Big Rat Grind/Best Echoes Grind

Fallen London
1

DISCLAIMER:
This information is now out of date as this grind has been heavily nerfed.

I’ve been asked by a few people to make this, so here it is.

Towards the end of the Big Rat Storyline, a storylet in the Flit opens up &quotGather your forces against the Big Rat&quot, in which there’s an option &quotAdvertise a spot of hunting&quot, which when utilised correctly can net up to 1.75 echoes per action.
The downside to this grind is that it’s very easy to lock yourself out of if you don’t want to pay fate. If you either take the Big Rat alive, or kill them, that’s it, you’re done. You’ll either have to pay either 5 fate or 30 fate respectively. It also presumes you’ve got a friend or an alt to dish out social actions to/from.

Here’s how to do it:
Advertising hunting gives you 3 Secluded Addresses, 1cp of scandal and 3 cp of Running Battle.
Deal with the scandal via your lodgings with &quotAsk someone for help laying rumours to rest&quot (including getting rid of your friend/alt’s scandal).
Duel Chi Lan to the death as soon as you can in Wolfstack Docks (Running Battle 13), cheating gets you an extra 9 pence per action (up to 1.84 epa).
If you fail, deal with wounds by having someone send you the social action to decrease your wounds &quotNurse a friend back to health&quot.

Selling everything averages at 1.75 echoes per action (that’s selling the secluded addresses, and the rostygold from the fight).

My math in a spoiler:

First things first. How much Running Battle per action?
Every 4 actions is 1 menace reduction, and every 4 of those you have to accept one back, for a total of 16*3cp running battle/5+16 actions.
So ~2.28 cp of RB per action.

Next, what’s the best bang for our Running Battle?
How many actions for each duel? Each time I calculated duelling someone a little later than as soon as possible the epa went down, so I discarded that fast.
All my calculations I’ve got here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pvl9Aut-vpR72Kp3Sv7S-thVOskZqSfjiG3bfSoX_ng/edit#gid=0

For recursive calculating I assume your friend sends you one wounds decrease, and that you’re a mean friend and don’t send one back. Sending one back decreases your epa by… Oh. Would you look at that. One penny. Sending a wounds decrease back decreases your echoes per action by one penny. I’m also assuming it only takes you wound wounds decrease to get rid of the accumulating wounds, considering we’re talking fractions of an action here, it’s not going to decrease your epa by much, probably not even a whole penny.

Fate Expeditions can net you a much larger amount averaging (depending on your luck), between 5.5 to 4.1 epa. Averaging anyways, you can get much more than this, or a bit less.

PM me if you want more details, just in general.
If you want to thank me for this, I’m collecting Starveling Cats for my Starveling Cafe! I’ve already got 22, only need 55 more.
edited by Cecil on 1/17/2016

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One more thing: to get through the big rat story, you DO NOT need to buy expensive rats. All you need is to get the disgraced rat chief in your rat infestation (Try to take him alive), and buy maybe 20 talkative rats. Use the chief to increase rodent investigation, and use talkative rats for cannon fodder.

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I wonder if it makes more or less profit to just soak the scandal, deal with it in tomb colonies with a high chance of catching a tomb lion, and then also breeding that lion.

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I’ll do the math on that. I doubt it, but I’ll do the math, getting out of the tomb colonies is a pain. It’ll be better to get in/out of the tomb colonies as soon as possible, so I’ll base off that.

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Assuming one wears both scandal gears and get that first sticky level of scandal, and exceptional luck with cards in the tomb colonies, it would take 13 actions to get to leave the colonies including getting the Tomb Lion.
Best EPA for breeding the lion (assuming you get a lucky result), is 18 Identities Uncovered over (18+13) actions, at 1.45 echoes per action. But. Uh. adding that into my original calculations… That might be 2.64 epa? In fact. I’m fairly sure it is. Someone should try this out for me.

This is assuming one is lucky on the breeding. I’ll try and find what the success rate and slot it in again.

Wiki says it’s pretty good odds Pulling out the Stops, so assuming that’s a 70% success rate, it pushes the epa down to 2.57 (which is still higher than just duelling.
edited by Cecil on 11/11/2014

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[quote=Cecil Palmer]Assuming one wears both scandal gears and get that first sticky level of scandal … 1.45 echoes per action.[/quote]I can see how it might be worth going to the Tomb-Colonies more often by wearing +2 Scandal, rather than going less often and having to get rid of 36 CPs at whatever rate you can reduce them by once there. But surely there is no benefit whatsoever in getting the sticky point from the items rather than simply getting it from Advertise a spot of hunting? I mean, that’s the most profitable Action in this grind, so why not get one for free?

I also have no idea how you can turn a 2.16 epa grind into a 2.57 epa grind by adding a bunch of 1.45 epa Actions. Mathematically it should even out to something between the higher and the lower of those two, depending on how many Actions are spent doing what. Granted, by going to the Tomb-Colonies you don’t have to account for other Actions spent reducing Scandal, but I assume all Scandal reduction in the Tomb-Colonies is done without any other rewards, and that should eat into your profits a lot.

My own calculations for breeding the Tomb-Lion gave me 1.71 to 2.06 epa depending on options, and accounting for one Action each for picking it up and breeding it, plus seven Actions to reach The Hunt is On! 6 for each option used. For pulling out all the stops, and not accounting for picking up the Tomb-Lion, since that’s baked into the visit to the Tomb-Colonies, you should use 22 Actions instead of 18 Actions.

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[quote=Gillsing][quote=Cecil Palmer]Assuming one wears both scandal gears and get that first sticky level of scandal … 1.45 echoes per action.[/quote]I can see how it might be worth going to the Tomb-Colonies more often by wearing +2 Scandal, rather than going less often and having to get rid of 36 CPs at whatever rate you can reduce them by once there. But surely there is no benefit whatsoever in getting the sticky point from the items rather than simply getting it from Advertise a spot of hunting? I mean, that’s the most profitable Action in this grind, so why not get one for free?

I also have no idea how you can turn a 2.16 epa grind into a 2.57 epa grind by adding a bunch of 1.45 epa Actions. Mathematically it should even out to something between the higher and the lower of those two, depending on how many Actions are spent doing what. Granted, by going to the Tomb-Colonies you don’t have to account for other Actions spent reducing Scandal, but I assume all Scandal reduction in the Tomb-Colonies is done without any other rewards, and that should eat into your profits a lot.

My own calculations for breeding the Tomb-Lion gave me 1.71 to 2.06 epa depending on options, and accounting for one Action each for picking it up and breeding it, plus seven Actions to reach The Hunt is On! 6 for each option used. For pulling out all the stops, and not accounting for picking up the Tomb-Lion, since that’s baked into the visit to the Tomb-Colonies, you should use 22 Actions instead of 18 Actions.[/quote]

I did include decreasing scandal and getting and breeding the Tomb Lion. I can give you my maths without being inane.
11 actions to get rid of your 21 cp’s of scandal, 1 to get the Lion, 1 to get out, + 19 for breeding the Tomb Lion (I need to edit the main post actually, I forgot to include the one action to actually breed the lion which decreases the epa to 2.559, or 2.56).

Actually. You made me have to redo my math, I have to figure out the average epa for the rat grind…

For ease of reading, I’ll refer to Tomb Lion as TL
Here’s what I was doing, because it’s not :
(Dueling Chi Lan reward+TL Successrate of success+TL Failurerate of failure)

(Avg actions to duel Chi Lan+Actions to get out of the tomb colonies+actions to breed the TL)

Which is wrong
That’s assuming I get to breed the tomb lion approximately once every time I duel Chi Lan, which again, is wrong.

The correct way of calculating the echoes per actions would be:

(Epa for duelingactions before exile+TL Successrate of success+TL Failure*rate of failure)

(Actions until exile+Actions to get out of the tomb colonies+actions to breed the TL)

I also tried it with 20 or 21 actions depending on whether you use that extra sticky point of scandal or not, and not using it decreased the result by one penny.

Actually doing that increases the echoes per action up to 2.61.

Where are you getting 36 change points to hit 8 scandal from?

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[quote=Cecil Palmer]I did include decreasing scandal and getting and breeding the Tomb Lion. I can give you my maths without being inane.[/quote]Was I being inane? I assumed that your &quot18&quot in &quot18+13&quot was for the three different progress qualities you have to get to level 6 to breed anything with ‘pulling out the stops’. And that should be &quot21&quot, and include the actual breeding Action for a total of &quot22&quot. But now I’m beginning to think that you didn’t account for those 21 Actions. Because that might explain your incredibly high Echoes/Action and why going to the Tomb-Colonies more often would somehow increase profits. If you didn’t have to work to actually breed the Tomb-Lion it would be an even better grind than Advertise a spot of hunting.

[quote=Cecil Palmer]Where are you getting 36 change points to hit 8 scandal from?[/quote]1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8=36 CP if you try to go there as little as possible due to the 5 Action cost of getting home, even after all Scandal has been reduced.

Here’s my calculation for breeding the Tomb-Lion, including the Action to pick it up in the Tomb-Colonies:

Pulling out the stops (18 x An Identity Uncovered or 12 x An Identity Uncovered):
(0.7 x 18 x 2.5 + 0.3 x 12 x 2.5) / (1 + 7 + 7 + 7 + 1) = (31.5 + 9) / 23 = ~1.76 Echoes/Action

And here’s duelling Chi Lan through Advertise a spot of hunting, not accounting for failed attempts or reducing Scandal:

31 Actions x 1.5 Echoes + 1 Action x 30 Echoes = 2.44 Echoes/Action

Combining the two gives me this:

(23 x 1.76 + 31 x 2.44) / (23 + 31) = 2.15 Echoes/Action

Okay, so maybe you get to breed two Tomb-Lions for every duel, since you wear Scandalous items to go to the Tomb-Colonies more often:

(2 x 23 x 1.76 + 31 x 2.44) / (2 x 23 + 31) = 2.03 Echoes/Action

Then, since I’ve never been to the Tomb-Colonies, I’ll just have to take your word for it taking 12 Actions to reduce Scandal and get home:

156.60 Echoes / (77 + 2 x 12 Actions) = 1.55 Echoes/Action

In the end, not worth my precious Actions.

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I need to go over your maths, but first, gods no I wasn’t talking about you being inane! I’m sorry if it came out that way! I was referring to myself, and I sincerely apologise for the misunderstanding.

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You are correct that is what those 18 actions were for in that previous calculation, I was under the impression that increasing each individual quality only took 6 actions (I have no idea where I pulled that from, I thought you only had to do the 3cp option 6 times I guess, eek, sorry).

I also correct myself thanks to you, noticing that I’d missed the action to actually breed the damnable beast.

Because that might explain your incredibly high Echoes/Action and why going to the Tomb-Colonies more often would somehow increase profits. If you didn’t have to work to actually breed the Tomb-Lion it would be an even better grind than Advertise a spot of hunting.

[quote=Cecil Palmer]Where are you getting 36 change points to hit 8 scandal from?[/quote]1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8=36 CP if you try to go there as little as possible due to the 5 Action cost of getting home, even after all Scandal has been reduced.

I had forgotten about the 5 action cost of getting home.
Scandal change point wise I was going off 20 actions because 2+3+4+5+6=20 CP (first cp gotten from sticky clothing +2 levels of scandal clothing)

Oh. I see where I buggered up calculation wise. I’m a fool. I was ignoring a key part to the equation, when I initially started up my table I was figuring out /just/ the epa for succeeding in the Running Battle challenge, presuming I also got 1.5 echoes every action. Very. Stupid. Move. On my part. Changes the epa for getting exiled and including to breed the Tomb Lion down to 1.82. Which, for what it’s worth, is still better than the affair of the box.

Redoing my calculations… no tiger breeding, fencing scandal off to a friend, duelling Chi Lan is 2.56 epa.

Thank you ever so much for making me realise just how badly I’d screwed up calculations-wise.

Okay. No. Still shuffling things. Total epa has dropped to 1.75.
edited by Cecil on 11/11/2014

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This has, sadly, been nerfed. Advertise a spot of hunting only provides one SA now.

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aye. thanks , i didn’t notice all this while. it’s still a half-decent grind especially you need whispered secrets for expeditions and such. the rosty gold can converted into said secrets in tiger’s labyrinth.[li][/li][li]
edited by rebelanarch-82 on 8/28/2015