Most people seem to have forgotten about mark of credit pages after obtaining their violin and safe-conduct, but with all the recent talk of renown and favours, I thought that perhaps we should pay another visit to the Numismatrix.
First, a primer.
In order to gain a Mark of Credit page, one must increase Counting the Days (CtD) to fourteen, upon which a new card will be added to the opportunity deck, allowing you to visit the Numismatrix, which allows you to cash in a mixture of either CtD, Mark of Credit pages, and Pocketful of loose change (PoLC).
The different ways to raise CtD change depending on the current level of CtD you have. The four different brackets that the various methods are seperated into are 0-5, 6-9, 10-11, and 12-13, these being the levels you have to presently have in order to use the option. As far as I’m aware, which is admittedly a surface understanding of viewing a handful of different options, every option gives 5 CP of CtD.
PoLC is largely irrelevant, as it’s only used in acquiring Mark of Credit pages, and the method I’ll be outlining will cause you to gain more PoLC than you spend.
Mark of Credit pages can be used to purchase either the Consonant Violin or an Iron Republic Safe Conduct, though they can also be given to one of three clusters of factions, depending on whom you’re Closest To. The clusters are as follows; Firstly, there’s Hell, Revolutionaries, Criminals, and Tomb Colonists, dubbed ‘Unusual’ factions. Secondly, there’s Docks, Urchins, Great Game, and Bohemians, dubbed ‘Hard-working’ factions. And thirdly, there’s Constables, Society, Church, and both the University factions, dubbed ‘Decent’ factions. You may only give a Mark of Credit page to the cluster your personal Closest To faction is in.
Giving a Mark of Credit page to a faction cluster gives you either a small amount of connected, or a single favour, depending on whether the faction is converted.
Now then, the math.
At 5 CP an action, the actions to go from one bracket to the next are as follows
0-5: 5 actions, 4 CP leftover.
6-9: 6 actions, 0 CP leftover.
10-11: 5 actions, 0 CP leftover.
12-13: 5 actions, leftover CP irrelevant.
Added together, this means 21 actions to reach level 14. Including the Numismatrix card, this makes every rotation on the carousel 22 actions.
Considering that the carousel needs to be taken twice for each reward, once to earn a Mark of Credit page, and once to cash in that page, the number of actions can safely be doubled to 44 actions between each reward.
Depending on which faction you’re Closest To, this grind has varying values, purely looking at number of favours earned.
For decent factions, you’d only get a solitary favour, Constables.
For hard-working factions, you’d get two favours, Docks and Urchins. Within the month, Great Game favours will also be added to these, making the new total three favours.
For unusual factions, you’d get two favours. Tomb Colonists and Hell.
Notably, Rubbery Men favours can’t be gained this way.
And now, the ways to grind CtD.
There are several opportunity cards which can raise CtD, but I won’t be going over them. Instead, I’ll be looking over the various storylets which can gain CtD. There’s one storylet that I know of for each bracket, except 0-5, which has two.
For 0-5, there’s "Dicing for secrets and coins" at Wolfstack Docks, which requires being closest to either Bohemians, Great Game, Urchins, Criminals, Hell, Revolutionaries, or Tomb Colonists.
Notably, there’s a second option. "Listen to them", in the Flit, which requires Closest To Urchins. Since Urchins is also an available faction in the other 0-5 CtD storylet, this storylet is more or less inconsequential.
For 6-9, there’s "Speak to an Aristocratic Academic" in the Forgotten Quarter, requiring Closest To Bohemians, Great Game, Constables, Society, or Church.
For 10-11, there’s "Talk about something else" at the Shuttered Palace, requiring you to have your soul.
And finally, for 12-13, there’s "Talk about Robbery" at the university, requiring you to have at least one level in Master Thief. Notably, you may do this even if you’re unwelcome at the university.
All of this in mind, someone Closest To either Bohemians or Great Game, whom owns their soul, and with Master Thief (Which you should have before grinding favours in the first place), can grind from 0-14 consistently using only storylets. The Numismatrix card has abundant frequency, so waiting for it shouldn’t take too long. This means that the hard-working favours would be easiest to gather using this carousel, Though anyone can get either 0-5 and 10-13, or 6-13 incredibly easily using these storylets, relying on opportunity cards for the rest.
Keep in mind, whether following the storylets, or using opportunity cards, the end actions required is the same.
Efficiency overview.
At the moment, the carousel is a bit long for it’s payout, though it’ll only get better in time. Presently, it’s 44 actions for between one and three mixed favours. When renown conversion if finally finished, it’ll give between three and five favours (Both unusual and hard-working would give four, though depending how they handle the university factions, decent may give either three or five.). At that stage, this grind would be rather decent, though it’d still take a wildly long time to get to fifty renown with any faction.
More math, for fun.
Getting 7 favours for any faction using only the CtD grind would take 308 actions, and fourteen Numisatrix oppurtunity cards. Adding in the single action to convert the favours to renown, makes 309 actions. Getting enough favours to get from renown 15 to renown 50 using this method would take 12,978 actions, removing 44 for each favour obtained elsewhere. If you were to cash in on two factions at once doing this, the actions required would only raise to 13,020. With a third, 13,062. And with a fourth, 13,104. Doing this with all three faction clusters raises this total to 39,312. At a maximum of 144 actions a day, this comes (surprisingly) to exactly 273 days, not a second more or less. Therefore, assuming the Numismatrix isn’t changed, once all the renown conversions go through, you could go from renown 15-50 in every Closest To faction in the game, in shortly over nine months. Meaning, it would take just as long to conceive and birth a child.
Closing Notes
I’m unsure whether this is the only non-fatelocked way to grind favours (Other than patriot hymns in the empress’ palace for docks favours), though it’s the only one I can name off the top of my head, so I thought I’d make a PSA to address such. Do correct me if any of this math ends up being incorrect, however, so I may edit the post. Good luck to anyone grinding renown, and thanks for reading.