Grinding as a person of some importance

Finding myself stat-capped and perhaps a little low on content, I’m now trying to find the sweet spot in my quest to accumulate a vasty amount of echoes for some supercaprine-related business. Perhaps this question has been asked but I have failed to pull up anything in my searches (not entirely sure what terms I should be using when perusing this library’s indexes).

Thus. I’ve been looking at the financial returns of Unfinished Business sections in the starter Locations, Mahogany Hall and the Labyrinth of Tigers.

So far, it seems to me that on Watchmaker Hill, the 2-turn Jade Fragments at 1.2 E per turn (the 5-turn Rostygold gives 1.1 E) is good and possibly the Spite’s 2-action Stolen Correspondence a bit more (1 Echo per turn usually but sometimes a 2.5 Echo Touching Love Story bumps up the value - haven’t calculated the odds so not entirely sure what the decimal value may be). The nice thing about these multlturn actions is that you can quickly grind them out and then be on your merry way to other distractions such as knocking back more gin and doing poetry readings.

Veilgarden and Ladybones Road don’t seem to yield more that 1 Echo per action (correct me if I’m wrong).

I think some actions in Mahogany Hall can yield something similar but it’s slower because it’s not multiple actions (Working for Jasper and Frank: 1.12E, Box Office Burglary or Cutthroat Advertising less, Forged Tickets 1.16 but at a connection price).

The Labyrinth’s does not seem to provide anything above 1 E per turn… Again, I’m not really keeping a spreadsheet (but I’m starting to think I should).

Am I missing something?

Echoing with unadulterated greed,
Alva
edited by Alva St-Snow on 3/8/2012

Take a look at item conversions. Each tier you go up, the amount you earn from a rare success goes ever higher: 2.50 echoes, 12 echoes, 24 echoes, and finally 67.5 echoes for a rare success on the highest stage. Please note that this is pure profit in terms of the bonus items received, the conversion itself breaks even.

You won’t always get a rare success of course, and you will occasionally fail and get nothing, but the rare successes come often enough that I feel you can make some nice money this way.

Master-classes in Etiquette aren’t bad - I haven’t recalculated since they reduced the final payout, but the total haul for each pupil is in the region of 1.2 Echoes per action. It gets boring after a while, so I’m varying my diet with item conversions and the odd trip to Zee. Hunter’s Keep’s lucrative enough to be worth the trip if you go round a few times before leaving. Especially if you get one of those sweet, sweet Searing Enigmas.

If you’ve done Merchant of Souls (fate-locked) grinding souls in Spite and selling them to devils provides about 1.42 echos/action.
I’ve also wondered if the Stolen Correspondence storylet was a nice one to farm, since the rare successes seem to happen quite often and 25 rare sucesses also make for a top-tire item conversion (with a possible bonus of 62.5 echos).
If you’ve still got the Velocipede Squad the “Riots in Watchmakers Hill” yields 7 bottles of Broken Giant 1844 - 25 of which goes into a top-tire item conversion.

The last thing I’ll suggest is Hunter’s Keep. Firstly for it’s charm (it might actually be a fun grind, imagine that for a second) and secondly it seems quite proffitable for longer grinds. It was argued in another thread that due to the long journey back and forth and the element of chance it wasn’t a good place to farm for echos. However, if you set the chance of getting a Searing Enigma at 10% (the same as the generally speculated chance of an almost impossible challenge) you should be able to make about 1.68 echos/action. So if you stay there long enough - about 11 cycles should do it - you’ll have broken even with a 50 action journey + the initial 4 actions it takes to get to “time passing 3” which is where you’ll start subsequent cycles (I used the fate-locked option of selling souls to devils at 1.42 echos/action to calculate the worth of an action). On top of this there’s the possibility of item conversion and a rare success in the one of the regular actions, which I have not taken into account, but which may very well further increase the payout slightly.
edited by Malt Jones on 3/8/2012

Thank you all. Not all your suggestions can be implemented (for example, the soul trade) but I will do further calculations. I have been several times at Hunter’s Keep. While the ladies are lovely company, it can be a tad provincial… Maybe I will review the Master Classes…

If you have a gang of criminals, Thefts of Particular Character in the Flit will net you around E1.25 per action. Nowhere close to E1.42, obviously, but still better than the Master Classes.

With regard to the Thefts of Particular Character, do the objects of one’s theft make a difference to how profitable it is? I’ve been stealing Bazaar Permits…

Nope. All thefts give 12.5 Echoes worth of items, so if you just want the cash, go with whichever one you prefer.

I have finally managed to regain my scholarly credentials after proving to them that my scientific work in the natural sciences is indeed top-notch. Still, I find that the University remains resistant to my work on the Correspondence. (ie I’m back in but there’s not much to do)

I have a slightly elaborate grinding loop that leaves nothing to chance - I thought it was crazy-lucrative (like 2.5 E/A), but I just did the calcs and came up with a saner overall return of 1.475 Echoes/action. Still seems to be the best RoI going, though.

Main limitation is that you have to be following the “Light Fingers” ambition and be far enough along to have access to A Secluded Coastline. You also need to be running a newspaper and be a Person of Some Importance, and to have a high Shadowy stat.

Here’s how it goes:

  1. Zee voyage to Dr Vaughan’s encampment.

  2. Use “Stopping Along The Coast” to grind lots of Phosphorescent Scarabs: a 5-action turn yields 65x Phosphorescent Scarab, for 13 per action.

-Whenever you have less than 5 turns but you’re about to be away from Echo Bazaar for long enough to max out your candle(s), use “Enough! Burn them!” to convert Phosphorescent Candles (500 at a time) to Memories of Light. Just don’t overdo it - you need about 7x as many Scarabs as Memories of Light. I count this as part of the action cost, since it scales with the amount you’re grinding.

  1. Zee voyage back to London.

  2. Go to the Downward Engineering Company in the Bazaar Sidestreets and convert all your Scarabs and Memories into Whirring Contraptions. This will take time, and is counted as part of the action cost for this loop.

  3. Go to Doubt St, and print newspapers until you run out of Whirring Contraptions.

I think it’s 14 actions per edition, yielding a default 110x A Journal of Infamy (the Wikidot wiki says 90 but it’s incorrect) for 55 Echoes.

Personally, I’m just printing “A gossipy and tantalising edition” each time - 60x Salacious Copy.

As a bonus, I now always go for “Employ a little theatrical accountancy” in “The Temptations of Power” - I always have spare copy anyway, and it’s a free 500x Rostygold for an extra 5 Echoes per edition.

OK, doing the calcs now - let’s look at one edition:
1x Whirring Contraption
200x Phosphorescent Scarab (15.4 actions)
30x Memory of Light (10.989 actions for the Scarabs, and 0.286 actions for the conversion - total 11.275 actions)
14 actions printing the newspaper.

Total 40.675 actions per edition, with a return of 60 Echoes (plus occasional bonuses from rare successes while constructing editions).

Return is 1.475 Echoes/action guaranteed, plus assorted bonuses from time to time.

Note that actions spent in zee voyages aren’t counted, because you can grind arbitrary amounts for each voyage.

… I might possibly be a huge nerd. I’m OK with this.

It was debated whether the Screaming Map right-half was an okay grind on Urth’s thread, but I seem to be unable to find it…

An Indepth Look at Money Options