That’s up to the all-mighty RNG to determine.
I’ve recently tried getting Night-Whispers using this method and got exactly a single one from my initial 39 ToT.[/quote]
Fair enough. That also falls pretty close to the theoretical amount of 32 Tales of Terror per Nightwhisper. Still easier than doing expeditions and hoping you will get the Nightwhisper outcome.
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My data and informal experience leads me to believe the 2xNight Whisper treasure is about a 30% chance at the end of the expedition. At my estimate of 57 actions/expedition, you should generally end up with about six Night Whispers if you expend 570 actions completing the loops (relatively easy to manage in less than a week for an Exceptional Friend playing a couple times daily). Yes, the Fidgeting Writer loop can get you that in fewer actions, but you’ll be burning up not just Tales of Terror, but Correspondence Plaques, Visions of the Surface, Brilliant Souls, and Identities Uncovered, all of which you’ll have to find some other way to grind. The Shrine loop, on the other hand, requires no inputs beyond some rostygold to launch your ship, and even when it’s not generating Night Whispers will get you lots of other great goodies.
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It’s at the link to the Grinding Watchful (and Persuasive) topic above, but here it is again for reference:
Again, this depends on zee voyages which are of course highly variable (and is based on my numbers with a Zubmarine and a very high Experienced Zailor, making the Wily Zailor card kick backside), assumes 100% success rate on all the Watchful challenges, assumes a large number of Corpsecage loops per trip away from London, and factors in the chances of pulling up the “A Sign?” chance in the process of the expedition. So, your mileage may vary wildly.
I’m currently at zee, but when I get back to the Forgotten Quarter I’m going to start up keeping notes on expedition rewards again. (The chances do seem to move about a lot which makes me wonder if FBG has done adjustments on these – people swear by the Hunter’s Keep loop, but I’ve done it several dozen times now and have yet to have a single Searing Enigma fall out of the sky…)
I think people started noticing a drop in the enigma rate around when the 77 enigma option on the God’s Editors card appeared (and the price of Proscribed Materials skyrocketed).
Just wanted to report that I finished my first Tomb of the Seven (easy peasy, at slowest speed they never caught up with me), got the Stones, started University stuff and so on. Thanks for all the advice!
[quote=Yara Aronssen]I’ve done the Blue Heaven expedition three times and got the wooden mask every time. I thought rewards were randomised, so is this just a coincidence or am I doing something wrong?[/quote]Unless they changed it since I went on those expeditions the reward is randomised, and the RNG is just trying to trick you into thinking that you’re doing something wrong.
When you get the screen with the results you can open your own profile in another tab/window and click on your ‘scrapbook’ slot and choose the icon for "Uncovering an Unpredictable Treasure" and see what number it gets in the scrapbook slot. That’ll tell you that it is random, because even though you might get the same treasure, it seems very unlikely that it would also be the same exact number every time, since each treasure is in a range of numbers. Spending further supplies to increase your Archaeologist’s Progress should not affect the end result once you qualify for finding the shrine.
For finding Eyeless Skulls I’d definitely stick to ‘seeking curios’ in the Forgotten Quarter, though some people would tell you that it’s better to just pay the money for what you need to enter the cave. But I liked ‘seeking curios’ back then, so I am not one of those people.
Until you finish the expedition you don’t get the Unpredictable Treasure, I don’t think that increasing your Archaeologists Progress beyond 20 will affect the RNG. You get what you get and yes it can be annoying when you repeatedly get one of the lower end rewards that you can also get from the Thieves Cache.
For skulls I echo Gillsing, you are probably better off Seeking Curios … just watch out for the nightmares:)
I finally quit collecting data after 68 repetitions. It’s possible the frequencies have been adjusted since I started about 7-8 months ago, but my results are below. Note the probabilities though – you can easily end up with a lot of cheapie results if you only do a few repetitions.
[table] [tr] [td]Result [td]Occurrences [td]Frequency [td]Value [td]Reward [tr] [td]A fragile flake of vellum [td]5 [td]7% [td]62.5 [td]1 x Searing Enigma [tr] [td]A long ago burglar [td]6 [td]9% [td]75.2 [td]1 x Fourth City Airag, 1 x Puzzling Map, 10 x Cryptic Clue [tr] [td]A tightly wrapped package [td]2 [td]3% [td]16 [td]1 x Collection of Curiosities, 4 x Aeolian Scream [tr] [td]A wooden mask [td]10 [td]15% [td]34.2 [td]10 x Ostentatious Diamond, 2 x Magnificent Diamond, 1 x Venom Ruby, 1 x Warm Amber [tr] [td]After the fall [td]8 [td]12% [td]62.5 [td]1 x Eyeless Skull [tr] [td]An instrument? [td]6 [td]9% [td]14.5 [td]1 x Storm Threnody, 200 x Whispered Secret [tr] [td]Inscribed Diamond [td]7 [td]10% [td]63 [td]1 x Primeval Hint, 1 x Ostentatious Diamond [tr] [td]Some deeper intrigue [td]3 [td]4% [td]22.5 [td]4 x Unearthly Fossil, 1 x Trembling Amber [tr] [td]The seal of a hooded hawk [td]10 [td]15% [td]40 [td]2000 x Jade Fragment, 1 x Puzzling Map, 3x Touching Love Story [tr] [td]What is this? [td]11 [td]16% [td]125 [td]2 x Night Whisper [tr] [td]Total [td]68 [td]
[td]
[td]
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Also, if you get the “Inscribed Diamond,” be SURE to use a second chance on the challenge. The payoff difference between succeeding in the Watchful challenge and failing is enormous.
The difference is only 50p, though; you still get the Primeval Hint, just not the Ostentatious Diamond. It’s not really that big of a deal, but extra cash is always good.
I did the Shrine expedition only once, and got an Eyeless Skull. But perhaps even more intriguing was a paragraph of text with some very important descriptions.
[quote=Lumyire]
BTW, the fate locked Uttermost Wind is not worth doing at all. The standard reward is at most an 12.5 E item.[/quote]
I went seeking a Temple of Uttermost Wind once, and found something that almost gave me as much echoes as all my other items at the time combined would… so I wouldn’t call it useless by any means. Not to mention the pieces of information there…
Ack, I’d thought you got the diamond but no hint, which would obviously be a huge drop-off. Haven’t failed it in a while, so I clearly am remembering wrong.
I may have missed something, but I haven’t seen that one in a long time. I’m wondering if it get modified out.
On a side note, I should note that I tested a hypothesis that the rewards were correlated to the Winds of the Forgotten Quarter at the point when you cross the finish line. After collecting data on that for a while, I’m pretty sure it is not, and that the treasure really is an independent random roll. edited by Trodgmey on 6/2/2014
I wonder if it requires a particular quality, then. As you can tell, I’ve run a whole lot of these, and I’d expect it to come up at least occasionally. But again, I may have missed something in a reward here or there.
It has a smaller range, looking at the wiki. The 2 Night-Whispers go from 140-158 (159?), while Airag + Parabola-Linen is just 160. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more common in the Expeditions that allow a higher Unpredictable Treasure value.
Edit: Well, more common in that it has a wider range than just 1 value. In practice the full range drawn upon could be wider, which might hurt the odds. I’m not sure.
Edit 2: I’m actually about to start running some Expeditions on my main and alt pretty soon. I want to have 10 bottles of Airag to complete my Wines collection, and Delmar wants to bring his Watchful up from 141 to 200. I could record what I get and provide more data for the reward probabilities. edited by Sara Hysaro on 6/2/2014
Airag is very rare indeed. I was running expeditions last winter, when Tears were all the rage. Got 5 skulls and maybe ten Night Whispers, but only one Airag bottle.
Is the consensus that this is still the best place to hope for Night-Whispers? For reasons likely obvious, I just started seeking those and no luck thus far on 6 expeditions - one storm threnody, two skulls, two diamonds, one other. Keep trying, I guess…?