It feels that gambling with scraps is counterproductive, but that might just be bad luck with the RNG. Is it wise to gamble scraps? Is there a mathematically ideal strategy to maximize your gains?
The only strategy is doing it a lot. You earn .5 scraps average for the cheapest option and get 1 scrap averted for gambling 10 or 20.
The RNG will find you. And you will regret gambling.
Jokes aside, you should have a large stock pile built up before you start gambling, I’ve heard over a thousand recommended. That way the RNG win’t ruin you if it gets nasty. I also heard that because of the wins and losses the middle option should be the most efficient.
gamble with the 10 scraps, not 20 scraps. same average value, but lower variance.
The ten scrap options need specific Airs values though iirc, so it would require doing other actions alongside.
oh, really? well, then gamble with 10 scraps when possible. I haven’t been doing the gambling, so i may have misremembered.
Gambling for/with scraps is probably not worthwhile unless you really need them now. The action-efficiency is terrible when compared to even one-scrap lodgings and it only gets worse if better lodgings are available.
The action-efficiency is one scrap per action (with a lot of variance), so it’s just as good as the one-scrap lodgings.
There is a lot of variance, though, so you have to be in it for the long game. You have to be able to look at the “you lost 8 scraps” message and shrug it off, knowing you did the right thing.
Most gambling options in the game tend to be slightly stacked towards the players to make them attractive and justify the action cost.
Scraps gambling doesn’t. It is also card-reliant and the stake is small enough that it gives you all the bad feelings of grinding AND gambling but none of the thrill or sense of progression.
Just be patient and spend your actions on something nicer.
My strategy when gambling for scraps eventually became to quit once I was ahead by enough double armfuls. But that requires getting ahead at one point, which, while likely, is not guaranteed. I wanted to get a much better return than the average 1 scrap per action, so once I had enough scraps (~200?) I used the 20 scraps option to get as much variance as possible as soon as possible, because in the long run even a large variance gets eaten up by the average. When I was two armfuls ahead (31 lucky vs 29 unlucky) I quit armfuls and focused solely on double armfuls, which ended with four double armfuls ahead (54 lucky vs 50 unlucky). So I spent 164 Actions to get 258 Certifiable Scraps, which makes it 1.57 Scraps per Action. Which is indeed much better than the average 1 Scrap/Action, but not nearly as good as the 2 Scraps/Action from two of the lodgings, and certainly much worse than the best lodgings, which I already had at that time. (Which is probably why I decided that 1 Scrap/Action just wasn’t good enough.)
So, in short, if you have as much luck as I had, try to aim for ~5 double armfuls ahead and then quit, assuming that 1.57 Scraps/Action is enough for you to even start in the first place. I’m sure someone who’s good at math could calculate the chances of success and risks of failure with this strategy. ‘Deviation from the mean’ and whatnot.
Ooh, look: My old post on the same subject, when I was still recertifying. It mentions me quitting armfuls with 30 wins vs 29 losses, so maybe the double armfuls at some point brought me down to few enough scraps that I chose to go back to a single armful just to be safe? How exciting that must have been.
The best strategy is not to do it, period!
Losing something that you think of as yours is really psychologically painful. So here’s what it boils down to:
From a mathematical perspective, the correct strategy is to click the button.
From a human perspective, the correct strategy is to not click the button.
As a compromise that I just thought of, you could click the button and not look at the results. You don’t really need to know how many scraps you have until the next relicker comes by anyway, right?
I click the button to gamble. Totally don’t care about the results. I never buy anything with them anyway, well, except for Parabolan silk.
Because, Parabola.
[quote=absimiliard]I click the button to gamble. Totally don’t care about the results. I never buy anything with them anyway, well, except for Parabolan silk.
Because, Parabola.[/quote]
I don’t buy anything either. My goal is to collect the 3200 scrap items.
I used to gamble Certifiable Scraps, 20 at a time. But when I went from 200+ down to pretty much 0, I gave up on it and just accumulated them gradually over time instead.
Nowadays, I have 6026 scrap and this sums up how I feel about scrap-gambling within Fallen London:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOoXwxqeVzg
[quote=Estelle Knoht]Most gambling options in the game tend to be slightly stacked towards the players to make them attractive and justify the action cost.
Scraps gambling doesn’t. It is also card-reliant and the stake is small enough that it gives you all the bad feelings of grinding AND gambling but none of the thrill or sense of progression.
Just be patient and spend your actions on something nicer.[/quote]
^ This, entirely.
[quote=Estelle Knoht]Just be patient and spend your actions on something nicer.[/quote]Absolutely.
If you do the following:
- Get all the lodgings and always play the option which gives Scraps on their respective cards[/li][li]Get a Sulky Bat and use its card to get Scraps[/li][li]Draw cards in the Flit and trade with the Urchins for 20 Scraps[/li][li]Never bet with the relickers!
… then you’ll get thousands of the things within a few months (depending on how trimmed your deck is).
I think there’s a lot of hate on gambling scraps because of the frustration, it is certanly better than most 1 scrap lodgings since you are bound to have a lucky streak sometime. But for optimal scrap per action grinding the 4-card lodgings and sulky bat approach seems to be the best.
You are also bound to have a losing streak sometime.
So, if you can afford to lose hundreds (if not thousands) of scraps to a bad streak from time to time, then gambling for scraps will be equivalent to one scrap per action in the long run.
Given these odds, I prefer using the lodgings cards since they are more numerous, more frequent and the resulting scrap is guaranteed.
Also, note that besides the 4-card lodgings which give 3 or 4 scraps per action, some lodgings give 2 (Decommissioned Steamer; Handsome Townhouse) or 3 (Half-Abandoned Mansion).
[quote=dov]
If you do the following:
[ul][li]Get all the lodgings and always play the option which gives Scraps on their respective cards[/quote]
[/li][/ul]I know what you were getting at (and you’re far more experienced at the game than I), but to people looking to get their first 3200 Scraps, I’d advise against getting all of the Lodgings, tbh. Some are clearly better than others and, at least until Lodgings can be sold, you’re just reducing your chances of getting good stuff by clogging your Opportunity Deck up with low-tier Lodgings.
The Cottage by the Observatory and the Smoky Flophouse are pretty nasty - skip these two.
Lair in the Marshes grant a good amount of Society alongside the Scrap, so that one’s alright. The Rooftop is mostly used for getting good wines (3E) instead of the single scrap it provides.