[quote=Waterpls]>>>Are there any EI grinds that give better than 1.875EPA?
Cider dreams?[/quote]
Definitely. If you have cider, then over 60 Cider Dreams you’ll need to erase nightmares 10 times with your friends’ help, and add more dreams 6 times. So 76 actions for 60 EI, 1.97 EPA.
edited by Kharsirr Lynx on 8/29/2019
[quote=Dudebro Pyro][quote=dov]
Given Strategy A (3.57 EPA for 5 actions per card draw), and strategy B (3.125 EPA, for as many actions as you’d like once you draw the card once), strategy B is definitely the most profitable, assuming you don’t have any other consistent way to get better than 3.125 EPA in your spare actions waiting to draw the card again.[/quote]
Wait, what’s Strategy A? I thought going for 5 actions per draw, you’d Walk the Walls for over 5 EPA. What’s the 3.57EPA from, again?[/quote]
Simply getting into Arbor and spending all 5 actions (plus one to enter and one to leave) on getting Extraordinary Implications.
So 10 Implications (25 Echoes) for 7 actions = 3.57 EPA, limited to 5 per card draw
Oh right that makes sense. Still, I don’t see the point of that over just walking the walls, since both end up limited by card draws - the whole point of grinding EIs would be to be able to stay in Arbor for arbitrarily long periods of time.
The downside of just Walking the Walls is that this gives high EPA in the long run, but depends on many many card draws to be viable.
The 3.57 EPA approach gives you just that - 25 Echoes for 7 actions per each card draw.
The persistent strategy, of course, lets you decide how many actions to invest (no limit), and the average will be 3.125 EPA.
The "only Walk the Walls" strategy only fully pays after many card draws, which could take months (or years, if you want to raise Attar to thousands).
edited by dov on 9/1/2019
Back to non-EPA considerations, so far the highest you need to raise Attar is nine, correct?
edited by Jolanda Swan on 9/2/2019
[quote=dov]The persistent strategy, of course, lets you decide how many actions to invest (no limit), and the average will be 3.125 EPA.
The "only Walk the Walls" strategy only fully pays after many card draws, which could take months (or years, if you want to raise Attar to thousands).[/quote]Maybe I got something wrong, but cashing in every 3 cards puts you to 3.767. Maybe I missed some Attar/Permission loss on the way.
[quote=Skinnyman][quote=dov]The persistent strategy, of course, lets you decide how many actions to invest (no limit), and the average will be 3.125 EPA.
The "only Walk the Walls" strategy only fully pays after many card draws, which could take months (or years, if you want to raise Attar to thousands).[/quote]Maybe I got something wrong, but cashing in every 3 cards puts you to 3.767. Maybe I missed some Attar/Permission loss on the way.[/quote]
I was referencing the proposed ideal 5 EPA strategy, which relies on collecting a lot of Attar before gifting to the Queen.
I haven’t run the numbers on all options, though. If by "cashing in every 3 cards" you mean collect Attar for 2 cards and then try to cash in (since it’s not guaranteed), let’s check it out:
Card #1: Go into Near-Arbor, Explore the market 3 times, enter Far-Arbor, Walk the Walls twice and then leave.
Total 8 actions (because of the travel to Far-Arbor), Attar: 10
Card #2:Go directly to Far-Arbor (I’m assuming(!) no extra action cost here), but lose one Attar when entering. Walk the Walls 5 times and leave.
Total 7 actions, Attar: 19
Card #3: Go south twice and start gifting Attar to the Queen. If you’re unlucky, you’ll need to continue in the next card draw:
This is trickier to calculate. Assuming 20% for the rare success, you’ll need 5 attempt on average to get the rare success. You only have enough Attar to do this action 5 times before this option locks for you.
Absolutely best case scenario (20% chance): Succeed on first attempt, converting your 19 Attar into 6 x Favours in High Places. You’ll move to Near-Arbor with still 1 x Permission to Linger . You can use that to move North (and spend yet one more travel action point next round to get to the Center and start fresh). One more action to leave (total 7). But since we now know you’ll lose an action the next time around, you’ll actually get less Attar than 10 in that first card draw.
Total EPA of best case: 75 Echoes over 22 actions = ~3.41 EPA.
Of course, that’s the best case (20% chance). We’ll need to write a simulation to get the real average. But it will certainly be lower than 3.767 EPA.
Can someone check my math on this?
Spend some time exploring Arbor, and eventually leave from Temple in Near Arbor.
On the next Arbor draw, assuming you left with 0 Attar -
Labour in the Temple for PtL in Attar. 3 actions, Attar at end: 5
Labour in the Temple for PtL in Attar. 3 actions, Attar at end: 9
Serve as a Serpent Shepherd for PtL in Presbyteriate Passphrases. 3 actions, Attar at end: 8, +5 PP
Serve as a Serpent Shepherd for PtL in Presbyteriate Passphrases. 3 actions, Attar at end: 7, +5 PP
Serve as a Serpent Shepherd for PtL in Presbyteriate Passphrases. 3 actions, Attar at end: 6, +5 PP
Serve as a Serpent Shepherd for PtL in Presbyteriate Passphrases. 3 actions, Attar at end: 5, +5 PP
Labour in the Temple for PtL in Attar. 3 actions, Attar at end: 9
After the initial investment of getting yourself to the Temple and the first Labour, it should be a cycle where every 5 draws totals 15 actions and 20 Presbyteriate Passphrases. This should work out to 3.33 EPA. Slightly less than just farming Extraordinary Implications, slightly more than the persistent strategy, but with each giving you a deck refill for 3 actions, as opposed to 7 for Extraordinary Implication farming and, uh, more, for the persistent strategy.
[quote=dov]I was referencing the proposed ideal 5 EPA strategy, which relies on collecting a lot of Attar before gifting to the Queen.
snip
Total EPA of best case: 75 Echoes over 22 actions = ~3.41 EPA.
Of course, that’s the best case (20% chance). We’ll need to write a simulation to get the real average. But it will certainly be lower than 3.767 EPA.[/quote]I see, I see, thanks for detailing with AP usage; this is where I had my doubts. Few changes to the calculator and we have:
Getting a rare success after two cards:
After 7 cards (lousy 47 Attar) we have 3.82 EPA with no remaining Attar.
After 30 cards (254 Attar) we have 5 EPA with the same 0 remaining Attar.
If we need 3 cards for the rare success:
After 12 cards (83 Attar) we have 3.86 EPA with 2 extra Attar.
After 50 cards (422 Attar) we have 5 EPA with the same 2 remaining Attar again
The Attar in parenthesis the the one before we start losing when we cash-in and I know that the rare success doesn’t remove all Attar. Not sure if it changed since it happened to me.
Must say, this card is pretty spectacular! :) And this doesn’t even include the lovely deck refresh! If someone is interested in the refresh, we can chop 2 more AP from every card and the one with 50 cards is pushed to 7 EPA.
edited by Skinnyman on 9/2/2019
The rare success indeed removes all Attar in one action, and replaces is with (Attar/3) x Favours in high Places.
[quote=D]Can someone check my math on this?
Spend some time exploring Arbor, and eventually leave from Temple in Near Arbor.
On the next Arbor draw, assuming you left with 0 Attar -
Labour in the Temple for PtL in Attar. 3 actions, Attar at end: 5
Labour in the Temple for PtL in Attar. 3 actions, Attar at end: 9
Serve as a Serpent Shepherd for PtL in Presbyteriate Passphrases. 3 actions, Attar at end: 8, +5 PP
Serve as a Serpent Shepherd for PtL in Presbyteriate Passphrases. 3 actions, Attar at end: 7, +5 PP
Serve as a Serpent Shepherd for PtL in Presbyteriate Passphrases. 3 actions, Attar at end: 6, +5 PP
Serve as a Serpent Shepherd for PtL in Presbyteriate Passphrases. 3 actions, Attar at end: 5, +5 PP
Labour in the Temple for PtL in Attar. 3 actions, Attar at end: 9
After the initial investment of getting yourself to the Temple and the first Labour, it should be a cycle where every 5 draws totals 15 actions and 20 Presbyteriate Passphrases. This should work out to 3.33 EPA. Slightly less than just farming Extraordinary Implications, slightly more than the persistent strategy, but with each giving you a deck refill for 3 actions, as opposed to 7 for Extraordinary Implication farming and, uh, more, for the persistent strategy.[/quote]
Does serving as a Serpent cost one Attar? The wiki doesn’t list that. Otherwise, this is the 4.17 EPA strategy referenced in this thread.
After the initial setup it’s very repeatable and you get 12.5 Echoes (and a deck refresh) for 3 actions, every card draw.
But remember that when comparing strategies with different actions costs, you can’t simply compare EPA. As can be seen in this analysis, using 7 actions with 3.57 EPA (just spying on the embassy) is more profitable than using 3 actions with 4.17 EPA (serving as a serpent shepherd). And, of course, the persistent strategy is more profitable overall, if you have the patience for it.
[quote=dov]Does serving as a Serpent cost one Attar? The wiki doesn’t list that.[/quote]It doesn’t but it costs you 1 Attar every time you enter Far Arbor.
An interesting thought I had: since this is a card, we’re trying to optimise both EPA and Echoes Per Card in parallel. In view of this, I wonder whether doing the 3.57EPA EI grind followed by trading in the EIs for Permission before Walking the Walls extensively would give a higher EPC (at the obvious cost of lower EPA - I believe it’s something like the average of 3.57 and ~4.1, weighted 1:3).
Of course. Silly me. So the math seems solid.
The comments regarding comparing the different strategies still applies.
Let’s see:
(assume starting at Near-Arbor North)
Card #1: collect 10 Implications (total 10, 7 actions)
Card #2: collect 10 Implications (total 20, 7 actions)
Card #3: collect 10 Implications (total 30, 7 actions)
Card #4:
Then the question is: how many actions will it take to gift all the Attar, and are further cards needed for this?
This, on average, will give you 15 Favours (187.5 Echoes) for ~67 actions (~2.79 EPA) over 4-5 card draws.
Possibly I’ve messed something in there…
But for this to be viable you need to trade enough Attar so that the 5 actions (on average!! it might be higher) to gift to the queen are negligible. And that means either doing it over many card draw or using the persistent strategy to generate the Implications needed.
Doing the above but using 30 card draws to gain Implications we get the following adjustments:
This, on average, will give you 195 Favours (2437.5 Echoes) for ~617 actions (~3.95 EPA) over 31-32 card draws.
But this can take a few months in real time to pull off.
Possibly I’ve messed even worse here…
The theoretical limit to the above, by the way, is 4.09 EPA (over many card draws and actions).
So if I’m getting this right, and using ballpark figures: in 30 card draws, you get 300 Permission. Assuming a perfectly spherical Arbor in a frictionless vacuum, that’s 600 Attar (more realistically that would be more like 586, but let’s ignore that for now). On the other hand, purely Walking the Walls instead of gathering implications will give 300 Attar over the same 30 cards. That makes the EI strategy give almost double the EPC!
Another way to look at it: only Walking the Walls gives 600 Attar in about 60 cards and 420-ish actions (I think?.. the script from rahv7 on reddit, corrected for a constant 5 actions per cash-in, gives 475 total, but on the other hand it should take 7 actions per card for 60 cards), while this method takes around 620 actions for the same but in almost half as many cards.
I’d honestly take an EPA approaching 4 over an EPA approaching 5.25 but requiring double the card draws. (Assuming the fully persistant strategy isn’t used for whatever reason, of course.)
Also, I’ve been able to draw it a few times per day so far (until I went and moved there permanently, and stopped drawing cards), so unless I’ve been having unreal luck, I’d say 30 cards is more a matter of weeks rather than months (with a properly maintained deck).
edited by Dudebro Pyro on 9/3/2019
[quote=Dudebro Pyro]So if I’m getting this right, and using ballpark figures: in 30 card draws, you get 300 Permission. Assuming a perfectly spherical Arbor in a frictionless vacuum, that’s 600 Attar (more realistically that would be more like 586, but let’s ignore that for now). On the other hand, purely Walking the Walls instead of gathering implications will give 300 Attar over the same 30 cards. That makes the EI strategy give almost double the EPC!
Another way to look at it: only Walking the Walls gives 600 Attar in about 60 cards and 420-ish actions (I think?.. the script from rahv7 on reddit, corrected for a constant 5 actions per cash-in, gives 475 total, but on the other hand it should take 7 actions per card for 60 cards), while this method takes around 620 actions for the same but in almost half as many cards.
I’d honestly take an EPA approaching 4 over an EPA approaching 5.25 but requiring double the card draws. (Assuming the fully persistant strategy isn’t used for whatever reason, of course.)
Also, I’ve been able to draw it a few times per day so far (until I went and moved there permanently, and stopped drawing cards), so unless I’ve been having unreal luck, I’d say 30 cards is more a matter of weeks rather than months (with a properly maintained deck).[/quote]
From my own observation, you’ve been lucky with the card draws. I’ve managed to draw the card twice in one day, but I’ve also seen more than a week go by without seeing it. I’d say twice a week to be a decent average for a standard-frequency card.
And you’re right that 4 EPA over 30 cards is better (or, at least more practical) than 5 EPA over 60 cards. But I’d argue that even the "naive" 3.57 EPA approach (just get Implications and forget about Attar) is probably more practical/useful, since it pays off immediately and not after weeks/months.
I need to sit down when I have some time and write a normal guide for the wiki on this…
Well, this is really the naive approach, except when you have a few Implications you embark on a longer grind in Arbor.
Can you leave Arbor without reseting Permission to Linger and keep what you have for next visit?