Every time you fail at an 80%+ challenge, you cry. You cry even harder when the action’s Drowning your Secrets. Back to grinding for Cryptic Clues. Can’t wait until I get to SMEN 9 to try out my crazy grind idea.
Not really sure how to proceed with this. I’m at Seeking 10, never got St Cerise’s Candle. Am I supposed to be shovelling copious quantities of Appalling Secrets into the abyss to try to get Seeking up to 27? Or does a less hellishly expensive method seem likely to manifest itself?
So SMEN is back, but Mr. Eaten still hasn’t accepted my Rat of Glory or my gift from Mr Sacks’ sack. I’m terribly put off.
Oh well, time to go drown my primary stat I guess. SMEN 5 to 29 is going to be a long, long road. At least my rat didn’t explode.
Drowning your Secrets is the CHEAP option. Unless we find an Unaccountably Peckish card that doesn’t really have a cap, or Mr.Page’s stall doesn’t have a cap, we’re all going to have to get thousands of Appalling Secrets. Or something.
I’m conflating goals by using the Fidgeting Writer to get Searing Enigmas for Mr Eaten. Cash and progress, all in one! It’s not the efficient thing to do, nor is it the fast thing to do, but it’s the thing I’ve decided to do. I’ll also be converting the Cryptic Clues I get through cards to hopefully move at a slightly less glacial pace as I prepare to burn all of the Searing Enigmas.
[quote=Sara Hysaro]It’s not the efficient thing to do, nor is it the fast thing to do, but it’s the thing I’ve decided to do.[/quote]This might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read.
Is the card "What Does That Awful Beast Want?" publicly known?
Unlocked with a Starveling cat and a Spirifer’s Fork, frequency unusual.
Haven’t played it yet, undecided about seeking. Will it stain my soul?
Are you sure it does not affect SMEN? Has someone tried it after the new SMEN started?[/quote]
I think so, yes. It never affected SMEN though iirc.
[quote=Ysrthgrathe]Is the card "What Does That Awful Beast Want?" publicly known?
Unlocked with a Starveling cat and a Spirifer’s Fork, frequency unusual.
Haven’t played it yet, undecided about seeking. Will it stain my soul?[/quote]
It neither increases SMEN nor stains your soul. Go right ahead.
edited by Optimatum on 6/13/2016
[quote=Gonen]
What about that very rare well card (what was its name)? Has anybody stumbled upon it? Does it do anything new?[/quote]
Got it. This card is now boarded in black, but no true change. Does not give SMEN (at least, not if you are hungry)
I noticed Set Fires Around the City didn’t have a wiki entry so I went ahead and tried it. It did, in fact, consume all 462 Mourning Candles required to unlock the branch. Also brought my suspicion from 2 to 8, and I even forgot to echo or screenshot it in my haste to put on menace reducing clothes.
So that went about as well as I could’ve hoped.
[quote=Sackville]I noticed Set Fires Around the City didn’t have a wiki entry so I went ahead and tried it. It did, in fact, consume all 462 Mourning Candles required to unlock the branch. Also brought my suspicion from 2 to 8, and I even forgot to echo or screenshot it in my haste to put on menace reducing clothes.
So that went about as well as I could’ve hoped.[/quote]
Thank you for invrstigating that expensive branch for us. Did ot only raise 1 point of SMEN? Did you noticed ANY advantage over spending appalling secrets?
The mourning candle option has a significantly easier Watchful challenge than the Appalling Secrets one (the Enigmas option is even easier), but even accounting for that it’s still vastly more expensive.
Any idea when they’ll be equal, due to increasing failure rates, or no?
I dread the day when regrinding a hundred levels of Watchful (probably more than once) or sacrificing three 1500E items becomes the economical option. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked out that it was somehow.
(I’ve heard the 4500E option gives you two levels, so if the success rate of the secret-burning check drops to 20% around SMEN 38 it’d be as expensive.)
Yeah, I got a single point each of SMEN and UP. The only advantage seems to be the watchful challenge difficulty, but… well let’s do some math.
St. Cerise’s unlocks at SMEN 27, so let’s say that’s what you’re going for. Some helpful folk have already pegged Drowning Secrets at a watchful difficulty of SMEN*20, so it’s a watchful 520 challenge. At my own watchful of about 275, that means just about a 30% chance of success.
At 30% we’ll probably need to play the option about 3.3 times, and it requires 26*77 = 2,002 Appalling Secrets with a market value of 300.3 echoes. So Drowning Secrets is expected to cost us about 1,000 echoes worth of materials.
For comparison, going from SMEN 6 to 7 already cost me 1,155 echoes via Setting Fires. Even if the watchful challenge remained at 100%, Setting Fires would cost 26772.5 = 5,005 echoes in Mourning Candles to go from 26 to 27.
(To be fair, you can grind Mourning Candles at a better epa than you can grind Appalling Secrets… but not nearly by enough of a margin to balance it out.)
Drowning is definitely the way to go from what we’ve seen. Although I am reasonably close to 182 enigmas, maybe once I get there I’ll try to go from SMEN 26 to SMEN 27 the absurdly expensive way just to see if anything special happens. (Pro Tip: Oh no man no way I won’t)
[quote=Aspeon]I dread the day when regrinding a hundred levels of Watchful (probably more than once) or sacrificing three 1500E items becomes the economical option. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked out that it was somehow.
(I’ve heard the 4500E option gives you two levels, so if the success rate of the secret-burning check drops to 20% around SMEN 38 it’d be as expensive.)[/quote]
That option already is economical, at least in terms of actions spent grinding. More expensive in terms of echoes definitely, but much better for the couple people rushing through everything who already have the necessary scraps and such resources stored up with actions as the limiting factor. Who knew SMEN speedrunning would be such a thing?
(I guess I already did know, considering NiteBrite basically speedran part of Old SMEN. And considering our cutting-edge Seeker pioneers are doing things like dunking Ubergoats down wells.)
edited by Optimatum on 6/13/2016
Oh no, this can’t be good.
Hey, has anyone echoed joining the House of Chimes as a name obsessed lunatic? I’m awfully curious as to what happens with that? ^_^
[quote=Blaine Davidson]Oh no, this can’t be good.
[/quote]
Oh my…What madness might The Drowned Man inflict upon you now that he’s accepted your offering?
"Finally! I’ve spent ages asking for a bite to eat. Now I can use my creepy dream powers to write the cooking blog I’ve always wanted."
All Seeking Master Eaten’s Name qualities in the game are replaced by Hi Fans! Check Out My Recipe for Poppy Seed Crumpets with Lingonberry Jam.