I hope you can help me with two newbie questions about Forgotten Quarter expeditions.
How do you "hinder rivals". The wiki seems to indicate that this is opportunity card based when your rivals’ progress is 3-9 and the airs of the Forgotten Quarter are in the proper range. The quote from the wiki pages says, "One is the Airs-dependent cards that show up everyy now and then…" However, while on an expedition, you do not have any opportunity cards displayed. Are you supposed to exit the expedition page and get back to the main Base-Camp page to see the cards? If the rivals’ progress is between 3-9 and you want to hinder them, is the best approach to monitor the airs of the Forgotten Quarter after each change (I am familiar with the scrapbook trick to reveal these airs) and, if they are in the necessary range (90-100 for Dr. Orthos and 80-90 for Virginia), exit the expedition page, go to the Base-Camp page and start clicking through cards?
The expeditions wiki page has a chart that shows "Average Progress to 10 Rivals progress". This varies as a function of the approach taken and your watchful stat level. I have completed the Deep Blue Heaven expedition twice. Once, I barely made it (rivals progress =9) and once I made it easily (RP = 4). This difference was probably just the randomness factor. For the next expedition, Tomb of Seven, I need to get to 30 progress and I am worried. My watchful is 95 and I 100% the cautious approach. I have a mood card that would allow me to bump my watchful to 125. I was hoping that I could use the bold approach but my percent chance of success for each step would be about 75% even with the stat boost. So this brings me to my question. According to the aforementioned wiki table, I would appear to have a greater likelihood of beating my rivals if I use the cautious approach without the stat boost than I would with the stat boost and a bold approach. According to this table, a cautious approach with 100% chance at each step yields an Average Progress to 10 Rivals progress of 36 (I win) while a bold approach with a 75% chance yields about 27 (rival wins). Am I looking at this correctly? In fact, even using a 100% success and a bold approach, I get the same Average Progress to 10 Rivals progress of 36 so there is no benefit to success from using the bold approach. It would seem the only benefit to the bold approach is reducing the number of actions needed although a bold approach uses more supplies which would take more actions to generate. Am I analyzing the cautious vs. bold approach at 100% correctly?
"One is the Airs-dependent cards that show up every now and then"
It’s not actually a card, it’s an option in the storylet. No need to hop in and out of the expedition for cards.
For 2): On a success, each crate of supplies you spend gets you 1 Archaeologist’s Progress. Assuming no failures, you always spend the same amount of supplies on a given expedition. So Tomb of Seven (needing 30 progress) with 100% cautious success = 30 actions and 30 supplies. With 100% bold success = 15 actions and 30 supplies. edited by Lady Sapho Byron on 9/15/2021
The guide’s wording is incorrect (or possibly outdated). The options to hinder Rivals appear based on Airs of the Forgotten Quarter. They are not cards, they are options in the regular Expedition storylet. They will simply appear if the Airs and Rival’s Progress are aligned.
I haven’t closely examined the numbers, but what you’re describing is likely to be true. I’m not entirely surprised that the Mood and riskier approach end up canceling each other out. The longer Expeditions are targeted at a higher Watchful than what your character has. Don’t let that deter you though, that just means it’s harder, but not impossible. Especially for a quest expedition like Tomb of Seven.
I’ll point out something important, though: If your Rival’s Progress gets to 10, you can confront them at the cost of Expedition Supplies. And there’s no downside to packing more supplies than you need; any unused supplies at the end of an Expedition are retained and can be used on future expeditions. So if you’re worried about Rivals, I would just plan that a confrontation might be what has to happen and pack 40 or 45 supplies when you head out.
The nature of a wiki is that anyone can edit it, even you. You don’t even need to create a login if you don’t mind your IP address being shown in the edit history
Hindering Rivals is expensive in terms of supplies, so the solution is to have plenty on hand. If you need to take that step, it throws them back from 8 or 9 to around 3 (sorry, my memory is fuzzy, it’s a while ago).
I had the very devil of a time with the Tomb of the Seven. A mountain of supplies (90, IIRC), and I did so badly, there were just a handful left at the end. I never got the airs for “A Sign” and had to beat off rivals twice. The RNG just hated the ground I walked on.
Anyway: stock up liberally. Personally, I’d not go down the route of extending the expedition by playing safe, since the rivals progress anyway depending on airs, and it can bite you regardless. But your choice.
90!!! The RNG went well beyond hate to utter loathing there.
I mostly go in with 10-15 over requirements and have not failed any. Nor bought extra supplies with fate, which is an option for the desperate.
My current thing is the Crimson Petals- expensive, but I keep hoping for night whispers. The wiki says it’s an “alternative” success not a “rare” success but I am beginning to doubt that.
To dive a little bit into the math of cautious, bold, or buccaneering expeditions: they spend 1, 2, or 3 supplies, respectively, but each take one action. The reason to want the more expensive one is to spend fewer actions overall.
There’s one other notable difference: if you fail the Watchful check, for any of them, you waste the supplies and gain Rivals’ Progress. For bold and buccaneering, each success gains Archaeologist’s Progress and has a 50% chance to gain Rivals’ Progress as well.
I think it’s less obvious with the change so that stats that don’t change also don’t display, but cautious approaches have the extra benefit of only having a 50% chance to trigger the 50% chance of rivals, so it’s actually only 25% chance per action of getting Rivals’ Progress.
The result is the following, if you can guarantee success on all the checks:
Cautious: 1 action, 1 supply, 25% Rivals’ Progress (0.25 per supply on average)
Bold: 1 action, 2 supplies, 50% Rivals’ Progress (0.25 per supply on average)
Buccaneering: 1 action, 3 supplies, 50% Rivals’ Progress (0.33 per supply on average)
That means cautious is slower but at least as safe as bold, while buccaneering is less likely to get you caught by rivals as long as you can 100% pass the Watchful check.
It is also possible (though perhaps only if the RNG really, really hates you) to go through an entire expedition without having the opportunity to hinder your opponents. At all. And end up losing the investment (in my case 40 supplies.) No, there was no final option to pay supplies to win.