Makes sense. It’s another endgame grind.
I’m in, once I finish my current grind of collecting 777 echoes worth of unusual love stories from hunter’s keep I’m going to go back to london and collect Cartographers’ hoards and flocks of ravens.
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I am extremely interested in hearing more about this - I know how the new thing works mechanically, but I want to know more about this old player theory and how people arrived at it.
Forum thread from when the Raven upgrades were first introduced, back in 2013. There’s some discussion but I think the final post in the thread sums it up neatly.
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OK, wiki’s been updated. If you fail the plot it just starts it over again and gives you a quality that makes the challenge easier the next time. Just have to go through 500 actions again.
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Ah, ok. That’s not too bad, it doesn’t make you waste the cartographer’s hoard.
First run of the plot finished for me earlier today. You have two options, one is to complete the plot with a challenge on one of the agent’s unique stats and the other is to have it restart, but guarantee that you’ll succeed with completion the next time. I risked it and succeeded. Got a replacement agent with a different unique stat and sent them out again with another Cartographer’s Hoard. According to the wiki, some have already completed a 2nd run, which just repeats with another agent replacement that you can send out again. Anyone want to guess how many times its going to repeat?
I’m a huge fan of Deliveries as they already exist, but that makes me more worried about the upcoming changes to them - I love the dynamic between the Queen and the Duchess so much that I’m not sure how the new sisters’ dynamics will stack up! On top of that, it’s already an extremely profitable activity that’s mostly held back by reliance on card draws, and I’m not sure if they’ll keep it bottlenecked to card draws - and making the other sisters reliant on draws might slow it down too much - or if they’ll do something like put the different sisters in different locations like across the Unterzee; if they DO do something like that, I’m wondering how they’ll manage to do it without locking it off to people who don’t have Ships or Railway progress yet.
if they pull it off it’ll be excellently sick though
I’m quite curious now, because I remember the consensus being on it being fun but not exactly profitable compared to most endgame grinds.
Would you mind breaking it down? Just curious if I didn’t pay enough attention to an update or something.
It always pays in a Night-Whisper or Searing Enigma along with lesser items at the cost of a Night-Whisper, Mortification, Enigma, or Captivating Ballad. I don’t remember the action count or the sale values of the side rewards and I don’t feel like pulling up the wiki, but the end result is something like 4-5 E.P.A., and the absolute maximum is over 6 if you get the best possible luck and serve as a serpent-shepherd during Arbor visits.
Requirements are a Base-Camp, a Lab, and ability to source all four of the inputs - boosted by Lab equipment, enough Watchful to 100% Bucaneering in the Quarter, and effective use of the Rat Market.(note: i mean that that boosts you to the highs i just described, not above them.) It’s not the best in the game, but I’m told it’s quite competitive, and I’m at a point where it’s either the best grind or one of the best grinds available to me.
The relatively low action costs, the reliance on Cards forcing me to take it slow instead of making it a main money-making method, and the fact that it can pay in items that I can’t get many other places without significant action input also make it much less soul-crushing than other grinds I have access to.
Did you factor in the cost of gathering supplies for the expeditions too? I know it’s something I’d forget, is why I ask.
i didn’t but the wiki did and I remember their weighted average being over 4
On another note regarding Deliveries: one thing that does bug me about them is that it’s not really clear to the player that you can choose which sister to start the cycle with - I started with the Duchess, and while performing deliveries for her, I saw nothing that hinted I could start with the Roseate Queen, nor that the process for doing so was to finish a delivery to the Queen, bring the Duchess her return gift, then instead of restarting the cycle, wait to draw the Arbor card, visit the Queen, and ask HER for work - I didn’t know this was possible until I thought to check the wiki’s guide for Deliveries. I think Arbor requiring a card makes this worse, because you can’t just “pop in” in-between Deliveries to check if there’s an interaction with the Roseate Queen without - as far as a newbie knows - taking the risk of missing out on a cycle entirely.
Right now this isn’t a huge deal because there are only two sisters, but if they up it to four, solo no-wiki players - I was one for years, I admittedly don’t know how many people play that way but I feel like it should be feasible - will be missing out on the fact that there are three end rewards besides the one given by whichever sister they started with, and quite a substantial amount of text.
Finally got my original flock back and I can confirm that you cannot unite them again to make another agent. You’re stuck with the one. Wiki has been updated again, it takes three successful plots that ends with a choice of a mutually exclusive new raven companion.
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So it’s three cycles, then a lab experiment, for a new companion. Did I miss anything?
It’s either that companion or another one with different stats. You can only choose one and can’t do the whole process again to get the other.
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Welp, time to head back to the Lab for three more Hoards.
Good to know. I was wondering if I’d need a second flock (I would absolutely do it).