Hmm. Got the rare success at Hunter’s Keep in my second run. This heals some of the trauma from the Fidgeting Writer. :) Honestly, the success rate for my end-run efforts was so horrible for the last 2-3 runs I would have liked to smash something.
Edit: Heh, got a second Enigma on my fourth run. Nice place, this. :)
edited by SmallFish on 11/6/2012
Well, I am disappointed. Moreso, I am in fact quite angry about the results of my second run with The Fidgeting Writter.
Step # %
Tale of Terror 429 71.56%
A Sense of Déjà Vu 307 70.68%
Glimpse of Something Larger 217 74.65%
Deal with a Devil 162 70.99%
Room Number at the Royal Beth 115 52.17%
Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer 60 40.00%
Lens of Black Glass 24 37.50%
9 Coruscating Souls
I spent over thirteen hundred actions on this run, not including gathering the needed materials or recuperating from the wounds the run caused, and wound up with an average of € 1.19 per action.
To see why this both angers and disappoints me, you must understand that my initial run started with barely a third of the Tales of Terror (172) and in the end netted me more souls (12) and averaged more than five echos per action. It also of course, took less than half the actions and therefor half the time.
As this rather starkly demonstrates how widely varied the rewards of this storylet can be, I can quite readily understand why some people have sworn never to touch it again.
[quote=Abraham Bounty]Well, I am disappointed. Moreso, I am in fact quite angry about the results of my second run with The Fidgeting Writter.
Step # %
Tale of Terror 429 71.56%
A Sense of Déjà Vu 307 70.68%
Glimpse of Something Larger 217 74.65%
Deal with a Devil 162 70.99%
Room Number at the Royal Beth 115 52.17%
Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer 60 40.00%
Lens of Black Glass 24 37.50%
9 Coruscating Souls
I spent over thirteen hundred actions on this run, not including gathering the needed materials or recuperating from the wounds the run caused, and wound up with an average of € 1.19 per action.
To see why this both angers and disappoints me, you must understand that my initial run started with barely a third of the Tales of Terror (172) and in the end netted me more souls (12) and averaged more than five echos per action. It also of course, took less than half the actions and therefor half the time.
As this rather starkly demonstrates how widely varied the rewards of this storylet can be, I can quite readily understand why some people have sworn never to touch it again.[/quote]
Yup. I know that feeling.
I will be doing another (and most likely final) Fidgeting Writer run of a scant 100 Tales of Terror. My latest run had just over a 2% Coruscating Soul rate overall so at the same rate, I should achieve 2 Coruscating Souls. Since all I want is one from this run, that is I hope a sufficient margin of error.
My first run was exceptionally lucrative. My second run had a lower rate of profit than other options I could have been employing as a max stated Person of Some Importance. I expect my third run to fall somewhere between the two.
In case anyone’s still interested in data, here are my figures, which seem largely in line with the progress others have reported:
800x Tale of Terror
589x A Sense of Deja Vu (73.625%)
426x A Glimpse of Something Larger (72.326%)
311x A Deal with the Devil (73.005%)
201x Room Number at the Royal Beth (64.630%)
111x Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer (55.224%)
63x Lens of Black Glass (56.757%)
30x Coruscating Souls (47.619%)
I’m seriously considering stopping at the Lens stage next time. The goods you get are worth 150 echoes, versus a shot at 312.5 for the soul. That works out to an average advantage of just around 3.75 echoes per lens from pressing onward (assuming a 50% success rate). Or, to put it another way, you need to get over a 48.78% success rate on the final conversion to make a bigger profit than you would from simply cashing in. Over the long run the coruscating souls will likely be worth more, but it doesn’t seem worth the stress when converting a relatively small quantity.
I did a run early in November and forgot to report it.
Now, I’m sure the random number generator is totally server side (cheating would otherwise be quite simple) so the computer or browser used should not matter, and yet… I got much better results for the turns I played on my parents’ pc when I was visiting them (I did about 50 A Deal with the Devil actions there).
I’ve done smaller runs before and I have always had bad luck (although I did not keep track those times and the human mind is easily tricked).
Same for ‘I’ve brought something for you to try, dear’; I’ve never had a single success with this card and I’ve been getting it for over three months now… 30+ times and not a single succes… And the card text says it could go either way…
Anyway; here are my stats:
Tale of Terror - Did not track these unfortunately
100 x A Sense of Deja Vu
70 x A Glimpse of Something Larger (70.00%)
61 x A Deal with the Devil (87.14%)
41 x Room Number at the Royal Beth (67.21%)
22 x Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer (53.66%)
7 x Lens of Black Glass (31.82%)
4 x Coruscating Souls (57.14%)
I’m now spending my time in Spite, grinding Survivor of the Affair of the Box. If it would be easier to grind the The Fidgeting Writer (a Try This Again button would help) then I might do another run just to see if I’d get very different stats.
And speaking of making grinding easier; I realise this would take quite a lot of effort but I’d love it if storylets that have a set maximum of times you can play them before hitting the boundary and having to move on to the next one (like Doing the Rounds, etc.) would have also a button to play it exactly that many times. This only works if there are no random results of course. But for Doing the Rounds, etc. it would just give me my increase in A Boxful of Intrigue, allowing me to move on after one click instead of having to play the storylet three times.
[quote=Vyrlokar]I’m grinding an overgoat too, and I’ve found that the most lucrative thing to do right now is this little story. Check my sig for my numbers. I’m currently at 18 brilliant Souls, having spent 1415 actions, and 1307 echoes worth of goods, for a total benefit/action of 3.05159010600707 echoes/action (2.19035176403603 echoes action once you take into account the actions needed to grind the materials, instead of their cost) [The link at my sig is constantly updated thanks to Google Docs magic]. With my percentages, it’s worth following the story until the end.
Current success percentages:
Tale of Terror->Sense of Deja Vu: 72.5738396624472%
Sense of Deja Vu->Glimpse of something larger: 72.6726726726727%
Glimpse of something larger->Deal with a Devil: 74.8936170212766%
Deal with a Devil->A Room Number at the Royal Beth: 61.9318181818182%
A Room Number at the Royal Beth->The Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer: 50.4587155963303%
The Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer->A Lens of Black Glass: 60%
A Lens of Black Glass-> Coruscating Soul: 54.5454545454545%
Given the data on my sig, could any armchair statistician calculate the confidence intervals and standard deviation for these percentages? Been a while for me.
edited by Vyrlokar on 4/8/2012[/quote]
My numbers for 1200 Tales are somewhere on Page 3. In short, I’m gonna combine the combined numbers in your sig, with mine, and I’ll figure out the 95% confidence intervals for individual conversions. In English, that means I’m gonna do some magic, and tell you 95% of the time, your probability of success (given enough attempts) should fall somewhere in this range.
If you want the sum of conversions, multiply the probabilities together. If you want the confidence intervals for the sum of conversions, a quick way would be to find the sum of all the relative uncertainties (the uncertainty, divided by the value itself), and multiply it by the actual sum. I’m not sure whether that’s the best way of doing it, so I’m using basic error propagation techniques I learnt in the science labs.
Tales → Senses: 72.182±0.95%
Senses → Glimpses: 71.246±1.13%
Glimpses → Deals: 70.882±1.46%
Deals → Numbers: 62.038±1.85%
Numbers → Hopes: 53.771±2.41%
Hopes → Lenses: 53.907±3.29%
Lenses → Coruscating Souls: 57.263±4.45%
The total probability, from Tales to Souls is the product of all the raw probabilities, which is 3.754%. The total fractional uncertainty is 26.3%, which means that 95% of the time, the number of Coruscating Souls you should get is 3.754±0.987% of the number of Tales of Terror you started with.
Sorry for being pedantic, but as a budding scientist I’d like to correct this.
The more Tales of Terror you start with, the more accurately you can guess the percentage that turn into Coruscating Souls, but the less accurately you’ll be able to guess the number of souls you’ll end up with. For example, if you start with just one Tale of Terror, you’re guaranteed to get either zero or one souls out of it, so you only have an error of 1 soul. But this is also an uncertainty of 100%, which is not so good. If you start with 1000 tales then you’ll likely end up with 37 souls, plus or minus a few, but it’s a much better percent uncertainty.
The actual probability comes from the binomial distribution. If you start with enough tales, then the binomial distribution is well-approximated by the normal distribution with a standard deviation of sqrt(np(1-p)), where n is the number of tales you have and p is the probability to get a soul from a single tale. If you want the 95% confidence interval (about 2 standard deviations), then starting with n tales you should get 0.0375n ± 0.38sqrt(n) souls. For 1000 tales, this comes out to about 37.5 ± 12 souls, or ± 32%. For 10000 tales, you’d expect 375 ± 38, or ± 10%. Of course the formula breaks down for small n (you can’t get negative souls), at which point you’ll have to take the actual binomial distribution instead of the approximate normal distribution (for example, with n = 95 you get 104% uncertainty). And for very large n the uncertainty will be dominated by the accuracy with which we have currently measured the probability, which I’m guessing is a fair bit better than ± 26% by this point.
Sorry for being pedantic, but as a budding scientist I’d like to correct this.
The more Tales of Terror you start with, the more accurately you can guess the percentage that turn into Coruscating Souls, but the less accurately you’ll be able to guess the number of souls you’ll end up with. For example, if you start with just one Tale of Terror, you’re guaranteed to get either zero or one souls out of it, so you only have an error of 1 soul. But this is also an uncertainty of 100%, which is not so good. If you start with 1000 tales then you’ll likely end up with 37 souls, plus or minus a few, but it’s a much better percent uncertainty.
The actual probability comes from the binomial distribution. If you start with enough tales, then the binomial distribution is well-approximated by the normal distribution with a standard deviation of sqrt(np(1-p)), where n is the number of tales you have and p is the probability to get a soul from a single tale. If you want the 95% confidence interval (about 2 standard deviations), then starting with n tales you should get 0.0375n ± 0.38sqrt(n) souls. For 1000 tales, this comes out to about 37.5 ± 12 souls, or ± 32%. For 10000 tales, you’d expect 375 ± 38, or ± 10%. Of course the formula breaks down for small n (you can’t get negative souls), at which point you’ll have to take the actual binomial distribution instead of the approximate normal distribution (for example, with n = 95 you get 104% uncertainty). And for very large n the uncertainty will be dominated by the accuracy with which we have currently measured the probability, which I’m guessing is a fair bit better than ± 26% by this point.[/quote]
I’m pretty sure I just had a nerdgasm over this. <333
Yes. Thank you, Guy.
Okay, so if I’m starting out with 15,000 Tales of Terror, then by the end of my travails I should have 562.5 souls ± 46.54 or 8.2737% ?
Of course this is entirely theoretical because I believe the method we’ve been using of gathering data is skewed and because I suspect 6 months of doing nothing but turning Tales of Terror into Deja Vu will drive me mad. Well madder.
In any event I hope to have a more definitive numbers by he end of it. Either that or there will be a big puddle of what was once Nigel crying on the floor.
[quote=Nigel Overstreet]Okay, so if I’m starting out with 15,000 Tales of Terror, then by the end of my travails I should have 562.5 souls ± 46.54 or 8.2737% ?
Of course this is entirely theoretical because I believe the method we’ve been using of gathering data is skewed and because I suspect 6 months of doing nothing but turning Tales of Terror into Deja Vu will drive me mad. Well madder.
In any event I hope to have a more definitive numbers by he end of it. Either that or there will be a big puddle of what was once Nigel crying on the floor.[/quote]
That should be right, but if I were you I’d do it in smaller batches. You may get super lucky and only (!) need 14000 Tales of Terror, and you wouldn’t want to do an extra 1000 when you don’t need to. Of course, if I were you I’d give up way before then. Manually grinding for so long is just kind of depressing when you realize a bot could do it just as well.
Converting Tales of Terror is relatively fast, it is after that the real horror starts. The problem is, each time you try to convert a Sense of Deja Vu you end up on the main story screen (because there is no “Try this again” button, only “Onwards!”). So each time you have to reload your inventory, find the item, click on it, try the conversion, end up on the main story screen, open the inventory… it gets old really fast.
edited by Fhoenix on 4/22/2013
This raises an interesting question: to what extent is it ok to automate some of this? It seems like it should be fine to write a script that automatically converts one Tale of Terror (without having to search for it in the inventory and such), but maybe converting 10 tales at a time is going to far. And it’d definitely be a violation of the terms and conditions to have a script that converts one tale every 10 minutes for 6 months (right?). Where’s the line? Or is any script at all a prohibited?
[color=#009900]All scripts are prohibited, including relatively benign ones that e.g. automate outfit-changing, in part because it’s difficult to draw the line, in part because we dislike wasting time on support and finding that the cause of weird behaviour is user scripts. Of course we pursue some sorts of thing more aggressively than others. We can and will delete accounts permanently.[/color]
No. After getting the result screen from the conversion you should click on the “myself” tab instead of clicking Onwards. This will save a little time. I also found that if I swiped my finger on the mouse wheel three times while waiting for my inventory to load, the relevant item would be on the screen.
[quote=Fhoenix]Converting Tales of Terror is relatively fast, it is after that the real horror starts. The problem is, each time you try to convert a Sense of Deja Vu you end up on the main story screen (because there is no “Try this again” button, only “Onwards!”). So each time you have to reload your inventory, find the item, click on it, try the conversion, end up on the main story screen, open the inventory… it gets old really fast.
edited by Fhoenix on 4/22/2013[/quote]
A clear answer. Thanks.
You’ve previously said that the script to display storylet prerequisits was allowed as long as (i) it doesn’t do any kind of automation (ii) the creator is credited so they not we get support requests (iii) everyone using it knows it may break at any point (we will probably be using that freed-up space).
Is this no longer the case?
[quote=Nigel Overstreet]You’ve previously said that the script to display storylet prerequisits was allowed as long as (i) it doesn’t do any kind of automation (ii) the creator is credited so they not we get support requests (iii) everyone using it knows it may break at any point (we will probably be using that freed-up space).
Is this no longer the case?[/quote]
[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]I’m afraid it is unambiguously no longer the case, for the reasons above (this script in particular, or its cousins, have generated their share of time-wasting support issues, (ii) and (iii) in the thread you quote notwithstanding). As I say, we’re not going to pursue this kind of trivial automation aggressively, but you’re basically voiding your warranty.[/color]
Did anything happen to this chunk of content? Because I’ll go to a ToT in my inventory and the option to pursue the case isn’t there.