The Demi-Monde and Opportunity Cards in general

Fallen London
1

So after several years of just poking around and more or less clicking things at random and reading cool story bits, I’ve recently been trying to actually set goals for myself and work toward them. I set my sights on the Journalist profession and got the requisite Connected: Bohemian to unlock it, and since then…

I have spent weeks logging on every time I think of it to go through my opportunity cards, and the Demi-Monde has yet to show up.

So I’m either super unlucky, which I guess is fine, or I don’t understand how opportunity cards work, which is more likely.

a) Are they tied to a location? Does where I am when I draw them matter? Does where I am when the deck fills matter?
b) Is &quotwhen the deck fills&quot even a thing? Is there a deck, in any meaningful sense, or just a number of draws I’m allowed?
c) Is there any sort of RNG mitigation at work? Is there a pool that is drawn from until it is empty, or is it just rolling on a table with every draw?

With c) it feels like there has to be something going on, because at the very least I never seem to see duplicates in a single hand of 3.

I guess it’s also possible that I’m just missing something about the Demi-Monde, in particular? But I keep getting the opportunity card that would give me the Trickster profession if I had sufficient Urchin connection, which leads me to believe I’m barking up the correct tree.
edited by Jick on 1/6/2015

2

I think I got your Demi-Mondes. I swear I drew that card five times this evening. It doesn’t have any pre-requisites or locational requirements - you’ve just been staggeringly unlucky.

Summing up what I know of the card system: your cards are randomly selected when you click the deck. You can’t have two of the same card at once, but there’s nothing preventing you from dismissing every card in your hand and them immediately drawing them all again. Each card has its own assigned frequency, but you still may well draw several rare cards in a row but not see the specific common one you’re after for weeks. Usual fist-shaking at the RNG applies.

3

That’s happened to me a lot recently (well not the whole hand, but single cards). I really feel the deck functionality could do with a little finessing still.

4

a) Are they tied to a location? Does where I am when I draw them matter? Does where I am when the deck fills matter?

  • Some cards are tied to a location. The demi-monde doesn’t, but you can technically increase your odds at getting it by drawing in a location that doesn’t have any. See the wiki page for a list of the known ones (and/or suspected ones)

b) Is &quotwhen the deck fills&quot even a thing? Is there a deck, in any meaningful sense, or just a number of draws I’m allowed?

  • The deck is the amount of draws you have. Your hand is the cards you have drawn.

c) Is there any sort of RNG mitigation at work? Is there a pool that is drawn from until it is empty, or is it just rolling on a table with every draw?

  • As far as I know, every card has a value for drawing. Your chance of drawing that one card is value/total value of all cards. If you have already drawn a card, you can’t get a duplicate, and the values depend on the card frequency.
5

That’s me and the Bandages and Dust card. I swear I used to discard five of them a day, and now that I have a Collection of Curiosities, the tomb-colonists are making me pay for snubbing them so many times.

6

I swear I used to discard at least 3 of Demi-Monde card a day, and now I can’t draw it anywhere either. And I really wanted to be a journalist…

7

It is Saint Finagle’s Law at work: “The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum.”

– Mal

8

Also, if you have acquired favorable circumstances you can use that to force draw the card. Pricey, to be sure.

9

Yep, and if this person could do that with Notability, they wouldn’t need the Bohemians card to become a Journalist (they could just use Unsigned Message), IIRC.

10

You can boost your odds a bit by shrinking the pool of cards you might draw from. Things like:

  • Cash in and remove your connections with most of the Fallen London factions (to get rid of conflict cards);[/li][li]Selling all your proscribed materials and incendiary gossip (both of which unlock cards, one of which is pretty useless unless you’re trying to grind connections with the masters);[/li][li]Completely getting rid of one or more of your menaces (and the menace-reducing cards they unlock, as well as things like Orthographic Infection);[/li][li]Selling any companions that unlock extra cards;[/li][li]Keeping ‘frequent’ frequency cards in your hand (e.g. Brass Embassy Guest Room, Royal Beth) to stop them immediately coming up again;

And if you’re really, really desperate, I suppose you could:

  • Sell your houseplant;[/li][li]Leave your club and break off your relationship with your spouse;[/li][li]Play Flint, take the Sardonic Music-Hall singer with you, and make sure she never returns.
11

[quote=uli]

  • Sell your houseplant;

Won’t this just get you the card that gets you a new plant?

As far as I know, the only way to get rid of plant cards is to get the plant to full strength, at which point cards cease to show up.

If I’m correct, then selling your houseplant would be the biggest mistake one could possibly make there :D

12

[quote=thedeadlymoose][quote=uli]

  • Sell your houseplant;

Won’t this just get you the card that gets you a new plant?

As far as I know, the only way to get rid of plant cards is to get the plant to full strength, at which point cards cease to show up.

If I’m correct, then selling your houseplant would be the biggest mistake one could possibly make there :D[/quote]
Yes and no. The only way to get rid of all three houseplant cards is to get it to full strength, but… there’s only one intro option, so if you sell it, it’s one card to deal with instead of three.

Like he said, though- if you’re desperate.

13

Yep, and if this person could do that with Notability, they wouldn’t need the Bohemians card to become a Journalist (they could just use Unsigned Message), IIRC.[/quote]

That’s incorrect - you’d be able to upgrade to either a Tier 3 or 4 with Unsigned Message, but Journalist is Tier 2 and only in the Bohemian card.

14

Nope, zero-ing your Music-Hall Singer quality drops the two City Vices cards from your hands, but not the card &quotAn Old Acquaintance&quot, which doesn’t have any additional locks on it other than having your Music Hall-Singer quality at 1.

15

Nope, zero-ing your Music-Hall Singer quality drops the two City Vices cards from your hands, but not the card &quotAn Old Acquaintance&quot, which doesn’t have any additional locks on it other than having your Music Hall-Singer quality at 1.[/quote]
again, if you’re desperate it removes a card. note how he said &quotreally, really desperate.&quot a bad idea, but an option to prune the deck a little further in 5-card lodgings/ non-remote lodgings.

16

Yeah, I think it has to do with the low likelihood overall that any SPECIFIC CARD you really want is going to come up that often, despite the very high likelihood that something in a set that large will end up super over-represented. Rather realistic, when you think about it.

For example, what I display in my profile (for now) represents what I’m &quotworking on.&quot My character is endeavoring to upgrade his 4-card Bazaar lodgings, so he shows off the tears he has so far. I also NEVER pass up an opportunity to gain Criminal Favours, but my renown isn’t quite out of single digits yet because I draw such cards once, maybe twice a month max.

Similarly, it’s very easy to earn enough wine to redeem all possible Portly Sommelier visits for an Airag. Although I’ve got 1+ potential BDR in every possible equipment slot, that’s it - my character has no tattoos yet, so my Notability reaches 5 pretty easily with no assistance from the &quotblast&quot approach of using a Salon or Orphanage to produce Waves. I still like to maintain a healthy stockpile, but the appropriate lodgings card shows up maybe once a week tops.

That said, the Revolutionaries show up close to once per day even though I’ve never been that nice to them and will have no use for them whatsoever once I cap Dangerous. On the bright side, the Sardonic Music Hall Singer invites me over constantly, but given my voracious appetite for Salon CPs, I can’t say I mind.

Changes of profession are one purpose for which I would endorse the use of Favourable Circumstances to arrange a faction meeting. With the exception of making or breaking a Closest To: relationship, that’s the only truly substantial transaction that occurs that way. I wouldn’t recommend changing profession often, although I haven’t ruled out becoming an Author since my Midnighter deals heavily in wine overall.

As long as you HAVE a job, though, it’s probably best to wait as long as it takes, make SURE you have the requisite amount of Bohemian connections, and RP that your character is an aspiring author. Your big break is somewhere in that Opportunity Deck.

Edit: In case anybody happens to be interested in wine and somehow wants to glean information about Airags, I should note that Airags CAN sort of be ground through Expeditions. I’m currently spending most of my non-wine turns making my name at Court; for RP purposes I wanted to achieve 100% on all such challenges before letting certain events come to pass.
edited by Gerald Edgerton on 12/10/2015

17

Nope, zero-ing your Music-Hall Singer quality drops the two City Vices cards from your hands, but not the card &quotAn Old Acquaintance&quot, which doesn’t have any additional locks on it other than having your Music Hall-Singer quality at 1.[/quote]
again, if you’re desperate it removes a card. note how he said &quotreally, really desperate.&quot a bad idea, but an option to prune the deck a little further in 5-card lodgings/ non-remote lodgings.[/quote]

Just a note: you don’t have to play flint to prune your deck this way; you can just borrow Moon-Pearls from the Music-Hall singer when visiting her, and it’ll zero out your connection with her just like Flint does.

18

I’d been considering thinning my deck further because I’m tired of drawing various cards over and over and not feeling like I’m getting anywhere with them, and so this is particularly helpful. Thankyou!