I know that it says on some options that the results scale to your stats but I find them very random. I quite like ‘Oi! You stepped on my invisible rat!’ the 2.5 echo rare result turns up often enough and the range on the other items means that most of the time the echo value compares favourably to London actions.
If you have a strange catch and have got all the weapons from the Wreckers Cove I would use “Follow them to the Well” unless you need to give it to the Chef or Curate to manage your menaces.
Hey, the non-equipment rewards from the Wreckers Cove aren’t that bad. The festival is an easy way to acquire some stuff that would take a bit of grinding otherwise.
They’re not too bad, but at a minimum of 11 actions with no other reward (or more with scaling rewards and menaces), and needing to spend additional resources to get anything above the crate of fabrics, they’re not terribly great from an epa perspective.
Not sure about the festival actions for maxed out characters, since most of them scale with stats, but around the 150s they’re also ok but definitely inferior to top London grinds for pure epa.
What kills the WC as a grind is the amount of luck you need to have for it to be anywhere near decent:
- first the RNG needs to allow you to use cartography items enough times to raise your Running Battle to what you need (and considering the last point, even higher than that)[/li][li]than you need to meet the Lady in a reasonable timeframe (I had a case where I burned more actions on that than on fishing itself)[/li][li]and finally your Catch level must stay at a decent level when moving to the Cove (and I have seen it drop by 4 levels)
It is pretty embarrassing, really.
Apparently I am such a complex person with so many quirks that I just can’t get my Catch low enough to grab Mutersalt or Eloith. Or maybe I am just good at fishing.
I feel better now.
[quote=marcmagus]
Not sure about the festival actions for maxed out characters, since most of them scale with stats, but around the 150s they’re also ok but definitely inferior to top London grinds for pure epa.[/quote]
They are downright horrendous for EPA, since the "scale" is random and common results include things like skyrocketing Wounds + 1 Incendiary Gossip / Appalling Secret even at 200+ stats.
Good for other players in dealing with Nightmare, however, especially for those who rely on Laudanum or hate social actions. Wounds less so, so I recommend leaving the island after you get rid of Nightmares.
edited by Estelle Knoht on 8/23/2015
Incidentally, for anyone who a) has all the unique items, b) loves grinding, c) does not get frustrated by RNG and d) is driven to seek out every last bit of lore, here is a challenge:
Strange Catch has a nice description for each level. The Wiki documents 11 levels. Mathematically, it’s possible to have at most 12 levels. To get the last level you need every single turn of Fishing to have the option to Find an isolated cove.
You should have said something like "Maybe level 12 is Mr Eaten! Paramount Presence!" and then people would have burnt down their home to do it.:)
From what I’ve gathered during the chaos of this year’s Festival, I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to make a moderate profit off of it. It just requires an ungodly amount of forward planning and dumb luck. The option to sacrifice your catch to the well seems to be a fair option if you don’t have the max amount of Extraordinary Implications for the option. Not only does the well not require the use of items to increase Running Battle… above 5, but the Extraordinary Implications can be traded out for extra Uncanny Incunabulum. Non-catch options such as calling out Mrs. Plenty with Identities Uncovered! tends to have a profit of 1.5 to 2 echoes if fate serves you right, and a few other options that spring up have the off chance of netting you 1.5 echoes or more in Appalling Secrets, Romantic Notions, Tales of Terror!, Zee-Stories, and possibly a few other items I can’t remember at the moment. Overall it’s still not quite that good as a source of echoes and resources (at least as an optimal one), but if you’re wanting to get a bit of new content or lore without absolutely breaking your income then it’s not the worst thing to be doing with your time so long as your okay with some planning and counting on the luck of the RNG.
edited by Sir Joseph Marlen on 8/23/2015
edited by Sir Joseph Marlen on 8/23/2015
[quote=genesis]
Strange Catch has a nice description for each level. The Wiki documents 11 levels. Mathematically, it’s possible to have at most 12 levels. To get the last level you need every single turn of Fishing to have the option to Find an isolated cove.[/quote]
Even with re-using a strange catch as bait to retain half your running battle?
Ah, no. I forgot to take that into account. Thank you for pointing that out. I’ll have a think about it but in any case the point was that there are level(s) left to unlock :)
That is going to be very tricky. I just had an attempt with an alt, got to Strange Catch 10 on my first trip, threw it back to start with 5 and didn’t get a single opportunity to spend items so ended up at SC 8.
Looking at the numbers, the highest you can get is 14.
The maximum catch for a single run is 12 (either 8 or 9 isolated coves, or 7 coves and two zailor stories). Toss that back in to start at catch 6 (21 CP), add on a run where you get a full set of isolated coves and you just squeak into catch 14 (requires 105 CP, you’ll have 111 CP).
Throwing that back in won’t get you enough CP to boost a perfect run into catch 15 (you’d need 120 CP and only have 118 CP).
Each isolated cove seems to be a 1 in 5 chance. Keeping things simple, you need 17 successes out of 18 attempts (it is very slightly easier than that, but not much).
Looking online, that puts the chance of success at around 2x10^-11. Or in more normal terms, 2 successes in 100,000,000,000 attempts (I think).
Of course, if you want to see what 14 pickings in the cove converts to, you’ll have to try a lot more times then that. Good luck.
How does one get Mutersalts? I’ve gotten the items above it and below it, but it continues to elude me. My 3 Catch translated to 2 Cove, and my 5 Catch translated to 4 Cove. Since you need 3 Cove to get Mutersalts, do I need 4 Catch? or some fraction between 3 and 4 Catch? Argh.
edited by Starry Wisdom on 8/24/2015
Your best bet is to get catch 5, 4, or 3 and keep trying. The drop in catch value is random, so keep trying and you’ll get there.
[quote=Starry Wisdom]How does one get Mutersalts? I’ve gotten the items above it and below it, but it continues to elude me. My 3 Catch translated to 2 Cove, and my 5 Catch translated to 4 Cove. Since you need 3 Cove to get Mutersalts, do I need 4 Catch? or some fraction between 3 and 4 Catch? Argh.
edited by Starry Wisdom on 8/24/2015[/quote]
Catch reduction on entering the cove is random between 0 and 4, I think. Also, Murphy’s Law applies, as my three or four attempts to get a reduction by 1 to get the Mutersalt didn’t get me any reduction at all, while my 8 catch was promptly reduced to 5.
I’m trying for the higher catches (12 and up) so I’ve been throwing back every catch I get. I threw back a catch with a running battle value of 7 and got, to my surprise, a running battle value of 4. So I figured the wiki was wrong and throw it back rounds the value up, not down. But then I threw back a strange catch with a value of 9 and got 4 again, and just now I threw back catch 11 and got catch 6. Anyone else had this happen to them? Is this a bug?
edited by Angus Turner on 8/24/2015
So after a really terrible week where I lost my soul, got stabbed to death by assassins, and found a sanity-destroying eyeless skull all in the same day, I’ve managed to get all of the Cove weapons collected in a relatively painless amount of time, had my fill of delicious seafood and well-induced whispers of madness, and am heading home to London.
Did you say Mr Eaten?!
I was a very new player last year and the festival was a great way to get useful weapons, leave London, and find a destiny. It also seemed like a decent source of items/echoes.
It’s definitely less interesting now that my stats are capped and I spent way too much energy building quirks. I did finally get the guinea pig, which I was unable to get as a new player. It’s not especially exciting if you’re a POSI and have all the unique items, but it IS great for new players. If nothing else, it introduces them to the evil of the RNG. :)
Hey guys, how do I raise Picking Through the Wreckers’ Cove ?
I need it 7 for guinea pig but I only have 4
edited by Crnogorac on 8/27/2015
You’ll have to take your pick of the options given and head back to the cove.
In order to get your catch above 5, you need to cash in items when fishing - zee stories and partial maps (the maps in particular). Not all runs can get you enough catch to get the guinea pig. Once you’ve gotten a decent catch, trade it in and see how much picking it turns into.
The conversion between catch and picking is random, so keep trying. You can turn your catch into the chef or the preacher to get more partial maps and zee stories if you run low.