Need to make some collections of curiosities, and i need venge rat corpses as well as bone dice. having some trouble with the corpses though. Any good source for them? I know bundles can have them but no luck yet. Mostly getting Brandy and Compromising Documents. Google didn’t turn up much.
edited by sslrranma on 2/2/2015
You can do the long pickpocketing thingummy that clears your hand in spite, I think. In general, War of Assassins is MUCH more efficient for Collections of Curiosities than the normal way of getting them, so if you’re a POSI that’s a better bet.
Edit: To clarify "the long pickpocketing thingummy" refers to the Pickpocket’s promenade, and I think that if you rob a ratcatcher you get at least one corpse.
edited by CulturalGeek on 2/2/2015
Going to second that Wars of assassins is the better option if you don’t want to get rid of stuff you’ve already got. Dice are very hard to find, and the wiki page shows that most are either retired, hard-to-get or expensive, so if you don’t have them already, wars of assassins is the way to go.
And the smiley that appears with :D really messed up that link…
edited by Aximillio on 2/2/2015
Also, for the sake of experiementation (I also wanted a corpse to potentially use on De Gustibus), I’ve done three runs on the pickpocket’s promenade today, spending something like 30-40 actions on it, and I’ve still yet to see a rat-catcher (the card that gives venge rat corpses according to the wiki). I may have just gotten unlucky, but yeah… it’s looking like getting these things is far more trouble than it’s worth.
For venge-rats, it’s either troubled with vermin if you haven’t done it earlier, or the pickpocket’s promenade. The other sources are from opening high-level bundles of oddities and retired options.
Pickpocket’s Promenade report:
Trips: 6
Rat-catchers seen: 1
Methods: I draw cards until I have a full hand. If a non-rat-catcher card can be discarded, I discard it. If a card has an option that increases unseen, and my unseen is at 3, I will loiter to decrease “approaching your destination” and play the option that increases unseen. I play the cards that grant the most pickpocket’s rewards, but only when my hand is full of non-discardable cards.
Note: I didn’t realize this until most of the way through my experiment, but make sure to move to your biggest lodgings before attempting this. I was still in the remote address from an earlier experiment - it would be much easier to hunt rat-catchers if I’d been using my 5 card from the start.
And of course, immediately after posting this, I get three rat-catchers in a row. So they aren’t HIDEOUSLY rare after all, just annoyingly RNG-based. Still, with four or five card lodgings, they shouldn’t be impossible to get.
Devilbone dice are much harder. You can get three by selling your soul to the Affectionate Devil using the “hear him out” option during the Intimate of Devils storyline… but there are many more profitable ways to sell ones’ soul, so this seems like rather a waste. Rare successes when converting uncanny incabula to searing enigmas also give one pair. You can get a few through Sartorial Squeamishness, a card that occurs in your lodgings if you have a Working Rat and a Ratskin suit, but this requires you to sell off the suit… a 115e item, in exchange for 3 devilbone dice and about 10e worth of trash… you’re losing over 100e for a mere 3 sets of dice and a single point of ratly concerns.
So venge rat corpses are entirely get-able, with a little bit of luck. It’s the devilbone dice that will cost you, and cost you dearly. All of this is much more of a hassle than doing the War of Assassins.
Seriously though, unless you have a strong desire to see the text for creating the Collection with the separate items, or your stats are really really low, it will save you loads of time and expense to do the War of Assassins (34 actions and no item/echo cost, to be exact).
I’m pretty sure you also can only sell your soul via Intimate with Devils once. (Altho if you’re selling your soul repeatedly, you get one dice every time you get your soul back from a bundle)
But really, war of assassins.
Collections are also an occasional find in the Shrine of the Deep Blue Heaven in the Forgotten Quarter.
I’ve been getting collections by way of IRAGO (1 point) and seems worth it to me. Course, limit of 1 per week.
The card in the Cave that gives a Collection can also give a Searing Enigma, which is on its own as valuable as you can usually sell a Collection for and without needing to wait for the card.
The card you’re talking about (the End of Battles) adds 2 points of Irrigo, not 1. And it’s also not limited to one per week - there’s no reason that you can’t draw the card more than once per visit to the Nadir. In fact, if you were very lucky, you could get up to four Collections before your Irrigo level forced you out.
That’s incredibly remote, but I’ve had a few visits where I’ve drawn the card twice.