Since you have a stat above 100 you should (eventually) draw a card beginning your journey to PoSI. You’ll receive guidance from that point, but to summarize here, you have to have all stats at 100 (counting gear and not at the same time), complete your choice of some requirements, and do a brief quest in the Bazaar Sidestreets.
That depends if you’ve started the path to being a POSI. i.e. are you A Person of Some Little Consequence, and if so, at what level?
Once any stat reaches 100, you’ll be eligible to draw a card which sets you on this path to POSI. You can also skip waiting for this card by talking with the relevant neighbour in your lodgings (under FIND NEW STORIES: Chat with the Local Gossip). That is, since your Watchful and Dangerous are over 100, you can chat about this with either the Loquacious Vicar (Watchful) or the Clay Coalmen (Dangerous).
Either of these options (via your neighbours or via the cards) will set your "A Person of Some Little Consequence" quality to 1, and you’ll find the Ambitious Barrister waiting for you in your lodgings to progress this storyline. After chatting with her, she’ll send you on a trip around areas in London, each will require a different stat to be at least 100 (with gear), but not at the same time (alternatively you use Fate to bypass the stat 100 requirement).
There will be more steps along this way - some card based and some in your lodgings (and later in the Bazaar Side-streets, which will open up for you).
This was what confused me. I’m POSLC 4 but have no idea how I got there - I’ve not previously been systematically trying to get to POSI so I clearly started it at some point just randomly and pursued it a bit. Trying to pick it up again I went to the local gossips and that’s where I picked up on the fidgety writer storyline. Assumptions were made, actions wasted, etc. from there. Thanks, all, for setting me straight!
I’m kind of curious about this, too–selling 25 rings equal the 312.5 echo item at the end. It seems like getting 25 rings isn’t all that hard to do, and the plaques etc. that go into the initial stages are cheaper and easier to get than the items needed later. I was frustrated by the FW early on and never returned. I guess I never realized how useful it would be to grind echoes despite reading about it. Now that I’m thinking of grinding for a goat, I’m wondering–echo-wise, doesn’t stopping at the ring make you about the same amount of echoes in the end–and with a lot fewer actions?
I’m fairly certain people have done the math, and it works out that going all the way to the end is most profitable, even though the odds of each step drop a bit. This is, of course, assuming that the RNG neither favors nor hates you.
I believe you…but I hate luck-based story lines. So I guess I will go with pretty darn profitable even if going to the end would be better. It’s all about your tolerance for risk, isn’t it?
Sure, although when you do it with huge numbers of items you just kind of learn to not pay attention to the results. I just converted about 500 tales of terror, and I couldn’t tell you how many senses of deja Vu I got out of it.
The second to last stage can be considered more valuable… if and only if you have a use for Comprehensive Bribes. Bribes cost nearly 60 echoes to obtain any other way, so if you need one, Fidgeting Writer is the way to go.
I’m wondering… is there a point (when you’re losing) at which you should cut your losses and cash out? And if so, how do you know when you’ve reached it?
I’ve just about completed a run of ~1050 Tales of Terror, got to the last stage with 56 Last Hopes, and currently have 9 Last Hopes and 28 Coruscating Souls. So… first off, at the last stage the granularity of the coin tosses had me concerned for the first time. If I’d used up 40 Last Hopes with only 12 Souls to show for it, I’d start to seriously consider turning the rest into Bribes etc. in order to get something like a profit out of the enterprise.
As it is, I’ve got a reasonable return on 56 Last Hopes already (yay), and I am now wondering whether to treat the rest as gravy and gamble them, or set up a cache of Comprehensive Bribes.
edited by Gregstrom on 5/29/2017
There’s never a point where you should cut your losses, no. The chances are fixed; you can expect ~50% of your Last Hopes to turn into Souls whether you’ve had 0 failures or a string of 50 failures. To think otherwise would be to fall for the gambler’s fallacy.
Now, in real life, things might be different. Chances can change, unknown factors can exist. If you flip a coin 50 times and it always comes up heads, it’s time to assume the coin is rigged.
Also in real life, there are situations where minimum bars must be reached; if you need to make at least X profit off a venture, and you get a string of bad luck to the point where it’s unlikely you’ll reach the target amount, you might want to cut your losses and quit, even if the chances are fair and accurate. The only similar situation in FL I can think of though would be Polythreme’s carousel.
edited by Kaijyuu on 5/29/2017
Last Hopes can either be a 50% chance of a Coruscating Soul or a 100% chance of ~150 Echoes of items. So you can expect the return to be slightly better for the gamble… which isn’t really my thinking.
Yes, you can reasonably expect 50% of the coin tosses to come out your way. However, the smaller the sample size you’re playing with the greater the chance that your final payout will differ significantly from that baseline 50% success rate.
In the early stages of the process, you’re working with big numbers and can reasonably expect runs of bad luck (and, sadly, good luck) to even out. At the end… not so much. If I had used 40 of my 56 Lenses (not Last Hopes - oops) and only got 10 souls, I’d have no reasonable expectation of getting consistent successes with the remaining 16. I’d also be aware of the pretty decent odds of getting 6 or less successes, and concerned about leaving the run with a very shabby EPA.
As you have control over your outcome, you can at any point cash out rather than carry on gambling. It’s possible to set a target echo value you want to leave the Fidgeting Writer pyramid with, and cash out as soon as you can hit that by taking 100% chances. Similarly, it’s possible to set a floor value you want to take out, and bail at a point you’re guaranteed to make this with the 100% chance, but only have a 50% chance (or 60%, or whatever your risk tolerance may be) of making the target amount by gambling.
I suppose I was wondering what sensible floor or ceiling values should be, if any.
TLDR: My main point was more about avoiding the gambler’s fallacy than falling prey to it.
edited by Gregstrom on 5/29/2017
Yes, the variance goes up as the sample size goes down, but that’s irrelevant; your expected payout will always be higher by continuing. Your EPA for a single run isn’t really important, assuming you plan to do additional runs in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean
Now if you’re aiming for a Cider (or some other benchmark), by all means cash out as soon as you’re guaranteed to hit it. Nothing wrong with being risk averse as soon as you’ve got a guaranteed path to your goal.
Also if you find bad luck demoralizing, then yeah you might want to cash out and do something else. No need to make yourself feel bad if you get unlucky. Plenty of viable grinds in the game (better than Fidgeting Writer is, even).
Yes, I wasn’t planning any more Fidgeting Writer for a while, partly because of the need to restock significantly after the last run. And I ended up with 32 souls and can easily afford to buy a Goat, so yay.
If you have streaks of luck like mine, where you’ve failed the first step of the fidgeting writer’s line a few times in a row. I advise aiming for affairs of the box for cash.
I ran the first step a little over 1000 times. There were probably some chain failures in there, but I got somewhere around 700 successes.