Recently a character of mine has acquired a reservation for the Royal Bethlehem, and upon drawing the respected opportunity card I was also presented with something which drew my attention: Harvesting the Hotel. Now, as a respected and kind individual my character has not become a soul salesman, but instead a shepherd of souls, so this option is of course not available. What I want to know though is what exactly is the reward for that thing? If it’s something worth it, then I may consider purchasing the same story for a different account, one who would love being a spirifer. Anyone that tried it out and is willing to share whether it’s worth it?
I recently had the privilege to assist sundry visitors to throw off their souly shackles and received 40 souls and two brilliant souls plus, I believe, a boost to heartless
I’ve been a Spirifier in the past, and I believe it only gave you 40 souls and 2 Brilliant Souls
Honeyaddict is correct; it’s items but no quirk changes.
Note also that for folks of the spirifage persuasion, souls transact at 3 brass per, making it a 2.2E card all told, which is relatively decent.
Well, technically … you spend (1+40/1000) actions 1) getting 40 souls and 2 bril souls and 2) turning that in for 40/1000 of 3000 brass and 4 appalling secrets (plus a bit of suspicion if you are really unlucky), so … ((3000+415)/25+250)/(1+1/25) = 213.84 ppa
(In Fallen London, talking is (usually) not a free action)
edited by xKiv on 8/8/2018
True enough. This wrinkle in the computation did occur to me, but it seemed inconsequential to the larger point of whether it was a profitable card. If doing the spirifer grind, any card over the baseline of ~1.78 epa is presumably a keeper and this one would qualify even without the bonus brass. But it is especially … satisfying … given the boost, as is the Smuggler’s Grave "One Stone in a Thousand" option. But always good to have a few more decimals of precision, thanks for the more detailed computation!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but… the Spirifter option for transacting souls for brass is…
… uhhhh trying to remember officially the second best and most action-efficient way of earning echoes? Specifically the second, right?
The first being what, do you recall? Not sure what we are comparing to. I sometimes see the claim that the Court of the Wakeful Eye’s "Urchin Enslavement Grind" is better, but I’m skeptical. The claim there is that in the limit (i.e. with enough tribute offered to render the zee trip overhead negligible) that at 2.22epa it outperforms others. But Spirifer is a London-based grind, meaning you also have to fold in the gains from the opportunity deck, which if you’ve pared it down, means mostly connections-gain-and-cashout, the occasional Thieve’s Cache expedition when able, and the individual > 1.8E cards (and there are a few out there). That is a fair proportion of actions, some even up in the 3-4E range. It isn’t clear that aggregating those gains with the background "when nothing better offers" spirifage activity of 1.78epa won’t perform better in the long run. I’ve intended to spreadsheet out a week of spirifaging in London (with high-EPA opportunities included) to see how it compares to a week at Court. Perhaps when I get back from Court (cough cough) I’ll do so.
I do both grinds, largely determined by how much I want to be in London or just on autopilot. The Court is great because there are no decisions and actions are 4 a pop, so it is about literally 1 minute of activity a day, which is great for when you get busy or burned out, and I do a (merest) bit of spirifage when more engaged with the game generally, which is most of the time.
edited by Shaerys on 8/10/2018
[quote=Shaerys]I sometimes see the claim that the Court of the Wakeful Eye’s "Urchin Enslavement Grind" is better, but I’m skeptical. The claim there is that in the limit (i.e. with enough tribute offered to render the zee trip overhead negligible) that at 2.22epa it outperforms others. But Spirifer is a London-based grind, meaning you also have to fold in the gains from the opportunity deck, which if you’ve pared it down, means mostly connections-gain-and-cashout, the occasional Thieve’s Cache expedition when able, and the individual > 1.8E cards (and there are a few out there). That is a fair proportion of actions, some even up in the 3-4E range.[/quote]This is how I feel as well. I’ve done both grinds for a while now, switching between them, and am leaning toward the idea that staying in London is more lucrative. Also of note: the Urchin grind technically can only go up to ~2.19 EPA because staying any longer would cause you to miss a visit from Time, the Healer. Not a big deal, but still something to consider when comparing numbers. But you’re right, it is super easy in the sense that you don’t have to dedicate much time or effort to it.
As for staying in London, being able to draw cards that offer 3-4 EPA is what it’s all about. Between Favours and other high paying cards, it seems silly to go somewhere for ~two weeks where you can’t draw/play cards at all. Any actions not spent on cards can go to Spirifage for a decent average EPA overall. I’ve been meaning to do a comparison as well, but just haven’t been able to bring myself to track and note every single action for two weeks. It’s tough if you play some on desktop and some on mobile.
Honestly, I’m not convinced that staying in London is as efficient an Echo-making strategy as the 2-week orphan/tiger adoption cycle. While there are a substantial number of cards that are >1.8 epa, I can only think of a few above ~2.19 epa
- Conflict cards (very infrequent)[/li][li]Neath’s mysteries[/li][li]Rooftop shack[/li][li]Rare cards
It’s not easy to consistently play these cards, and they would need to make up a not-insubstantial portion of your daily actions to significantly raise the profitability of staying in London. There are other benefits to staying, like Making Waves gain and social interactions, but my intuition says that the percentage of cards needed to make this work (it has to be equivalent to just over 80% of actions being spent on spirifage and just under 20% on Neath’s mysteries).
I can imagine that the Hesperidean Cider method of quickly refreshing the deck might make this more feasible in combination with the ~1.9(?) epa grind that can be conducted with the Cider itself, though.
[quote=Azothi]Honestly, I’m not convinced that staying in London is as efficient an Echo-making strategy as the 2-week orphan/tiger adoption cycle. While there are a substantial number of cards that are >1.8 epa, I can only think of a few above ~2.19 epa
- Conflict cards (very infrequent)[/li][li]Neath’s mysteries[/li][li]Rooftop shack[/li][li]Rare cards
It’s not easy to consistently play these cards, and they would need to make up a not-insubstantial portion of your daily actions to significantly raise the profitability of staying in London. There are other benefits to staying, like Making Waves gain and social interactions, but my intuition says that the percentage of cards needed to make this work (it has to be equivalent to just over 80% of actions being spent on spirifage and just under 20% on Neath’s mysteries).[/quote]It might seem that way, but there are more high EPA cards than that. As for other good ones off the top of my head:
- The Engage in Commerce option on the Premises at the Bazaar card is Frequent Frequency, and offers almost 4 EPA [/li][li]the Harvesting the Hotel card (that this thread was about) is also Frequent with good EPA. [/li][li]the 7+ EPA for Calling in Favours in the Flit (which looks to be standard Frequency) [/li][li]The Bohemian faction card, if you have the correct ending from the Blemmigan Affair can easily be over 4 EPA[/li][li]The A Visit card can get you 7+ Echoes[/li][li]A Polite Invitation, if done right can get you you Favours worth somewhere around 2.4 EPA[/li][li]The Overgoat card is over 2.2 EPA with the 8-action choice[/li][li]The Newshound card is 2.5 EPA (although, I’m not sure if that’s rare)
Then there are all of the conflict cards (which you mentioned), but if you keep up with Favours you draw them at least one of them often enough, since there are quite a few different conflicts. Plus the fact that each Conflict card gives you +1 Someone is Coming, which when cashed out for the Souls (if a Spirifer) is good money. Also, the buildup of additional SiC lets you Rob a Drunk Rat in Spite, which has good EPA due to a rare success.
I’m not saying staying in London is definitely better, but there are quite a few cards that offer really good EPA.
I’m with Azothi on this one. While there are a decent number of good cards in London, there are substantially more bad cards, even in a heavily trimmed deck. While some cards are fantastic, they’re inconsistent by definition. When the effective Favour cash-ins are all cards, it’s common to have periods where you get more Favours than chances to spend them, or vice versa. Many of the best cards also require Fate, like the Aunt card. In addition, it’s very easy to let your deck fill up and waste cards.
When I was grinding for Cider via Spirifage, Favours were only fully implemented for the final couple months. Still, I used somewhere around half of my daily actions on grinding souls, even with grinding various Renowns simultaneously. Had the Court been around at the time, I would have used it instead. Cards can be worthwhile, and staying in London is nice if you have multiple goals to work towards, but for pure monetary gain Tribute just seems much better.
A couple notes:
- While the Bazaar card is technically ~4 EPA, having to cash in 3200 Scraps at a time makes it really hard to liquidate.[/li][li]As was said earlier in this thread, Harvesting the Hotel ends up as 2.13 EPA, worse than Tribute.[/li][li]A Polite Invitation can give many Favours, but it costs several actions to attend, and many of the Favour sources during the party either have associated costs or are inconsistent.[/li][li]The Overgoat card requires really high stats to be better than Tribute.
So yeah, while plenty of cards give decent profits—and are definitely worthwhile ways for non-endgame players to get cash—I think very few match the convenience and consistency of the Court.
Is Port Carnelian the best grind? Its 2.6 EpA or somewhere near.
edited by Waterpls on 8/11/2018
Do you have reliable calculations that reach that number?
Nope. I personally have not tested that empirically. And its really hard to calculate due to random nature of that grind. Its just something i have read somewhere in that forum. Thats why i am asking.
It’s indeed very hard to calculate. I don’t remember seeing this particular number (2.6 EPA) mentioned.
The very early attempt to calculate this estimated an EPA of ~1.8, but it was a very initial assessment, based on some guess work and on a specific strategy (and was also before the cycle gave Tribute for siding with the Tigers).