I think it would be nice to share the recipes that people managed to figure out this week, maybe it’ll help us all optimize them?
This week we have a bonus to Antiquity and +15% to Insects.
I’ll start!
I’m trying to gather Scrip, and I have tons of bones laying around, so I’m trying to sell them off using as few actions as possible.
Selling to Author of Gothic Tales, I figured out this recipe for 1 Exhaustion:
Prismatic Frame [+2 Antiquity]
Sabre-toothed Skull [+1 Antiquity, +1 Menace]
2x Carved Ball of Stygian Ivory
2x add four more joints to your skeleton
4x Femur of a Jurassic Beast [+4 Antiquity]
2x Holy Relic of the Thigh of Saint Fiacre
4x Wing of a Young Terror Bird [+4 Antiquity, +4 Menace]
1x Withered Tentacle [-1 Antiquity]
3x Tomb-Lion’s Tail [+3 Antiquity]
3x remove tail
make skeleton less menacing [-2 Menace]
declare Insect
Result: 43,700 Value, 13 Antiquity, 3 Menace. Needs 26 Actions to assemble and sell, assuming you have all ingredients already.
Sells for 1240 Scrip (620 Echoes) at 1 Exhaustion.
Alternative, perhaps more efficient, with way easier to obtain frame: - Leviathan Frame [+1 Antiquity, +1 Menace] - FAIL adding Sabre-toothed Skull [+1 Antiquity, +0 Menace] - 2x add more joints - 6x Femur of a Jurassic Beast [+6 Antiquity] - 4x Wing of a Young Terror Bird [+4 Antiquity, +4 Menace] - 1x Tomb-Lion’s Tail [+1 Antiquity] - remove tail - make skeleton less menacing [-2 Menace] - declare Insect
40,550 Value, 13 Antiquity, 3 Menace, 19 Actions. Sells for 1168 Scrip (584E) at 1 Exhaustion.
If you use a Horned Skull instead of the Sabre-Toothed Skull, you can get a lower zoomania bonus (-15 scrip) but 9 more Carved Balls (+45 scrip) for the same Exhaustion.
This week is Menacing Amphibians, which is an absolutely horrible combination, as there are no Menacing legs to use on them. It’s impossible to reach Menace higher than 5. 6 with Vake Skull. Or 7 with a Ribcage with a Bouquet of Eight Spines, which is, you know, highly suboptimal.
It’s probably best to focus on selling Amphibians with Relic legs to Colourful Phantasist.
Or just ignore this week’s bonuses, go straight to the Trifling Diplomat with Insects, and use up your Exhaustion on adding Custom-Engraved Skull(s).
Example Trifling Diplomat recipe with 0 Exhaustion:
Selling a Mammoth° with three menace and 6 antiquity is a fine skeleton with no exhaustion for this week. For exhaustion one could go deep on the Phantastist°°, but it is never really that great.
°° For example: Skeleton with Seven Necks, fail 1 Brass Skull, fail 5 Balls of Ivory, succeed 1 Ball of Ivory, 2 Helical Thighs, remove tail. If everything works one should have 16 Implausabilty and 6 Amalgamy on a legal frog. That’s 97 kinky bazaar books for 4 Exhaustion. Failing the heads is never 0 % chance though, so it’s a very unreliable recipe.
That’s a neat recipe, even if all 6 required fails have only 0.9^6 = 53% of happening. The expected Implausibility you would actually get is, if my math is correct, 2+14*0.9 = 15.3, so that’s still great even if it’s not perfect.
Alternatively you could do it with Ribcage with a Bouquet of Eight Spines, Black Stinger and 2 Relics of Saint Fiacre, aiming for 18 Implausibility/4 Menace, and 3 Exhaustion. This is very slightly suboptimal (10 Echoes loss compared to the optimal 19 Implausibility), but on the upside, the payout is 100% in Scrip, if that’s something you care about.
So full Menace Implausible Amphibian recipe would be something like:
Ribcage with a Bouquet of Eight Spines (+2 Men)
fail Bright Brass Skull (+6 Impl)
add 7 Balls of Stygian Ivory and 4 Relics of Saint Fiacre, failing either of them exactly 6 times total (+12 Impl)
add Black Stinger (+2 Men)
remove tail
declare Amphibian
Sell to Colourful Phantasist for ~1212 Scrip and 3 Exhaustion. (Takes 17 Actions to assemble and sell.)
More exhausting version - still very easy to assemble:
do all of the above, except fail Balls/Relics exactly 9 times total (+18 Impl)
Sell to Colourful Phantasist for ~1332 Scrip and 4 Exhaustion.
I put a custom skull on a thorned ribcage with four ivory femurs and no tail, then selling to Mrs Plenty, repeating this twice. You only get a measly extra 2.5 echoes for the menace bonus, but it’s a nice way to stock up on Scrip while taking advantage of the weekly exhaustion with the custom skulls.
You can also add a Jet Black Stinger before removing the tail, for extra 5.5 EPA : ) (Assuming you have a stock of Jet Black Stingers - I have 350 that I don’t need and gathered only as a byproduct of other actions… I probably won’t be able to sell them all in my lifetime lol)
I consider 5.5 EPA worse than other uses of my actions at the present moment, especially considering I will eventually have to restock my Stingers. But yes, I did consider it. :)
I could use engraved skulls, but rather skip this week and see what next one will bring (I have 3 days window between change of fads and TtH to raise Exhaustion).
As a side note, adding tails just to cut them off is generally bad idea and should be avoided in most cases.
And still, when making a frog it is often the most lucrative option, given the lack of torsos that don’t need a tail. Sure, there are recipes that reach 18 secondary rewards with the decision to not attach a tail, but those require the fairly elusive Helical Thigh and some even need to fail to attach one.
The way I talk myself into it is, it’s typically between having 12 secondary rewards (3/4 qualities) or 18 secondary rewards (3/6 qualities). And that’s 15 €. Not counting preferred qualities. Gaining exhausting frogs without tails is even worse.
Frogs just don’t make great skeletons (economically speaking).
One suggestion: due to rounding, it’s slightly more profitable to sell a skeleton with a Brass Skull to the Theologian (34 crates of biscuits= 170 scrip) instead of the Constable (168 scrip).
. My bad!
