‘The Corruption of Youth’-storylet in the palace lets me gain Persuasive and items without the risk of menaces. Instead of Scandal, it reduces or gives Hedonism, which is useless to me at this point in the game, and also not very high for me to begin with.
Are there any similar storylets that do not give menaces? I really need to increase my Shadowy (and would like to increase the others as well), but the amount of menaces I gain is making it almost impossible to progress.
My favorite way of increasing Shadowy is grinding Casing through the Preparing for a Big Score storylet in Flit, then selling the Casing to criminals. The Well-Planned Villainy option gives you 15CP of Casing for 5 Actions, and it is not a challenge so there is no risk of failure or menace gain - unfortunately it only works if you’re a PoSI. If you’re not, you can still use the other options to gain Casing, but they’re not as risk-free.
Then, when you trade the Casing through another storylet in the Flit, you get 10CP of Shadowy in exchange for 10CP of Casing, and you also gain 10CP of Connected:Criminals which you can later exchange for stuff using the An implausible penance card.
There are a few stories without serious menaces out there. If you don’t have many weasels, Mahogany Hall has a lot of options that will only threaten them (although you can still get standard menaces if you try). Mahogany Hall will allow you to boost Shadowy and Persuasive, IIRC. The only watchful place I can think of off-hand is fate-locked - Flute Street, but the University is pretty safe to play in to get to about 150 watchful - if your menaces get too high, do the University Days ‘Enjoy the pace of academic life’ to get rid of your nightmares and restore the lost connections. Likewise you can lose wounds there with one of the feasting options. That’s if you haven’t been locked out yet.
If you don’t have access to Mahogany Hall just yet, you can go to the Flit, get casing as best you can, and then sell it to Criminals (option at the bottom of the page) for a nice shadowy boost.
Not sure where you can go to reliably boost Dangerous without menaces, but there’s probably a few options out there.
If your menaces are getting too bothersome, what difficulty challenge are you attempting? Your stats will progress fastest if you aim for a 90% (exactly) chance of success. If you’re aiming for higher-risk activities because they have higher reward, I THINK you’ll lose out on the long run.
If you just want to boost your stats without risking menaces, go to your lodgings and interact with other players, converting the second chances your get into skills. The Shadowy option there isn’t great, but you should be able to find people willing to spar with you, play chess, or drink coffee with you. It is the fastest way to raise stats.
Your stats progress fastest on Almost Impossible challenges, which give 4 cp on failure. (And 6 on success, but you won’t be doing that much)
Jass trained her shadowy a fair bit on a storylet in Spite (don’t remember the name, it’s about talking to the Gracious Widow) that increases Connected: The Widow a lot on success and decreases it a bit on failure. She then proceeded to turn that into Connected: Urchins and cash that all in for Certifiable Scrap. Zero regrets.
You could try fooling Gullible Spirifers in Spite if you’re a POSI. The only penalty for failure there is a drop in your Hell connection, and you could always go to the carnival or convert the souls you’ve gotten to build that back up to the required level.