Keep or Sell?

Other than bragging rights/hoarding, are certain items are worth hanging on to? I’d like to sell some of my hoard to get the overgoat.

Venge rat corpses?
London street signs?

How much of these do you keep? Jade, silk scraps, rats on a string. I’m a mid-level POSI and have about 10,000 of each.

How about Tier 2 items like stolen correspondence, intriguing secrets?

Generally I decide what to sell and what not to sell by how difficult it is to get it. If I can reliably get a reasonable amount of something then it’s perfectly good for selling, but if there’s any sort of catch or hassle in getting more of it then I won’t sell any of it.

There’s no real use for Venge-Rat corpses. They can be used to create a Collection of Curiosities in the expensive (and not recommended) way - much better to use the War of Assassins for CoC.

Notice that VEnge-Rat corpses can either be sold directly to the Bazaar for 0.5 echoes, or, when De Gustibus comes they will buy them for 1.5 echoes each (but it will cost an action).

Venge-rat corpses are mildly difficult to come by, and not that valuable, so I’d suggest hanging on to a few at least.

London street signs are much easier to acquire if needed, so go ahead and sell.

If you have yet to visit the labyrinth of tigers, keep your rats on a string. I’d suggest keeping 1000 of the basic tier one stuff apart from that. In particular jade, moon pearls, and nevercold brass have very few uses, so 1000 should be plenty. (Moon pearls have a mildly useful use in Mahogany Hall, but it’s far from essential to keep them).

Tier 2 I’d probably hang on to. They’re sometimes more of a pain to get than tier 1 or tier 3, and stuff like incendiary gossip are used for POSI-specific stuff like Books of Hidden Bodies, and then you’ll find yourself trying to farm all you can get. Check the wiki for uses, and see what you think you can lose.

[quote=dov]There’s no real use for Venge-Rat corpses. They can be used to create a Collection of Curiosities in the expensive (and not recommended) way - much better to use the War of Assassins for CoC.

Notice that VEnge-Rat corpses can either be sold directly to the Bazaar for 0.5 echoes, or, when De Gustibus comes they will buy them for 1.5 echoes each (but it will cost an action).[/quote]

Actually, If I am not mistaken, making a Collection of Curiosities is always cheaper than the value of selling them to the Tomb Colonists. Total value of the content of CoC if sold separately to Bazaar is around 47 echos. You gain about 15 echos with only 1 action (making the collection) instead of 34 actions at War of Assassins. (15 echos for 1 action vs. 62.5 actions at Wilmor st. for 34 actions, not including the Tomb Colonies card. Less profit but still a nice profit, quick and dirty)
So you always gain by making CoC. That is why one should keep those London sings and Venge-Rat corpses, and Earthly Fossils and all.
Especially since Venge-Rat corpses are not common.
edited by Gonen on 1/12/2016

[quote=the truthseeker]
Based on the rare draw and turns &quotspent&quot looking for the said difficult components the EPA (Echoes per action) drops considerably. This is why people chose to do the Assassins carousel over collecting such a difficult eclectic collection not easy to assemble ever. But don’t take my word for it, ask him, who told me this many months ago. Sure if you have everything ready to build, go ahead. But don’t waste your time stockpiling to build a sidestreets CoC either.[/quote]

Ah, did not say to go and collect them. But those things tend to arrive someway or the other.
And the question was whether to keep or dump London signs, Fossils, Rat corpse etc. My answer is absolutely keep it. I celebrate when accepting a new batch of Venge-rat corpses on a surprise packages - almost always I have everything else on standby, ready to be converted to CoC on an instant profit (well, not INSTANT since need to draw the Tomb’s card, but that is a shared problem with the Assassins’s way. And, well, CELEBRATE is such a strong word for this occurrence. I nod approvingly, tight lips and stern look).
When I don’t have those ingredients I do the usual carousel.
edited by Gonen on 1/12/2016

You never know when some new story might show up requiring 3000 Flawed Diamonds, 900 Map Scraps, 20 Venge-Rat Corpses, 3 Unearthly Fossils and a Queer Soul. Are you ready for that storylet? I am. Some of you are probably thinking “well, I could be ready for that pretty quickly, I can sell this and buy that and upconvert…” Oops. It was a story that was only available for 20 minutes as the Wicket closed.

Such is the mindset behind “hoard in variety and only sell when you really need to buy something, because you can always convert items to echoes, but it’s harder to go the other way.”

Of course, the real reason storylets like that don’t appear is because a lot of people would wail and gnash their teeth, the moreso for the lack of a bunch of grindable stuff than for a rarity like (until recently) a Mirrorcatch Box. But isn’t wailing and gnashing of teeth part of the point?

I want to mark all your answers as the accepted answer!!!

I think I’ll hoard all the common items till 5000, and keep all the weird stuff until the Goat Farmers Extension tells me it is time. Then I’ll decide. You know, kick the can down the road and all that ;)

How about First City coins? I have almost 200 of them. Considering that they do take about an action a piece to earn, should I simply discard the opportunity card to get First City coins? Should I sell them?

Aside from anticipating a storylet requiring a vast number of First City Coins, the primary reason to keep some on hand is pass them along as gifts … especially to someone in the early stages of pursuing the Heart’s Desire Ambition.

Questions to ask yourself:

  • Do you have the item in abundance?
  • Do you have a reliable way to grind more of this item?
  • Do you need the cash immediately?

I tend to hang onto stuff, which served me well during the Flint storylines - I’d been accumulating passphrases and had considered selling them, but am glad I didn’t. (I chewed through a whole lot of them while overzeas.)

Perhaps the most important question I should ask you, though:

  • What are you wanting to buy? (If you don’t have a specific answer for this, you don’t need to sell stuff yet.)

Especially if you ever decide to create an alt to play that Ambition story, you’ll be glad you don’t have to spend an extra 200+ actions to gather them again.

Oh it’s quite easy - I’m wanting an Overgoat at the moment. According to the goat farmer’s extension, I’m about 2000 echoes short (this after having reserved a fair few items). As the remaining grind is probably going to take another two months or so, depending on whether I want to grind echoes in earnest.

It doesn’t really address the problem of First City coins though. I do have a number of them; short of drawing the Pocketful of Coins card and Counting the Days, I’m not able to grind them per se; and I don’t need the money quite yet. I guess I’m just itching to see my echo balance go up!

And is it overzeaz or overzeas? ;)

[quote=Kittenpox]Questions to ask yourself:

  • Do you have the item in abundance?
  • Do you have a reliable way to grind more of this item?
  • Do you need the cash immediately?

I tend to hang onto stuff, which served me well during the Flint storylines - I’d been accumulating passphrases and had considered selling them, but am glad I didn’t. (I chewed through a whole lot of them while overzeas.)

Perhaps the most important question I should ask you, though:

  • What are you wanting to buy? (If you don’t have a specific answer for this, you don’t need to sell stuff yet.)[/quote]
  • Abundant? Somewhat, under the circumstances.
  • Reliable grind available? No.
  • Immediate cash needed? No.

Save 'em. Sell something else, or wait a week while you gather other materials.
(Also, you know about buying bags of low-quality diamonds in the Bazaar Sidestreets, yes? Convert your Cryptic Clues for additional profit. ^_^ )

I figure they’re called Zailors not Zailorz, so &quotOverseas&quot would likely follow the same guidelines.
edited by Kittenpox on 1/14/2016

Yes thank you on the cryptic clues conversion. Sadly the rare success is rare indeed and out of about 20 conversions, I have yet to get a magnificent diamond!

The chance to get a Magnificent Diamond is almost certainly 5%, or very close to it (confirmed by converting more than 240,000 Cryptic Clues recently - success rate stands at the moment at 5.45%).

So, on average you can expect 1 rare success for every 20 attempts. Of course, it’s quite possible to go through 40 or even 60 actions before getting that rare success once. But I’ve also encountered it in consecutive actions, which is very nice :-)