I’ve become used to using Spirifer as my souls-to-brass cash handout, but 312.5 echoes for around 60-70 actions isn’t bad either. To anyone else who’s tried it, how viable is the Parabolan War as a moneymaker?
tl;dr It’s pretty dang good, actually.
The Spirifer grind has been outdated for a while. The Court of the Wakeful Eye and Arbor both exceeded it. But since FBG started increasing the pace of new content about a year ago, the accessible EPA has steadily increased over time. Most content in the upper river returns 2.50 from naive play. Several accessible lab grinds can beat 3.0 or even 3.5. Mammoth Ranching can beat 4ish I think, but it takes two PhDs and a cold fusion reactor.
Still, even with that context, the Parabolan War is extremely competetive. The Morale-based options can reliably pull down about 2.25 Advance! per action, which can clear a Campaign in 53 actions. A few actions for beginning, claiming, and narration still puts this in the neighborhood of 60 or 65. Which is, y’know, like 5 EPA. Peerless. Would have been unthinkable a year ago, but even today it’s a head above everything else.
It’s possible to do that a little better than just playing Morale options if you are armed to the teeth. Like primary stats over 300 and a maxed General. Not easy, but possible.
And now my biggest fear is that this will be nerfed next week, when the staff notices your calculations.
Mammoth Ranching is not that complicated and it’s upper limit is actually a bit higher than 6 EpA. But yeah, Parabolan War eats less brain cells and demands only very high Dangerous. With second phase in London you could even have some variety and entertainment with London cards.
edited by Waterpls on 4/17/2021
Welcome to the Victorian Military-Industrial Complex.
[quote=Waterpls]Mammoth Ranching is not that complicated and it’s upper limit is actually a bit higher than 6 EpA. But yeah, Parabolan War eats less brain cells and demands only very high Dangerous. With second phase in London you could even have some variety and entertainment with London cards.
edited by Waterpls on 4/17/2021[/quote]
Tell me a bit more about mammoth ranching, how does it make big money? I always ended up spending way too much time fetching random things when building skeletons.
You’ll find some details in the following reddit thread (especially link to Google doc in there). I tried it, but I feel like you really need A Player of Chess at 10, otherwise you can fail at those tests and it messes up the grind. Have a look.
What PSGarak said above. It is likely the best 'every free action" grind currently. There are other actions that will get you more, but it’s the best for random-dump.
I believe (without full evidence) that with a Kataleptic Toxicology of 12 doing Queenly Attar from your lab and flipping cards for Attar Dreams and Docks Favors is competitive with the current Parabola War.
There’s a pretty decent Money-Making guide on wiki, mind you.
Mammoth-ranching grinds about 5.5 EPA, which is not half-bad. Grinding Casing in Parabola and spending it in Balmoral can get you as much as 4.65 EPA, while the Lab grinds have been downgraded significantly and only generate 3.8 EPA even with fate-upgraded equipment.
edited by Wojciech on 4/18/2021
There is actually a Morale-locked advance in stage 2; it’s in London rather than Parabola, so you spend an extra action (each way) passing through the mirror, but that still means 24 actions for stage one and only 6 for stage two.
You get six Advance! per action for the Morale-limited options, so actually you need ~21 actions for the later stages (you can’t, I think, start with Morale higher than 9, so you’ll have 33 at the end of stage 1, which isn’t enough for four stages costing 12 Morale each. 9 morale-boosting actions in those stages will also gain you 9 advance, reducing the morale you need to spend and bringing everything into line). Stages three and five cost you only four actions each (spending 12 morale each time), while in stage four you take the extra time to boost morale up to the required level. Or you can do that in stage two, if you prefer; it doesn’t change the total action cost, but for some reason my brain thinks it makes the numbers easier.
So you’re actually looking at 30 plus 21 plus about 5, which is 56. Lets round up and call it 60 in case I’ve forgotten something, and your rewards come out at ~5.2 EPA.
But like Wojciech, I welcome anyone pointing out whatever errors I’ve made.
OK, I didn’t know about the Morale option at stage 2, and my numbers were off for 3-5. Sorry about that.
So, between stages 2 and 4 you indeed will spend 12 actions on earning Morale and 14 actions on spending Morale. You’re right, we get to 56 then. Also, most of the options will be 100% Straightforward on Dangerous 230 with top-tier equipment.
So, the only question that remains is to calculate the overhead. I have a feeling it will be more than 5. It might also vary with the campaign.
Cause of War - 1
Choose a General - 2
Move Out - 3
Move to Stage 2 - 4
Move to Stage 3 - 5
Move to Stage 4 - 6
Move to Stage 5 - 8 (in most cases takes 2 actions as there’s an intermediate activity)
Complete Stage 5 - 9
Finish the campaign, move to In the Wake of War - 10
Depart for Base Camp - 11
So, we put these 11 on top of 56, we get 67. We end up with 4.67 EPA which is worse than Mammoth Ranching, but absolutely on par with Parabola-fueled Balmoral Robberies.
(just thinking, we can probably do it without a general, huh?)
edited by Wojciech on 4/18/2021
Note that you don’t actually need to choose a general to start a Campaign. It is not even necessary to have one to have 100% success on the morale options (at least with maxed out dangerous).
I counted for the Cat campaign :
- 12 actions to start/end the war and move from stage to stage
- 52 actions to complete the 5 stages themselves with only morale related actions. You can improve that a little with other types of actions, but it requires some ressource expenditure.
With only morale related actions, it reaches 4.88 EPA, which is quite nice :)
Mr. J’s calculations match my own observations, with potentially 65 actions being used. It’s very good.
The hypothetical Lab Attar and cards grind (calculating Docks Favours up through skeletons is the sticking point) appears to approach or surpass that value, but requires the right Ambition AND Fate-locked items. The current wiki values don’t take into account the change that leaving Parabola no longer costs an action.
If you started the Parabola War with 3 more Morale, it would be hands-down the most valuable grind in the game.
edited by Toran on 4/19/2021
[quote=Waterpls]Mammoth Ranching is not that complicated and it’s upper limit is actually a bit higher than 6 EpA. But yeah, Parabolan War eats less brain cells and demands only very high Dangerous. With second phase in London you could even have some variety and entertainment with London cards.
edited by Waterpls on 4/17/2021[/quote]
I thought it’s complicated enough, at least regarding the calculation of EPA, how did you get the number 6 exactly?
edited by ugo on 4/27/2021
I am too lazy to write simulation myself. Ask mp, Jess or Ada in official discord, there are at least three different models, two iterative (in python and java, i think) and one linear algebra based.
Grind by itself is not that complicated.
edited by Waterpls on 4/27/2021
I think needing linear algebra to figure out EPA is exactly what people mean when they call Mammoth Ranching complicated, especially as there are several options depending on what resources you have access to, e.g. Counterfeit Heads, Horned Skulls in Ealing, etc.
[quote=menaulon]I think needing linear algebra to figure out EPA is exactly what people mean when they call Mammoth Ranching complicated, especially as there are several options depending on what resources you have access to, e.g. Counterfeit Heads, Horned Skulls in Ealing, etc.[/quote]Personally, I just calculated it by writing down all of the actions I did and looking at the numbers. I ended up with very close results to what the others got using scripts, so it’s definitely not necessary to do that. The scripts are more of a proof of the EPA.
And honestly, it’s really not a complicated grind. Yes, there are a lot of prerequisites, but the actual process is fairly straightforward. You just have to know how certain sections of the game work, which if you’re far enough into the game to meet all the prerequisites, you should probably know already. That’s things like the Bone Market, Balmoral Woods, Painting in Balmoral, and Helicon House.
–
edited by idyl on 4/27/2021
[quote=idyl][quote=menaulon]I think needing linear algebra to figure out EPA is exactly what people mean when they call Mammoth Ranching complicated, especially as there are several options depending on what resources you have access to, e.g. Counterfeit Heads, Horned Skulls in Ealing, etc.[/quote]Personally, I just calculated it by writing down all of the actions I did and looking at the numbers. I ended up with very close results to what the others got using scripts, so it’s definitely not necessary to do that. The scripts are more of a proof of the EPA.
And honestly, it’s really not a complicated grind. Yes, there are a lot of prerequisites, but the actual process is fairly straightforward. You just have to know how certain sections of the game work, which if you’re far enough into the game to meet all the prerequisites, you should probably know already. That’s things like the Bone Market, Balmoral Woods, Painting in Balmoral, and Helicon House.
–
edited by idyl on 4/27/2021[/quote]
…in all fairness, I personally skimmed straight through Helicon after figuring out how to up my Shapling Arts and basically forgot about the Woods or Painting. The former because of a confusing couple of tries in it, the latter because I was just tired of playing errand boy-painter.
[quote=menaulon]
I think needing linear algebra to figure out EPA is exactly what people mean when they call Mammoth Ranching complicated, especially as there are several options depending on what resources you have access to, e.g. Counterfeit Heads, Horned Skulls in Ealing, etc.[/quote]
The actual grind itself isn’t complicated to follow. Doing all the math to determine what the exact EPA is is complicated as hell, but the grind itself is easy to follow.
Volumes of Collated Research into Mammoth Ribcages and St. Fiacre bones. Turn said bones into holy mammoths with counterfeit skulls. Turn surplus ribcages into ancient mammoths with horned skulls and fossilized forelimbs (bought in upper river). Make sure to replenish supplies of peppercaps and horned skulls in Ealing Gardens and spend all your excess moonlit on paintings. Every once in a while restock your bone fragments for heads with a skeleton (or other appropriate method). In the long term, you might build up some casing from Helicon house while restocking peppercaps, so spend that on robberies. The rest is just keeping supplied with Volumes of Collated Research.
I’m probably doing myself a disservice by refusing to build anything less than the best version of a thing. The holy thigh bones are worth twice as much if you attach them to five-pointed ribcages, so I’ve been trying to do that. But the only way to get five-pointed ribcages is by trading Cartographer’s Hoards (after completing the fate-locked Upwards story), and it takes a lot of actions to get those.