I’m currently grinding bazaar permits for a Lengthy Lease to Premises at the Bazaar. Are they faster through the Thefts of Particular Character storylet, or through Heists? I can’t sail to Polythreme yet, where I’ve seen from another topic is best, because the right side of the Map has yet to arrive at my Lodgings. Thanks in advance for all replies ^_^[li]
I want to say Heists are a bit faster, but it’s possible that it’s just more fun.
I think heists might actually be slower if you are already a POSI or you have a gang of hoodlums (and the requisite stats to reasonably ensure success). This is because you have to get the necessary supplies, then do the theft itself (which can sometimes take a while, especially if you went in underprepared). All that then yields just 2 permits. I found it quicker, or at least easier, to just do thefts and spend second chances to ensure I didn’t fail too often.
True, if you have a Gang of Hoodlums it’s probably better to just do that. Still less fun, however.
I’m getting my Bazaar Permits by converting items that I can easily get a lot of. Cryptic Clues from "Dropping the eaves" after getting both Seeking… and Investigating… from "A new piece in the Game". Okay, it’s not fast, but at 1.97 Echoes/Action it seems efficient while I’m grinding other stuff. Also turning Primordial Shrieks into Correspondence Plaques through Maniac’s Prayers. Then turning Correspondence Plaques into Visions of the Surface, and upgrade those to Touching Love Stories and then Bazaar Permits. And if those relatively close items in the ‘third tier trade’ ring won’t suffice, there are always the Compromising Documents from various Bundles of Oddities. Or the even more distant Incendiary Gossip from all the Proscribed Materials I’ve received from the revolutionaries in the Flit.
Let’s see…
1250 x Compromising Document = ~278 Bundles of Oddities = 278 Actions
1250 x Compromising Document → 1250 x Vision of the Surface = 175 Actions (7 steps, 25 batches)
1250 x Vision of the Surface → 250 x Touching Love Story = 25 Actions
250 x Touching Love Story → 50 x Bazaar Permit = 10 Actions
Total: 488 Actions = 9.76 Actions / Bazaar Permit
Raiding message drops after investigating at the University could work as well:
28500 x Cryptic Clue = ~326 Actions (at 87.5 x Cryptic Clue / Action)
28500 x Cryptic Clue -> 3990 x Appalling Secret = 57 Actions
3990 x Appalling Secret -> 1250 x Journal of Infamy = 12 Actions (not quite enough appalling secrets, but close enough)
1250 x Journal of Infamy -> 1250 x Vision of the Surface = 50 Actions
1250 x Vision of the Surface -> 250 x Touching Love Story = 25 Actions
250 x Touching Love Story -> 50 x Bazaar Permit = 10 Actions
Total: 480 Actions = 9.6 Actions / Bazaar Permit
I have never done a theft of a particular character, but according to the wikia a successful theft costs 32 CP of Casing… which is 8.8 Actions if you use a gang of Hoodlums. Add an Action for doing the actual theft, and it looks like Bundles of Compromising Documents are about equal if you can get them, and they’ll leave a trail of other third tier items along the path to Visions of the Surface, as each trade of 50 gives 51 of the next item. Though gathering Casing increases Shadowy, so there’s that. Looks like they balanced this well.
The gang of hoodlums is a bit unreliable though, if your shadowy isn’t quite high. The POSI option is a bit slower but unless you can guarantee your gang will listen to you, its probably faster.
I don’t have a gang of hoodlums, but the POSI option looks fine. Thanks for the answers guys, especially Gillsing (I could never work out stuff like that). I think I’ll give raiding message drops a go, since I’d completed my investigating for the connections to get my ship, and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll go back to Thefts of Particular Character.[li]
Small update: I did the Cryptic Clue way and have my 50 bazaar permits now (probably because I realised I had this huge stash of cryptic clues already). I do think this way is better because you get other stuff as well – I was gifted a Fourth City Airag by a particularly generous Master on a rare success while converting Touching Love Stories to bazaar permits. Though if you’re running low on Connected: Bohemian you should stick to the Flit; I used up a fair bit of mine.
If you have a huge stash of cryptic clues you aren’t using it certainly is faster, though you are ending up with a large resource loss in the end. I believe to come out without losing overall resource value thefts are superior.
Time is a resource as well. All the time saved using already available resources can be spent replenishing those resources. Or not, if there’s something more important to do. In this case there doesn’t seem to be any significant shortcuts.
Well, in that regard its simply, is the time to replenish the lost secrets and the time converting them shorter than the time to do a theft. I don’t know the particular math behind that, but I think the theft is probably faster.
[quote=Elene]I don’t know the particular math behind that, but I think the theft is probably faster.[/quote]But I did that math. It is in my first post in this thread. It shows that gathering the Cryptic Clues takes most of the time, and converting them takes roughly 50% more time, for a total time that is about equal to thefts of particular character. I didn’t just assume that one would start out with a huge stash of Cryptic Clues, just as I didn’t assume that one would have built up Casing… to level 57. (That would be roughly the 1600 CPs of Casing… you’d need for 50 thefts.)
Your math is solid for someone at high levels, who has access to all the optimal options. In which case, as you point out, they are about the same (assuming you wish to return to your original resource totals). That said, paperwinter and I are people who aimed to get a premise at the bazaar shortly after becoming a POSI. Paperwinter lacks a gang of hoodlums, thus would have to rely on the POSI option for thefts, while options to grind cryptic clues like dropping the eaves have only a so-so success rate at around 100ish stats. I was talking about paperwinter’s situation since its similar to what I went through not long ago.
[quote=Elene]Your math is solid for someone at high levels, who has access to all the optimal options.[/quote]Ah. I was assuming that the suboptimal options would be roughly equally suboptimal. But I guess that doing the University investigations with only Watchful 100 wouldn’t work very well at all.
Still, I didn’t use "Dropping the eaves" for my calculations, I used "Raid a message drop", which happens to be an Investigating… challenge, so you’d only need high Watchful (for building Investigating…), not high Shadowy. And if your Shadowy is at 100 you should be able to entertain the Topsy King with bats and get oodles of Compromising Documents, which was the first option in my post. With the new "stay in the storylet" mechanic you can get 100% success rate for 2.25 Echoes/Action. I wish my Shadowy was still low enough for that!
I guess I misread your calculations a bit, apologies. What option in the university builds investigating though? I’ve been camped there for a while and there is just a lot of short story loops about cricket and stuff. Also, what is the stay in the storylet mechanic? I’ve not heard of that before.
The Investigations at the University come when you get your own department. Be sure you are ready to do that though, you lose access to all the early University content and are started on a path that ends with you losing access to most of the University content.
[quote=Elene]Also, what is the stay in the storylet mechanic? I’ve not heard of that before.[/quote]Before a recent change we used to end up in the main Story window if we accessed our inventories on the Myself tab while we were ‘inside’ a storylet or a card. But that is no longer the case. Now we can ‘sneak’ into a storylet/card with stats lowered by a Talkative Rattus Faber, and once inside we can go to our inventories and change equipment to go from -25 to +25 (or more). And suddenly we can get better than 60-80% chance of success on the challenges.
Perhaps this is to be considered an exploit? I don’t know. I always interpreted the stat caps for storylets as a way to keep the lists of storylets manageable, since otherwise they would become very long indeed once the player qualifies for all of them. And the difficulties that all end up being around 60-80% appears to be a result of the game changing from narrow difficulties to broad difficulties, which seems to mostly be unintended consequences.
So until I know for sure, I’m just going to keep doing what I do right now, which is to draw some nice 81-118 cards and do those challenges with 150 in the relevant main quality. Would be nice if those 118 caps could be removed though. Then I could start raising my qualities like everyone else. But what’s the point when it’s not high qualities I need to do what I’m doing right now?
[quote=Gillsing]1250 x Journal of Infamy -> 1250 x Vision of the Surface = 50 Actions[/quote]When I click on Journals of Infamy in my inventory I see the option to convert them to Extraordinary Implications and Correspondence Plaques. How does one go about turning them into Visions of the Surface?
The Correspondence Plaques turn into Visions of the Surface.
Oh wow, I’m glad this thread got brought back. I was so sure Treasures of War was the best way I mathed it out to show it and it ended up being 11.3 actions per permit! Time to switch gears for sure.