Best way to grind "Bottle of Fourth City Airag"?

In the near future I plan to acquire upwards of thirty five of these rare liquors in order to gain a certain item, and I was wondering what the most efficient way to do so from scratch would be? I have heard that entering the wine trading business is a good place to start, or even searching the forgotten quarter as an option. However for both options I remain clueless has to what the most efficient use of my time would be. Any advice would be most welcomed! While this is likely a very unprofitable endeavor, it is something I am certain I want to do.

You can do the Affair of the Box, cashing in the reward at the end for Strangling Willow Absinthe, then upconvert that twice to Broken Giant, then Cellars of Wine. Use the Cellars when the Presumptuous Opportunity card comes around, and… eventually… you will get to your final goal.

Alternatively, you can use the Velocipede carousel in Ladybones and gain the Broken Giant directly from the final choice “Riots in Watchmaker’s Hill! Shops are Burning!”

People smarter than me have determined that these two carousels take the same number of actions once you factor in the conversions, so I like to mix them up to keep things from getting too grindy.

I would recommend stocking up on some Cellars of Wine to take advantage of the Presumptuous Opportunities that do turn up, but to rely on the Deep Blue Heaven expedition for the majority of your Airag.

Would it be more efficient to upward trade wines for them? Or to average out expedition rewards?

If you want to use your existing stock of wines to get some more Cellars of Wine then I’d say that’s fine, but otherwise you should stick to collecting the high tiers from either the Affair of the Box or the Velocipede Squad.

Just out of curiosity, how reliable is getting Airag from the Deep Blue Haven expedition and is it a better method than up-converting from the Affair of the Box? I was always under the impression that the latter was the most efficient.

Also, what about converting Tales of Terror! from the Flit into wines? Not only to you get a fair amount of wines from it, but you also get MW to turn into Nobility for Favorable Circumstances. Then you can use that to get a presumptuous opportunity from the Portly Sommelier. Then again, I haven’t crunched the numbers so I could be wrong. Still, couldn’t hurt to check.
edited by Sir Joseph Marlen on 8/27/2015

I’ve done 566 runs and gotten 75 bottles of it (71 Airag + Map and 4 Airag + Parabola-Linen), though accounting for luck it’s probably closer to 10% than 13%. I like it because you can keep on doing it while waiting for A Presumptuous Opportunity to turn up and cut back on the number of times you’ll need that card.

I don’t know the numbers on getting Favourable Circumstances using Tales of Terror from the Flit, but I think you’d end up with a bunch of surplus wine in the process of getting enough Notability to force that card 20+ times. I’d be interested in seeing some actual numbers, since a long term goal of mine is to get 11 bottles of M_____'s B____, so if this is a better way of getting through it I’d definitely like to know.

edited by Sara Hysaro on 8/27/2015

I’d been going to comment that if I understand correctly Airag should account for 1/8 of non-skull Deep Blue Heaven expedition rewards, but I remembered Sara has been logging expedition results so I thought I’d let her comment first. But that puts the expected number at something times 12.5%, could be as low as 10% if skulls are 1/5. Always nice when predictions and results match up.
edited by marcmagus on 8/27/2015

Here are my full results thus far if anybody is curious:

An Instrument - 62 (10.95%)
A trophy - 70 (12.36%)
An amulet - 6 (1.06%)
A wooden mask - 53 (9.36%)
Seal of Hooded Hawk - 66 (11.66%)
Flake of Vellum - 33 (5.83%)
Tightly Wrapped Package - 22 (3.88%)
After the Fall - 56 (9.89%) <- Eyeless Skull outcome
An inscribed diamond - 65 (11.48%)
A long ago burglar - 71 (12.54%)
What is this - 58 (10.24)
A carefully wrapped container - 4 (0.70%)

Unpredictable Treasures list for reference.

edited by Sara Hysaro on 8/27/2015

If you visit the Nadir, one card has the option to trade sudden insights for airag.
edited by Rook Crofton on 8/27/2015

Sudden insights, actually.

Yes - it’s worth checking in the Cave of The Nadir once a week to try to snag a bottle (just don’t go in without the requisite sudden insights).

[quote=Sara Hysaro]Here are my full results thus far if anybody is curious:

An Instrument - 62 (10.95%)
A trophy - 70 (12.36%)
An amulet - 6 (1.06%)
A wooden mask - 53 (9.36%)
Seal of Hooded Hawk - 66 (11.66%)
Flake of Vellum - 33 (5.83%)
Tightly Wrapped Package - 22 (3.88%)
After the Fall - 56 (9.89%) <- Eyeless Skull outcome
An inscribed diamond - 65 (11.48%)
A long ago burglar - 71 (12.54%)
What is this - 58 (10.24)
A carefully wrapped container - 4 (0.70%)

Unpredictable Treasures list for reference.

edited by Sara Hysaro on 8/27/2015[/quote]

Have you ever added any of these results to the spreadsheet? This information is very helpful.

Boxfuls of Intrigue (~141ppa) is a more profitable path than Riding the Savage Cobbles (~123ppa) for obtaining Airag; according to my numbers. I haven’t found a more profitable Wines route though I have found several far less profitable.

The short version is that, if you only care about wine, or are A Guardian of the Realm, the Box is almost exactly the same as the Squad (accounting for conversions). The Box is something like 0.01 EPA more efficient in the very long term.

In terms of raw EPA, however, the Affair of the Box as the Conscience of Empire enables you to pick up Correspondence Plaques, and the additional conversions mean you get further bonuses on the luck checks, so if you’re looking for cash in addition to the Airag, the Box will be better every time.

Duly noted. It looks like ill be box hunting soon.

Note they you may want to grind as much as possible before Failbetter gets to implement the Favors system for the Church - getting the required connections seems much easier than getting Favors (at least that is what I feel about the Criminals).

Oh? How does this particular grind work? I thought it was just an ordinary carousel in which I built up wines an up covert a few times?

The grind is a carousel, but to upconvert the wine you get from it you need Connected: Church (and in the future will need Favors).

[quote=Yang Yang][quote=Sara Hysaro]Here are my full results thus far if anybody is curious:

An Instrument - 62 (10.95%)
A trophy - 70 (12.36%)
An amulet - 6 (1.06%)
A wooden mask - 53 (9.36%)
Seal of Hooded Hawk - 66 (11.66%)
Flake of Vellum - 33 (5.83%)
Tightly Wrapped Package - 22 (3.88%)
After the Fall - 56 (9.89%) <- Eyeless Skull outcome
An inscribed diamond - 65 (11.48%)
A long ago burglar - 71 (12.54%)
What is this - 58 (10.24)
A carefully wrapped container - 4 (0.70%)

Unpredictable Treasures list for reference.
[/quote]

Have you ever added any of these results to the spreadsheet? This information is very helpful.[/quote]

Nope, this has all been isolated within my private spreadsheet until now. Feel free to add it to the spreadsheet. :)