The Fidgeting Writer - doing the maths (SPOILERS)

I’m doing a 1100 Tales run, and I’ll be posting my results of the conversions once I get my souls. The conversion rate for Tales of Terror seems to be going better than expected though. :D

Another run with 30 Deja Vus. Ended up with four Lens of Black Glass. Haven’t had the actions/courage to run them through yet, but I’ll update when that happens.

edit Two coruscating souls. 600+ echoes. I think this grind is a keeper. Although I didn’t figure out the costs from 30 Deja Vu’s. I dare say they’re a lot less, though.
edited by SmallFish on 8/28/2012

Just wanted to chime in with more data - I did 100 runs with ToT which led to 76/49/36/21/11/6/3 of the remaining items. Once I finish everything else up (need 1 more lodging, a gym, and to visit the Iron Republic) I’ll start a 1200 ToT run to get an overgoat.

As an aside, if anybody from FB reads this, can you put a Try Again link on the intermediary items? It’s annoying to remember to click Myself and then find the item again when I’m trying to bulk convert.

[quote=BaronElectric]
As an aside, if anybody from FB reads this, can you put a Try Again link on the intermediary items? It’s annoying to remember to click Myself and then find the item again when I’m trying to bulk convert.[/quote]

Yes, please do!

[quote=Dave ][quote=BaronElectric]
As an aside, if anybody from FB reads this, can you put a Try Again link on the intermediary items? It’s annoying to remember to click Myself and then find the item again when I’m trying to bulk convert.[/quote]

Yes, please do![/quote]

Agreed!

My updated data:
[color=#000000]1061 echoes worth of materials[/color]
[color=#000000]1113 actions[/color]
[color=#000000]3750 echoes of souls earned [/color]
[color=#000000]total: 2 .416 echoes per action[/color]

[color=#000000]355 tales of terror [/color]
[color=#000000]259 senses of deja vu [/color]
[color=#000000]190 glimpses of something larger[/color]
[color=#000000]139 deals with a devil[/color]
[color=#000000]87 rooms at royal beth [/color]
[color=#000000]53 last hopes of a fidgeting writer[/color]
[color=#000000]30 lenses of black glass[/color]
[color=#000000]12 coruscating souls [/color]

Argh… Have the odds been tweaked?!1! Two runs with 30 deja vus’, ended up with nothing. Perhaps the right strategy is to try and build up a base of 20+ Black lens and go from there…

My current amounts so far :)

444 tales of terror
319 senses of deja vu
230 glimpes of something larger
164 deals with a devil
114 rooms at royal beth
66 last hopes of a fidgeting writer
34 lenses of black glass
16 coruscating souls

New totals for me:





554 tales of terror

404 senses of deja vu
300 glimpses of something larger
216 deals with a devil
135 rooms at royal beth
75 last hopes of a fidgeting writer
44 lenses of black glass
17coruscating souls

Hmm. 100 deja vu’s, 1 coruscating soul. I’m starting to have doubts.

It’s called the Law of Large Numbers. In simpler terms, if you use a small amount of items, there’s a high chance of things not fitting your expectations.

That’s also why I started with 1200 Tales. I know I’ll get more than enough Souls to make a decent profit.

[quote=Nagato-01]It’s called the Law of Large Numbers. In simpler terms, if you use a small amount of items, there’s a high chance of things not fitting your expectations.

That’s also why I started with 1200 Tales. I know I’ll get more than enough Souls to make a decent profit.[/quote]

Yeah, but you’d expect 2-4 Coruscating Souls when you start with 100 deja vus. Bad run. I had rotten luck at the end, only one in five lens paid off. Actually it seems to me, from all the data I’ve seen here + my own experiences, that the success rate for lens is less than 50 %, even though it’s stated at “could go either way”. This is something to keep in mind.

Dunno how relevant, but I’m prepping a 1400 tales run, and I’m bag a legend ambition. Without spoiling, later on at zee there’s an option to get 13 visions of the surface for 5 actions, coming out at 2.6 per action, better than either polythreme or converting (Polythreme, 12 romantic per action, works out to 2.4 visions per action, not including the extra action to convert, making 21.833333 actions per 50 visions, including the conversion). The ambition option works out to 19.23 (13/5=2.6, 50/2.6 = 19.2307; ). Not a HUEG deal, but when I need 1050 visions (and an extra 1700 for converting to identities), the number of actions saved that way works to 2.6 someodd per 50, or 54.65 actions saved…so even taking into account the zee travel (4 card hand, zee clipper for me, one way trip seems to run ~20 actions for me), it’s far more efficient for both identities uncovered and for visions.

As mentioned, using the 19.2307 actions per 50 visions, this brings the actions for 10 identities to 22.2307 (this also doesn’t include the extra incendiary or the extra mystery gotten). Using the carnival route would be 25 actions for 50 incendiary, so 26 actions per 10 identities. So (26-22.2307)/10 = .3769 actions saved per identity; for my run, I need 340, so I save 340*.3769=128.15 actions
IE, if you’re in bag a legend ambition, the best place to grind for visions of the surface and identities is at zee. For my run, it saves a combined amount of 182.8 actions. Or over a day’s worth of actions. However, as said, it’s at zee. That being said though, it’s closer than Polythreme. IE, if you only need a “small” amount of identities, work the carnival. If you need visions though, it’s both closer and more efficient. Again though, Bag a Legend ambition only =/

Also, more numbers from a run of 100 tales
100 tales
69 Deja vu (Only used 55 to convert to glimpses)
42 glimpses (Only used 24 to convert to deals)
15 deals
10 rooms
9 last hopes
7 lenses
3 souls
I got rather lucky converting rooms and last hopes from what the average numbers say @.@ looking at Vyrlokar’s spreadsheet, from 24 glimpses, I should’ve gotten ~1.73 souls…I got roughly double that 0.0 w00t!hopefully that doesn’t mean karma comes and kicks my butt next run though!

On a side note, the visions grind is 130PPA, decently high. Not high enough to warrant going to zee purely for monies though, especially since it’s ambition-intensive and still doesn’t beat out 143PPA of boxful of intrigue =3 could be a good grind if your shadowy is low enough boxful is challenging?I haven’t looked at the numbers for the challenge for visions v. boxful. Just spitballing there xD
edited by skunk12 on 10/17/2012
edited by skunk12 on 10/17/2012

It’s been 5 months since I decided to do my run.

1200 Tales → 874 Senses (72.83%)
874 Senses → 631 Glimpses (72.20%)
631 Glimpses → 434 Deals (68.78%)
433 Deals → 279 Room Numbers (64.43%) (1 Deal converted for Hellfarer)
279 Room Numbers → 150 Last Hopes (53.76%)
149 Last Hopes → 76 Lenses (51.01%) (1 Last Hope converted for 1 Night-Whisper)
75 Lenses → 48 Souls (64.00%) (1 Lens converted for 1 Primeval Hint + 1 Enigma)

Total profit: 11641.50 Echoes
Profit per action for conversion only: 3.20 echoes (3 significant figures)

I despair. 30 Room numbers → 9 Last Hopes.

A more in-depth version of my progress so far

444 tales x 50 = 22200
320 deja vu x 50 = 16000
225 glimpses x 100 = 22500
164 deals x 100 = 16400
113 room numbers x 250 = 28250
66 last hopes x 250 = 16500
36 lenses x 250 = 9000
20 souls x 31250 = 625000

130850 cost. 494150 profit.

1368 turns

361.22076023391812865497076023392 PPA

Hmmm… I now have 40 last hopes and am starting to think of cashing in. 40 Nightwhispers for 2500 echoes. If I continue, I would get ~20 Lenses (2994 echoes) and going for Souls, ~10 Coruscating Souls (3125 echoes). It actually seems, that the right place to cash in is at the Lenses stage - it doesn’t get much better after that (if the 50 % chance holds true). Any thoughts?

A quick question, does this actually accomplish anything except echo/rare resource farming? I’m not a big fan of the item conversion aspect and have my own, longer ways to get a lot of echos but don’t want to miss any story.

Depends on how comfortable you are with luck. If you think luck will not be on your side, you should convert at the Lenses stage. Then again, if you think luck won’t be on your side, you should probably stay away from this storyline altogether.

If you have 10 Lenses, you can spend 10 actions and turn them into 1500E. Alternatively, you can take your chances and spend 10 actions + 25E worth of Mourning Candles. Your expected result would be 5 Coruscating Souls, or a net profit of 37.5E over trading in the lenses.

Expected isn’t guaranteed, of course; you could get more, you could get less. If you get 5+ Souls (~62% chance), you made the right choice; if you get less than that (~38% chance), you should have traded the lenses in.

Personally, I think the Fidgeting Writer is overrated for echo-generation.

I recently finished a 230 Tales run, ending up with 6 Souls. After including component generation, that’s a 1.54E/action rate of return. Mind you, that was with all of my final three checks being successes, so this could have been much worse.

I’ve moved back to Hunter’s Keep. I’ll take a 1.50E/action floor (with an expected 1.69E/action, assuming a 10% rate of rare successes) over a higher expected rate of return but a floor of zero.

Can you pls remind me, what was the grind at Hunter’s Keep?

I’ve run through 20 Last Hopes now, with 7 Black Lenses as result. This is pretty sucky, I feel. Perhaps I should just sell everything now for about 2200 echoes…

Edit: I’ve run through 33 last hopes now with a net result of 10 lenses. This really p***ses me off. I think I’m going to Hunter’s Island too.
edited by SmallFish on 11/3/2012

Can you pls remind me, what was the grind at Hunter’s Keep?

I’ve run through 20 Last Hopes now, with 7 Black Lenses as result. This is pretty sucky, I feel. Perhaps I should just sell everything now for about 2200 echoes…

Edit: I’ve run through 33 last hopes now with a net result of 10 lenses. This really p***ses me off. I think I’m going to Hunter’s Island too.
edited by SmallFish on 11/3/2012[/quote]

Rare successes[color=#332200] on take your net to the well gets you searing enigmas, goods worth 62.5 E[/color]
edited by Aximillio on 11/3/2012