Or 10 Levels at a time, at the highest tier of that card. Which also gives 10 levels of Church and Constables. That’s 700 cp each at high levels. Granted - this option costs 40 echos. I admit it’s not the best way to take advantage of that system due to high price… But coincidentally I am going to use this card’s option several times for other reasons and this calculation came at the right time!
[quote=Jeremy Avalon]Out of curiosity, how does using ‘Swap Incendiary Gossip’ compare to grinding Jade?[/quote]Well, you use the Jade to buy Incendiary Gossip (in Coil 1 of the Labyrinth, "Take some refreshment"). Yes, if you only need a few Identities Uncovered and can wait for the card, great, but it’s not really grindable in bulk since it’s 1 Gossip at a time and the card is Very Infrequent (half as frequent as Standard).
Right. I meant 2.40 echos via "Calling in Favors" (swapping connections with 120 bottles of 1882 wine).
So at Temple club, reduction of 44 cp instead of 120 cp, for 2.50 of echos instead of 2.40 echos is pretty sweet
[quote=metasynthie]I’ve never gotten more than 451 jade from Unfinished Business, so I think the cap of 501 is overestimated or has been reduced. Still, even with a Persuasive mood, profession and destiny I think Unfinished Business comes out a bit ahead. I suppose if you got ALL your Society connection from being a Shepherd of Souls, 50 CP at a time, Temple Club would jump ahead, but that’s not really a reliable grind.[/quote]Or if you were generating it from giving lectures at Hallowmas, or some other incidental thing that you wanted to burn.
Right. I meant 2.40 echos via "Calling in Favors" (swapping connections with 120 bottles of 1882 wine).[/quote]Phew! Yes, I agree with you, I’m just glad I didn’t give the wrong impression!
Psst… just in case you are ever tempted, it’s been found to gives 500 CP of each – which is 10 levels at high levels, since all qualities besides the main attributes stop pyramiding and flatten out at 50, not 70. So it’s better than the cheaper option in terms of taking 1 action instead of 10 to get that amount – but it also costs 2x the materials per CP.
[quote=metasynthie]
Psst… just in case you are ever tempted, it’s been found to gives 500 CP of each – which is 10 levels at high levels, since all qualities besides the main attributes stop pyramiding and flatten out at 50, not 70. So it’s better than the cheaper option in terms of taking 1 action instead of 10 to get that amount – but it also costs 2x the materials per CP.[/quote]
50?
Ha… Always thought it stopped at 70, like stats.
Thanks for the warning, and correction.
I apologise if I am missing something truly obvious but what is the advantage of the FW grind seeing that in the limit, the EPA is less than the the Affair of the Box?
Historically, FW has been trumpeted as genuinely profitable but unappealing due to variance and hence attractive to people who could hold off the emotional aspect and keep the mind on the stats. The extent to which the actions required to gather the resources affect the “raw” profitability had been debated but, if I am not misreading it, an_ocelot’s spreadsheet makes a very good case that the long term profitability, accounting for resource gathering, is mediocre…
One thing to bear in mind is that FW was nerfed a while back. The odds used to be better. I don’t recall if the nerf was enough to push it below AotB, or if it was already there, but the situation has changed.
As I understand, an_ocelot’s spreadsheet shows estimate for sustained FW grind without acquiring resources by other means. However, if you alredy have gathered a fair amount of required resources by doing something else, for example rare successes from item conversions, trading favours with revolutionaries in the Flit (the echoes of Hallowmas) or gradually amassing from opportunity cards (exchanging incendiary gossip, for example), the EPA would be better. Not by a lot, but still. Also, in this case you may get a bit less mental fatigue, as if you haven’t associated you actions while getting all said stuff with FW, you would have believed that you’ve already profited from them somehow, and now you can reinvest your gains and profit again. Though that mostly depends on your mindset.
Besides that, you may always get lucky =)
It calculates both the EPA if you don’t have to go shopping (“EPA based on carousel only”) and if you do (“EPA based on total actions”). And yeah, if you already have the stuff lying around from other things, it’s a lot higher–2.75 EPA for Coruscating Souls.
I make the Fidgeting Writer 1.62 EPA with shopping–that’s an estimate based on the Wiki reported range for Unfinished Business for Jade, and the hideously complex Polythreme stuff might be better for Visions of the Surface, but see: hideously complex (if anyone can reduce it to a formula, please do!). Affair of the Box is 1.64 EPA. So they’re very close, and indeed, you might get lucky. Regardless, if you like to vary things up, it’s an option on par with AotB.
[quote=RandomWalker]One thing to bear in mind is that FW was nerfed a while back. The odds used to be better. I don’t recall if the nerf was enough to push it below AotB, or if it was already there, but the situation has changed.[/quote]Also: do we really know that, or were people just inferring better odds based on smaller data sets? (Edit: excuse me, going back through the thread, I see that one of the steps was dropped in odds, but probably by 10 percentage points, so I’m not sure it was "nerf" levels.)
edited by an_ocelot on 3/16/2016
[quote=an_ocelot]excuse me, going back through the thread, I see that one of the steps was dropped in odds, but probably by 10 percentage points, so I’m not sure it was "nerf" levels.)
edited by an_ocelot on 3/16/2016[/quote]
Well, I can’t remember the exact details of the change, and don’t know the numbers before and after. That being said, if the odds used to be 70% x 3, 60%, 55% x 3, and one of those last 55%s changed to 45%, then the odds of taking a ToT to a Coruscating Soul went from 3.4% to 2.8% (if my mathematics are right, which isn’t always the case).
a) 70% x 70% x 70% x 65% x 55% x 55% x 55% = 3.424%
b) 70% x 70% x 70% x 65% x 55% x 55% x 45% = 2.8015%
If that were the case, and you did many thousands of runs, you would, on average, get a few less souls per thousand
1000 runs with a)'s odds = 34.24 coruscating souls (rounded to 10700 echoes)
1000 runs with b)'s odds = 28.015 coruscating souls (rounded to 8755 echoes)
Cost difference = 1945 echoes
1945 / 10700 = 18% (roughly)
I’d consider dropping the EPA by almost a fifth to be a nerf, particularly if it drops it from being number 1 common grind to number 2.
Of course, my maths may be well off, in which case I apologise to all concerned.
People thought that the last steps were 55% based on data gathering, but for that to have been the case, there would’ve had to have been a separate Luck system created just for this, because ordinarily StoryNexus Luck challenges work in steps of 10 (according to people who created worlds in SN). So whether it was a change from 55% to 50% or whether there was just insufficient data to show that it was really 50% is unclear. I use 70% for the first three steps, 60% for the middle, and 50% for the last three, which seem to be the generally-accepted numbers now.
The 10-points change I referred to was the step right in the middle, which used to be "pretty good odds" (70%) and went to "either way" (which could be 60% or 50% in SN terms, and we believe to be 60%).
edited by an_ocelot on 3/16/2016
[quote=an_ocelot]People thought that the last steps were 55% based on data gathering, but for that to have been the case, there would’ve had to have been a separate Luck system created just for this, because ordinarily StoryNexus Luck challenges work in steps of 10 (according to people who created worlds in SN). So whether it was a change from 55% to 50% or whether there was just insufficient data to show that it was really 50% is unclear. I use 70, 70, 70, 60, 50, 50, and 50, which seem to be the generally-accepted numbers now.
The 10-points change I referred to was the step right in the middle, which used to be "pretty good odds" (70%) and went to "either way" (which could be 60% or 50% in SN terms, and we believe to be 60%).
edited by an_ocelot on 3/16/2016
edited by an_ocelot on 3/16/2016[/quote]
Ah - apologies. I still consider a drop on the return of 14% to be significant.
About that–I make it 12% by changing the spreadsheet, but ballpark, yeah. Certainly enough to make it better in the long run over AotB, but not enough to make it wildly profitable, you know?
Edited again: Just see below. I apologize for my mistakes.
Edit: filled with errors. I misunderstood how An_Ocelot was calculating Jade generation and am re-checking my math on the rest.
Another thing to note, is that An_Ocelot’s excellent (and frequently consulted) spreadsheet, calculates costs from a "post-everything" perspective. This makes sense because most players looking at really long grinds may be past things like the Court or the University. However, the court has what may be the best grind for Jade (1.35 Epa) and the University has the University/Flit Investigating grind. I’m not sure about the rate of return in the Temple Club, but a 35% increase in Jade acquisition is nothing to scoff at. In the Investigating grind, mining Clues and converting them to T3 is almost exactly 1.5 Epa (according to my calculations). Even using the T3 carousel may not make it less efficient then mining Jade. And for getting Tales, and Plaques, Clue mining is strictly superior to Thefts.
TLDR: The math in An_Ocelot’s guide was intended for anyone. It was certainly the best choice for the project. But, depending on where you are, you may have more lucrative ways of getting various components. Those ways can skew your math tremendously.
Edited a mistake.
edited by MrBurnside on 3/16/2016
edited by MrBurnside on 3/17/2016
edited by MrBurnside on 3/17/2016
edited by MrBurnside on 3/17/2016
MrBurnside, great, thanks–I’ll update the spreadsheet with a link to this! (Unfinished Business for Jade is comparable but uncertain, I mean.)
edited by an_ocelot on 3/17/2016
Hey MrBurnside–I’ve tried my best to get this right, I don’t have access to the relevant University storylet any more, but I make University grinding at 1.69 EPA, to 1.62 for Thefts of a Particular Character. I might be missing something! Would you mind checking it out?
edited by an_ocelot on 3/17/2016
Well… we may have both made some mistakes. First of all I misunderstood what you meant by "assumes a conservative average." My fault for not reading more closely. I didn’t realize you meant "conservative per action" not "we’re not sure of the range, but are making a conservative estimate." Entirely my mistake.
Before we go any further, however, I do think not including lockable content makes more sense then including it. As you wrote up-thread, you yourself are already past it. I imagine many forum-goers are. If it’s supposed to be of use to the largest number of people, it may be best to not include these except as a sidebar. I hope I didn’t come across as demeaning the work you put into the spreadsheet, or the value it provides. I only intended to provide context as to how FW could be more profitable to some, then it is to others.
Ok. On to the math!
My math for thefts comes out to 1.264 Epa based on:
Value of items/(Cost in casing/(casing per round of Gang of Hoodlums /Action cost of Gang of Hoodlums)+action for the actual theft)
12.5/(32/(18/5)+1)=1.264
I’m not sure how it could be higher, but I may be missing something.
For the Uni/Flit an abbreviated calculation would work like this:
Success rate of final check [ CClues per Interview of the Dept… * # of actions to reach 5 investigating + 270] / (# of actions to reach 5 investigating +1 for the check) + failure rate [ Success rate of final check ( etc etc etc )
The key is that the number of actions needed to get up to 15 cps changes after each successive failure and each failure takes a turn that gets added to the total number of turns. This is because the Interview the Dept action gives 4cps but each failure takes away 5cps. The (abbreviated) arithmetic goes like this:
.7(534+270)/5 + .3[.7(535+270)/7 + .3(53*7+270)/10] = 89 cclues per action (roughly)
It could keep spiraling down the failure rate drain, but diminishing returns means that it evens out around 87 or so.
After the action cost to turn 2379 Cryptic Clues to JofI or TofT (roughly 5.75 turns) is added the actions to get them (roughly 27.4) and all that is placed under the payout 52.5 Echoes you get 1.58 Epa.
My 1.5 estimate may have been based on an estimated cost of getting plaques. It may also have been including menace reduction. I honestly can’t remember. I’ve been doing a lot of arithmetic lately and I sometimes get mixed up.
edited by MrBurnside on 3/17/2016
edited by MrBurnside on 3/17/2016