Seeking advice on wedding-planning...

Fallen London
#1

Me and my sweetheart are gettin’ married… eventually. See, we’ve decided that we’re not gonna settle for any ‘good enough’ measures. We’re going the distance - it’ll be the event of the year!

Which means we’re looking to scrape up a hefty 10.000 ‘Planning a Wedding’. We recently hit the first 1000-point milestone, but there’s still far to go, so I’d appreciate any insights into how to make the most of available resources.

I’m already aware of the two ‘best options’ - rats, and love-stories. And we’re pouring everything we can get of either into this, of course. But there ARE many other options, too. Notably, wine and clothes. One question I’ve got, thus, is whether it’s better to pour my stockpiles of wine into the party directly, or refine/combine them into more high-value items such as Cellar of Wine first. Same thing for the ‘rag-trade’ items. Do I use the Surface-Silk I’ve got, or turn them into Puzzle-Damask and then use THAT?

There’s also a number of Relicker-items that can be used to power the party - and I’ve got a decent stock of scrap, too. Are there any relicker-available items that provide a better scrap-to-party ratio than others?

Other than that, I’m basically just looking for any advice or warnings about pitfalls I can get, from those who have traversed this treacherous ground before me…

#2

Felicitations to you and your intended! We went the whole hog too - it was fun and I’m glad we did.

I very much took the ‘raid the savings and throw everything I have at it’ approach to wedding planning (as ever, art imitates life where I’m concerned), so I have no idea if my schemes were the most efficient. (I was also very character led and went heavily for fabric - Eris loves her clothes and she had to have Ivory Organza, whatever the cost.) I also did pretty much every option once, because I wanted the text.

But yes, I converted rag trade items - the occasional bonuses and rare successes made it worth it, in my opinion. The other thing I did was the Velocipede Squad carousel - the ‘Attend a Funeral’ option gives Incendiary Gossip, Identities Uncovered and Blackmail Material, which can all be converted into Planning a Wedding. As I say, I have no idea if this is a cost-effective way of doing it, but it was quick and required relatively little thought, which suited me.
edited by Lady Eris on 6/7/2015

#3

Congratulations! My advice might not be the best given my lack of experience with weddings, though, but here’s my two cents -

It is generally not worth it. Most items give 1 point of OaW per Echo.

Puzzle-Damask is 12.5 Echoes / 13 OaW
Surface-Silk is 10 Echoes / 10 OaW

While it does look like you get an extra half-echo from Damask, don’t forget that up-crafting consumes valuable Criminal connections and extra actions. Unlike other factions, Criminal connections can be traded in for good profit pretty frequently while being insanely hard to raise.

The only good 100% profitable up-crafting is the Tier 2 mass-crafting (500 T2 Item into 105 T3, Surface-Silk to Whisper Satin in this case) because it gives a guaranteed 2.5 E Profit and no Connection loss, except you don’t have a good way to earn Surface-Silk Scraps more efficient than Polythreme.

Furthermore, the conversions beyond that (Whisper Satin -> Thristy Bombazine -> Puzzle-Damask) cost too much Criminals, and earning that has its own problem.

The higher level items at 312.5 Echoes only gives 313 OaW, which mean you are sacrificing a hard-to-get item for an extra 0.5 Echoes - considering how much extra effort it took to get a Tears of the Bazaar, it is defintely not worth it.

Don’t use your scraps for these, either - their value lies in acquiring the otherwise luck-reliant items like Night-Whisper reliably. Items that are probably going to be needed as they implement new roadblocks for the Ambitions. You can earn echoes and common goods with a click, but it is much harder to earn a Night-Whisper with 63 clicks.

However, Blackmail Materials, Night on Town and Cellars of Wine are quite good, because Professions hand them out - Rats are especially good if you are a Rat-Catcher, too.
edited by Estelle Knoht on 6/7/2015

#4

Yes, my dear wife-to-be is a Rat-Catcher by profession, and she’s… well, let’s just say she’s pretty much cornered the market on providing food for the feast. :P It’s very much in-character, too, in the sense that she’s the rough-and-tumble type who prefers to hang out with dockworkers, crooks and anarchists, while I’m the urbane high-society type. In other words, I’M expected to deal with the WINES… :p

Personally, I’m an Agent (though looking to move up to Midnighter sometime soonish), so I’m not getting anything that would be IMMEDIATELY useful… though of course, I could upconvert my steady stream of Identities Uncovered to Blackmail Materials.

About Cellars of Wine, though - are those only a good deal if you’re getting them from your profession, or do they remain so if you have to craft them in the Bazaar Side-streets? After all, several of the ‘components’ could be poured (hah!) directly into the wedding…

#5

Crafting anything in the sidestreet is a bad deal by default - you are paying extra.

#6

Hmm… I sort of figured that, honestly. Answers another, unrelated question I’d been thinking about putting to the forums, too. (Namely whether crafting a Collection of Curiosities just to turn it in to the Tomb-Colonists for Puzzling Maps and then selling them might be profitable.)

Well, I gather that the upshot of all this is that - beyond rats and love-stories - the best thing you can do is to fuel the wedding with whatever you have easy access to, right?

#7

That’s pretty much correct. I’d actually been stockpiling a lot of goods while bouncing around professions in my Early FL days, particularly Journalist and Author, so I had a pretty sizeable stockpile of Nights on the Town and Blackmail material. Also, a few Personal Recommendations from attending Parties in Veilgarden. Anything you actually have on hand is going to be more efficient than anything else; beyond that, remember: this is not meant for profit. Any efficiency will be minor at best, and if your aim is something memorable, a few echoes or actions either way really don’t matter all that much.

#8

Yes, I thought the economics of getting married in FL were quite a wry take on the economics of getting married in general.

Once something is connected to a wedding, it becomes more expensive. Sometimes there are things you don’t need but once you know you can have them you think ‘Oh, why not? Might as well’. Eventually you might reach a point where you know there are cheaper ways if you put the time in, but you just don’t care - you’ll pay extra just to make life easier.

It’s something you do because you want to, and you go into it knowing that it will cost you money. If you go for the big 10,000 Echo event, you either grind for most of the rest of your natural life, or you take (expensive) shortcuts because you just want to get married already.

(And it is, of course, lovely and wonderful and completely worth it. Obviously.)