Incidentally, the highest Watchful value that’s low-risk on all the challenges on Corpsecage is 181. Of course, failing the checks does screwy things to the math, since a lot of the time success gives you 2 cp of Orthos is Coming while failure only gives you 1. So you’re getting some Nightmares and making the loop take another action, but you aren’t getting fewer rewards unless you fail twice.
I am currently possessed of a base Watchful stat of 127, with +41 from my equipments, and I grind Watchful at the University. I do not know if this storylet will eventually lock, but I run the "Investigations in the University" combined with the "Invite a friend to join you in something terribly intellectual" storylet at my lodgings.
The University storylet’s 5th option gives me 53 Cryptic Clues/action, which I then convert using the same storylet’s 6th option into Sudden Insights, at the price of 25 Cryptic Clues/action. In order to grind Watchful, this requires that I use 5 actions (to gather Cryptic Clues), 10 actions (to obtain the Sudden Insights), and 2 actions (to increase Watchful using the Lodgings storylet).This turns out to give a action cycle of 17 actions for about 50 CP, with a net gain of 3 Cryptic Clues on average for me.
It would be a honour if anyone could suggest a better place for a Watchful person of my level to grind.
[li][/li][li]EDIT: My apologies, it does appear that the University storylet’s 6th option also gives 108 Whispered Secrets, along with Watchful and Investigating CP.[/li][li]
edited by jonanlsh on 12/19/2013
[li]
Waiting until The Airs are 96+ in order to force the A sign? option is pure brilliance, but if I may suggest: if the intent is to grind Watchful, then always select A Meeting with the Dean. It costs 3 actions, but it yields a flat bonus +5 Watchful in addition to the regular stat increase, which for those for whom the Seeking Curios options are all straightforward, works out to +2 CP per action (1 for straightforward challenge, 5 bonus, divided by three actions). This is the best option for high-level watchful grinding I’ve found.
Talking with the dean reduces the number of changes to the airs in the quarter to 1 per 3 actions, but that is a very good point. I should also mention that I tried this techinque recently and, acknowledging that random is indeed random, the airs did not reach the magical 96 or higher. They did when I finally started the expedition. I think that this exploit has been nerfed, but I would appreciate it if anyone can tell me that they’ve pulled it off in the last couple of days.
I’ve also been unable to get 96+ from Curios over the past few days.