Relative cost of Prelapsarian Archaelogical Notes

Does anyone possibly know how many Echoes in the equivalent measures those items cost?

Do you mean “how much to buy one” or “how much can I get for one”? Those are different.

Selling is relatively easy to gauge. You can use 1 action to “collate” 120 notes into 1 collated research (250p) and a volume of work (worthless). So, assuming you value your actions at 120 ppa or more (say, if you have access to affair of the box, or the foreign office, or velocipede squad, or a bunch of other similarly-levelled options), you are looking at roughly 1 note = 1 pence conversion rate (120 p + 120 notes = 250 p).

Obtaining is worse, because there are several ways to get some, but it will generally be way worse than selling. After quickly glancing at the sources, I guesstimate you would be spending dozens of actions to get just a few hundred notes - so (and this is a very rough estimate) between 5 and 15 pences to get one note?

Prelapsarian Notes become slightly more valuable when you consider them as fodder for archaeological expeditions in the Forgotten Quarter - something like 15 pence each. But even then, to get them you’re foregoing all the extremely valuable opportunity cards in London to go to sea. There’s honestly no reason to get them unless you’re planning on getting at least a few thousand and that takes 2-3 days of grinding, so you’re missing a lot of cards during that time.

First of all, it’s the 500 note-options and archaeological supplies you want to use - 500 notes cash in for 50 echoes, valuing research at 10p, not counting the action to cash in.
You also get preliminary research once in a while, which means you can convert collated research (250p) for 120 total notes (1200p using these mathematics).
You can also convert excess unearthly fossils (250p) from archaeology for 80 crypto-notes + warm amber (800p + amber), once you’re past the area where you can convert collated research, to you reach 300 notes or more.

Warm amber is valued at 10p or so by the game, I think, at least when comparing url=http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Inauspicious_iron[/url] with url=http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/The_zee-caves[/url]
edited by Aximillio on 4/19/2014

I have gone to Zee on research, returned, collated notes, etc. I have some unearthly fossils and am interested in the option to use them in Organizing Research. I have 120+ of the three kinds of research. Wiki indicates an option to discard 50 pages of each kind, and return to an earlier stage of research, and thus gain the option to “prune” research. I don’t have this option from Organize my Research at Lodgings. Do I actually need 170 pages (that is, discard 50 and still have 120 left)? Is there some other requirement? Thanks!

That option is locked with 120 of each research. You need to sell some (in the other branches) before you can return to preliminary.

Do I need more than 50 and less than 120 in each of the three categories, to unlock “Another round of preliminary research”?

You don’t need any at all! In fact it’s better if you don’t have any at all!

I can rip up 50 pages of notes, without having 50 pages of notes?

If you don’t have 50 pages you’ll lose all the pages of the relevant category instead. Just try not to have more, since excess will make it harder to get a lot of preliminary research.

If you’re highly Watchful, you can convert them to expedition supplies and run the Shrine of the Deep Blue heaven route, which has a widely varied by often times substantial reward. My general calculations on it go something like this:

Assume 18 supplies to get finish the expedition (this assumes you can do the 2 supplies/action search without risk, and is 18 and not 20 because of the freebie you get when you start and the occasional &quotA Sign?&quot storylet that pops up and gives you 4 points of progress.)

18 supplies will cost you 180 notes plus 18 actions to convert them. Add another 10 or so actions to finish the expedition and get the reward.

I’ve kept notes on now 57 loops of the shrine, and the average sale value of the yield hovers right below 60 (it can go as low as 14.5 or as high as 125 if you get two night whispers).

So, 180 notes plus about 28 actions yields about 60 echoes. If you figure that there are plenty of 1 echo/action results around and treat this as one of them, it comes in at about 17-18p/note.[li]
edited by Trodgmey on 4/21/2014

[li]
This also depends a lot on how you play FL. If you check in once an hour and play cards, you miss a lot. If you have an exceptional friendship and just blow 40 actions twice a day or so, you’re not missing that many cards.

I think this is one reason I spend so much time at zee. The Corpsecage/Deep Blue Heaven combo is a pretty easy way to blow a bunch of actions quickly without having to think about them too much, and end up with a pile of valuable items on the other side.

That worked, thanks! I did a Zee voyage and got enough Cryptozoological for the mass sale, converted my Prelapsarians to expedition supplies, and was able to resume preliminary research using the fossils.