Ok, that makes a lot more sense. Dammit, that means the Knock will cost me the re-grinding of all my hard-to-get items, because there’s no way I’m grinding daily for four-five years to get the Secrets.
I am currently doing this (at 55/77) and the easier way I’ve found is to repeatedly gain St Destin’s candle using 12 Notability, and then sacrificing it at the light house on Winking Isle (which doesn’t require losing items). It is painfully slow.
Ooh that’s not necessarily a bad idea. Are you sinking all your actions into this, or taking breaks? How many days does it take you to get 1 SMEN?
I’m sinking almost all of my actions into this. Take breaks for ES and social interactions. With BDR 32 I can get 2 points a week, if I only use the salon for N12. (Losing Destin’s candle also gives a point of SMEN)
Wait, does it take you a week to get to N12? That doesn’t seem right to me. I have BDR 29 and it would take me a few days at most using side-conversions (although maybe not quite twice a week), unless I’m misremembering how long it takes. Plus if I go this route I’ll probably buy Feducci’s Marriage to get the romantic notions (since IIRC they come out above just side conversions, even taking into account the actions to grind them).
Either way, I should do more maths, but this seems really doable. Thanks for the idea suinicide!
edited by Dudebro Pyro on 5/10/2018
Romantic Notions are much much worse than side conversions.
They are only good when not taking into account grinding for them. I.e. spend lots of actions stocking on RN, and then later the actions of converting them give good MW per action.
Oh, for some reason I was under the impression that the Marriage’s Notions were the end-all be-all for MW grinding. No idea how I came to this impression then, since there are other much better ways to stockpile burst MW.
I thought romantic notions (then side converting to tales of terror, then up converting) was the best too. But that calculation didn’t account for the connected you need.
It’s the best way to get the Romantic Notions themselves, should you desire than.
[quote=suinicide]I am currently doing this (at 55/77) and the easier way I’ve found is to repeatedly gain St Destin’s candle using 12 Notability, and then sacrificing it at the light house on Winking Isle (which doesn’t require losing items). It is painfully slow.[/quote]But how did you get to SMEN 35 in the first place?
[quote=suinicide]I thought romantic notions (then side converting to tales of terror, then up converting) was the best too. But that calculation didn’t account for the connected you need.[/quote] Or Documents and upconvert if you have the GG favours.
It’s the best way to get the Romantic Notions themselves, should you desire than.[/quote]Which is the best, non-card, source for MW preparations, not the actual grind/time when you need them.
edited by Skinnyman on 5/11/2018
I just did some crude maths and it turns out to about 1MWPA. I think I messed up calculating the successes and failure rates for the luck challenges but either way it’s either very slightly above 1 or very slightly below (think 0.95-1.1 MWPA). You also end up with something like 0.1 EPA not counting rare successed, which is very likely worse than the 0.5 EPA of side-converting.
As a renewable source of stockpiling, it is indeed good (the path of "already having notions -> upconverting -> sideconverting to terrors -> upconverting" is better than "already having visions -> sizeconverting to compromising documents"), but not for actually grinding.
I guess if you’re really unlucky drawing the Townhouse/Polite Invitation cards (or are just cards-averse), it would be helpful. I never saw that as a problem, though, since the window to draw them is a week and they’re pretty frequent.
edited by Dudebro Pyro on 5/11/2018
I got to 28 via marsh mired, played Chimney pot wars to 32. Then gained candles the rest of the way.
Aha, I see, thanks! Care to pop a PM/spoiler here regarding the Fate option for SMEN? About to get a new Candle, wait for site reshape (hoping I’ll get a crimson book) and off to Winking! :D
[quote=Dudebro Pyro]In theory, one could finish SMEN without ever going to Winking Isle, right? Has anyone done the maths on how many Apalling Secrets on average that would cost? A quick back-of-the-envelope check seems to turn up around 77,000 pessimistically*, which is just over 11,500 echoes or the equivalent of 550,000 cryptic clues. That’s oddly achievable, and even seems optimal for an end-game character with a lot of rare items if you intend to turn back. Another very dirty calculation gives about 11k actions**, with about 130 actions/day of dedicated grinding that’s under three months - in comparison, grinding out a single Master’s Blood will take five weeks just grinding Notability for the Presumption Opportunity, longer if you have to grind the Cellars or wait for it to show up randomly, and that’s just one single item out of the multitude that need to be sold off.
Am I missing something? Or is it that almost nobody actually intends to turn back, so nobody cares?
[i]*According to the wiki, Watchful challenge is SMEN * 20. At SMEN 76, that’s 1520, giving about 12% success chance with Watchful 305, 10% at 260. Each attempt costs 77 Secrets. Let’s butcher statistics and say that on average you’ll need 10 tries to succeed at a 10% challenge, that gives 770 secrets per SMEN. Let’s round up to cover up our mathematical ineptitude to 1000 secrets. Then just assume every level is the same difficulty to account for (very) bad luck (and not just because I’m lazy) and multiply by 77 levels (again rounding towards pessimism by ignoring levels gained through black cards, candles, etc.).
**Using Unfinished Business for Clues (and ignoring any starting stock - I personally would start with over 130k ready to go - or the possibility of grinding at the University if not locked out, and the several Clue-generous Opportunity Cards) gives about 9.2k actions on average to get 550k, then a bit over 1k to upconvert to Secrets. Again since we’re rounding for pessimism let’s assume bad luck and round up to 11k.[/i]
edited by Dudebro Pyro on 5/10/2018[/quote]
A hahahaha I’ve been doing this for some time now. Suffice it to say that I’ve purchased the maximum of 60000 cryptic clues… oh, it has to be approaching 50 times now. I gave up on that entirely. There are ways and there are ways.
Since I have no one else to tell.
I’ve gone north with my main, to discover What is forgotten. I need help naming a new character to live on the new site when it’s released… until they invent some new horrible suicide.
[quote=Kowth]Since I have no one else to tell.
I’ve gone north with my main, to discover What is forgotten. I need help naming a new character to live on the new site when it’s released… until they invent some new horrible suicide.[/quote]
I’d be delighted to help but more information about what you’d like in a name would be useful. Do you want a somewhat realistic name (like Rykar Malkus) a high-sounding name (like Colin Sapherson, Lord President of the Council) or a simple descriptive name (like Skinnyman) or something else? (All of these examples are in use by player characters, so they themselves aren’t available–they are just examples of the types of name I’m talking about.
[quote=Catherine Raymond][quote=Kowth]Since I have no one else to tell.
I’ve gone north with my main, to discover What is forgotten. I need help naming a new character to live on the new site when it’s released… until they invent some new horrible suicide.[/quote]
I’d be delighted to help but more information about what you’d like in a name would be useful. Do you want a somewhat realistic name (like Rykar Malkus) a high-sounding name (like Colin Sapherson, Lord President of the Council) or a simple descriptive name (like Skinnyman) or something else? (All of these examples are in use by player characters, so they themselves aren’t available–they are just examples of the types of name I’m talking about.[/quote]
Well, Kowth, for example, is from the Name of the Wind. Fantasy novel, protagonist named Kvothe. There may have been a hillbilly accent involved. In this dialect: Kvothe=Kowth.
I find this kind of attention to detail both endearing and hilarious.
[quote=Kowth][quote=Catherine Raymond][quote=Kowth]Since I have no one else to tell.
I’ve gone north with my main, to discover What is forgotten. I need help naming a new character to live on the new site when it’s released… until they invent some new horrible suicide.[/quote]
I’d be delighted to help but more information about what you’d like in a name would be useful. Do you want a somewhat realistic name (like Rykar Malkus) a high-sounding name (like Colin Sapherson, Lord President of the Council) or a simple descriptive name (like Skinnyman) or something else? (All of these examples are in use by player characters, so they themselves aren’t available–they are just examples of the types of name I’m talking about.[/quote]
Well, Kowth, for example, is from the Name of the Wind. Fantasy novel, protagonist named Kvothe. There may have been a hillbilly accent involved. In this dialect: Kvothe=Kowth.
I find this kind of attention to detail both endearing and hilarious.[/quote]
That felt like a nickname though. Maybe realism is preferable after all. Or something like the blankety blank blank. The garrulous sesquipedalian.
[quote=Kowth][quote=Kowth][quote=Catherine Raymond][quote=Kowth]Since I have no one else to tell.
I’ve gone north with my main, to discover What is forgotten. I need help naming a new character to live on the new site when it’s released… until they invent some new horrible suicide.[/quote]
I’d be delighted to help but more information about what you’d like in a name would be useful. Do you want a somewhat realistic name (like Rykar Malkus) a high-sounding name (like Colin Sapherson, Lord President of the Council) or a simple descriptive name (like Skinnyman) or something else? (All of these examples are in use by player characters, so they themselves aren’t available–they are just examples of the types of name I’m talking about.[/quote]
Well, Kowth, for example, is from the Name of the Wind. Fantasy novel, protagonist named Kvothe. There may have been a hillbilly accent involved. In this dialect: Kvothe=Kowth.
I find this kind of attention to detail both endearing and hilarious.[/quote]
That felt like a nickname though. Maybe realism is preferable after all. Or something like the blankety blank blank. The garrulous sesquipedalian.[/quote]
So that is where your name is from! I enjoyed "The Name of the Wind" myself, and wonder whether and when (and how) Rothfuss will finish that series. Ah, well.
Ultimately your character name must satisfy you, and only you. I have stuck to the name that I used on Twitter, but you could plumb the depths of any works of fiction or characters from history to get a name that feels right. I have done that with some of my Companions, such as Temujin for my Bitter Saker Falcon.
Best of luck with the naming process.
After no small consideration, and with much fear and trepidation, I’ve embarked on the Seeking Road with my main character.
I’ve been long away from FL, so long that I’ve forgotten much of the game and had to check my main’s journal to see my play history. Seems like I started here in 2011 (FL year 1889) and my last entry was in 2013 (FL year 1891)! A lot seems to have changed in that time, to the point where it made sense to start over with an alt and replay all the content to see how things have changed and grown. So I did.
What to do with my main, the accumulation of about 2 years of serious gaming and quite a bit of Fate? Well, he has scars, chains and stains, so I’d apparently begun Seeking with him before I stopped playing FL, and the Seeking content has changed substantially from what I remembered. Makes sense to continue.
But what a commitment. What a loss. That consent page made me pause – and I initially opted out of it, but decided to continue. Those early steps and consequences of the Seeking Road made me pause some more. (Dire consequences. And this is just the beginning?)
It’s not so much the in-game resources (because I can make them back on my alt – and I am playing the game with a quasi-clean slate so doesn’t feel that grindy) as the non-transferable history I’ll be losing with my main. I have the old FL journal with venerable dates, I have A River in a Box, I have a membership to the Temple Club. Nothing of much consequence in the big scheme of life, but still, those are nice little touches that can’t be transferred to my alt character, and would eventually become inaccessible.
I don’t think I’ve thought so long and hard about an in-game decision for a while. But while each step down the Seeking Road made me pause, I took them anyway. And now I’ve taken too many steps and am committed. There’s no turning back. So be it.
edited by Vega on 7/13/2018