So after getting my livid bat, I learned that Feducci’s lance is actually best in slot by an enormous margin, and also that I’d have needed to get 2 confessions via notability if I hadn’t gotten the bat. Now I need 4. What’s the best way to put every single action into making waves? Item conversion, or social actions? If there’s a house of chimes-limited action, would anyone be inclined to charity for my sake?
Some considerations:
Item conversions can be massively more or less efficient depending on what your current inventory is. A full side-conversion cycle is around 2 MW per Action on average, but the items that generate waves are not evenly spaced around the cycle. If you have a giant stockpile of Visions of the Surface, you’re better off converting all of those through three steps of the cycle first.
There are a couple of item upconversions that are also really good for making waves, but they are limited by Favors. Again, strongly depends on your current stockpile but they’re pretty good if you have expensive items to burn.
With the remake to dinners, the social action route isn’t great anymore.
If you have access to some way of refreshing your deck, strongly consider dumping your actions into that instead. Several cards (especially lodgings) have options to generate a whole pile of Making Waves at the cost of expensive items. I don’t normally consider them worthwhile, but given the time-limited nature of the season, I have spent half-a-dozen Searing Enigmas on Spiders with zero regrets.
Sadly, I recently sold most of my valuable items for a goat. I hadn’t kept in mind the items-to-MW exchange on certain cards though (since I never use it otherwise), so I’ll be sure to use those.
Is refreshing my deck better than going for 2 MW/action? I’ve already used up my useful side-conversion items.
Oh, damn, I’ve already used my confessions. Didn’t know the new ones were more valuable. Crap.
Sideconverting the tier 3 items is more like 1.4 MW per action, but it’s still probably better than refreshing your deck and hoping to get useful cards. (Even if you use the two-action refresh.) It’s certainly more reliable.
Could be like me and have tons of MW items but no Amanuensis. In which case, card draws are all you need.
Wow, sorry to hear this, mate!
To add to what’s been said: Extraordinary Implications, Stolen Kisses are great, Forger card is decent, but do not forget about converting honey to 10 romantic notions. The 105 option only gives 3 mw, but I still find it better to do the 10 for the moment. Not only it gives you control and not wasting a 1-10 mw conversion for 1-2 cp, but visions are the best starting point for side conversion.
Wish you all good luck!
edited by Skinnyman on 11/2/2017
If you’re contemplating spending fate on refreshing your deck, you’re almost certainly better off spending it on buying confessions directly. 3 fate refreshes 10 cards (even as an exceptional friend), so 15 fate (the cost of a confession) refreshes 50. 50 cards is, even at my (high but not quite maxed) BDR, unlikely to generate a full cycle from 0 to 8 Notability.
Become an Exceptional Friend if you can possibly afford it, even if just for this month. (It’s also a better use of money to speed up long-term cash grinding than almost any expenditure of Fate, IMO. By my rough estimate, the extra actions and card draws you get on getting up in the morning alone are worth about 50 echoes per day if you’re well-optimized for grinding.)
Use the Android (or possibly iOS; I don’t know) app. It gives 2 actions and card draws per 10 minutes rather than 1. AFAIK, the devs have never confirmed whether this is intentional or a coding error, but it’s a known phenomenon that has been going on for a long time now.
Schemes (available if you have a Handsome Townhouse) are incredibly helpful if you have them. I don’t know whether acquiring one if you don’t makes sense at this point or not.
Assuming you’re a Person of Some Importance, parties are excellent. A solid source of MW, some cash value as well, and they double the number of cards in your opportunity deck when you enter and leave. The exact best strategy depends on your hand size and whether you’re an Exceptional Friend, but you should be able to net increase your number of cards by at least four. A word of warning about combining this with use of the app: When you sync, cards gained in this way are lost. So always sync immediately before doing a party (unless you just did another one, of course) to give yourself the maximum amount of time, and then draw your deck down to zero between returning and syncing.
Similar to parties but more grindable, someone noted in another thread that the Pickpocket’s Promenade doubles the number of cards in your opportunity deck on entry and quadruples it on exit. With moderate luck, this can net gain you 4 cards if you’re not an Exceptional Friend, and up 6 if you are (technically up to 7 if you only have a three-card lodging and get really lucky) at a cost of 7-8 actions. Not worth it echo-wise under normal circumstance, but a good way to flip more cards if you have a lot of actions available. You need 3 cards to start for the non-Exceptional strategy, and 4 for the Exceptional one. The same caution about the app applies as for parties.
edited by osberend on 11/2/2017
edited by osberend on 11/2/2017
Also, to elaborate on a previous comment: Every day so far, there has a storylet in one of the four basic areas (Veilgarden, Ladybones Road, Watchmaker’s Hill, and Spite) allowing you to trade a particular individual’s confession for any of three others. So far, all of the confessions that could be traded in in this fashion were week 1s, but some of the confessions you could get in return have been week 2s. Keep an eye out for this as an opportunity to upgrade any week 1 confessions you may get between now and the end of Hallowmas.
edited by osberend on 11/2/2017
Re: refreshing cards, apparently the best way is to go into a Flash Lay with two Scandal and immediately put on every piece of Scandal-increasing equipment, instantly kicking you out. Card refreshes for only two actions!
Holy crap, you’re right. And since it’s a full refresh (similar to returning from Zee), you don’t even need any cards in your deck in order to start it off. Well done (to you if you were the one to discover this; to whoever it was if not)! And many thanks for the info in any event!
This is going to have a massive impact on my optimal end-game grinding analysis. Very cool.
On a related note, is there any way of encouraging the Amanuensis to show up when you have Notability 0? He’s always hanging around when I’m already Notable (and thus can reliably get him through Lodgings), but never wants to show his face when I’m not.
The only way is to just draw lots of cards, hence the discussion of card refreshing techniques.