I reached 200 Shadowy a while back, specialized, celebrated, married, and so on. (And have decided to save the grind to 15 Notability 'till after the Feast of the Exceptional Rose.) So for now, I figure I’ll start grinding up some echoes - I’ll need 'em eventually for goats and/or cider, and money’s always nice to have! But that is when I realize that all the good methods for grinding echoes that I know are shadowy-based. Getting souls through Unfinished Business in the Flit and trading them for Brass, running through the Affair of the Box circuit for Mourning Candles… both pure Shadowy. There is, of course, the War of Assassins for CoC’s and from there to Puzzling Maps, which can train just about any stat along the way, but that one’s dependent on cards. (And I already got a healthy stockpile of CoC’s awaiting conversion.)
So where does that leave me, if I want to train up my remaining three stats while making money along the way? I’ve heard the Velocipede Squad Carousel mentioned as an option, but alas, I seem to have… alienated those gents somewhat with my rather unconventional stance against police brutality and rampant corruption. :( Any recommendations?
If you still have access to the 3rd coil in the labyrinth of tigers, raising "on the hunt" and hunting goat demons in the flit gives ~2 epa, highest epa for any grind at the moment. (this is for dangerous) edited by ganjalf91 on 1/11/2016
Meaning, you can’t have reached the Fourth Coil yet? Alas, I have. Generally speaking, I’ve been everywhere and done everything. (An exaggeration, to be sure, but… sadly not by much.)
I’m not sure about the EPA of this but you can train a Louche Devil in Mahogany Hall and then bribe an orchestra to play for your show. The grind is pure persuasive and I’ve obtained most of the echoes on my alt this way.
[quote=Flyte]
[li]If you have the Hell’s coursers option, check the value of The Airs of the Forgotten Quarter. If it is 96+, it’s time to go on an Expedition. Otherwise, select Hell’s coursers and repeat step 2.[/li][li]Trade in Whispered Secrets for 20+ supplies, then Seek a shrine of the Deep Blue Heaven. Choose the A sign? option. It gives you four Progress for free. Then pursue the Expedition as normal. (Either use the safe two Supplies option, or use Sudden Insights and cancel if you fail the Watchful check on the first attempt. Supplies are too expensive to waste.)[/li][/ol][/quote]
I had understood that the trick for determining Airs of the Forbidden Quarter to start with a free A Sign? no longer worked, at least the last time I mentioned it, and appears to be deprecated when others mention it later on in the thread, as a note.
Yeah, only expedition options seem to give Airs values of 96-100 now. For persuasive you could do a lot of governing but I’m not sure exactly how profitable that is, though it’s a pretty cool quality to raise and there are some high-level watchful challenges alongside the persuasive ones. For dangerous breeding beasts is okay; if you’re at zee picking up a Seal can lead to a chunk of CP gain alongside the cellars of wine for handing in a Hound of Heaven.
As an aside, Wilmot’s End is better for reliably training one stat for CoC’s. I also seem to recall it’s slightly better than WoA. (Though as I recall, the Wilmot’s Shadowy option is still better due to The Faithful Functionary granting a rare success – I’m told 10%? – of 2 Compromising Documents. You can train Dangerous instead for the latter, longer part of the loop, but still.)
IIRC the Watchful grind via Seeking Curios is still good if you use the multiple-action meeting option, and don’t mind advancing the Liberation by selling any eyeless skulls you pick up whilst changing Airs. (If you do, you can still get brass rings fairly regularly as a rare success, and occasionally nodules of pulsating amber.)
I did not know about the Labyrinth of Tigers grind. Needless to say, I’ve been locked out of it for over a year. :(
If you don’t have Scholar of the Correspondence at 10, you could use writing Symphonies in Court as your Persuasive grind. Not the most profitable ever (better if you can trade menaces with someone and use the +Suspicion option), but if you want to get SotC 10 for Christmas anyway…
As an aside, Wilmot’s End is better for reliably training one stat for CoC’s. I also seem to recall it’s slightly better than WoA. (Though as I recall, the Wilmot’s Shadowy option is still better due to The Faithful Functionary granting a rare success – I’m told 10%? – of 2 Compromising Documents. You can train Dangerous instead for the latter, longer part of the loop, but still.)[/quote]
Outside of cashing in for rewards, both Wilmot’s End loops and both War of Assassins loops take the same number of actions per point of Dramatic Tension. As such the rare success for Compromising Documents is the only way I know of in which Wilmot’s Edn is better.
Wilmot’s End can also take a shorter number of actions if you grind it very intermittently and wait for cards that give you extra CP on rare successes. (Probably on the last half of the carousel, so you can do Faithful Functionary on the first half.) It’s a weird way to do it, and is NOT good for grinding stats since it’s much slower – but I find it does make things slightly quicker for getting Collections of Curiosities to occasionally sell to Tomb-Colonists.
I had the same question as the OP, but kind of the opposite. I have almost reached 200 Dangerous and am trying to raise other stats while making money. This thread has been helpful.
I’ve just been churning out one masterful short story after another. Using romantic notions and then touching love stories, average net profit is 50.20 echoes (plus lots of waves) for 39 actions.