[color=#009900]This is a thread for discussion of strategy, narrative and co-operation in the Seeking Mr Eaten’s Name storyline. Note that this is an optional and deliberately absurdly challenging element of the game, and no customer support is provided. Take the in-game warnings seriously.[/color][li]
Hooray! Shiny new thread! I’ll try not to tromp too much well-water into it. I sort of hurled myself down one yesterday and I have yet to get all the blood out of my clothes.
Just to be clear - when you say discussing strategy and narrative, how so do you mean? Are we able/encouraged to openly discuss what happens during the story, to roughly the same degree of avoiding spoilers that’s exercised on the rest of the forums, or should we maintain what’s been the standard amount of mum where Seeking the Name has been concerned? (Before the whole talking-in-circles fiasco over the past few days.)[li]
edited by Laluzi on 11/25/2013
I am empty.
So I’m trying to draw the card concerning the number of candles after getting my various marks to show my effort pursuing the name, but I haven’t seen it in months. Is something up, or have I neglected to do something?
edited by Leraika on 11/25/2013
Ouch. That’s… pretty severe. I’ve drawn A Number of Candles twice so far, and I’ve been at SMEN 7 for a grand total of twelve days. It’s not as common as the other cards, but it does exist. Keep trying?
Alright so here’s the bidness that’s gone down while we were all in the grip of a tyrannical censor ghost;
Hopefully none of this is too spoilers. I’ll shove it all in a tag anyway, just to be safe.
First off; that list.
Having Reputation: Abomination puts you on the list. And being on the list makes you eligible for… a certain social action, in a certain place. I’m not going to say where because that might end in tears for all of us. Let’s just say it’s a rather nightmarish challenge. It does, however, improve your Reputation for some reason.
Because Reputation increases and decreases at a glacial pace, if you have, say, a very high Reputation because of all the rats you’ve sent, you’re not going to get off that list easily. Ex-Seekers still seem to be eligible, too.
Second; God’s Editors.
A new option has shown up on practically anything to do with them (such as joining them or doing work for them)
It requires 77 Searing Enigmas and some mysterious quantity of Proscribed Material. How much? God, I wish I knew.
Third and finally;
On the Restitution card, a pair of new options have shown up; Hithe and Trithe
Both require a point of Abominable Rep; Hithing requires 7 Searing Enigmas and 100 Dangerous, Trithing requires 3 Hard-earned lessons, 150 Dangerous and 3 Searing Enigmas. You need at least one point of Reputation: Abomination to do either of them.
It’s… some sort of challenge. Dangerous, I think. The loser loses 7 Enigmas in Hithing and 3 Enigmas in Trithing. Hithing gives the sender the advantage, Trithing gives no advantage to either party. The winner gets the Enigmas the other lost. Also, the sender loses 2-3 points of dangerous if Hithing and 1-2 points if Trithing.
Both modify Abominable in some way… not sure if increase or decrease. Hithing also gives both parties a terrifying amount of menace (about 7-10CP in all four).
I want someone to scrawl MONSTER on my door :[
edited by Spacemarine9 on 11/25/2013
Something weird is going on with that list. Being a civilized seeker, I don’t have the requisite quality which you think would land me on it, but I’m there anyways. I have sullied my reputation in the past though, for whatever that’s worth.
And while not directly related to Seeking, one more change that’s relevant to the above:
A new option under “Shadowy Dealings at the University” lets you turn Uncanny Incanubala to Searing Enigmas. The return seems to be random, possibly averaging a bit worse than the 25:5 that you get from the other conversion storylets.
Are you certain? Check your qualities - sending St Destin’s Candle appears to have given a small amount of said reputation.
Perhaps I had the quality for some short window in which the list was compiled. Then I must have done something foolish like give to the poor.
Interesting. I must have as well before I ceased Seeking.
Right, so how is everyone getting their Enigmas?
To bring over content from the now-locked thread:
At "The Other Thing in the Other Chapel", with Watchful 244, I got 6, 6, and 3 Enigmas out of my 75 Uncanny Incunabula. (So 5 is not the cap, as previously reported.)
You can get Uncanny Incunabula by converting up items in the Mysteries category, the last of which are Extraordinary Implications. You get a guaranteed one of those at Hunter’s Keep, and an Enigma itself is a rare success there, though not terribly rare in my experience (though perhaps the RNG has been kind).
If you get as far as the Lens of Black Glass in the Fidgeting Writer, you can smash the Lens for an Enigma and other very valuable things. Per Guy Scrum’s calculations, on average you’d spent about 45 actions and 32 echoes to get each Enigma this route (one of the other items you get, a Primeval Hint, sells for 62.50 echoes, so you’re ahead money-wise). Just eyeballing it, that’s probably roughly the same, time-wise, as Hunter’s Keep? But I really hate the Fidgeting Writer, the luck tests make me stressed and angry, so I’m not sure I’d go that route unless it were really much better.
Then you can get Enigmas directly from rare successes at converting up from Thirsty Bombazine Scraps (of which I have practically none, and appear to be reasonably difficult to get), Mourning Candles (of which I have lots from the Affair of the Box), and Broken Giant (of which I have practically none, but which apparently can be got from A Presumptuous Opportunity).
I came back from Zee because I was running out of time to get an Unsigned Letter (which I did, woo!), and am now converting Mourning Candles just because they’re there (one Enigma so far). I suspect I’ll go back out to Zee fairly soon, but I’m not great at this, so, thoughts?
edited by an_ocelot on 11/26/2013
Doing the numbers for Hunter’s Keep. We want to make sure to collect as many mysteries as possible, so we should use the following set of actions (with dramatic tension):
[li]11 actions for Swap stories with Cynthia (638 Cryptic Clues)
[/li][li]14 actions Talk to Cynthia seriously (140 Cryptic Clues, 28 Tales of Terror)
[/li][li]1 action for Take your net to the well (either useless glim, or an enigma about 20% of the time)
[/li][li]1 action for A game of charades
[/li][li]1 action for [Sister] finishes her story (1 extraordinary implication)
Now we have to figure out how the conversion works. 778 Cryptic Clues converts to 108.9 Appalling Secrets (on average, doing many conversions) and takes 1.56 actions. These secrets can be converted to 34.3 Tales of Terror over 0.32 actions. The 62.3 tales turn into 12.5 Extraordinary implications over 1.25 actions. And finally, the 13.5 implications turn into 2.7 Uncanny Incunabula over 0.54 actions.
So in total, we get 2.7 Uncanny Incunabula over 28 actions, plus another 3.6 actions for conversion. If the average conversion from incunabula to enigmas is 25 to 5, then this corresponds to 0.54 enigmas. Assuming a 20% rare success rate per trip to the well, we get a grand total of 0.74 enigmas over 31.6 actions, or 1 enigma per 42.8 actions. So it beats Fidgeting Writer.
All of this hinges upon a good conversion rate from incunabula, for which we just don’t have good data yet. I assume that with my reduced watchful I’ll get worse results. Also you’ll need to keep your college connections up for the conversions (you can convert some of the secrets to Journals of Infamy to spread out the connection use in the next conversion step).
Edit:
If instead we only get 3 enigmas per incunabula conversion, the actions per enigma jumps up to 60.8. That’s still a little better than Fidgeting Writer when you factor in the Fidgeting Writer supply cost, but you’ll miss out on the other Fidgeting Writer rewards and whatever happens in London while you’re oversea.
[/li]
edited by Guy Scrum on 11/26/2013
Are we allowed to speculate on the what happened to Eaten or is that against the rules?
I’d like to know that myself. It would definitely be an excellent topic of conversation, but I feel like it falls under ‘spoilers’, even if it’s all conjecture.
The best source of Incanubula without leaving the city is probably Thefts of Particular Character for Journals of Infamy/Tales of Terror and converting up.
My math says it’s be 28.6 actions for 2.7 Incanabula, so a bit worse than Hunter’s Keep even without the rare success. But everything’s going to be worse than Hunter’s Keep.
[quote=Guy Scrum]Doing the numbers for Hunter’s Keep. We want to make sure to collect as many mysteries as possible, so we should use the following set of actions (with dramatic tension):
[li]11 actions for Swap stories with Cynthia (638 Cryptic Clues)
[/li][li]14 actions Talk to Cynthia seriously (140 Cryptic Clues, 28 Tales of Terror)
[/li][li]1 action for Take your net to the well (either useless glim, or an enigma about 20% of the time)
[/li][li]1 action for A game of charades
[/li][li]1 action for [Sister] finishes her story (1 extraordinary implication)
Now we have to figure out how the conversion works. 778 Cryptic Clues converts to 108.9 Appalling Secrets (on average, doing many conversions) and takes 1.56 actions. These secrets can be converted to 34.3 Tales of Terror over 0.32 actions. The 62.3 tales turn into 12.5 Extraordinary implications over 1.25 actions. And finally, the 13.5 implications turn into 2.7 Uncanny Incunabula over 0.54 actions.
So in total, we get 2.7 Uncanny Incunabula over 28 actions, plus another 3.6 actions for conversion. If the average conversion from incunabula to enigmas is 25 to 5, then this corresponds to 0.54 enigmas. Assuming a 20% rare success rate per trip to the well, we get a grand total of 0.74 enigmas over 31.6 actions, or 1 enigma per 42.8 actions. So it beats Fidgeting Writer.
All of this hinges upon a good conversion rate from incunabula, for which we just don’t have good data yet. I assume that with my reduced watchful I’ll get worse results. Also you’ll need to keep your college connections up for the conversions (you can convert some of the secrets to Journals of Infamy to spread out the connection use in the next conversion step).
Edit:
If instead we only get 3 enigmas per incunabula conversion, the actions per enigma jumps up to 60.8. That’s still a little better than Fidgeting Writer when you factor in the Fidgeting Writer supply cost, but you’ll miss out on the other Fidgeting Writer rewards and whatever happens in London while you’re oversea.
[/li]
edited by Guy Scrum on 11/26/2013[/quote]
[li]
Another option with Hunter’s Keep is to grind for silk scraps inbetween trips to the well and convert up to Puzzel-Damask with the hope of a rare sucess which nets you 5 enigmas. I don’t know how rare the rare success is though.
I was away for a bit when St. Destin’s Candle first showed up and I’ve completely missed how this one works. How do I get it and send it?[li]