[li]
Ah… it is, in fact, repeatable, and you don’t even have to row the second time. You can only get a single point of SMEN on your second visit, however.
Iaskaris: that’s exactly what I was wondering earlier, and everyone here was so kind to help me with. I’ve heard if you’re very careful, you can leave Winking Isle with 70 SMEN and be good. You have a number of choices to make, though, once you’re ready to get Gawain’s Candle, and those choices determine how many more levels you’ll get. If you’re foolish like me, you could end up with 75, or perhaps less. If you’re worried, I’d suggest getting 72 SMEN before leaving the Isle. Also: the Notability grind isn’t that hard, if you have good BDR gear. I was able to rebuild my 12 points (I foolishly gave away my Destin’s to see the lighthouse) in about two weeks, though I did NOTHING but think about Making Waves in that time. The important thing to remember is that you have nothing to lose, so all those crazy MW-grinding actions that seemed so pointless before are suddenly your friend. "A Private Auction" was one of the best, and donating Forgotten Quarter treasures to Benthic/Summerset was also very helpful.[li]
You can go South as many times as you like, once you’ve rowed there once.
So don’t sweat how many points of SMEN you’ll need at that point - a quick Zee trip will make up the difference if there is one.
naraoia: thank you for the advice. sadly I don’t actually have good BDR gear since my Seeker character is my alt and I kind of didn’t do that much on him before I started Seeking. (probably should have done it on my main, ahahaha. oops), and I left most of the POSI grinds alone except for getting a ship (and opening the Nadir). Oops, shot myself in the foot on that one. Ah, well.
Hi. I have SMEN 3, 71 Watchful, 56 Shadowy, 68 Dangerous, and 54 Persuasive on my seeking alt. I’ve been Seeking for about two-three weeks now, and I seem to have reached a bit of an impasse. The only ways I can think of to reach SMEN 4 are to Blacken my Mind or to manage to get Unaccountably Peckish from some of the few sources I’ve found.
Blackening your mind seems most accessible, but it has a big opportunity cost. Is it worthwhile, and would I want to wait to become a PoSI before trying it? Is getting a starveling cat an alternative?
Don’t do it! Drowning your secrets and UP are the better alternatives. Trading a starveling cat can help you raise UP when you need it. For drowning your secrets, try to find a way to find cryptic clues.
And remember that you’re going to have to liquidate your character’s items anyways for Winking Isle, so you may as well sell your stuff and buy cryptic clues for upconversion.
If you have Brilliant Souls, keep them - Winking doesn’t require you to remove Infernal items aside from the Reported Location, and you do need an Uncanny Incunabulum at the very end for St.Gawain, so you will want some Brilliant Souls stockpiled to be converted to Tales of Terror -> Incunabulum when you finish Winking for good.
Depending on how prepared you are, I really wouldn’t bother trying to drown secrets. You have to prepare for other stuff later on, so there’s really no point trying to rush SMEN to 21. Drowning secrets really should be the lowest priority. If you’ve already got all the searing enigmas, cats, and other supplies for Arthur, as well as notability 12, and something for cerise’s, then there’s not much else but SMEN 21 to work toward and drowning secrets is fine. If you don’t have all that, you’re gonna need to get it, so you might as well work on grinding that and just increase SMEN with your UP point once a week. Otherwise you’ll end up wasting a bunch of money and time on secrets when you could have been getting other stuff ready.
Believe me; it is pretty much wasting your time to drown secrets. I had watchful ~250 with my equipment, and after about 2 weeks spent solely focusing on grinding and drowning secrets, I ended up with two or three extra points of SMEN. I was exceptionally unlucky, but since the question asker has watchful 71, I really doubt they’d do better than me. Even with that dreadfully slow SMEN progress, I’ve still hit SMEN 21 without being 100% prepared for Arthur’s or Destin’s.
Granted, this is seeking, so throwing away thousands and thousands of appalling secrets and weeks’ worth of actions is kind of in the right spirit.
edited by Pumpkinhead on 2/3/2017
Yeah, drowning secrets has very rapidly diminishing returns. You can get a few points early that way, but soon you’ll lock yourself out. The long path, using UP each week to get Marsh-Mired, is so much easier to manage–especially if you hold out for the high value, low risk cards. Get your UP up to 9, get your SMEN point, use the Labyrinth to reduce UP. Repeat. The time investment seems massive, but it goes a lot faster than you expect. Subjectively, anyway.
Oh, and I know I was terrified of Winking Isle before I got there. Don’t be. By the time you reach it, it’s such a breath of fresh air… Finally, don’t knock yourself out trying to find someone to give you a calling card. Getting the proscribed materials together seems impossible, but I did it in about 48 hours, just spamming Unfinished Business.
Also, you really don’t want to blacken your mind: you get enough stat hits from certain of the UP cards + some of the candles (Arthur and Destin’s) that you really don’t want to further blow up your Watchful, especially because Winking Isle requires 200 Watchful (with equipment) in order to access. And while it is recoverable with enough chess game spamming, don’t add even more to that.
Another tip, don’t destroy your SoTC quality if you don’t plan on going through the gate(impatience can give some lessons coughs).
Or they could just keep the Tales/Incunabulum themselves; you don’t need to get rid of mysteries either, unless you’re going for the special quality. Even then, you could just wait until right before you go South.
edited by Morucant on 2/5/2017
What’s the easiest thing to grind for St Cerise’s Candle? The Overgoat seems intimidating but I’m not sure how it compares to the fluke-cores or the short story.
The short story is cheaper, but takes longer since you need trade secrets, and you can get 1 of those a month. No one has ever completed the fluke core one, so yeah…
If you’re up for spending fate, the Daughter in the Shadows is a good option. You get to experience a fate-story, and advance SMEN, a win-win
The short story is cheaper, but takes longer since you need trade secrets, and you can get 1 of those a month. No one has ever completed the fluke core one, so yeah…[/quote]
If you’re just starting seeking, definitely go for the short story. There’s a lot of grinding for other stuff that needs to be done, so you can work on gathering that and gathering a few trade secrets for the story.
If you have 12,000 echoes sitting around already, then the Overgoat is probably your best choice.
If you’re already far enough along in SMEN to unlock Cerise’s, then I don’t know what your best option is. I’ve heard that one can get an Overgoat in about two months, but I’ve been working on one on my non-seeking account for the last four months or so. Granted, I’ve been doing it very inefficiently and frequently getting distracted, but 2-3 months is what you’d be looking at for the trade secrets for a short story anyway, and it costs WAY less actions.
I’m at Seeking 15 but I still need to grind up to 200 watchful (I’d be there if I hadn’t nuked it blackening my mind like paper). I’ll probably either go for the Noman option or the Daughter, honestly.
Also, how do you get to Melancholy 12?