I reached some status of importance not too long ago, and I’m starting to earn the related goods; a gang of less-than-upstanding citizens is now working for me, and I have a comfy sedan chair to carry me around. The next steps are getting admitted to a Club and consequently setting up a Salon to have more options for Making Waves to eventually upgrade my profession.
The problem is both my Club of choice (the Stags) and the Salon (and the process of getting a ship, but that will be a new hell for another day) need a certain number of Personal Recommendations, that as far as I know are the only PoSI item that can’t be reliably gained outside the Bazaar Sidestreets, at least for me: the Talk of the Town way is slow and luck-based, and my Verdant Menace has only reached level 7.
This means I have to find a way to efficiently round up Stolen Kisses, Compromising Documents and Intruiguing Gossips. I have unlocked the Boxful of Intrigue, Wilmot’s End, War of Assassins and the Velocipede Squad carousels; can someone point me to the best way to grind these Influence items?
Can not say about the most efficient way to hoard personal recommendstions, though I farmed for stolen correspondence at the palace. Also, the soft-hearted widow proved to be usefull in collecting stolen kisses (ehm… that sounded wrong, thus I almost feel ashaimed).
I have no idea whether it’s the best way or not, but you can steal a large quantity of Stolen Correspondence from the Duchess with Thefts of a Particular Character. Since it sounds as though you have a Gang of Hoodlums already, which will help with grinding Casing, this might work well for you.
Boxful of Intrigue gives Stolen Kisses and Compromising Documents. Don’t forget you can side convert 50p items to get to the Compromising Documents. I can’t think of a good source of Intriguing Gossip off hand but maybe ambushing Couriers in Spite for Stolen Correspondence and converting up would work.
I’m fairly sure I got my Personal Recommendations by attending a Party.
It’s a card, which means it isn’t SUPER reliable, and you usually need a few goes-around to get it, but it works.
It takes about 4-6 draws of "A Polite Invitation" to get a Personal Recommendation via a party, and each run through the party will take 6-10 actions depending on whether you’re a K&C player and take the "Contrarian" shortcuts in the party. The fewer actions you spend on the party, the more times you have to draw it, but it’s around 32-34 actions per recommendation. Plus you get Making Waves every time, which might be worth considering as you build towards a salon; you can make some (diminishing) progress on MW every week even as you get hit by Time the Healer. On the other hand, the party tends to chew through your cards, which is a hard-to-quantify loss of opportunities.
The Verdant Menace route takes a long time and is dependent on luck, grinding, and social actions, so that’s probably the hardest. Plus the alternative prize there is even more of a pain to get, so there’s that.
As for grinding the items to make it in the Side-Streets, reveurciel is right. Boxfuls of Intrigue is definitely the way to go for Compromising Documents. Converting Tales of Terror (stolen from writers in the Flit) is close, but Boxfuls of Intrigue get you a bonus of 6 Correspondence Plaques every time, which you can keep or sell. Similarly, Boxfuls of Intrigue are the fast way to get Stolen Kisses, but if you want to factor in the value of bonus items, the slight extra time spent converting Compromising Documents (which you get from Boxfuls) into Stolen Kisses can be worth it, since you’ll get some First City Coins and rarely Identity Uncovereds. The fastest way to get Intriguing Gossip is to ambush couriers in Spite and convert their Stolen Correspondence, although the "meeting with the Dean" card in the Forgotten Quarter is not too bad if you happen across it and the Music-Hall Singer’s card isn’t bad either. Overall I think this route takes about ~25% more actions than the party, but it’s not dependent on drawing that card.
edited by metasynthie on 7/2/2015
Oh, it’s worth noting that the party route requires Persuasive, while Boxfuls of Intrigue require Shadowy, so which attributes (and second chances) you have may make a difference as well!
With gear I can get around 120 in both stats, so they have about the same chance to get me menaces, but I’ll manage. I also have access to the House of Chimes, so I can hoard smiles easily for the party (since failures during the party burn time and possibly force me to wait for more invitations).