I see a lot of people getting told that they’ll need skeletons to progress through the new content. That really isn’t true!
To take a few examples:
-Bessemer: 2 per action from the requesting samples from the dean carousel in your lab.
-Hinterland Scrip: 4 per action at the bone market.
-Rumours of the upper river: 0.5 per action once the railway is built.
-bone fragments: 50 per action from the same carousel as Bessemer, just selling the thigh bones to a different person at the end.
…and so on.
If you want to go through the effort to build skeletons, that’s great! And in some cases it may be more profitable (though I’ve yet to see a great guide to the EPA of these materials from easily repeatable skeletons, perhaps because the process is often confusing or convoluted). But it’s not necessary, you can easily keep up with the railway content without that. I’m about to buy the 850 scrip upgrade at Ealing and I don’t even have paleontology unlocked.
Building skeletons definitely isn’t necessary, but it is more efficient! Though we don’t have fully optimal strategies yet, Brass Skulls and Ivory Humeri are safe choices. The former converts echoes to skeleton value with a slight profit. The latter is a little more complicated: either have a Poet-Laureate statue in Ealing Gardens and 2 Bohemians favours, or take bone fragments to Parabola for an Orange-apple and give that to the Sculptress in the Bone Market. Whichever you do, the Humerus is worth 30 echoes on a skeleton.
That said, the Railway is definitely doable without skeletons; it’ll just take longer. The only skeleton-only resource I’m aware of is Final Breaths.
Possibly! Let’s walk through how many actions that whole skeleton costs, including generating the echoes for the brass skull for example. From start to finish, are we likely to out-perform, say, 4 scrip per action?
I think the Bone Market’s reputation for being difficult is overblown. I already thought that before the usability update, but I definitely think that after the most recent update. Aside from not using cards anymore, a lot of mechanics that used to be implicit are now spelled out in painstaking detail.
Seriously, if you’ve previously given up on the Bone Market, go back and poke around just to see the new effect descriptions in bold text.
Well, the advantage of using a Brass Skull is to spend Echoes rather than Action. I have a lot of resources already farmed up, and I’d rather spend those than re-farm form scratch. That’s just a personal opinion, though.
If you’ve decided to farm from scratch, and have already made it to Ealing, then depending on your lab set-up you can get 5-6 Scrip per action by farming Cartographer’s Hoards.
The Bone Market values Bessemer ingots and Hinterland Scrip at 50 pence each, Bone Fragments at a penny, and Rumours at 2.5 echoes. While assembling a skeleton has some action overhead, if you’re generating these at significantly less than 2-ish echoes-equivalent per action, then I think you’re overpaying.
You say it’s easy to craft skeletons at the Bone Market, but it’s taking me a solid eight hour day to complete one simple ape skeleton. Working nine to five - what a way to make a gibbon!
It sounds like part of the division here is that some people have a lot of echoes saved up and others don’t; I blew all my echoes on finishing my ambition so the opportunity to convert echoes to scrip isn’t that appealing to me.
I assume you’re referring to the Toxicology challenge for the Author of Gothic Tales? That’s only 4 scrip/action if you can hit Toxicology 10; without any KT items, it’s only 2.8 scrip/action. On the other hand, consider:
Buy human ribcages via Constable favours[/li][li]Grind for Brass Skulls via Silken Thread expeditions[/li][li]Obtain Orange-apples via Fragments and exchange for Ivory Humeri[/li][li]Sell every third skeleton to the Palaeontologist to maintain fragment levels, and the rest to the Constable
Some quick math shows that’s over 5 scrip/action, and it’s pretty inefficient! You could get ribcages for one action instead of six, or use a more expensive ribcage. You could use a better echo grind for the Brass Skulls, which could now reach twice the EPA. You could use other skulls instead, like Sabre-toothed or the Vake. You could build a Poet-Laureate statue and buy the Humeri via Favours. You could sell to a different buyer and take advantage of other skeleton traits.
So yes, with even minor planning, we’re very likely to out-perform 4 scrip per action.
I find the only difficult part (as opposed to fiddly) about crafting skeletons is finding the right clothing combination to allow me to sell to particular buyers. (like the Zailor, or the Tentacled Entrepreneur, or the Teller of Gothic Tales).
I assume you’re referring to the Toxicology challenge for the Author of Gothic Tales? That’s only 4 scrip/action if you can hit Toxicology 10; without any KT items, it’s only 2.8 scrip/action. On the other hand, consider:
Buy human ribcages via Constable favours[/li][li]Grind for Brass Skulls via Silken Thread expeditions[/li][li]Obtain Orange-apples via Fragments and exchange for Ivory Humeri[/li][li]Sell every third skeleton to the Palaeontologist to maintain fragment levels, and the rest to the Constable
Some quick math shows that’s over 5 scrip/action, and it’s pretty inefficient! You could get ribcages for one action instead of six, or use a more expensive ribcage. You could use a better echo grind for the Brass Skulls, which could now reach twice the EPA. You could use other skulls instead, like Sabre-toothed or the Vake. You could build a Poet-Laureate statue and buy the Humeri via Favours. You could sell to a different buyer and take advantage of other skeleton traits.
So yes, with even minor planning, we’re very likely to out-perform 4 scrip per action.[/quote]
I’m assuming you hit Toxicology 9, which is pretty easily doable for an endgame character.
What you’re suggesting here relies at multiple points on favours, and thus the opportunity deck, which is a step backwards; for any long term grindy goals, ideally one wants the opportunity deck and favours to not be involved at all.
Cartographer’s Hoards are probably the better option for beating 4 scrip per action then.
Here’s a summary of how you can get additional Toxicology: Clothing: +1 via Ambition: Nemesis Item Weapon: +1 via Profession (Licentiate) Companion: +1 via Ambition: Nemesis or +1/+2 via Fate Home Comfort: +1 via Heart’s Desire item
So you have to spend Fate and/or have made the right decision for profession and Ambition in order to get toxilogy 9 (assuming there is nothing missing in the wiki). +4 would be possible but you would have to be a Licentiate, picked the right Heart’s Desire item and got the companion July via Fate.
So either I’m missing something important here (like a option to raise the cap above 7) or it is not "pretty easily doable".
/edit: corrected the mixed up ambition, thanks to Tyrconnell. edited by Judaspriester on 7/9/2020
You mixed up a little bit, I think by confusing Bag a Legend with Nemesis.
You can get +1 clothing or a +1 companion from Nemesis.
You can get a +1 Home Comfort from Heart’s Desire.
You can get (or could have gotten) +1 from a fate companion in the Feast of the Exceptional Rose, and you can always get a +2 companion from a year of Exceptional Stories.
+1 from the Licentiate item.
And that’s it. You can’t get more than +1 from your ambition, and you can only get +1 from non-ambition, non-fate sources by being a licentiate.
It’s possible to have 5 normally, 7 by raising the cap, and then you only need +2. That still requires either fate or one of two ambitions with the right choices made and the right profession (or fate).
Simple, sure, but that’s 300 fate minimum. I’ve played every ES and still didn’t have enough Tales for July. Expecting endgame characters to spend substantial amounts of fate is unrealistic at best—and a substantial number of players don’t spend money on FL at all.
My guess is that most people who are at the extreme endgame to be able to experience Railway content have also spent at least a year as an exceptional friend, so no fate needed… And I’m guessing July is the first purchase many people are making with memories of a tale, since she’s one of the top 2 most mechanically useful of the lot. But yes, for people where that doesn’t ring true, 9 toxicology will be tougher. edited by Televangelist on 7/10/2020
Well, I’ve been on half way to PP (Persuative and Watchful done), already bought a overgoat and got another 2,5k echoes to spend on the new content. That’s maybe not what you mean with “extreme endgame”, but I’m able to do the railway stuff, even if I have to figure out which recipies for skeletons work best.
But I haven’t bought Fate until today, nor I’m an exceptional friend (mostly because I don’t like paypal and don’t have a credit card, but that’s another topic). I don’t know about others, but for me your assumptions feel a little strange.
[quote=Televangelist]I’m guessing July is the first purchase many people are making with memories of a tale, since she’s one of the top 2 most mechanically useful of the lot.[/quote]I certainly immediately zeroed in on her since there was no other toxicology companion on offer anywhere and I only had the +1 bonus from my ambition. I’m curious, what would be your other top 2 pick? I’ve been thinking about that mithridacy slug a bit, myself.
Right, unless you’ve made some very specific Ambition choices, it seems like after July – assuming you have the Whitsun companions – your most gameplay-impacting choices are essentially:
12 Memories for Monstrous Anatomy +1 (over your current stat)
12 Memories for Mithridacy +1 (over your current stat)
7 Memories for Mithridacy +1 (over your current stat)
12 Memories for a special lab assistant
My natural tendency would be to spend the next 19 Memories for Mithridacy +2, because at first glance it feels like Mithridacy checks are everywhere, especially hard ones. Monstrous Anatomy doesn’t feel so tough.
However, I’d definitely keep 12 Memories in reserve for a special lab assistant. Right now the new content is unsettled enough that we don’t really have a strong sense of which lab assistant is the ‘most useful’ one; if it turns out down the road that one or more of these lab assistants are incredibly useful to have, I’d want the means to grab one.
Yes, I’ve been considering the same. I have no idea what the various research assistants offered by Mr Pages specialize in, and it remains to be seen which future projects they might be useful for.