Here’s this week’s thread for quick FL Q&As.
I am returning after some years away. What’s the best method for unlocking the railway venture? I already have the card, but I’m not sure how best to get scrips, or whether the other method (society renown) is more promising. Seems unlikely since renown is grindy and leans on drawing the right cards.
Without access to the Upper River locations, the Bone Market is probably your best bet for getting hold of scrip. Some of the buyers pay out smallish amounts.
I only see 7 Society favours and a level of Notability (not Renown) plus Respectability. Many items of dress and companions come with some respectability – the salon and some clubs also have a chunk.
The society favours are card-based, but 7 usually accrue in a couple of days. Go to parties for 3 or so, depending on how the cards fall!
You probably have some notability already, otherwise request a first point here on the relevant thread. Make sure you have one outfit that maximises Notability from all sources – for long-term players, that usually gives the first five or six levels (call the Amanuensis under the society storylet).
My recollection is that the main problem was needing a chunk of money once the board was set up, but perhaps you have a stash from the old days.
Welcome back, by the way!
If I’ve go this right, this means level up my laboratory → unlock the bone market → buy my way into the railroad. Right?
If you decide to go the scrip route, yes.
The society favours only outstrips that on the Notability front, and seven is really still in the foothills, as it were.
When the Contrarian kills someone during a party, he says he doesn’t know why this keeps happening. Is he being truthful about that?
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I have an alt that I mostly use to remove menaces from my main. However, since the alt has lots of actions, I try to use these up raising his primary attributes. I am familiar with the grindable option at the university to raise Watchful and have gotten my alt to 200 in this attribute. I am now using the 5 CP option “An eye wide open” to grind his Dangerous and expect that to reach 200 in the next week or so.
Are there any good grinds to raise persuasive (currently 148) and, especially shadowy (currently 118)?
Thanks, in advance, for any help you can offer.
I read that as a honest “I don’t know why that person keeps coming back to get killed, over and over again”.
Raising Persuasive:
- Spider Symposium, Suggest they define knowledge. Menace free 230 difficulty check - at 148 persuasive you’ll have a 38% pass chance which gives 2.76 cp/action. This will decrease as your persuasive increases - you can use stat reducing items to make it harder and increase the cp/action gain
- Sell information in the Flit - this allows you to trade 10 cp of casing for 10 cp of persuasive (sell to the Brass Embassy) or shadowy (sell to a colleague). You can gain casing at 3 cp/action through various sources in the Flit, which gives 2.31 cp/action of persuasive (and also 0.77 shadowy cp/action from gaining casing).
Raising Shadowy:
- Sell information in the Flit - as above, but you’ll also gain shadowy while raising casing. If you steal paintings from a gallery (shadowy 125 needed to 100% the check), this reaches 3.08 cp/action
- Pickpocket’s promenade - trading 50 trophies gives 25cp of shadowy. This is hard to measure as the number of trophies depends on the cards drawn and increases with base shadowy, but gets very good at higher shadowy levels.
- At 170 base shadowy (where trophies max out) I was able to get at least 100 trophies per run (9 actions) most times, which is at least 5.56 cp/action. With bad luck on the card draws you’ll need to loiter to allow an extra card draw (2 actions), which reduces it to 4.55 cp/action (still very high). You also get at least 20 echoes of loot per run
- Lower base shadowy will mean more card draws are required, and the unseen reduction makes loitering more than once dangerous so it may not work as well (hitting 100 trophies is important as 50 trophies is the best cp/trophy trade) - I only discovered this when my shadowy was already high, so I don’t know how well it will work
- Selling Vitreous Almanacs in the Dome of Scales (requires a Parabolan Base Camp) - 275cp for 4 almanacs. Almanacs can be gained for 5 actions in the Sunken Embassy (requires watchful 297 to 100% the checks), which is 13.1cp/action (ignoring cost to enter/leave Parabola). With lower watchful you’ll need more actions/almanac, but at 200+ watchful you should need less than 7 actions/almanac on average (hard to calculate due to the breakpoints) which is still 9.48 cp/action.
- Note this requires the Dome of Scales to be occupied by Fingerkings (default option) - if you fight a Parabolan war different options may be available (though this is probably not likely for your alt)
I didn’t have to work too hard to raise my Persuasive (I spent a lot of time grinding mountain-sherds for Tribute in the Underclay), so there may be better persuasive grinds that I’m unaware of. Shadowy seems to have by far the most options to raise.
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