I recently pursued an expedition for the Tomb of the Seven in the Forgotten Quarter. I had made pretty good progress choosing almost always the safest option (1 supply for 1 progress, which had a 100% chance for me) and ocasionally risking a little more (2 supply for 2 progress, around 55% chance), wich paid off almost always. But as I was reaching the 30 Archeologists’ progress needed to reach my goal, I saw my Rival’s Progress skyrocket from 3 to 10, and I had to concede. So, does anyone have a clue on how Rival’s Progress works? Shoul I follow a different strategy, or come back later with better stats, or just force my luck?
There is a chance that your rival’s progress will increase every time you do something with your expedition. If you fail the chance increases to 100%.
Ah, rivals.
Every time you use an action to gain progress, your rivals have a random chance of moving forward as well. Thus, the faster you go, the better you will do. The slow option is good enough for a thief cache raid, but it’s not going to do you for the Tomb of the Seven without some particularly remarkable luck. The middle option gives you an even shot, if you can succeed on it regularly, which is how I managed it. You probably won’t be able to access the top option until long after you’ve finished the Tomb expedition.
If you aren’t able to regularly hit the second option, you aren’t going to move fast enough to succeed at the Tomb expedition yet. I would back off of it and go search for Caches and Shrines for a while, until your Watchful is up. These expeditions can get you some nice items (which will help for that Echo grind you mentioned on another topic) and will help exercise your Watchful stat. Come back to the Tomb of the Seven when you’re able to move through more confidently. (Just watch your Nightmares!)
I’m pretty sure the chance of gaining Rival’s Progress on success is higher for the harder options. In other words, choosing ‘A cautious approach’ will give Rival’s Progress far less often than ‘A buccaneering approach’ would.
I’m with optimatum on that one.
As advice for OP, I’d probably work towards better stats. You’ll definitely need 100% chances on the 1 supply option.
I thought the player was given a chance to Confront a Rival and spend 10 x Crates of Expedition Supplies and other resources to lower Rival’s Progress from 10 to 1? So it should really only be a matter of gathering enough extra supplies before starting the expedition. And there’s no reason not to, as one gets to keep surplus supplies for future expeditions. I don’t recall having done any of the confrontations for the Tomb of Seven though, so I must’ve been fortunate enough to have gotten there before my rivals. Which shouldn’t be that unusual, now that think about it:
As far as I recall, "A cautious approach" has an extra chance of not increasing Rival’s Progress, where Rival’s Progress isn’t even mentioned in the results. I guess it’s a ~50% ‘rare’ success? For the regular success Rival’s Progress is either increased (+1) or unchanged, with a ~50% probability for either one. So for someone sticking to "A cautious approach" one would expect Rival’s Progress to increase ~25% of the time, which should get it close to 10 within 29 attempts, but not quite all the way there. Especially not if the player manages to take advantage of "A sign?" at least once during those 29 actions. Thinking about it, I may have seen it come close enough for my discomfort, and taken advantage of an opportunity to hinder one of my rivals, which costs a lot less expedition supplies than confronting one of them. Sticking to "A cautious approach" is also good for rerolling the Airs of the Forgotten Quarter more often, leading to more chances to hinder rivals as long as the player has extra supplies and whatever other resources would be needed. And also more chances to save time and supplies with "A sign?"
So these would be my strategy tips for important expeditions: 15-30 extra supplies, A cautious approach, and take advantage of random chances to hinder rivals. (Beware that such chances might not come up when you realise that you might need them, so it might be best to hinder them early and often.)
Adequate supplies really are the key here. Always, but always, have the extra 10 needed to confront. I had a spectacularly unlucky run at this and used way more than the 30 supposedly required.
I was never able to complete any of the expeditions that required more than 20 progress without confronting my rival at least once.
Make use of your friends to get sudden insights to preserve supplies (if this still works, it worked for me a month ago!)
There’s a helpful guide but another tip is to grind the search option before going on the expedition to get a high airs value to increase the chance of getting a shortcut event.
I think I actually managed the Tomb of the Seven, but just barely, and I was lucky.
But the Nadir and Hearts Desire ones definitely needed it. Gotta have high watchful and some extra supplies.
[quote=SeveredJoke]Make use of your friends to get sudden insights to preserve supplies (if this still works, it worked for me a month ago!)
There’s a helpful guide but another tip is to grind the search option before going on the expedition to get a high airs value to increase the chance of getting a shortcut event.[/quote]
I’m pretty sure neither of those suggestions work. Last I heard, with the unlock vs cost mechanic that’s implemented in the Forgotten Quarter, using second chances and failing a challenge consumes the cost (ie the supplies) a second time. Likewise the FQ options outside of expeditions won’t reroll FQ Airs to 96+, so you can’t cheese it to get A sign? at the beginning of the expedition.
I have started several expeditions out with A sign? in the past few months. I’ve not tried, so it’s always a nice surprise, but it’s certainly possible.
During my run I never encountered “a sign?” and was not given the opportunity to confront my rival, though the latter was probably because I didn’t have 10 supplies
I have started several expeditions out with A sign? in the past few months. I’ve not tried, so it’s always a nice surprise, but it’s certainly possible.[/quote]
Yeah but you won’t be able to force it using the non-Expedition airs shufflers. In fact you might have 96+ airs from the end of a previous expedition and using one of the shufflers in the quarter will eliminate it.
Naturally changing the airs would, well, change them. What are the grounds for saying that the Airs of the Forgotten Quarter stop at 95 unless you’re on an expedition? I admit it’s been a month or so since I’ve gone on one, but the cap certainly wasn’t in effect then. If something’s changed since then, then it means the wiki is out of date, as well.
My source is wiki comments. I dunno how trustworthy they are and I dunno if anything’s changed in the meantime. If someone wants, they could shuffle their airs ~100 times or so and see if it ever hits 96+.
The wiki pages don’t specify that the non-expedition Airs options have a cap because they originally didn’t. I’m pretty sure they have for a while, though. FBG doesn’t want players to be able to complete tough expeditions just by rerolling airs repeatedly and eliminating all risk.
edited by Optimatum on 3/31/2017
[quote=Optimatum][quote=SeveredJoke]Make use of your friends to get sudden insights to preserve supplies (if this still works, it worked for me a month ago!)
There’s a helpful guide but another tip is to grind the search option before going on the expedition to get a high airs value to increase the chance of getting a shortcut event.[/quote]
I’m pretty sure neither of those suggestions work. Last I heard, with the unlock vs cost mechanic that’s implemented in the Forgotten Quarter, using second chances and failing a challenge consumes the cost (ie the supplies) a second time. Likewise the FQ options outside of expeditions won’t reroll FQ Airs to 96+, so you can’t cheese it to get A sign? at the beginning of the expedition.[/quote]
It worked for me as long as I backed out of a failed use of sudden insight. I also managed to get ‘a sign’ but it was an exceptionally charmed run after numerous failed attempts.
I don’t think it was ever possible to ‘eliminate all risk’ for tough expeditions, since it isn’t possible to reroll airs outside of an expedition while being on an expedition. This is because "Seeking Curios and Secrets in the Forgotten Quarter" is locked with An Expedition, and according to the wiki history, that was the case way back in 2013, when I started playing, and when expeditions were apparently introduced for the first time. So I’m guessing that just being able to start out on an expedition with airs 96+ might have been considered too beneficial. (Though I don’t remember ever taking advantage of that possibility, since that would likely have required many lower-profit actions and given me nightmares.)
As Gillsing pointed out, the absolute most benefit you could get from starting out with A Sign? is, well, starting out with A Sign? - an extra 4 progress. While handy, this is rarely enough to tilt the success of an expedition. It certainly can’t eliminate all risk, or even a substantial quantity of risk, on its own.