I just hopped back on my ship after a two-week-long stay in Polythreme, and thought I’d share some data I gathered during my stay there. Polythreme’s distance from London makes it an unappetizing destination for grinding; but since most people will travel there sooner or later in pursuit of their Ambition or other cases, there may be some interest in making the most of your time there.
Bottom line up front: by carefully managing my opportunity deck and keeping track of my progress, I was able to earn an average of 1.75 echoes per action over my long stay there, and sail away with ample supplies for a future run at the Fidgeting Writer.
Before going into details, I should mention that I am deeply indebted to Urthdigger’s comprehensive guide to Polythreme’s mechanics, which I heavily relied on for my own trip. Polythreme’s mechanics are very interesting: they are luck-based, but since they depend mostly on drawn opportunity cards from a very limited deck, luck will determine how quickly you can complete a profitable cycle, and not whether your cycle is profitable or not. Unlike the Screaming Map or Fidgeting Writer, where each outcome either succeeds or fails, Polythreme will eventually succeed, after some indeterminate time. Whenever you don’t draw the correct cards, you can avail yourself of the standard grinding storylets, which offer a respectable 1.2 echoes/action.
Each cycle through Polythreme takes 12 actions. You’ll spend 1 action on the storylet Begin your Polythremic Promenade, which also grants 1 echo of Memories of Distant Shores. The next 10 actions will come from your opportunity cards, which you will use to raise Investigating or Fascinating. The final action will be spent on the storylet Spending your Time; with an Investigating or Fascinating of 13, you will earn 25 echoes of rewards. So, each cycle will give you 26 echoes over 12 actions, for 2.17 echoes/action.
It doesn’t really matter whether you focus on Investigating or Fascinating; I did the former because of my other business in Polythreme, so I’ll use those cards as my example, but you can use the corresponding ones for Fascinating if you prefer. In order to get to an Investigating of 13, you need 91 CP of Investigating. We have 10 actions to reach it, so we can get the reward if we get 10 CP with each of those actions. We can still get the reward if a single one of those actions gives at least 1 CP. We cannot reliably get the reward if any one of our 10 actions gives zero CP.
We’ll assume you have a 4-deck hand. The Priest at the Temple and At the Market will never give any Investigating, so keep those in your hand at all times. The Wax Wind Comes and The Masked Man will give zero Investigating if we’re unlucky, so keep one in your hand, and discard the other whenever it appears.
That leaves three cards. Fractious Furniture is our best choice: it’s a skill-based challenge, and always gives 10 CP, so if we play this card each time it appears, we can reach 100 CP with no problems. Next is The Temple. This is a luck-based card that also gives 10 CP on a pretty-good-odds success, and still gives 5 CP on a failure. So, whenever I started a new cycle, I would always play The Temple whenever it appeared, until the first time it failed. After that, I would switch to only playing Fractious Furniture. This gets us to 95 CP, still enough for the best reward, and lets us spend more actions on the cycle than if we were only waiting for a single card to appear. Finally, The Ruin is a bit odd; it’s an even-odds card that gives 15 CP on a success, and still 1 CP on a failure. I generally discarded The Ruin, unless I was at the last step in the cycle and hadn’t yet failed at The Temple.
Any time you discard a card, you can use the action you would have spent on that card to Lurk in the Eaves, earning 12 Romantic Notions. Note that you’ll want 2 actions available at the end of a cycle so you can play the two storylets to end the current cycle and start the next one.
I’d decided to stay on Polythreme until I had ground 7500 Romantic Notions. By the time I had done so, I had acquired 690 Stolen Kisses and 138 additional Memories of Distant Shores. My total earnings from the visit were 2546.50 echoes. During my two weeks, I had spent 828 actions completing 69 cycles, and 625 actions harvesting Notions, for a total of 1453 actions. On average, I earned 1.75 echoes per action during my stay.
While I’m quite pleased with these results, I suspect that there might be some additional refinements available. I haven’t been able to work the math on it, but it might be beneficial to play The Ruin more often than I did. It’s essentially a trade-off between potentially being able to spend more actions on the highly profitable cycle, versus the risk of failing at The Ruin and not being able to play the better-odds The Temple when it next appears. Also, because the Opportunity Deck is so crucial, you’ll do best if you can flip cards every hour, instead of waiting for 10 or 20 actions to accrue.
On the whole, I think Polythreme offers a lot of potential. My favorite aspect is that the less-profitable part of the process yields Romantic Notions, which are currently considered one of the best sources of materials for the Fidgeting Writer. Also, it’s notable that the 2.17 echoes/action that the cycle yields does not require any investment, and compares very favorably to the return on Fidgeting Writer once you account for acquiring materials. So, even if you’re in Polythreme specifically to gather Notions, it can still be worth your while to ride the cycle.
The downside to this method: it does require you to keep track of whether you’ve experienced a failure yet in the current cycle. You can sometimes, but not always, deduce this from your current progress in Investigating versus your Unnatural Exuberance. If keeping track proves difficult, you may want to use some token to help remind you of your status; personally, I’ve found that donning a Ridiculous Hat works wonders.