One of the oddities of the new content is that it has mostly been separate from preexisting resources. In many ways that makes sense. Cash can only go so far in laboratory research. Bones are an entirely new thing. Still, it felt off that the financial work of building a new railway required currencies with no straightforward exchange rate with echoes. Having to perform paleontology to build a railway just seemed odd with mountains of assorted goods piled high in multiple lodgings.
Now, with Ealing Station, that’s no longer true. I’m sure there will be careful examination of how to best turn property and grinds into scrip and other rail currency, but there are straightforward ways to just buy goods at the Bazaar and trade echoes for scrip, at almost exactly 1:1. You can do better, such as brilliant souls being 2:1, but those aren’t as easily acquired.
Mostly I’m just happy that old wealth can now be used as new wealth.
[quote=Tyrconnell]One of the oddities of the new content is that it has mostly been separate from preexisting resources. In many ways that makes sense. Cash can only go so far in laboratory research. Bones are an entirely new thing. Still, it felt off that the financial work of building a new railway required currencies with no straightforward exchange rate with echoes. Having to perform paleontology to build a railway just seemed odd with mountains of assorted goods piled high in multiple lodgings.
Now, with Ealing Station, that’s no longer true. I’m sure there will be careful examination of how to best turn property and grinds into scrip and other rail currency, but there are straightforward ways to just buy goods at the Bazaar and trade echoes for scrip, at almost exactly 1:1. You can do better, such as brilliant souls being 2:1, but those aren’t as easily acquired.
Mostly I’m just happy that old wealth can now be used as new wealth.[/quote]
Mainly I’m just short on Scrip at the moment due to my rapid station expansion. Any good ways to add Menaces to skeletons?
Jet Black Stingers add 2 Menace to your skeletons on success and the Monstrous Anatomy check is easier than most. Sabertooth Skulls give one point of Antiquity and Menace on a success but only the Antiquity on failure, whereas Horned Skulls are a little harder to get and offer less raw value to your skeletons but always give you at least 1 Menace and 1 Respectable. I haven’t gotten to Ealing Gardens yet, so I haven’t personally tried out any new bones.
Edit: There are Thorned Ribcages as well, and they give 1 Menace, 1 Amalgamy and a Tail slot. These are much easier to get if you have an Iron Toothed Terror Bird, but there are a couple of Rare Successes that give them out as well. edited by The Lonely Hunter on 7/5/2020
It strikes me that the Tentacled Servant is a more important buyer now if you’re looking to get scrip in Ealing since you can sell the Eoliths you get from skeleton sales for 1 scrip apiece. Raising the Mithridacy cap will make this more viable if you’re trying to put Knotted Humeri on your skeleton since the failure condition for that bone is painful. Otherwise, you can get both Albatross Wings and Helical Thighbones without spending Fate now if you want to sell Rubbery birds.
Edit: Looking at the Market closely, it seems like there are a lot of other goods that sell for higher scrip like Scintilack or Stygian Ivory. Still, Nightsoil also sells for 1 scrip apiece, so the Tentacled Servant and Rubbery Collector are worth looking into as buyers. edited by The Lonely Hunter on 7/5/2020
I’m more interested in the Railway content than the Palaeontology content, but unfortunately the latter seems to be prerequisite for the former. Can someone please tell me what’s currently the best way to gain lots of Bessemer Steel to get started with laying tracks? Apparently, everything becomes much easier once you unlock Ealing station, but I need to get there first.
I haven’t played any Palaeontology content so far and am completely out of my depth with all these bones and skeleton types. Is there a Guide yet?
You’re likely going to need Scrip to start the Bessemer Steel grind. What I do is get Humanoid Skeletons, four Ivory Humeri and a Sabre-Toothed Skull to make an Ape to sell to the Enthusiast of the Ancient World. You’ll need four Parabolan Orange-Apples, costing either 1100 Bone Fragments or 5 Aeolian Screams each, to get the arms and 125 Scrip to buy the Skull from the Enthusiast. The Skull gives you the necessary point of Antiquity to sell the Ape for Ingots, and taken together the whole thing is worth 19,500 Echoes and gives you 390 Ingots per pop if I have the math right.
It helps to build Skeletons like there’s no tomorrow to get the required materials. You can get Scrip by selling Humanoids to Constables at the Market when the Paleontological Fads are right, by selling Menacing skeletons to Mrs. Plenty or selling Menacing and Respectable skeletons to the Author of Gothic Tales. Bone Fragments are earned on a 1 for 1 basis by selling any skeleton to the Paleontologist with Hoarding Propensities. Finally, make sure you have a lot of Monstrous Anatomy, Kataleptic Toxicology and Mithridacy, because failing Narrow difficulty checks at the market makes it harder to sell your skeleton.
If you have cash on hand and want scrip, the easiest solution is to buy Antique Constable’s Badges or Red-Feathered Pins and sell them in the Ealing market. No actions, and you get 1 scrip per echo. It’s not the most efficient, probably, but it’s very easy and you can get lots of scrip quickly.
Viric Frocks feel like they should be a better source, given the more elaborate work of getting Parabola-Linen Frocks, Fingerking Favours, soaking the frocks in viric, and selling in the Bone Market, but you waste more actions and still get fewer scrip per echo invested.
The Bone Market values Scrip at 50 pence. Paying a full Echo for a scrip means getting charged a 100% mark-up for the convenience. Which is sometimes what you gotta do, but it’s not great. There are some items that can’t be bought but whose Sell value is pretty equivalent–Vital Intelligence was at the top of my list, I happened to have a stockpile from Heists. For future grinding, I would absolutely prioritize Cartographer’s Hoards.
If you have Headless Skeletons, then you can convert Echoes into Scrip favorably and efficiently by sticking a Bright Brass Skull on it and selling to the Gothic Author. If you only have torsos that require more limbs, then Ivory Humeri are good value for actions.
There is a guide on the wiki. Right now it’s more of a reference sheet than a guide per se, but if you have a rough idea what’s going on it will help you plan. It’s also missing a ton of Ealing Station bones right now, but that’s not a problem if you’re not there yet.
Am I the only one finding the new content perfectly easy to unlock without paleontology? I literally don’t even have paleontology unlocked!
Bessemer: the "petition the Dean for research materials" carousel for unidentified thigh bones is 2 Bessemer per action. More than enough to get my track handled.
Hinterlands Scrip: with toxicology 9, the bone market gives 4 scrip per action, endlessly repeatable, no muss no fuss.
Skeletons seem fun and I’ll probably invest in a stall one day. But the idea that you need to use skeletons to access or advance in the new content is just based on nothing at all, as far as I can tell.
Please check this wiki page I made for saleable items at the Upper River Exchange (which I believe will be used for more than just Ealing Gardens). I used The Bazaar’s shop page as a template.
Also, as a reminder, the Faction items have been nerfed.
Oh wow… the shop tab in Ealing Gardens are in a mess now.
It looks like someone at Failbetter is trying to combine the default shops together, but the Sell My Things tab are using the default one. The Scrip-based list is not around anymore.
UPDATE: Oh, it’s not an actual change. It’s a bug. When the player changes from London-proper to Ealing Gardens, the player needs to reload the page. This should restore the list. edited by Rostygold on 7/6/2020
[quote=Televangelist]
Hinterlands Scrip: with toxicology 9, the bone market gives 4 scrip per action, endlessly repeatable, no muss no fuss.
Skeletons seem fun and I’ll probably invest in a stall one day. But the idea that you need to use skeletons to access or advance in the new content is just based on nothing at all, as far as I can tell.[/quote]
This is very good option, but people are impatient. And messing with skele stuff is the way to do things faster, because you can convert echos / old resources to new resources. You need around 6000 scrips for Ealing. With 4 scrips per action you will get them in two-three weeks of grind. With skeletons you can do it in a few days. edited by Waterpls on 7/6/2020
Reading some of the comments here, I’m glad I’m not at Ealing yet. I guess it’s worth waiting until the place has settled down and FB have decided what they want to do with it. I don’t like being used for playtesting.
Yeah, I think I’m going to stick to selling skeletons for raw scrip for a few days. I figure that the items you get from the Bone Market are safe, but I would like an idea of what you should be able to sell for scrip and they feel what unbalances the economy before I put more time into grinding other items.
It’s still doable, but it’s much less doable. Perhaps there are solid game reasons for this. It feels like a way to just say that all old progress is to be discarded and only new currencies, bone- and rail-related, matter. Perhaps it is intentional redenomination.