I have a total wealth as of this morning of 12k echoes. Approximately at what point in wealth would it be reasonable for me to start selling things off to have the cash on hand for a goat? I don’t want to be so beggared I need to spend a few weeks grinding unfinished business afterwards and I also don’t want to sell off the rare to replace items. Dreadful Surmise, cantigaster venom, etc. I’m currently leaning towards around 15-16k in total wealth is where I should aim for? Thoughts?
It’s not the total Echoes so much as the composition of your inventory. As you’ve obviously already considered, you should aim to keep anything rare/pricy, any equipment you need, and anything that isn’t easily replaceable.
There is a Chrome extension somewhere on the forums which I am sure someone more capable than me will be able to track down and link - that enables you to "reserve" those items in your inventory that you don’t want to sell, and do the same if you want to keep a particular quantity of one type of item. It will then keep a running tally of the Echo value of your non-reserved items, and can even tell you how far away you are from a specified target amount.
It’s the GoatFarmer: community.failbettergames.com/topic9501-goat-farmers-browser-extension.aspx#post75797
Personally I’d consider the opposite point of view: set an ideal stockpile for items according to their cost and availability and sell the rest; I keep 5 echoes of each cheap item (when possible) and 5-10 of the items costing 2.50 or more. To buy my goat I sold the item gained by selling Nadir’s location (replaced by the Theorem on my mantlepiece), the items granted by my profession and grinding the rest of the money through the University carousel.
And remember: before selling a unique item learn about its possible uses, so it won’t come to bite your posterior later.
Reading these is interesting. It’s a set of pragmatically similar, but conceptually different ways at looking at goat acquisition. Myself, I’m sufficiently concerned with minimizing opportunity-cost, that I’m actually setting specific types of high-Epa acquisitions aside in order to not have to grind sub-optimal options in order to restock (I’m looking at you glim). It’s kind of a nutty way to go about it though.
I sold stuff until i had about 12k echoes of useless-to-easily-replaced, non-gear stuff (i.e. none of the truly pricey stuff, unless i had no use for it, so i kept the fluke-core, and meant to keep the dreadful surmise) I also held onto my vials of Tears of the bazaar, which, had i sold them, would have saved me months in aquiring the overgoat- but also missed the point, since the only reason i got the overgoat is it made expeditions faster- which makes tears of the bazaar easier to find.
I held onto some money, since I wanted to be able to buy strong-backed labor for a quick expedition, and to be able to buy anything i ran out of and desperately needed.
edited by Grenem on 2/2/2016
Weirdly, the Overgoat card is also one of the better cards in terms of EPA, so getting even an Overgoat is useful to get the second/Ubergoat.
Well, yes, but it’s not like you’d get more than 100 echoes in the action before you had enough echoes to buy the overgoat the safe way- and don’t forget the overgoat failure rate, it’s like 23% failure with near-peak equips, and when you factor that in, it’s only 2.71 epa, less the value of a sudden insight. (a profession might marginally improve this EpA, but there’s still a pretty high chance of failure, and 2.5 echoes to show for 8 actions.)
Still good, but not, say, good enough to make up for the trouble of gathering a new fluke-core, or the wasted irrigo until you do.
edited by Grenem on 2/2/2016
edited by Grenem on 2/2/2016
I sold very little, to be honest, to get the first Overgoat. I sort of got that Overgoat via "natural causes;" I use my actions whenever feasible (and whenever doesn’t interfere with real life). I kept 2000 of each low-level item, 20-50 of most mid-tier items with some use, and I looped Wilmot’s End and the Affair of the Box when I couldn’t think offhand of other things to do.
I had mental cutoffs for grindable 12.5e+ items. For instance, I kept 10 Magnificent Diamonds at all times "just in case", but sold anything beyond that (probably didn’t need to keep that many, but habit). Mourning Candles are easy to get, so I sold all of 'em. Puzzling Maps are rarely used, and I regularly grind them, so I sold all of those too. I up-converted Antique Mysteries to Primeval Hints and sold any Hints above 3. Every couple weeks I’d go through my inventory and assess what things I needed (checking the wiki if I wanted to play it safe).
Being an Exceptional Friend helped considerably in the long run. The extra candle effectively gave me 20 bonus actions daily, and drawing more cards (and playing the profitable ones) probably helped on the outside at the end there.
I didn’t grind efficiently, mind you. But here’s a question to ask yourself: if you are grinding efficiently, why not just rely on the grind and forget selling anything you’ll regret? An Overgoat isn’t as out-of-reach as it sounds, if you’re at max stats and have the boxes unlocked. Just requires a few months of focus.