The Case of the Fidgeting Writer

Is it even worth going through all those Tales of Terror? I thought getting Primaeval Hints this way would have proven easier. Should I just accept the fact that my RNG luck is just absolutely f_____g awful or abandon it?

The only way I’ve found to do Fidgeting Writer without going insane myself is to do it in bulk. If you take one Tale of Terror and try to go through the sequence, it’s frustrating as heck when you fail at the last step.

However, if you do it in bulk, the probabilities work out. Start with, say, 400 tales of terror. On average that’ll convert to 280 senses of deja vu. Which’ll give you 196 glimpses of something larger. Which’ll get you 137 deals with a devil. 82 room numbers at the royal beth. 41 last hopes of a fidgeting writer.Which gets you 20 lenses of black glass, and then 10 coruscating souls (or 20 primaeval hints).

But doing them one at a time is a quick way to go as insane as the fidgeting writer. Because if you start from a Tale of Terror, you’ve got only a 2.5% chance or so of getting to that coruscating soul. Only a 5% chance of getting all the way up to the Lens, even. It doesn’t take particularly bad luck to fail a “5% chance” many, many times in a row, and it’s really disheartening to spend a lot of resources and get nothing out of it.

If you just want to get one primaeval hint, it’s probably less annoying to do the straightforward way - do Thefts of a Particular Character to steal seven antique mysteries, then convert them to one primaeval hint.

I thought doing them in bulk would give me less of a migraine. Guess that’s the way I’m going then.

I would do it via Antique Mysteries but I do need more than one Primaeval Hint (and for more than one account). Plus I do want to see the case itself through and the extra rewards aren’t bad either.

Thanks!

An alternative would be to do like series of 10 and see how far you can get with a series. At least I personally find doing a lot at once bit boring and time consuming.

I would also reccomend doing it in smaller batches like 10-20. There is still the risk that those aren’t big enough to get trough, but at least you don’t need to burn that much actions at once.

Besides that, I think its interesting getting it done once for the story, but since I have finished this once, I have no plans to do this madness again. Got already trolled enough by RNG today by failing a 80% chance 3 times in a row.

Starting with 400 tales of terror is rather a lot, I’m not sure what use anyone has for 10 coruscating souls, but I’d recommend something in the 50-100 range as a starting point, myself. Personally I went for two completions recently (one soul to get a breath of the void from Moulin, another to hang onto) and it took me something along those lines. If you get lucky with your rolls, you can always go for more prizes or leave your parts in reserve.

Coruscating Souls sell for 312.50 Echoes apiece at the Bazaar. Selling a lot of them is a great way to make money; it’s how my husband financed his purchase of Hesperidean Cider.

I mean, sure, they’re valuable items, but the profit for producing them works out to well below 2 EPA, which is really not a lot, especially for such a tiresome grind.

Do you have access to the railway already? Balmoral lets you grind for Primeval Hints through the searching for Cornelius storyline in your cabinet noir. At least for me I ground out 20 Primeval Hints that way. The EPA is also higher than Case Of The Fidgeting Writer.

If you don’t have access to Balmoral then doing tales of terror in batches makes sense. I went through >500 ToT to grind for comprehensive bribes back in the day, before you could get them in parabola.