Here’s this week’s quick questions thread.
Is it worth it to employ experts in the laboratory even if I won’t be researching in their areas of expertise? Like, just so I’m not alone?
As of now, only the Numismatrix is employed (not permanently, mind you; I thought she would go away after the coin research for the Dean finished, but I guess she stuck around), and the only other expert I can employ is Lettice, and since my equipment will remain under 5 for some time I won’t be able to have her help me with ordinary research.
I remember the very early days of the lab being very slow (point at a time slow) and very expensive, though I was probably too early setting one up. Having very few people also brings up at least two cards that aren’t (very) profitable / don’t generate much progress.
You don’t mention students: some become very useful after a while, and the experts that become available through the Ambition seem well worth employing.
Having said that, I’ve used mainly the Numimatrix and Mrs. Gerbrandt.
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You most definitely don’t want to have less than three people in your lab, whether they’re experts or students. There are black cards that are worse than whatever off-brand expert’s card you replace them with
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Here is a great analysis of the Lab thanks to @rahv7 over Reddit:
Playing most of the cards is not generally a good idea.
If you are reasonably close to getting the Visionary Student, get that one first, it really helps a lot because you can almost entirely avoid Disgruntlement. Having Disgruntlement above 4 is really annoying these days because you need all the card slots you have. If you have a Visionary Student (another reason to prioritise this!), you can graduate your second student to get rid of Disgruntlement and then use the Visionary to level a new student. It doesn’t cost anything and gives research!
- my card-priority is usually this: Specials > Expert > Visionary Student > Non Expert > 2nd Student.
- the usefulness of “Unorthodox Methods” depends on your highest stat for that card. I can be better or worse than the Visionary Student, but is usually not as good as an Expert (which gives bonus-Epiphanies)
- By “Specials” I mean super profitable cards such as the cards for Secret College, Correspondent, 4th assistant, spending Epiphanies, etc.
- use Unlikely Connections with non-Experts
- The 2nd student can either be a Profound one (more research!) or a Gifted Student (Society Favours!). I try to cash in Epiphanies with their card if it becomes necessary to play it.
Other than that, maybe check this comment and the answers for a good strategy.
We also did some fairly extensive analysis here but it’s not quite up-to-date anymore because a few things such as “Write up your findings” have been slightly adjusted in the meantime.
Oh, also long experiments are more profitable than short experments are more profitable than middle range experiments.
I hope that helps, best of luck with your Theorem! If you’re willing to invest Enigmas it’s not so bad, but unfortunately it’s also not profitable.
Did a few long experiments and even got another Theorem with this flow of actions and I can say it works the best! It takes a while to get used with each card so you won’t have to search Wiki, but after that you should be oki.
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Thank you for the tip, I sometimes forget to check the subreddit. The number of different actions you can take in the laboratory seems huge!