Grinding Watchful for an Extraordinary Mind

Hello Friends. I do rather enjoy setting myself long term goals, and my current goal is to grind my Watchful to 200 so I can lay claim to the title &quotAn Extraordinary Mind’. Alas, a man has to eat (or rather buy himself new gear) so I’m looking for advice on what would be the best Watchful grind in terms of both Echo gain and Watchful stat point gain.

Currently my Watchful is 146 (+48) and I am just going around the Wilmont’s End carousal, cashing my Dramatic Tension in for Collections of Curiosities which I then intend to trade on the Tomb Colonists card for Puzzling Maps (intend, that is, if the d–m thing ever feels like appearing in my opportunities). Can anyone suggest a better alternative?

The War of Assassins carousel is better than Seeking a Missing Woman or Doing Business in Wilmot’s End for stat grinding, because every WoA action is a stat challenge while SaMW and DBiWE have only 8 stat challenges in each 11-action loop.

Remember to tune your Watchful so that the challenge is always low-risk (90% or less, blue text), to earn 2 stat cp per success.

Can’t really recommend a better grind if you also care about profit. It’ll take a while to turn in all those collections but it will get you the most money while also getting 200 watchful.

If you’re in a bit more of a rush you can keep your stats low enough (through gear like the Talkative Rattus Faber) to always have a 90% chance of success. This will average out to ~1.9 CP of watchful per action, though of course with a bit of a cut to the profitability. And if you really want to rush without caring about money at all, you can turn in your favours with various factions on their cards to get a big stat boost, along with grinding Sudden Insights and converting them to stats at your lodgings.

Yep, if profitability is not a concern, grinding sudden insights through chess is the best option. With the new chess mechanics it’s ever so slightly less effective (I think you get a bit under 1 insight per action, whereas previously you’d average a bit over 1IPA), but it’s still the best way to raise stats afaik.