Hi, I’m a guy looking to get as many Echoes as possible over the course of a week with the action supply provided by an Exceptional Friendship and I wanted to compare hauls on a weekly timescale. I’ve seen and tried some other Echoes grinds/carousals in the past, but always got hit with the nagging suspicion they weren’t nearly as much as just stocking up as many heist preparations as physically possible, use all my actions on the day before Time the Healer to actually steal said AMs and then sell them all on the big day. I use my spare actions to fund Roser archeological digs, saving scraps for the various Relickers and using maxed out Persuasive to get a fickle 2 echoes every now and then with the relevant card. With good timing I find I can make a little more than 1000 echoes every week. How does this compare to other grinds?[li]
Incidentally, it’s funny but FL grinding has been a better motivator for me to wake up early in the morning than just about anything else.
You can check the wiki link for a list of echo grinds!
I won’t go into many details, but, as you can see The Tomb of the Silken Thread is worth 2.27 and, compared to the Tiger court, you get to stay in London! Quick math and you see this only takes almost 63 AP/day to get to 1k echo/week.
But it can be vastly improved! The expedition EPA is boosted by Dock favours obtained via cards. Getting a connection pet, The Gift exceptional story (a certain ending) and/or staying at A Name Scrawled in Blood 5 or 6 for An evening’s zailing card helps with those favours!
I’m always mentioning the zailing card because, over the course of 1000 Thieves cache expeditions, I saw it had double frequency! Checking this card bug discussion shows why I had those results; it has two requirements.
With all the extra sources, in 18 months, I drew cards worth 2100 Dock favours. This is enough for 1 expedition in two days which is almost 500 echo per week.
So you will probably need to "grind" (as in Buy Strong-Backed Labour) and do just another expedition and you are basically done!
To this we can add other very profitable cards which can be found in that Wiki link.
[quote=Skinnyman]You can check the wiki link for a list of echo grinds!
I won’t go into many details, but, as you can see The Tomb of the Silken Thread is worth 2.27 and, compared to the Tiger court, you get to stay in London! Quick math and you see this only takes almost 63 AP/day to get to 1k echo/week.
But it can be vastly improved! The expedition EPA is boosted by Dock favours obtained via cards. Getting a connection pet, The Gift exceptional story (a certain ending) and/or staying at A Name Scrawled in Blood 5 or 6 for An evening’s zailing card helps with those favours!
I’m always mentioning the zailing card because, over the course of 1000 Thieves cache expeditions, I saw it had double frequency! Checking this card bug discussion shows why I had those results; it has two requirements.
With all the extra sources, in 18 months, I drew cards worth 2100 Dock favours. This is enough for 1 expedition in two days which is almost 500 echo per week.
So you will probably need to "grind" (as in Buy Strong-Backed Labour) and do just another expedition and you are basically done!
To this we can add other very profitable cards which can be found in that Wiki link.
Have fun![/quote]
[li]
Just what I’m looking for, thanks! Truth be told the main reason I use a relatively AP-heavy method to begin with was because of work-study making it hard to find time for FL and not wanting actions to go to waste over the course of a day. I’ll likely still have to use my old slow-grind, but the Tomb of the Silken Thread/Favors: Docks sounds like the perfect supplement! I originally favored the Sanctuary of the Crimson Petals for the chance of Night WhispersX3, but the 12.5 side bonus of the usual cache really isn’t worth the extra 10 required Expeditions Applies and the seemingly significantly higher risk of the rival archaelogist catching up/the soft action sink needed to delay him
[quote=Hattington]I originally favored the Sanctuary of the Crimson Petals for the chance of Night WhispersX3, but the 12.5 side bonus of the usual cache really isn’t worth the extra 10 required Expeditions Applies and the seemingly significantly higher risk of the rival archaelogist catching up/the soft action sink needed to delay him[/quote]The rare success chance is around 5% so it’s not really worth it!
Even so, I will try and have 200 of those expeditions under my belt just to have a more accurate percentage.
Could someone specify what method does the expedition grind use to generate Strong-Armed Labour? The guide just says “Buy” which suggests the Bazaar Side Streets, but when I did just a simple calculation to confirm, EPA was just below 2. I did not take into account the A Sign opportunity; can that really raise EPA up to ~2.27?
Alternatively, you could buy these in the Clay quarters somewhat cheaper. That option is not sustainable, however, since you’d need other sources of the items you expend and that would probably make the whole thing much less profitable. Not to mention that it would completely ruin your Magnanimous (for what, giving your Clay friends a meaningful and stimulating work in the open air?).
And lastly, grinding for the Labour in Wilmot’s end carousel gives incomparably worse return than just buying at the Side Streets…
I must note that I am no statistician and I could easily be missing something crucial. Therefore, I’ll be grateful for any clarification…
Without any further considerations, that is, only buying the strong-backed labour, EPA is about 2.13.
13.5 echos and 2 actions (buy and convert) per 5 supplies. That is 2.7 echo and 0.4 action per supply.
28 supplies are needed, that is 75.6 echo.
28*0.4 is 11.2 actions for the supplies. Another 12 actions are needed for the expedition, for a total of 23.2.
Expedition yields 125 echo rewards, that is 49.4 after subtracting the cost of the labour.
49.4/23.2=2.13
Obviously this assumes guaranteed success for the buccaneering approach.
[quote=Aardvark]I did not take into account the A Sign opportunity; can that really raise EPA up to ~2.27?[/quote]Yes. The wiki link that was shared contains a link to a discussion about it.
But indeed, it the Sign brings it up, and Docks favours brings it up higher, although definitely a difficult task to say how much, depends open how many cards you draw, and which cards you draw give you the favour.
Another card that I can’t see mentioned is A Visit, Regretful Soldier option. That one also brings you some Whispered hints for another supply crate or two (and a few for the A Gift option, if you have it). Also some rats that pile up over time and can be converted to rostygold for Dock’s faction card favour option (a measly 10 or so needed, but if you grind nothing else, you would run out).
[quote=alekth]But indeed, it the Sign brings it up, and Docks favours brings it up higher, although definitely a difficult task to say how much, depends open how many cards you draw, and which cards you draw give you the favour.
Another card that I can’t see mentioned is A Visit, Regretful Soldier option. That one also brings you some Whispered hints for another supply crate or two (and a few for the A Gift option, if you have it). Also some rats that pile up over time and can be converted to rostygold for Dock’s faction card favour option (a measly 10 or so needed, but if you grind nothing else, you would run out).[/quote]Oh, definitely. The more Docks favours you use (compared to buying SBL), the higher the EPA will be. And using the "A Visit" card is amazing if you use the Regretful Soldier option combined with this particular grind.