Does anyone have any statistics to brandish in determining whether or not the rare success reward is worth the grind?
Personally I have succeeded the challenge about 50 times already but no rare success yet. So either the odds are REALLY low or I’m just being unlucky. And since I have completed the Souls Trader storylet I get a 4 Mourning Candles (=10 Echo) reward choice from Capering Relicker so I’m losing echoes selling the corpses from the failures with my 50% succeed rate. Not to mention the hefty 2CP Wounds each time -ouch! edited by dharthoorn on 8/18/2014
I got two rare successes in my first 80 attempts or so (100% chance of success). Then I got to 104 regular successes before they upped the Someone Is Coming cost from 3 CP to 6 CP, and who knows if the rare success is still there? I’ve now had another 127 regular successes without a single rare success. This weekend I reported these results to the Google document (except for the last two regular successes). Mostly because it seemed to me as if that particular entry was wildly skewed towards people who’d actually gotten rare successes, making it look like the chance was above 2%. Now it shows 1.43% with 5 rare out of 349 successes.
Given the value of a Ratwork Watch I assumed that I was just very, very lucky in the beginning, and that the actual chance of a rare success is 1%. But even that was quite high when it only cost 3 CP of Someone Is Coming, so I assume that the cost was increased to 6 CP to effectively halve the chance of a rare success. Particularly since the amount of Surface Currency was increased by 150%.
According to the Google document you only get the chance for a rare success once you’ve already succeeded with the roll, so if your chance to succeed is only 50% you’ve effectively halved the chance for a rare success. And with the Wounds +2 CP I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. Maybe use a Hastily Scrawled Warning Note to increase the chance to (effectively) 75%?
Also, you don’t have to choose between the gift from the Capering Relicker and robbing the rat. Let Someone Is Coming build up to level 5 and 1 CP, then rob the rat. If you succeed you’ll end up at exactly level 4, which is enough to draw A Gift from the Capering Relicker. That way you’ll only lose 10-15 CP when the Capering Relicker removes 21 CP (which doesn’t show up in the results if there aren’t that many CPs).
I started tracking this a few months ago, and finally got the rare last week, after almost 100 tries (all 100% successes). I will probably update the spreadsheet sometime later.
TL-DR: it’s still there.
[quote=xKiv]I started tracking this a few months ago, and finally got the rare last week, after almost 100 tries (all 100% successes). I will probably update the spreadsheet sometime later.
TL-DR: it’s still there.[/quote]
Hmmm, seems success rate hang between 0.5% and 1.5%. Need thousands more to narrow it down more reliably ofc. It doesn’t seem to be a good source of income, even with 100% succeed rate.
[quote=dharthoorn]It doesn’t seem to be a good source of income, even with 100% succeed rate.[/quote]The Ratwork Watch sells for 230 Echoes. Even with a 1% chance of a rare success, that’s a 2.30 Echo action, not counting the Surface Currency you’d get the other 99% of the time. That’s a very good source of income as long as you’re getting Someone Is Coming CPs from cards that you play anyway. Adding the Surface Currency you can get up to about 5.9 Echoes. Subtract your ‘regular grind reward’ from that (1.7857 Echoes for me), and you could value each CP of Someone Is Coming to 69 pence. But for me that is not enough on its own, so for good earnings I combine it with The Acacia and the Butterfly and Crime or Punishment? Then I get to Collections of Curiosities levels (the aforementioned 1.7857 Echoes/Action).
Actually yes, when I take the tea cosy off my head and actually do some simple math, at a 100% succeed rate it’s quite good actually.
Don’t know why I blurted that conclusion out.
Hmmm…when I get to your level I might try that alternating strategy.
My biggest problem at the moment are the incurred Wounds and a very finite amount of Someone is Coming points.
Sound advice to dump them in this storylet until it hits level 4.