I’m considering grinding up for a room at the Royal Beth (40k drops of honey for 50 Antique Mysteries). Has anyone done the math on time spent for the honey vs. the mysteries? I did a forum search, but nothing cropped up.
It will depend on what actions are available to you. If you’re a Person of Some Importance, you can grind Prisoner’s Honey at 50/action, meaning that you need 800 actions to get the honey. You’ll need Persuasive 105 to do so without risk, but I assume that if you’re a PoSI, you have at least that much, once you factor in gear. If you have Shadowy 125, however, you can go to Polythreme Streets, and Grind Romantic Notions, at 12 per action. You need 6000 Romantic Notions (500 actions). You then bulk convert with the 500:105 option, for 1250 Visions of the Surface (12 actions). Convert them into Mysteries of the Elder Country via the 50:51 conversion (25 actions) for 1275 Mysteries of the Elder Country. Convert 1250 Mysteries of the Elder Country into 250 Presbyterate Passphrases at the 50:10 rate (25 actions, and you’ve got 25 Mysteries of the Elder Country as leftovers). Convert them 25:5 into 50 Antique Mysteries (10 actions).
Total actions: 500+12+25+25+10=572 actions, plus the actions needed to go to Polythreme and back (No idea how many actions on the tramp steamer are needed, as I have my own ship. With it, I will tell you that you don’t need 128 actions to get there and back, so if you own a ship, and have the Screaming Map, it’s a better deal to go grind the romantic notions)
EDIT: Also, by taking the crafting route, you get some extra leftovers: 25 Mysteries of the Elder Country [12.5 echoes], plus whatever you get from successes and lucky successes when converting to Presbyterate Passphrases (normal success: 50 x Cryptic Clue [1 echo], lucky success: 2 x Uncanny Incunabula [25 echoes]) and to Antique Mysteries (normal success: 100 x Cryptic Clue [2 echoes], lucky success: Unknown, but should sell for around 60 echoes). You’ll spend some Connected: The Tomb Colonies though.
edited by Vyrlokar on 4/24/2012
If you have a Gang of Hoodlums and access to Thefts of a Particular Character, you can grind up your Casing and trade it in for Antique Mysteries.
The Gang of Hoodlums option gives you 3.6 Casing cp per actions(18 for 5, i believe) and stealing an Antique Mystery costs around 32 cp. That means that you should have the 50 you need for a Beth reservation at just under 450 actions.
I am a PoSI, but I don’t have a Gang of Hoodlums. With this in mind, does grinding Casing still give better returns than grinding Jade at 240 per two actions?
(As a sidenote, the Antique Mysteries purchase option provides ~30 echoes of free goods when you choose it, to further tip the scales away from the Honey.)
Nigel’s math is missing the 50 actions needed to actually turn in the Casing points for each Antique Mystery. With that accounted for, it’s more like ~500 actions with a Gang of Hoodlums, ~530 with the PoSI option, and ~580 via The Decoy. If your Shadowy isn’t capped, the couple hundred cp in Shadowy (and ~50 echoes in random goods) you’d get from The Decoy probably makes up for the action deficit of that option.
And from the Unfinished Business Jade option:
10 actions to convert 250 Presbyterate Passphrases into 50 Antique Mysteries
25 actions to convert 1250 Mysteries of the Elder Continent into 250 Passphrases.
12 actions to convert 6000 Relics of the Third City into 1,260 Mysteries of the Elder Continent.
58 actions to convert 58,000 Jade Fragments into 6,090 Relics of the Third City.
484 actions to farm for 58,080 Jade.
Total action cost: 589 actions, which is only slightly slower than Polythreme. (The 58 actions to convert from Tier 1->Tier 2 are wasted, but you don’t need the Tier 3->Tier 3 conversions or quite as much excess grind at the outset)
If you want to press your luck, you can also try the Fidgeting Writer, which from the last time I ran Vrylokar’s numbers would take ~493 actions + Echoes worth of other goods to get through on average. (I don’t have my full numbers in front of me, so I’m not sure how much crafting cost sets you back there)
If you are investigating the murder at the University, there’s another option:
- Interview the Department of ___ staff 9 times, then Raid a Message-Drop in Flit (straightforward Investigating challenge). This loop will yield 747 Cryptic Clues. (10 actions).
- Repeat step 1) 38 more times for a total of 29133 Cryptic Clues. (380 actions).
- Convert them via 500:70 option to 4060 Appalling Secrets. (58 actions).
- Convert them via 333:105 option to 1260 Journals of Infamy (12 actions).
- Use 50:51 option to convert them to 1275 Correspondence Plaques. (25 actions).
- Use 50:51 option to convert them to 1275 Visions of the Surface (25 actions).
- Use 50:51 options to convert them to 1275 Mysteries of the Elder Continent. (25 actions)
- Convert them to 250 Presbyterate Passphrases (25 actions).
- Convert them to 50 Antique Mysteries (10 actions).
Total actions spent: 570
Extra spoils: 133 Cryptic Clues, 64 Appalling Secrets, 10 Journals of Infamy, 25 Correspondence Plaques, 25 Visions of the Surface, 25 Mysteries of the Elder Continent + rare successes.
Unfortunately, I did all that long ago, long before the economy revamp, even.
I do have every lodging available (that I know of), including all three 4 card ones. Got them before the changes to the economy. Prisoner’s honey was a PITA to grind though, I had to go through coil 2 a lot of times to grind both Whispered Secrets (for the premises in the bazaar) and Prisoner’s honey (for accomodations in the royal beth). I bought the souls IIRC, as there was no way for me to grind them… (no PosI stuff available then)