Looks fine to me.
Oh, wow. I’m stupid. I was clicking on Appalling Secrets the entire time.
headdesk
In everyone’s experience with ToT what would be the best way to get visions of the surface?
My thoughts at the moment are to grind for Romantic Notions at Polythreme and turn them into Visions 500 to 105 at a time. You can also get a Bandaged Raven and use that card for 3 Visions a turn.
If you’ve got some honey, then the option to send an invite to the Surface in exchange for 2 to 4 Visions is also nice, but is less profitable in terms of Visions per action than Polythreme, if you exclude actions getting to the island.
If you already need to be in Polythreme for other reasons, that’s a good way to go about it, but otherwise, the trip to and fro will likely add too many actions to be efficient.
For most Tier 3 items, your best bet will often be to find the closest item available through Thefts of Particular Character or the Iron Box, and then convert as needed. In this case, I’d recommend Journals of Infamy through Thefts, and then two conversions to get you to Visions.
Thanks for the information. it almost sounded like the bandaged raven was the quickest way.
Is there a list of possible item conversions any place?
Converting from Journals of Infamy is less efficient than the "Perhaps you miss someone on the Surface" option in the Veilgarden.[li]
Getting 51 VotS that way requires 24 actions(4 uses of Gang o’ Hoodlums, 2 to make them Journals, 1 to make it Plaques, and 1 to make it Visions) and nets you a Correspondence Plaque.
In order for the Veilgarden option to give those results, the luck check would have to be 50%(17 actions at an average of 3 VotS a piece and 7 actions for the honey needed), which is unlikely given that it’s "pretty good odds."
Personally I’m going to head to Polythreme because I’m going to need somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,500 Visions of the Surface and the actions to make it there seem petty in comparison to month’s worth of actions I’m going to have to spend there.
Unless of course you became an exceptional person then you could cut that time in half to two weeks. That is if you were to go that route.
While this used to be the case, it is unfortunately no longer so. There are only 96 actions in a 16 hour waking day, so I’d only get an extra 10 actions a day from when I first get up in the morning; 20 if I play when my dog gets me up in the middle of the night. It would hardly double my efforts as long as I’m checking in every hour & 40 minutes, which I try to do.[li]
Yeah, assuming that you were an exceptional friend, you could cut back your time investment and only check in about every three hours, but unless you check in during your sleep cycle (Sometimes I do, if the cat or something wakes me up) you’re not benefiting significantly. Still, I find it helps me not to lose too much traction if I get distracted for more than an hour and a half.
Interesting.
I’d price things out a little differently–you don’t use up all of that Casing, so assuming you’re stealing a large amount, I’d say that you’re spending 21.8 actions for those 51 VotS. Still, as long as the "pretty good odds" are at least 64% (which is almost certainly the case), sending a message to the Surface is a better option. In fact, as long as the odds are at least 73%, it’s a better option than going to Polythreme as well.
Other than the ones that provide certifiable scraps, I haven’t really looked at the Surface options. Are there any other hidden gems like this?
Going from Deal with the Devil to Room Number at the Royal Beth is now “it could go either way.”
According to my big confusing spreadsheet that’s bringing the actions/enigma up by about 10, from ~56 to ~66. At least, if nothing else has changed.
Oh good, I did math too and mine agrees with you. (Using 70% for “pretty good odds,” the first three steps, and 50% for the last three.) Since my Fidgeting Writer math has been so foolishly cargo-cult and unthinking until last night, it’s a relief to hear it.
(That’s if you have all the materials on hand, of course. If you have to start from scratch you’re better going the bulk route, which is about 64 actions per Enigma assuming 4.5 Enigmas per trip to the Machine.)
Indeed… I just finished converting 98 Deals with a Devil, and ended up with only 53 Room Numbers. Not a statistically significant sample, but it does suggest it’s been adjusted down.
That said, this step has always been an odd one - it seems to have historically been a ~60% chance, in contrast with the 70% steps preceding it and the 50% steps following. Perhaps (and this is pure speculation) it’s been lowered to 55%, putting it into the range of the “pretty good odds” description while actually being slightly better. Eh. We shall see.
I have just created 30 Enigmas via the Fidgeting Writer, out of 503 Tales of Terror.
I didn’t keep track of actions, because I was often on my tablet, but that was 16.8 Tales of Terror per Enigma. This is significantly under the 70/70/70/50/50/50 calculation (23.3 Tales of Terror/Enigma), or even putting the Deal with the Devil → Room Number at 60% (19.4). However, I had some incredibly good luck with my last five, which took 17 Tales of Terror for 3 Enigmas and then just 2 for 2. Before then, I was exactly at 19.4 Tales/Enigma, and was under 23.3 for all except my first Enigma.
Again, I didn’t keep track of the Deal → Room conversion separately, but these results are more consistent with that being 60% than 50%. For what that’s worth given the relatively small sample size.
edited by an_ocelot on 12/22/2013
Well good day to everyone.
At least I think it’s day…
I myself have been pursuing the case, and in an attempt to get some harder numbers I burned my small stockpile of tales of terror.
I’m not yet done, but the numbers so far have been.
354 Tales of Terror
274 A Sense of Déjà Vu | 77%
199 A Glimpse of Something Larger | 72% - Making waves when you lose
141 A Deal with a Devil | 71%
94 Room Number at the Royal Beth | 66.6%
61 Last hope of a Fidgeting Writer | 65%
24 Lens of Black glass | 39%
13 Coruscating Souls | 54%
So all in all total cost
1160 actions not including the 10 or so actions required to get some of the components I was low on.
1099.5 echos
Net Gain
2963 echos
Please feel free to add these numbers to your own and share them, as this sample size is not large enough to be conclusive.
edited by TheDreamer on 4/6/2014
19,000 Tales of Terror turned into 13,428 Senses of Déjà Vu
for a conversion rate of 0.7067368421052632
I think it’s safe to say that .7 is The Number.
If you want more data points than that, I don’t know what else to give you.
edited by Nigel Overstreet on 2/9/2015