Years long quest only around a year and half away

74 thousand Echoes to go
74 thousand to go
I’ll earn some more
Then go to the Bazaar
And Hesperidean Cider is in my store

I’ve enjoyed FL for a few years and I always set goals. Once achieved, there’s always another to gain. I’ve mentored and helped folks along the way and always find something new to explore. SOtC and PP were milestones. It will likely take another year and a half to achieve this one, along with other goals along the way. Have fun!

Best of luck!

Good luck and check the link in my sig. :)

These days, it only takes just over six months of grinding to get 74k echoes. Unless you’re the kind of person who is prone to missing entire days’ worth of action at times due to boredom or real life, causing you to estimate the grind stretching three times as long - in which case I can certainly sympathise. Or your &quotother plans&quot happen to include a Heptagoat.
edited by Dudebro Pyro on 9/11/2019

Not really sure how you reached those numbers. With an exploit (reported and fixed, btw), it was possible to reach 74k e in 4 months if you spend about 100 AP per day, every single day. Using 144 AP per day for 4 months, you need an EPA above 4 to reach that.

Am I missing something here?

Oh, whoops, all my maths was by a factor of exactly 2. I edited my post.
I’m basing my maths off the persistent Arbor grind, with 3.08 EPA over 13 days with 1 day off to grab a pair of TtH, Nadir, and whatever else is needed and draw the Dream of Roses again. Except after calculating the bi-weekly profit and the number of such cycles necessary for various milestones, I then proceeded to merrily multiply it by 7 to get the days needed.
edited by Dudebro Pyro on 9/11/2019

Here is the thing: perhaps if you spam one particuar action over and over and over you do get there faster. But then you have stopped playing the game: you are just clicking. The question for me is, how fast do you get there if you play the game normally, doing the profitable actions as often as you can (but not exclusively)?
Technically, it was possible to just spam the Court of Tigers urchin-style, till you got the Cider. Or farm Clay Men and do the 30-supplies expedition. Or previously, do the Affair of the box over and over and over. But would anyone really play the game this way? It is certainly possible, but if you have turned FL into a clicker, what do you even need the Cider for?

If you’re not grinding echoes, and you’re end-game, what else are you going to do? EFs are good and all, as are seasonal events, and rarer than either but still existant are content updates. But playing through these takes up a fraction of the regular actions. What else is left, then? The “end-game grinds”? Sure, you could go for Paramount Presense, or go through arbitrary challenges like raising your Newspaper qualities. But you’ve just replaced one clicker minigame with another. Even Poet-Laureate is just a clicker. So ultimately, what’s the difference between side-converting tens of thousands of items at a time, writing 300 ballets, or investigating Near-Arbori really, really thoroughly?
If you have truly interesting stuff to do that you consider “playing the game normally”, do share. But due to the very nature of the game, I think everything is either going to be completed really fast, or it is a “clicker”.
(Ultimately, there’s SMEN, but the first half is also really grindy and the last few candles are relatively easy to get AFAIK.)

Not that I fully disagree with the premise. I’ve been playing for a few years, and if I had grinded perfectly at every opportunity, I’d already have a cider. Instead, I’m sitting on 40k echoes, because I have never really sat down and properly committed to a consistent grind for months. Often, I end up using actions extremely inefficiently, simply because I finish the latest seasonal event or whatever’s hot and end up in one of the endless grinds that take months to get anywhere. Then missing a day doesn’t really matter much, and soon I haven’t opened the game for a week.

Another point of view is that really simple grinds are better. I did 330-ish expeditions, and it took way too long because every single one requires mental effort (choose the correct action, time the 2-progress action correctly to maximise late Sign returns, don’t miss a Sign if it shows up!, don’t overgrind Supplies else they’ll be lost, don’t waste docks favours, don’t pick the wrong expedition out of the giant list…) so a lot of the time I just couldn’t be bothered. And after the first few dozen, expeditions (which translates to just a week or two), everything was rote, so it was no more interesting than repeatedly feeding 270 Urchins to Tigers. In that sense, a “clicker mode” to pass the time between interesting events can be much more profitable. I simply can’t think of anything more fun to do: the alternatives, really, seem to be either trading one clicker grind for another, or just going on hiatus until the next month’s EF or the next seasonal event.

[quote=Jolanda Swan]Here is the thing: perhaps if you spam one particuar action over and over and over you do get there faster. But then you have stopped playing the game: you are just clicking. The question for me is, how fast do you get there if you play the game normally, doing the profitable actions as often as you can (but not exclusively)?

Technically, it was possible to just spam the Court of Tigers urchin-style, till you got the Cider. Or farm Clay Men and do the 30-supplies expedition. Or previously, do the Affair of the box over and over and over. But would anyone really play the game this way? It is certainly possible, but if you have turned FL into a clicker, what do you even need the Cider for?[/quote]THIS!
This is what people should always keep in mind to avoid the burn, burden and lack of entertainment. I won’t bother anyone with the details.

[quote=Skinnyman][quote=Jolanda Swan]Here is the thing: perhaps if you spam one particuar action over and over and over you do get there faster. But then you have stopped playing the game: you are just clicking. The question for me is, how fast do you get there if you play the game normally, doing the profitable actions as often as you can (but not exclusively)?

Technically, it was possible to just spam the Court of Tigers urchin-style, till you got the Cider. Or farm Clay Men and do the 30-supplies expedition. Or previously, do the Affair of the box over and over and over. But would anyone really play the game this way? It is certainly possible, but if you have turned FL into a clicker, what do you even need the Cider for?[/quote]THIS!
This is what people should always keep in mind to avoid the burn, burden and lack of entertainment. I won’t bother anyone with the details.[/quote]

That’s why I don’t just do the same grind over and over; I change up which grind I do when I’m not interested in maximizing efficiency; I’m interested in hanging around Fallen London, because it’s come to feel like a place I enjoy visiting, somehow, strange as that may seem.

Well, my secret is this: I do everything. Instead of focusing on the most profitable grind, I play my ten cards, sometimes I even update them through Jenny’s school, and depending on what they cough up, I then go for the &quotgrinds&quot. But even then I don’t necessarily pick the &quotbest&quot grinds. If I have dock favors, I do expeditions. If I have the Shepherd card at hand, I go for heists, which have variety since they are hand-dependent (hey, I nearly even got imprisoned once. Nearly). If I have a clean slate, I might even do the blasted Flash Lay (rarely). Seasonal content is lore-heavy, which usually inspires me to go around the zee for a while. I let the Nadir take my stats every week, and work at re-building them. For this purpose I grind Collections of Curiosities to exchange with Tomb-Colonists, and revolutionary favors to do ballets that will let me get lots of Night-Whispers at Neathmass. I even grinded for Master’s Blood, because it combined going to the zee for seals, with going to the labyrinth, with drawing the right cards. It let me romp around London, depending on what actions, cards and stats I had, which was more fun than not doing it. I even had fun grinding notability back upwhich I hatefor a week*while on real life holidays. Damn you, Fallen London.

I am by no means saying this is the &quotnormal&quot way to play. The normal thing to do, is play the game in any way that you enjoy it. But what I enjoy is the variety, and finding a &quotbest&quot grind and sticking to it would take me out of London and into click-land, which is less enjoyable for me. But then again, I am in it for the story.

(As for Seeking, let us say I would rather eat my own teeth than do it.).
edited by Jolanda Swan on 9/11/2019

Well, my secret is this: I do everything. Instead of focusing on the most profitable grind, I play my ten cards, sometimes I even update them through Jenny’s school, and depending on what they cough up, I then go for the &quotgrinds&quot. But even then I don’t necessarily pick the &quotbest&quot grinds. If I have dock favors, I do expeditions. If I have the Shepherd card at hand, I go for heists, which have variety since they are hand-dependent (hey, I nearly even got imprisoned once. Nearly). If I have a clean slate, I might even do the blasted Flash Lay (rarely). Seasonal content is lore-heavy, which usually inspires me to go around the zee for a while. I let the Nadir take my stats every week, and work at re-building them. For this purpose I grind Collections of Curiosities to exchange with Tomb-Colonists, and revolutionary favors to do ballets that will let me get lots of Night-Whispers at Neathmass. I even grinded for Master’s Blood, because it combined going to the zee for seals, with going to the labyrinth, with drawing the right cards. It let me romp around London, depending on what actions, cards and stats I had, which was more fun than not doing it. I even had fun grinding notability back upwhich I hatefor a week*while on real life holidays. Damn you, Fallen London.

I am by no means saying this is the &quotnormal&quot way to play. The normal thing to do, is play the game in any way that you enjoy it. But what I enjoy is the variety, and finding a &quotbest&quot grind and sticking to it would take me out of London and into click-land, which is less enjoyable for me. But then again, I am in it for the story.

(As for Seeking, let us say I would rather eat my own teeth than do it.).
edited by Jolanda Swan on 9/11/2019[/quote]

No, it may not be normal, Jolanda, but you’re not the only one who does it! I do it too! I have a soft spot for different grinds now that I’m up to 215 in every stat, but I do like to do Expeditions in the Forgotten Quarter (mostly Silken Thread, for Judgements’ Eggs), and various cards that give me Favours to feed the Expeditions and also to get Tribute for the Tigers (Criminals and Church are good for this. I’d use Bohemians too except I still don’t have all the Renown rewards for them). I do enjoy Heists, but if one can’t afford EF status they can take quite a long time. Flash Lays if I want to build up Souls for the Shepherd or even (gasp!) to do the grind for Coruscating Souls (which I rarely do because my luck with the RNG is awful).

And I sell off from almost any category of item. I try to keep over 20,000 of most of the bulk commodities (e.g., glim, jade, rostygold) and when they get a few thousand over 20,000, I sell off 1000 or so. Lower limits for pricier items. And so on. Ultimately, I want to buy the Cider, but at 42,000 Echoes and change it’s going to take a while. But that doesn’t matter since I’m still enjoying the trip!

@ Jolanda

My playing style is very similar, too. Variety is the spice of life!
But tell me how the Shepherd card advances heists – I’ve not been able to work that out.

The Shepherd card allows you to wipe out menaces, so you can get Suspicion as high as 7+, without worrying. So when I have the card at hand, and my menaces are around 5, I start doing heists. They provide fun, rewards and MW, and I know that I am going to sipe out the Suspicion they entail with one action once it reaches too high.

Ballets at the Court are also easier with the Shepherd’s card. I use almost exclusively revolutionary favors for them, (they are hard to use anywhere else, since you have to draw ‘Favors at the Flit’ to get rid of them and I always pick the urchins option on it). Since I am at the Court I also exchange Society Favors for signs, accumulating more suspicion along with the echoes. And then, I simply wipe them out with a click and go out in the night.

It is a ‘grind’ in a way, but it includes so many different things (heists, ballets, favors etc) that it doesn’t feel like one.

Since this thread has turned into a discussion of playing styles, I might share mine:

I’ve been playing for more than five years now. I have no Cider, no Overgoat (let alone Übergoat) to show for it. I’m no Poet Laureate. Why? Well, for one, I’m not interested. And I have never, ever calculated the &quotEPA worth&quot of anything. I wouldn’t dream of it. That’s simply not the way my brain works.

Another reason is that I’m still, mostly, a very casual player. I log on most days, once or twice, but not all days (interestingly, I log onto this forum several times every day. I cannot quite explain that). I usually make sure to collect my weekly payments, but some weeks that’s all I do. After all, the world is full of interesting things, and I do need to work to pay the bills besides. I cannot even imagine the life of someone who plays every single FL action every single day. I’m not sure I want to. (I don’t mean to insult anyone, only to illustrate how foreign this concept of playing seems to me.)

I have never played FL on a smartphone. I consider that blasphemy, like reading ebooks. ;) Logging in to FL (one account after the other) is often the last thing I do in the evening before going to bed. A few minutes of escapism in a by now thoroughly familiar alternate history universe. When I play a new ES, I usually sit down for it on weekends, taking an hour or two (or three) to thoroughly read and record everything (I have recorded every ES and most Fate stories in separate text files, alongside full-text archives of SMEN, all Ambitions, Elections, Hallowmases etc and large text dumps of snippets from every which where. All those Guides and archives don’t come from nothing ;)), plus dithering over decisions over which path to take. Some of the lore-heavier ES have literally taken me several days to finish since I often stop playing to puzzle about greater lore implications, then get lost searching for some half-remembered snippet of another story. I consider that time well spent. I love well-crafted worlds, I’m a sucker for never-ending world-building (nods to J.R.R. Tolkien and Steven Erikson). I guess in a nutshell that’s what brought me here and made me stay: the quality of the writing plus the depth of the universe.

I’ve accumulated nine accounts now and still have to restrain myself sometimes from making more. Every one of these is a separate &quotcharacter&quot with their own back story and head canon. Almost all of these have been my &quotmain account&quot at some point, almost all have experienced large breaks where I didn’t play them at all. In some cases, I started out with a pretty good idea of who they were. In others, I decided to just start playing and see where things would go. I don’t roleplay everything (e. g. all characters grind Renown of all Factions. It’d be silly not to imo) but all the &quotimportant&quot decisions are down to &quotwhat would [character] do?&quot, not &quotwhat would I do?&quot And, for example, I’ve just put one character on a year-long zee-voyage because that one refuses to live in a city with a Devil Mayor.

When the Connected/Renown changeovers were implemented, I made a point of cashing in all my (often substantial) Connected beforehand. I was already an end-game player by then and I realized that grinding Renown for all Factions from scratch would make certain I wouldn’t run out of things to do anytime soon (I’m still at it).

On one account I’ve played SMEN up to the point where one needs to go to Winking Isle to continue. I even have Mr Eaten’s Calling Card, but I don’t think I’ll ever go there. Up to this point it was fun, because there was story with the grind (and I really wanted to get rid of my early-game lodgings). From now on it’s only masochism, which isn’t my kinda thing. Still, I do fancy that stupid Knock… I guess if I ever should run out of things to do, I might give it a go.

That same account has a &quotChanged by the Iron Republic&quot level of 111 which shows I can do a completely pointless grind if it fits my character’s narrative. :) In all seriousness I’d rather go back there and bump that quality all the way up to 666 instead of gunning for Cider or what-have-ya. That’s just a prop to put on your mantelpiece.

Over the years, a few puzzled people have complained on these forums that there’s no way to &quotwin&quot this game. I think that’s why I like it so much. After all, if I won, it’d be over. And I don’t want that. :)

Lovey read, Phryne! Your playstyle sounds like a journey.
Out of curiosity, hasn’t any of these alts seeked immortality? I went for the Cider for rp reasons: Jolanda wants to see the Surface again, she is a sun person, she loves to swim in the blue sea. I dont’t think she has realized yet that the Cider has the potential to keep her alive for a long, long, long time.

[quote=Jolanda Swan]Lovey read, Phryne! Your playstyle sounds like a journey. Out of curiosity, hasn’t any of these alts seeked immortality?[/quote]Um, yes, but of a different sort. Not immortality of the body, but of the soul.

And yea, for me the journey is the destination. Definitely. :)
edited by phryne on 9/15/2019

We must be friends!

The most profuse and profound eloquence seems insufficient to fully express my admiration and affirmation of phryne’s sentiments and perpective! (And, likewise, Jolanda’s, as parallel.) A deep and fully heartfelt bow most sweeping and graciously grand as i may muster, to you, O Muse of Neathly Lores! My time in Fallen London only began on February fourteenth, the Valen’s-Tines, and yet, i feel even immortality could not exhaust it’s fathomless fascinations, in living my Story - even as but one mere facet of it’s labyrinthine and kaleidescopic narratives.

My own dilletante yet driven engagement is focused via the medium of my Journalling of nigh all i experience here - captioning as much continuity and Role-at-play as i may, therein. My sole true Ambition in Fallen London is to live as worthy a Story as might be nigh so entertaining to another, or myself, in review, as those the setting provides. Ever &quotin-character&quot, my adhearance to my genuine, genial gentleman Anarch’s aethos and mores may create additional challenges in thriving and striving through ethical adversity or dillema, of Neath’s intrigues - but all the more a delight, to express myself as character and characture, in this vivid and wondrous world.

My nature does include elements of persona and humours that may plunge me in ennui or anomie, and thus, as much as any other distraction of &quotRL&quot, do delay my participation and progress at times - but, overall, i consider a daily prescence here to be as fufilling as savoured dreams are to both sleep and a rich life.

Over seven months, i may have lapsed as much as a month and a half away, but if i do archive all my journalling (so as to read and review it top-to-bottom, if anything, heh) it may add up to a tale worth transcribing and fleshing-out as a quite excellent novel. (i estimate 101, ten-stanza journal pages just for the first month, in fact.) May London’s delights remain and sustain until that ambition actually manifests, whereupon i might go on, to Sunless Sea, and the greater mileau.

Hmmm, well, not to rave on. (And, not to over-edit further; please pardon all the &quotmy-my&quot overuse of that possessive pronoun, if you would.)

My humble point in thus enthusing perhap best stated by quoting &quotthe bard&quot : &quotThe Play’s The Thing!&quot

  • CHEERS, All!
    .
    edited by Doctor_Static on 9/25/2019

Oh, pardon - ALSO, of course: Congratulations, In-Advance, Perrennially and In Perpetuum, To wise and long-sighted JAMIT !!
.
edited by Doctor_Static on 9/21/2019