Nanako
Posts: 536
1/5/2016
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I hate grinding, it's just an obstacle to interesting stories, i'm happy to get it out of the way as fast as possible.
With that in mind, i've been using this guide for a while http://echobazaar.wikidot.com/end-game-grinding
It apparently details the most efficient ways to farm every type of item. And i'm sure at one point, it did. However it seems to have not been updated in a long time. The information there is still sort of mostly accurate, but it varies wildly to unreliable, or flat out wrong in many cases, leaving me stumped on certain items.
Does anyone know of a similar guide which is more up-to-date?
edited by Nanako on 1/5/2016
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Sara Hysaro
Moderator
Posts: 4514
1/5/2016
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Yeah, be careful with the huge item grinding page from the wikia site. It's very comprehensive, but when I tried going there it locked up my browser for a minute because there was just so much stuff and my computer's too old to take it. As a result I was really hesitant to suggest it since I don't know your computer situation. If it's good then that's a pretty handy resource, otherwise it might be better to just look it up per item.
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Theus
Posts: 311
1/5/2016
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NiteBrite wrote:
It's just trying to load too many things. It'd make a good PDF, but as a website that has to load a ton of images it's just never going to work.
I suppose I could complete it, print it to a PDF, and then make the PDF a Google Doc.
edited by NiteBrite on 1/5/2016
That would make it more difficult to keep up to date.
If you wanted to keep it wiki-fied and part of that site, you should probably make that page a landing page with links to individual articles (don't have to go crazy, do them by groups) and likely have it indexable so people can ctrl-F to find where they should go.
For example:
Academic goods (Firefox candles, distant memories, collated research) [General info] [Click here for full listing]
Breaking it down to even a dozen subpages will make it much more usable.
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metasynthie
Posts: 645
1/5/2016
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Does a guide like this really need to have every source? If it's huge enough, it's kind of just a collection of every page you could click through in "Primordial Shriek Sources" or whatever -- and it's not much better in terms of information transfer to put it on one page that takes forever to load rather than having people click through everything.
For the most part, people seem to want the following kinds of information, more or less in this order:
- What is the fastest reliable way (not one-time or dependent on cards / TtH) to obtain a particular resource, meaning shortest number of actions including prerequisite steps? (e.g. "Steal Journals of Infamy, convert them to Correspondence Plaques, upconvert Correspondence Plaques")
- What is the most profitable reliable way? Some people prioritize EPA over number of actions.
And maybe:- What cards should I be on the lookout for to speed up gaining this resource even more? (Of course, some resources are only / primarily available via cards.)
And then:- What do I need in terms of attributes to make this efficient / reliable? Or, what do I need in terms of tracker progress, POSI status, access to various areas, Fate purchases, etc.
And then:- OK, it's going to be a while before I can get to that requirement, what are some less quick / profitable alternatives?
It's the last question that's the hardest to answer since there are so many variables involved depending on the player. I suspect the realistic way of answering that question involves one of three things: a conversation with a more experienced player who "consults" on the situation (as often happens on these forums), or the player researching by searching the wiki themselves, or some kind of database tool where you plug in stats and flags and it gives you suggestions (sounds like a lot of work).
The first several questions, however, can be answered pretty easily, for most resources, by a lot of advanced players from memory -- and occasionally correcting each other. This is the information that's spread throughout that immense wiki page, at the top of each item, but it's often in a "maybe this, but might not be efficient" form, and it's not clear whether speed or profit is being emphasized. (I suspect the former.) This is the kind of answer that works much better as a hand-written guide than as a bunch of wiki pages, because a lot of the methods are about doing an efficient chain of steps. Plus, if you're just considering the first several questions, you wouldn't need to change the guide all that often; it's rare that a new, even more efficient grind for a resource appears -- Unfinished Business is the best for many Tier 1 items, upconverting for Tier 2, side-converting for Tier 3, in some cases Breeding is good, POSI materials it's often a Dramatic Tension carousel, higher-tier items you need scraps -- and those have all been around for a while. Plus, unlike the wiki, a guide could make (spoiler-free) references to Fate-locked methods of getting certain resources -- players may want to know that if they REALLY need a ton of Nevercold Brass or Brilliant Souls, there are advantages in being a spirifer*, and I don't think that violates Fate-locked rules or spoilers.
So here's my question -- is the need for this guide mostly coming from new players who aren't POSI, have stats on the low side for Dramatic Tension carousels and Flit stealing, etc? If that's the case, this is a difficult problem. If there's a need to compile the best endgame source for stuff, on the other hand (which is kind of what the wikidot guide was supposed to be) then that may be easier.
* actually I think stealing Brilliant Souls from Hookman House is still faster
edited by metasynthie on 1/5/2016
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Theus
Posts: 311
1/5/2016
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Optimatum wrote:
Putting the sections into collapsible sub-menus so the browser doesn't have to display the whole thing all at once might help a bit. If there's any workable way to remove all the small icons for related stats and qualities that would probably make a big difference too.
Unfortunately the collapsible functionality used on the wikis pre-loads everything and hides it client-side, so that wouldn't reduce the load time at all.
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NiteBrite
Posts: 1019
1/6/2016
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Here are my thoughts on the matter:
1. Common items such as cryptic clues have 300+ pages linked on their category page, but this information is difficult to navigate because there are no sub-categories. Without going through each and every link a user has no idea if a source is a useful or relevant one, and this is a very time consuming task. I wanted to provide a new level of organization to the links so that users could get the information they need at a glance and not have to wade through hundreds of links. Alphabetical sorting just isn't enough.
2. Even a slight increase in information would make the categories page a lot more useful. For example, if we could divide the existing category pages into subcategories such as:
a. Single Play
..Storylet
....Exceptional EPA
....Average EPA
....Bad EPA
..Card
....Exceptional EPA
....Average EPA
....Bad EPA
b. Repeatable
..Storylet
....Exceptional EPA
....Average EPA
....Bad EPA
..Card
....Exceptional EPA
....Average EPA
....Bad EPA
This would make the pages infinitely more grind friendly.
3. I didn't want to omit any sources because then a person has to question if a source was omitted, or if the guide is outdated. Not being able to tell the difference the user would have to go back to the categories page and item 1 above reasserts itself over time as more and more sources get added to get game that don't end up in the guide. We don't have to give a bad source as much attention, but it should be flagged that this source is known and that its no good.
4. I thought it would be nice to be inclusive of lower level players who wish to grind too even if realistically you can't grind effectively until you have access to end game storylets. For this reason I wanted to be able to sort the storylets by stats requirements and challenges.
I remember there used to be lots of little pages on the old wikidot wiki that were like "what can I do between watchful 0-10, 10-20, 20-30, etc." and I kind of wanted to create something like that, but that makes too many pages and isn't a super useful way to present the data overall. Its too micro for what I was wanting to present. This is why I made the requirements column in the first place; however, I went overboard and included other requirments beyond Stats/POSI status and that wasn't necessary and could be cut.
5. Where I got really ambitious and where I faulted was in adding all the decorative but ultimately unnecessary images to the page. These make the tables visually appealing, but at the cost of lagging the page to a state of being totally unusable. The pages actually are on separate category pages (academic, nostalgia, etc) and the pages are loaded in fully made category page by category page, but its still super laggy.
Without the images though, the space available to present the data is small, and the text looks super messy and it quickly becomes overwhelming. The choices I see here are to either live with a mess of information that isn't very accessible, or to trim the fat and present less information. Since accessibility is the primary goal, I feel we would best be served by cutting back the information available to the bare essentials and chopping the guide into lots of smaller pages for individual items. Even a super limited categorization such as is presented in item 2 above would be better than a mess or a lag monster.
6. Ambitious extra data I tried to include, adjustments for menace gains/losses, connections gains/losses, and carousel effects. It's nice to know, but unnecessary for the guide really. I think if we had a broad category of "good" and it reasonably cut 300 links to say, 30 links it would be much more manageable for people to be expected to click through the links for themselves at that point. Other effects and notes could easily be cut from the data presented.
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In any case, I tried my hand at it and I really put a lot of work and heart into my effort too. I failed, but I learned from the experience. I dunno if I want to try my hand at it again though. Maybe someone else wants to try making this guide, but I'm basically done with it. Good luck to whoever takes these reigns. I wish you the best.
edited by NiteBrite on 1/6/2016
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dov
Posts: 2580
1/6/2016
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I wish you the best of luck in this attempt, and as a casual wiki contributor I'll try to help if there's a useful functional base to build on.
But take care not to invest too much effort into a structure which may become so difficult to update and keep track of that, it becomes obsolete in a few months.
(one of the reasons that the wikidot page was so useful - and it mostly still is to this day - is that it only mentioned the top 2-3 "best" ways to get something, which doesn't change often in the game).
edited by dov on 1/6/2016
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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
1/6/2016
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I know when I decided to rebuild my Searing Enigma stock that I had to do quite a bit of digging into old threads to find the best ways to stock up for the Fidgeting Writer, so something that says "here is the most efficient way to grind X for POSI / non-POSIs" would be absolutely welcome.
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Erika
Posts: 528
1/7/2016
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Weird, my post got deleted. Anyways.
I've started, but with no promise to finish, an early game guide of how to get items.
Also, this wasn't mentioned, but is only good for grinding echoes, not particular resources, if that's what you're after.
http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Money-Making
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dov
Posts: 2580
1/5/2016
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I completely agree with metasynthie.
The wiki already has category pages listing all possible sources of any single item. To have one page include all info in it both drowns the user with info and is also practically guaranteed to get out of date fast.
If someone wants to *know* all possible ways to get, for example, Jade, they can go to the Jade Sources page. But if they want to actually *get* Jade, they just want to know the one or two best actions they should take right now.
The old wikidot page's format is absolutely great for this, but is only aimed at end-game grinding. i.e. some options listed there are not applicable to beginning or mid-level characters.
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Optimatum
Posts: 3666
1/5/2016
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Putting the sections into collapsible sub-menus so the browser doesn't have to display the whole thing all at once might help a bit. If there's any workable way to remove all the small icons for related stats and qualities that would probably make a big difference too.
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NiteBrite
Posts: 1019
1/5/2016
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Nanako wrote:
dear god that's a laggy page. And i have a midrange gaming pc.
What is the point of this? shouldn't there be numbers here? http://i.imgur.com/0aHbc2V.png
That's my old project. I wanted to make an updated guide for literally every item and source. One that was adorable and visually useful at a glance.
I was too ambitious though and it quickly grew into a lag behemoth. It got so bad I had to abandon it in an unfinished state. I'm not really sure why can be done to fix it so it's just like the ruins of a failed dream. The lag was just too great.
edited by NiteBrite on 1/5/2016
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Stats loss counter: reset, irrigo equivalent: none
[00:34] <@ortab> NiteBrite's laugh is that of a condemned soul gazing into the abyss.
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Theus
Posts: 311
1/5/2016
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Grenem wrote:
You need an adblock to use any wikias, really. it's a shame, but it's the truth.
Unfortunately, wikia just isn't optimized for a page of this size. There's 44,000 lines of code on that page, and the big hit it takes when loading is actually displaying the content (not the ads), formatted correctly.
So, it's not the truth.
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Optimatum
Posts: 3666
1/5/2016
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This guide is certainly more up-to-date, though as with any other large compilation of data some is bound to become inaccurate without anyone noticing.
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Optimatum, a ruthless and merciful gentleman. No plant battles, Affluent Photographer requests, or healing offers; all other social actions welcome.
Want a sip of Cider? Just say hi!
PM me for information enigmatic or Fated. Though the forum please, not FL itself.
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