Laconic prodigy before progressing salon?

Fallen London
1

I would like to get the laconic prodigy, which I understand requires improving your orphanage for a while. I already have a salon, but haven’t bothered to do anything with it yet.

Would it make sense to get rid of my salon, buy an orphanage, and stick with that until I get the prodigy, then switch back? Or is it more profitable to stick with my salon for a while and upgrade it, and then go for the orphanage at some point in the future?

2

You lose your Scheme: Salon when you close it, so it’d be best to ditch it now before you’ve invested anything into it and reclaim it once you have your Laconic Prodigy. You’ll also lose a couple points of Notability, so if you’re wanting to do anything that requires a higher level of it soon you may want to hold off for a bit until you take care of that.

edited by Sara Hysaro on 5/2/2016

3

Thanks. Does the salon have an equivalent reward like the laconic prodigy? Would it make more sense to work towards that and then switch after I get it? Although for RP reasons I might want to end up with a salon permanently either way.

4

There’s no companion for the Salon, just an option with a small Fate cost that gives a ton of Making Waves and nothing else.

5

Tangentially related, how do you swap from salon to orphanage?

6

Click the Handsome Townhouse key in your Inventory and you’ll see the option to close up your old Scheme. I think after that you have to wait for the card to come up to pursue the other one.

7

Laconic prodigy aside, is there any reason to keep an orphanage over a salon? On another thread, I read something saying that salons consume connections and orphanages consume wealth, both to make waves? Did I get that right? Is there any other use for either beside making waves?
edited by Harlocke on 5/2/2016

8

Both schemes can give some extra perks, but they’re more or less negligible. The main use of either scheme is to rapidly boost your Making Waves. At high levels of Notability (or really anything above 5 or 6 I’ve found) it can be next to impossible to raise Notability in a timely fashion if you don’t use one of them.
Personally I prefer the Salon, but that’s mostly because Orphanages can get extremely costly after a while and I don’t mind sacrificing society and bohemian favour so much.