[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]So, due to… Reasons… I find myself needing a bat with attitude. As many others may soon find themselves in need of one, is the only non-recursive source via a rare success when one release a bat into the clouds? If so, this could be a VERY long and, shall we say, ambitious? enterprise.[/color]
I believe that’s the only source, yes.
This seems like a good place to discuss the fastest way possible to obtain a Bat with Attitude.
What you want to do is maximize your chances of drawing the "A parliament of bats" card, and that means drawing as many opportunity cards as possible. That means spending as many actions as possible performing "flash resets". For those unfamiliar with the tactic:
Keep Scandal at exactly 2 and your Suspicion and Nightmares below 3. Equip the Barrel with Leather Shoulder-Straps (Bohemians Renown 10 item), Modish Bonnet, and Pair of Scarlet Stockings of Dubious Origin. Begin a Flash Lay in Veilgarden. Because your modified Scandal is at 5, you will automatically fail the Flash Lay. This will completely refill your opportunity deck, to 6 for free players and 10 for Exceptional Friends, at the cost of only 2 actions.
After that, you can only try to prevent yourself from drawing cards that aren’t "A parliament of bats". Hold onto Frequent cards in your hand (the 4-card Lodgings and the Townhouse, if you have them) so you can’t draw them. Get rid of your faction pet. Get rid of all your Hell Favours. Resigning from your club would be extreme (a step I haven’t taken), but it gets rid of 2 useless cards in this context.
I can’t guarantee that this will give you success any time soon. It’s the strategy I’ve been using since the update dropped. I’d estimate that I’ve drawn somewhere around 800 cards, of which 9 have been "A parliament of bats", and I’ve still yet to find one.
To what Azothi said, I want to mention that getting rid of all Criminal favours, drawing cards in FQ and keeping the other 3 menaces to 0 are a bonus too.
With less than that card optimization I recorded some data about how often I get a card:
With EF status, flipping all cards and consuming around 110 AP/day on FLs while using 6-7 standard frequency cards, you may get one such bat in 4-5 days (statistically). Just discard all cards, forget about favours, Echoes; maybe just farm Flit favours if that’s a thing for you and the 12.5 E rare card.
edited by Skinnyman on 1/16/2020
Whoever decided to make getting that b____y bat necessary to continue should be thrown down a well.
And then dragged back up, taken to zee, and thrown down another well!
I hate being overly negative, but this seems like such terrible design. I am a "casual" player on my only active account after finishing Seeking, only playing about once a day after work, and it seems that even abusing the unintended flash lay reset I will be looking at a month of doing absolutely nothing but logging in and hoping. Going after poet laureate was a grind, but it was at least something you could enjoy and plan towards incrementally. Even Winking Island, as RNG as that was, had a path to reliable progress. This is like rolling a 1d100 once a day and hoping you get really lucky.
I hope Failbetter is looking at data and player feedback on this, because having a main ambition task that is worse than anything in Seeking seem kinda backwards.
edited by Askebaske on 1/17/2020
As an aside, I have found the bat situation more tolerable as I picture myself as the character from The Neverending Story screeching out, “Stupid bat!” at each failure.
There are three luck-based grinds that are difficult to accomplish (becoming friends with the Wry Functionary, getting a Yacht, Fidgeting Writer storyline), and then there is the Bat with Attitude. For the three previously-listed grinds, they are frustrating but at least are pinned and can be tried at any time as long as you have the materials in bulk and keep spending actions. For the Bat with Attitude, it’s different because you can only try for one if you get the card, which appears based on LUCK. So not only do you have to be very lucky on the option, you have to have some luck to draw the card in the first place. Even if you are using borderline-game-breaking exploits like the Flash Lay Card Reset, it could still take a frustratingly long amount of time without any promise you will get one.
I can guess that most players do not have Bats with Attitude, because they’ve never been needed before and because the success rate is so low, and they were just an extra bonus for collectors with too much time to obtain. If the same case was repeated but with a Blemmigan Secretary for example, would it be right for Failbetter to expect casual players to constantly exchange surprise packages with each other dozens of times just to advance an Ambition?
I understand that the end of an Ambition is end-game content and that I myself am salty about not having a Bat with Attitude on hand, but this has not been planned out well. For this part of the Ambition, getting Courier’s Footprint is optional, getting into the Mind is optional, but somehow lucking into a Bat with Attitude is mandatory?
Excuse me, but your saltiness, being on the edge with ‘game-breaking exploits’ a bit above cited quote, in the quote went overboard to insulting collectors, of which I am. I understand polemics, but please do not judge my dedication and playstyle the game we both enjoy. I tried to be silent, as usually I am, but this word-stab was just rude.
Also, 1/20 of Bat with Attitude is not even close to 1/1000 of Blemmigan. Seriously. Comparing one to another, even in theory and as method of rhetoric argument, is the insult of mathematics and probabilities in itself. And before you say that: both rolls are essentially based to card-drawings, be it bat card, or Unsigned Message.
You compare X with X squared. It’s two orders of magnitude difference. It’s as if you were comparing meters to centimeters. Just no.
edited by Kharsirr Lynx on 1/18/2020
edited by Kharsirr Lynx on 1/18/2020
[quote=The Curious Watcher] Even if you are using borderline-game-breaking exploits like the Flash Lay Card Reset, it could still take a frustratingly long amount of time without any promise you will get one.[/quote]I said it two times and here it is again:
With EF status you need 3-4 days of grind to get that bat while discarding all other cards. Give it or take 1-3 days because of RNG.
On this matter I can only agree with Kharsirr Lynx; I’m a frigging hoarder as well, sold some bats at the beginning and removed that card some time ago from my deck. All in all, here I am sitting on 24 bats. Even so, active player and older than me found it hard to get the Blemmi.
Let’s stick with the fact that FL isn’t a game where everything is served upfront and the design is asymmetrical thus we can expect less punishing requirements.
These bats really have some attitude considering the stir they are causing! :D
[quote=Skinnyman][quote=The Curious Watcher] Even if you are using borderline-game-breaking exploits like the Flash Lay Card Reset, it could still take a frustratingly long amount of time without any promise you will get one.[/quote]I said it two times and here it is again:
With EF status you need 3-4 days of grind to get that bat while discarding all other cards. Give it or take 1-3 days because of RNG.[/quote]In my opinion, you’re both right here, and it’s exemplary of the deeper problems that make the hunt for a Bat with Attitude so polarizing in these discussions.
3-4 days sounds like a very short amount of time, but the amount of failure packed into 3-4 days of flash resets is typically several weeks’ worth. I began the Nemesis update with 40 actions about 20 minutes after the update dropped early on Discord (and here). A few actions of incredible story and tension, which I can only characterize as "Holy s___". One zee trip full of budding anticipation. And then: a Bat with Attitude lock. I went straight into flash reset mode. I would only play WTTS cards, "A parliament of bats", and my aunt card. Got WTTS up to 15 within the first 24 hours and shifted to only playing "A parliament of bats".
Now it’s been about 102 hours. Because of my horrendous sleep schedule (thanks uni 
), I’d estimate that I play around 130-144 actions per day, and that’s not even counting the action refreshes from the Aunt card. So for ease of calculation, let’s say that’s around 100 actions purely dedicated to flash resets per day. That’s 500 cards per day; across 4 days, that’s 2,000 cards (and this is almost certainly an underestimate for me) - and every single one of them did not work. The number of "failures" - drawn cards that do not provide a Bat with Attitude - scales at around 5 times the rate of actions spent. And the deeper point is that all other cards go into the discard pile, and all that’s left to show for it are scraps and a few Cryptic Clues. There’s no progress, there’s no learning experience; there’s only the detritus of failures.
–
Let’s consider a different requirement, one that, with 100 actions per day, would take around 4-5 days. Let’s suppose, then, you could advance the story by spending 31,250 Souls. That would take around 400 actions to grind 1,250 Echoes via Arbor, or around 516 actions on average via Unfinished Business. This would take a long time, but I doubt we’d see the backlash we see now against the Bat with Attitude requirement, despite superficially needing about the same time on average. What notable distinctions are there?
(1) Choice: Players have much more choice about how to grind 31,250 Souls. They can even liquidate 1,250 Echoes of items and grind that back later. It will require the same amount of time to gain back those Echoes regardless; it’s just placed after the Ambition rather than during it. Compare that to the Bat with Attitude hunt, where there’s only one choice that involves nothing but discarding cards and hoping for a rare success.
(2) Progress: Nearly every action you take when grinding for 31,250 Souls is a baby step towards the goal. You will go from 1% to 2% to 10% to 50% of the goal, and so on. There’s a clear sense of progression. Even if you aren’t there today, you are closer than you were yesterday. This is not the case for the Bat with Attitude. This hunt is boolean: you either find one or you don’t. This means for an anticipated 99.95% of the time, you’re at 0% progress, and then at the very end you instantly jump to 100% progress - and there’s no way to determine where that end is. Even with Winking Isle, you know how near or far you are from your goal.
[quote=Skinnyman]On this matter I can only agree with Kharsirr Lynx; I’m a frigging hoarder as well, sold some bats at the beginning and removed that card some time ago from my deck. All in all, here I am sitting on 24 bats. Even so, active player and older than me found it hard to get the Blemmi.[/quote]Hoarding is relative. I’m in the same boat as Kharsirr Lynx: we both have the Cider and the Heptagoat, which comes from years of grinding. In the meantime, I’ve obtained 1 Bat with Attitude ever, which I upgraded to an Utterly Livid Bat back in '95. The fact that had I not done that (something I even bought extra Confessions with Notability to do!), I wouldn’t have this problem just rubs Salt in the wound.
It’s perfectly valid to say that the scope is different because they absolutely are. But the comparison isn’t between (a) obtaining a Bat with Attitude and (b) obtaining a Blemmigan Secretary. The comparison is between (a) requiring a Bat with Attitude for your Ambition with no alternative and (b) requiring a Blemmigan Secretary for your Ambition with no alternative. The question posed is "if (b) is not reasonable, then why is (a) reasonable?"
To wager a guess at the response, I’d say it’s a matter of probability (as Kharsirr Lynx pointed out). You only have a 1/1000 chance from a Surprise Package for b[/b], but you have a 1/20 chance on "A parliament with bats" for b[/b]. If so, then where should we draw the line? Is 1/100 unreasonable? What about 1/50? Why not draw the line at 1/10 or 1/5? What standard is used to judge how reasonable a chance is? When should we offer players another way to reach their goal?
There’s a tendency, I think, to draw lines based on personal experience - between the "haves" and the "have-nots", so to speak. "I don’t have a Bat with Attitude, so this is an undue burden." "I have a Bat with Attitude, so this is a reasonable burden." Likewise, "I don’t have a Blemmigan Secretary, so it would be an undue burden." There’s little room for reconciliation with that kind of divide.
[quote=Skinnyman]Let’s stick with the fact that FL isn’t a game where everything is served upfront and the design is asymmetrical thus we can expect less punishing requirements.
These bats really have some attitude considering the stir they are causing! :D[/quote]We may have different views on what "upfront" means. No one’s asking for free Bats with Attitude. What people are asking for is an alternative method so that there’s choice and the ability to judge progress - like progression before the Cave of the Nadir, for example.
Asymmetrical design does not mean it’s good design. Let’s compare this choice to two other examples of (in my opinion) good asymmetrical design involving rare/hard-to-obtain qualities/items in the same Nemesis update below the spoiler tag.
[spoiler]The exact same choice that requires a Bat with Attitude has a Scholar of the Correspondence requirement. You need at least 10. If you’re at Courier’s Footprint, then you only need the Lamplighter’s Beeswax and the Bat with Attitude. If you’re not, then you need a Searing Enigma as well. This gives a small bonus to the "haves" - the class with Courier’s Footprint - but also the satisfaction of the game recognizing your character’s achievements.
A more analogous instance of asymmetrical design is the next step, where (as I understand it - the community has been kind enough to be very open about mechanics but careful with story spoilers) you must travel to 3 of 4 locations: the Royal Beth, the Mirror-Marches, Carnelian, and the Mind of a Long-Dead God. Three are easily accessible; the fourth is entirely reliant on card draws, followed by a long grind on Mutton Island. The "haves" - those who are close to going to the Mind - receive the bonus of what I’ve heard is a really nice piece of text. The "have-nots" - those who likely don’t even have Stormy-Eyed - are not barred from progressing the story by opportunity card draws. You can choose whether or not to pursue the rare, fourth option.
Now for our third instance: the Bat with Attitude. The "haves" - those with Bats with Attitude - can continue the story normally. The "have-nots" must buy lottery tickets until they succeed and are barred from progressing the story until they succeed.[/spoiler]
What compounds the problem is that Nemesis is due for an update in under 3 days, and the final update will likely come within weeks of that. Meanwhile, we have players stuck at an arbitrary step simply because, no matter how many tens of thousands of Echoes your character has available or how many connections your character can all in, there’s no other way to obtain a Bat with Attitude. More importantly, in the scope of the story progression, it comes immediately after the hook. This is the very first step, and more likely than not, it’s where most of the "have-nots" will spend their time this update. I don’t think that was intentional. I don’t believe the idea was to have players waiting around for a few days at this step because it makes no sense for story pacing.
Not only does it kill hype that the team spent an entire month building (not to mention years of waiting), but it runs the risk of hurting future hype: there’s no guarantee that players currently stuck now will be free by the second or third update (and given how much travel is necessary, the window for the second update is rapidly closing). It doesn’t make sense as a launch strategy.
The way I see it, it’s a blind spot in the design. "Sulky Bats are too common, so let’s make it a Bat with Attitude." Suppose 99% of Nemesis players have a Bat with Attitude, and 1% do not. The experience of that minority "have-not" is going to be markedly different from the vast majority. Is there a need to accommodate for that minority? Not necessarily, but some backlash is to be expected if not. And that’s just if its 1%. Between the forum and Discord, it seems far closer to parity.
Azothi wrote it far better than I could. I would also like to note that for players like me who play at most once or twice a day, with a poorly optimized deck with a lot of lodgings and generally refuse to use unintended mechanics (my choice, I know, but it means I reset at 6 actions instead through the school) the estimated time is way, way more than 3-4 days. I am 3 days into the grind and have only seen the card 5 times. That means it will take me a few weeks on average, possibly up to a month with bad luck… At which point my hype will be thoroughly dead. And god save players who avoid spoilers or the wiki, because the game has zero hints on how to get the bat at all.
I simply wish for a method with some kind of reliable progress that doesn’t depend on a random chance to roll a d20. People may disagree, but I don’t think this is an unrealistic thing to ask when it comes to access to core content.
edited by Askebaske on 1/18/2020
To counter my own rudeness a bit (that barb of ‘too much free time’ was awful, but I shouldn’t had had a lash out like this) I repeat: the option to get the bat by some other way specifically for Ambition pursuers would be very nice. And it’s not even the first time they did that (First City Coins, remember? Or Location of Prince of Hell.)
edited by Kharsirr Lynx on 1/18/2020
Edit: I am sorry for saying "Collectors with too much time on their hands", as I didn’t understand how that could be taken offensively as at this point, I accomplished almost every aside from Cider and Heptagoat and every other goal seems extraneous in comparison… I apologize for saying such a thing, will try to be more mindful of my speech in the future.
Moving on, I actually am arguing this based on my own personal experiences and my own tendencies to hoard random items: on my main account for Heart’s Desire, I have three of the four scrap treasures and am in the process of getting the last one, which took months for no foreseeable pragmatic benefit. At the same time on that same Heart’s Desire character, after 2.5 years of continuous play, I have a whopping two Bats with Attitude, not out of lack of interest, but due to probability.
I am not saying that the Bat with Attitude is as hard to get as the Blemmigan Secretary, of course it is not and I apologize if it sounds like I am exaggerating, but the idea of locking critical plot development based on LUCK, whether it is as high as 5% on a card or 1% or so on, is not a good idea. The same type of complaints have been lodged with the exceptional story "Fine Dining," where success is dictated on LUCK and not having all the information to make an informed decision. And that story was self-contained and not important in the long run, while an Ambition is clearly very important esp. since everyone is rushing to complete it after waiting for years. In a very short time, the long-awaited conclusion to this Ambition, perhaps all Ambitions in general, will be treated as old news just like how it’s commonly accepted Cups = Mirrors, and players right now want to reach the end without having it spoiled for once.
To the people that have 10+ Bats with Attitude, congratulations on your luck, but luck doesn’t favor everyone equally. The chances of getting a Bat with Attitude are roughly 5% - people who can afford to grind tons of cards through Flash Lay Resets may think this doable in a few days, people playing casually may take several weeks - and whether it’s possible matters less than finding a compromise that maintains difficulty and keeping players moving forward without being unreasonably frustrating.
edited by The Curious Watcher on 1/19/2020
I actually wonder how many people have passed that Bat with Attitude roadblock and reached the current content boundary in Nemesis, compared to those who have not, because in my purely anecdotal experience I think I have seen more people without Battitude than with, at least in Discord. I can count on one hand how many people (including myself) have reported reaching the new content boundary in Discord, maybe two hands if I also count people from the Nemesis finale thread in this forum. That’s so few and seems not proportionate to the hype for ambition finale update.
Maybe it’s just a case of the "have-nots" continually reporting their lack of progress making them more visible, I don’t know. At the end of the day I still agree with Azothi’s points that this is simply not a good design choice.
edited by silurica on 1/19/2020
Personally I see no problem with requiring some time and action investment to progress in ambitions. They’re supposed to be very long term goals, after all.
For anyone using rahv7’s Opportunity Protector style (with Stylus, as a reminder), the ID of "A parliament of bats" is 11344. This can prevent accidental discards, and it’s helpful nonetheless at making the card stand out by removing the Discard button.
Maybe the simplest thing would be to petition FB to allow people to sent each other the relevant bats, as with the First City coins. (As it happens, this is my ambition, and I have only ever had 2 BwAs, one of which is now absolutely livid.)
Later – but the RNG loves me, so one of the first cards I drew was the Parliament of Bats, and another one dropped – which I would be happy to donate if able. Or FB could change the frequency of the card for late stage Nemesis players maybe?
edited by Meradine Heidenreich on 1/19/2020
Until now I didn’t even know such bats exist. An oddly specific and obscure requirement for one of the main quests…