seeking the name and other pursuits

I am approaching the end of the available content (I have a just couple stories left that I’m saving for a rainy day/I’m not quite Dangerous enough yet to play) and so I must ask the question: what to do now?

I am always hearing about a search for a certain name . . . if a person were interested in such an endeavor, where would he/she begin? I’m never seen a card or opportunity for it and I thought I had pretty thoroughly scoured London. Is it fate-locked?

Or perhaps it’s time for me to buckle down and start working on that Overgoat. I’ve heard rumors that the Fidgeting Writer is a very profitable path (and Hunter’s Keep but I just spent a month at Zee and would like to stay in the city for a while to trade dinners and chess games with my sister who I finally(!) convinced to start playing)–is that so?

Suffer from an unnatural hunger, and pay attention to your dreams of Death by Water.

It is, but whether it’s for you really depends on how much you enjoy luck-based challenges.

On average, the Fidgeting Writer storyline appears to generate around 2E/action. However, there’s a lot of variability. You could, for example, spend ~800 actions and end up with 8 out of 10 successes on the final 50/50 luck challenge (yielding over 3E/action), or only 2 out of 10 successes (giving you only 0.78E/action).

It all depends on how much you enjoy simple games of chance.

The Iron Box storyline appears to be the current benchmark for non-luck-based Echo-generation, at 1.40E/action.

[quote=Tesuji]On average, the Fidgeting Writer storyline appears to generate around 2E/action. However, there’s a lot of variability. You could, for example, spend ~800 actions and end up with 8 out of 10 successes on the final 50/50 luck challenge (yielding over 3E/action), or only 2 out of 10 successes (giving you only 0.78E/action).
It all depends on how much you enjoy simple games of chance.
[/quote]

2 things I recommend with the fidgeting Writer:

  1. Do it in bulk - it gives Lady Luck less of a chance to interfere.
  2. Do it in stages - the chance to get a coruscating soul is somewhere around 2-3% after you go through the chain. If you start off with a tale of terror and fail over and over and over, you get demoralized very quickly. Instead, convert all your tales of terror first, then your senses of Deja Vu, etc. The failures don’t matter as much, because they’re getting mixed in with successes. Of course it will take quite a while before you see any souls, but considering we’re over 2 months since any new content, you don’t really have anything else to do.

[quote=WordsLikeWeeds]I am approaching the end of the available content (I have a just couple stories left that I’m saving for a rainy day/I’m not quite Dangerous enough yet to play) and so I must ask the question: what to do now?

I am always hearing about a search for a certain name . . . if a person were interested in such an endeavor, where would he/she begin? I’m never seen a card or opportunity for it and I thought I had pretty thoroughly scoured London. Is it fate-locked?
[/quote]

Vague answer: if you suffer from an unnatural hunger, the name search may come to you in your dreams, or you can stumble on it in a show.

More specific answer:

[color=#ffffff]You must first have Unaccountably Peckish 1. There are a variety of ways to get this, detailed here: Unaccountably Peckish - Echo Bazaar . The simplest one is a rare success at eating rubbery lumps at the carnival.
Then, you must have Recurring Dreams: Death by Water 7 (but no higher than… whenever that card locks up. 9?) and take the right option on the dream card, the option that requires Unaccountably Peckish. Alternatively, you can go to the Wednesday show at Mahogany Hall (while having unaccountably Peckish) and there will be a way to start the search, I hear.[/color]

Be warned - the search is very long, very painful, will cost you lots of items and stats, will require lots and lots of boring grinding and cardflipping.
edited by M_L_G on 10/4/2012

As someone who recently hit the content wall on the search for a name, and who has extensive data on the fidgeting writer storyline, I’ll add:

Search for a Name:
If the card is locked to you, you’ll need to raise your unaccountably peckish quite a bit, as the other option tests it. My advice is that you gain yourself some starveling cats (both obtaining them and trading them raise that quality). You’ll need 4 of them, and it can never be too soon to start seeking them. I can’t send you boxes, as I’m already sending all mine to someone else, who is having very bad luck. You need about 30 boxes per cat, by some users’ reckoning. I can lend you my cat (you end up with a leftover one that is not consumed, after seeking the name) but you’ve got to return it to me (and will keep sending lending it to you until you raise your UP high enough, if you so want)

Fidgeting Writer:
My numbers give me about 2€/action when you take into account the actions needed to get the materials, but 3€/action if you already have them. Check my sig for the latest numbers. Prepare yourself for a hard grind though, one that will sometimes be thankless. This is comming from someone who has obtained 72 coruscating souls BTW, and is seeking more.

I was told that if you seek the name you’ll lose all your second chance items, first sporing wines, and… other things? Your wealth might not be safe, even your overgoat might not be safe!

This is mere speculation.

Thank you very much for the information and for the offer of the loan of a cat! I guess I will wait on this endeavor for a while though, while I try to gather the requisite cats (I don’t have any yet–when even the success with the boxes yielded nothing but the Duchess’s displeasure and a few measly secrets, I started ignoring them) and build up my recurring dream. I’ve never even seen the card for seeking the name so my guess is it will be a while before I can start seeking. In the meantime I’ll try some less risky pursuits.

[quote]
2 things I recommend with the fidgeting Writer:

  1. Do it in bulk - it gives Lady Luck less of a chance to interfere.
  2. Do it in stages - the chance to get a coruscating soul is somewhere around 2-3% after you go through the chain. If you start off with a tale of terror and fail over and over and over, you get demoralized very quickly. Instead, convert all your tales of terror first, then your senses of Deja Vu, etc. The failures don’t matter as much, because they’re getting mixed in with successes. Of course it will take quite a while before you see any souls, but considering we’re over 2 months since any new content, you don’t really have anything else to do.[/quote]

This is excellent advice. My husband follows it, and he has, I believe, 70 Coruscating Souls to my 3. (I have been more reluctant to do this because I haven’t bought Exceptional Friend status for awhile, but you see the point.)

This is mere speculation.[/quote]

I wouldn’t even be so generous as to call it that. Even ‘wild-ass guess’ is being polite. It’s more … ‘scaremongering’ or ‘incoherent rambling’, depending on any motives you want to assign to me. :D