I have a confusing situation (at least it is confusing to me) related to assembling skeletons and the Church of the Wild that I hope someone can help me with.
I am currently working on my Church of the Wild. I dedicated the church to a "A Custom-Made saint". My plan is to later build a statue to this "Custom-Made Saint". In order to dedicate the church to this Custom-Made Saint, I had to have a skeleton in progress with 5xSupport for a Counter-church Theology. I created such a skeleton and was able to dedicate the church. I see in the wiki that in order to erect a statue, I need to have a skeleton with the same 5xSupport for a Counter-church Theology. No problem (I hope). I still have that skeleton and can go and erect that statue anytime. Is there any problem with this plan?
But now for the bigger problem/question. I see in the wiki that in order to claim one of the rewards from this statue, I have to have a "skeleton in progress". Further, the size of the reward (connected: Benthic) depends on the level of "Support for a Counter-church Theology" in this skeleton.
A few minutes ago, I tried to build a new skeleton for purposes unrelated to the Church of the Wild but could not do so because I already had the 5xSupport for a Counter-church Theology skeleton made but not sold.
This all seems to suggest that I would have to make and dispose of (sell or disassemble) a skeleton with "Support for a Counter-church Theology" every time I wanted to use the Burrow-Infra-Mump statue. Alternatively, I could keep this skeleton made but not disposed of indefinitely but this appears to prevent me from making any other skeletons.
Am I missing something? Is there a way to have two skeletons in existence at once? One would be the current 5xSupport for a Counter-church Theology one for use under the Burrow statue and the other(s) would be the 2-3 I make each week to sell for various stuff.
Thanks for any help you can offer on this confusing issue.
Just sit there for a while with a big skeleton until you feel like you’ve gotten enough value out of the statue that you can leave it alone for a while. Maybe on an insect week, with six holy thigh bones jammed onto a prismatic frame.
I did some more research and discovered the ability to preserve a skeleton by turning it into a home comfort item. If I do this with a skeleton with some Counter-Church Theology", would that skeleton/home comfort item count as a skeleton for the purposes of the Burrow statue?
Nope, that consumes your skeleton. The Home Comfort you get is a preserved skeleton, but it’s not “preserved” in the sense that you keep the qualities.
The statue effect is really cool, and quite powerful. You can get a lot of benefit from the counter-church theology. But making the most of it basically means committing some blocks of time where you don’t use the Bone Market, and draw your cards in Burrow during that time. Whether this is good for you or not is a personal decision: I used to not use it very much, but now that I’m locked out of the top-line sellers for another 20 months I might as well.
Thanks much for the info. I suppose that it is only the first option under the Burrow statue (gaining Connected: Benthic) that requires a skeleton, preferably with high counter-church theology. Let me make sure I understand what you are suggesting. Are you saying that you do the following:
Make a skeleton with high counter-church theology
Go to the Burrow statue
Gain lots of Connected: Benthic using the first option which is “An Evening of Palaeontological Discussion”. Repeat this option as much as you want to get high Connected: Benthic up to a maximum of 41. I’m not saying that you must get to 41 but, rather, that 41 is the highest that you can use this option.
Switch and start using the other option under the burrow Statue to get flourishing ribcages and Prismatic frames.
Once you use up your connected: Benthic CP, switch back to option 1 under the statue
Repeat steps 3-5 as long as you want.
Sell the skeleton to free up the bone market for making more skeletons using the bones you just obtained or whatever you want to do in the Bone Market.
One last unrelated question. I have read about people exhausting their access to the Bone Market for years and it appears from your comment that you have done this for at least 20 months. How did you accomplish this? What skeletons did you make that led to this much exhaustion? At 4 exhaustion per week, this is at least 20 months * ~4 weeks/month * 4 Exhau/week = 160 exhaustion. How do you get that high?
You understand the cycle correctly. When you finally sell your Skeleton, the Bohemian Sculptress will give you bonus based on your Theology. It’s not necessarily the best use, but it might be.
My current exhaustion is 341, finally down from its initial value of around 450. One of the methods to attain Scrip for a Hellworm is to add as many joints as possible to a skeleton and make it absurdly, magnificently Amalgamous to sell to the Tentacled Entrepreneur. My skeleton had 8 heads and 36 legs, with 106 total Amalgamy, resulting over 70,000 Final Breaths. The material investment required was about 80,000 Warm Amber, and other materials with a total value of perhaps 1,000 echoes. The cost is substantial, but the payout was substantially larger.
You are probably aware, "locked out of the Bone Market" is a mild exaggeration. About half of the buyers will still talk to me. The ones that don’t are the ones affected by Bone Market Fluctuations, which is where the opportunities for leverage come from.
PSGarak, Thanks again. All of your posts are so incredibly illuminating. You are a real asset to this community. I did NOT understand that the Bone Market exhaustion effects only some of the buyers. Thanks to you, I now do. I try to make two skeletons each week that exhaust my BM exhaustion but I make these with CE skulls. When I try to make skeletons without CE skulls, I struggle to even get 2 BM exhaustion. I have yet to add any joints to a skeleton which is probably why I have not been pushing the BM exhaustion issue. Thanks again.
I just thought of something I omitted from my post about how to use the Burrow statue to a Custom-Made Saint. After step 2, you have to draw cards to get the statue card, don’t you? Then each time you want to play my steps 3, 4, or 5, you have to draw the same card again. This would significantly slow down how fast you can play this cycle. I now better understand why this would cause you to “camp out” in Burrow for a long period of time. Sure, there are far fewer cards in Burrow than in London but you still have to draw the right card from a group of them.
Keep in mind that card deck in upper river is much worse than in London, unless you have hellworm. Only two good cards (peppercaps and statue). Not sure if it’s worth to burn actions in Burrow and moving makes EpA worse. Also flourishing ribcages are not convenient for any skeleton type.
Flourishing ribcages are nearly the only good ribcage for Insect, and there’s at least one and possibly two cards that give a Church favor. The urchin card is only a tiny bit worse than the peppercap card. The society card is also good if you don’t mind raising banditry. And the smuggling card is a 5epa source of Bessemer Steel if your banditry is high and you have the Widow on the board.
Burrow in Twilight (including all its alternate names) is also just as good as the peppercaps card. The dark ones are slightly better, since moon pearls are more abundant and less useful than jasmine leaves, but the value is equivalent. edited by PJ on 4/22/2022