On the other hand, you can use a big heist to convert the remaining casing into 8 TLS (which generally takes me less than 10 actions once I have the casing). I didn’t count that, because those are not correspondence plaques.
When I was grinding for the Overgoat I worked out that the best ROI was going to Spite as "A Survivor of the Affair of the Box 12", and then grinding the "An Agent of the Masters" and/or "The Unionist" stories until you have collected 13 x A Boxful of Intrigue. You then use another action to exchange the boxes for 8 x Mourning Candle, after which the story resets and can be played again. And again, and again etc. etc.
It sounds slow, but each 14 action cycle gives you 8 x Mourning Candles, with no risk (assuming your stats make it all Straightforward), nor any prerequisites, costs or waiting around for cards to show up. Selling them at the Bazaar (for €2.50 each) will earn €20, which works out as €1.43/action - this is pretty good!
There are a few places were you can earn €1.50/action doing tasks, but none of them were quite as handy for pure, 100% repetitive no-brain grinding, for weeks on end! I was not aware I now needed [color=#F44]two[/color] Overgoats though!
Also, thin your opportunity deck. Some cards are worth pretty fabulous amounts of money for a single action (Namely, A Visit, where the forger will give you twice your shadowy in cryptic clues. Plus a variety of cards worth around 2.00-2.50)
The fewer conflict cards, location specific cards, pet cards, etc… that you draw the more likely you are to draw a card worth the Benjamins. Or rather, the whoever’s face is on an echo, I suppose.
Jon, you’re ignoring the fact that if you have Conscience of Empire (i.e. taking the carousel options that go against the Masters’ interests) then you also get 6 Correspondence Plaques - 2 each on steps 8, 9 and 10 (“Intercept the Messages”).
That actually gives 23 Echoes over 14 actions, or 1.64 Echoes per action. It’s the best repeatable money maker that I know of.
Getting collections of curiosities from War of Assassins and trading them with the tomb colonists is better (1.78 echoes/action), but it requires a card so your best bet if you’re trying to farm echoes with that is always try to hold on to a collection of curiosities and grab a new one whenever the tomb colonists card turns up, while spending the rest of your time on affair of the box/fidgeting writer/whichever you prefer.
I think using some specific stories that pay money and raise a progress stat can do similarly better but those tend to be time limited (like using the third coil, which you can only do before you advance to the fourth coil.) Also I would not count on them not getting nerfed.
edited by WormApotheote on 10/15/2014