SeanH
Posts: 65
3/2/2012
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SPOILERS, do not read if you haven't finished the content!
The Case of the Fidgeting Writer is a brilliant bit of content from Failbetter, just the sort of story I'm looking for in Echo Bazaar - a Lovecraftian peek behind the curtains at the horrors of the fallen cities. Absolutely wonderful stuff.
And not to be cynical about it or anything, but it also appears to be pretty lucrative, and that Overgoat ain't getting any cheaper. I'm wondering if it could be a better deal than the current gold standard (the Velocipede Squad, rendering E1.23ish per action).
The difficulty is this. Each step you can trade your progress in for a guaranteed reward or take a chance on progressing further. The option to progress further carries a small(ish) item cost, win or lose. This makes the maths of the economics here pretty complicated (at least to me with my philosophy degree), particularly since we don't know exactly what the odds are (most are "pretty good odds", the last three are "could go either way").
Here are the steps:
Step 1 (Tale of Terror!!):
Cost: 1xTale of Terror!! (E0.50)
Chance: Pretty good odds
Step 2 (Sense of Deja Vu):
Cost: 1xVision of the Surface (E0.50)
Chance: Pretty good odds
Trade: 1xExtraordinary Implication (E2.50)
Step 3 (Glimpse of Something Larger):
Cost: 2xCorrespondence Plaques (E1.00 total)
Chance: Pretty good odds
Trade: 2xCollated Research (E5.00 total)
Step 4 (Deal with a Devil):
Cost: 2xBrilliant Souls (E1.00 total)
Chance: Pretty good odds
Trade: 1xBrass Ring (E12.50)
Step 5 (Room Number at the Royal Beth):
Cost: 1xAn Identity Uncovered! (E2.50)
Chance: Could go either way
Trade: 2xAntique Mysteries (E25.00 total)
Step 6 (Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer):
Cost: 1xExtraordinary Implication (E2.50)
Chance: Could go either way*
Trade: 1xNight-Whisper (E62.50)**
Step 7 (Lens of Black Glass):
Cost: 1xMourning Candle (E2.50)
Chance: Could go either way
Trade: 1xSearing Enigma, 1xPrimaeval Hint, 1xBazaar Permit, 1xComprehensive Bribe (E149.70 total)
Win: 1xCoruscating Soul (E312.50)
*A success here also increases your Wounds and Nightmares.
**This also has significant curiosity value, since currently the only other way to get a Night-Whisper is to trade with the Shivering Relicker, an option that requires Watchful 150 and is thus, I think, only available to those with Overgoats. (edit: I stand corrected on this last point, but it certainly is very difficult to get a Night-Whisper)
That's a potential 302 Echoes from 7 actions. But of course, most times you won't get all the way - if you fail on the last step, you're out E10.5 worth of stuff. The question is, will you succeed often enough to make the failures worth it? To get an exact answer we'd need to know how good "pretty good odds" are, but we do know this: to get 302 Echoes from the Velocipede Squad storyline, you'd need to spend 245 actions. Maybe I've just gotten lucky, but I'm sure the average number of actions it takes for a successful Fidgeting Writer run is far smaller. Of course, you'll occasionally have to replenish your stocks of Tales of Terror!!, Correspondence Plaques etc, but fortunately none of these are very hard to get.
Thoughts? Have I made obvious and terrible errors of judgement?
edited by SeanH on 3/2/2012
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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
1/24/2016
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Okay! I was entirely unable to debug the fancy spreadsheet, so I went for the less-fancy, but hopefully more transparent, version.
Here's the updated version.
Use the tabs at the bottom to choose what you want to convert. You'll get back what items you need for the Fidgeting Writer itself, plus what raw materials you'll need, with the actions it'll take (one of those is just a conservative estimate).
This gives significantly different results than GeorgeEarlslight's version for Antique Mysteries and Collated Research; please do check my math! I also added the number of actions it takes to cash in the items to the EPA calculation, which was omitted from the prior spreadsheet.
Other feedback is extremely welcome.
(Further edits: putting back thing that got eaten by a cut & paste bug; updating EPAs; link to check for updates from spreadsheet itself.)
edited by an_ocelot on 1/25/2016
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Talkes
Posts: 90
3/17/2016
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an_ocelot wrote:
I'll look at hyaneas in a bit. I just couldn't resist.
Now, my young ones, as we continue exploring the preserved wildlife of the Fifth City in the Labyrinth of Tigers, we are to behold a rare sight: an ocelot preparing to hunt hyenas. You may wonder, how such a modestly sized feline would hunt it's savage pack-hunting relative, but in the Fith City the nature and the order of things get distorted easily enough.
Now, watch closely, as an ocelot is distracting hyena with a jar of first-class honey, snaps a collar around its neck and drags honey-mazed beast deeper, to the inner coils, where one of ocelot's several lairs is.
How does it get honey you ask?
Well, why do you think it hunts hyenas?
edited by Talkes on 3/17/2016
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Nigel Overstreet
Posts: 1220
7/23/2014
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19,000 Tales of Terror turned into 13,428 Senses of Déjà Vu
for a conversion rate of 0.7067368421052632
I think it's safe to say that .7 is The Number.
If you want more data points than that, I don't know what else to give you.
edited by Nigel Overstreet on 2/9/2015
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The Romantic Egotist: Most Hedonistic Man in All of Fallen London
Are you or someone you know Overgoated? Please, let me know!
Cider Club
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Nigel Overstreet
Posts: 1220
12/16/2015
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an_ocelot wrote:
Vision of the Surface = side-convert from Journals of Infamy (Thefts of Particular Character) Depending on how many you need, it might be more efficient to get Romantic Notions in Polythreme and convert up.
an_ocelot wrote:
Extraordinary Implication = convert up from Tales of Terror!! You should be able to get enough of these through Cider dreams, yes?
an_ocelot wrote:
Mourning Candle = Affair of the Box I got all I needed and then some with the Half-Abandoned Mansions.
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Are you or someone you know Overgoated? Please, let me know!
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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
12/16/2015
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I prefer to stay in the Fifth City so I can pull cards; I've temporarily set aside Cider dreams to ditch my Revolutionary connections (and obviously that's not very useful for most people!), and I don't K&C so I can't use a Half-Abandoned Mansion, but that's good to know for others. Thanks!
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GeorgeEarlslight
Posts: 27
10/2/2015
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Hello,
I've worked on ancusohm's google sheet
(http://community.failbettergames.com/messages.aspx?topicid=376&Page=6#post71580)
to create a shopping list for the Fidgeting Writer carousel.
It's on the third tab.
You need to input the amount of items needed and the desired award.
The sheet calculates the amount of materials needed according to the standard success ratios and common component grinds used by the original editor.
It also outputs various data on the echo worth of the awards.
Surely some values could be off, so any comments would be welcome.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_wHGKJCG9SnhiGEwPihKiMJGM6VC4EkJJSsZTYR9xJY/edit?usp=sharing
Please remember that the calculations are based on statistics and that you should overshoot to avoid component shortcoming.
PS. If the original writer does not wish me to use his work, just send me a message and I'll remove the original tabs.
edited by GeorgeEarlslight on 10/2/2015
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Available for Salon orations.
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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
4/2/2016
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Further update to spreadsheet: columns to tell you when you can stop converting your Jade to Scraps of Incendiary Gossip (added out of personal need; wrong-way-around thinking about it now fixed); minor fix to EPA for two-item sets; cosmetic improvements.
(Now with even more cosmetic improvements, and I swear I'm done fiddling for the day.)
edited by an_ocelot on 4/3/2016
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Dave
Posts: 215
3/2/2012
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I ran the numbers after completing the line once myself; I'll share them here.
Assuming a 66% chance on all "pretty good odds" and a 50% chance on "could go either way" odds, I came up with the following averages:
To get A:
Deja Vu: 1.52 turns, 0.76 echos cost, trade in for Extraordinary Implication (E2.50) (adding one extra turn)
Glimpse: 3.81 turns, 1.91 echos cost, trade in for Collated Research (E5.00 total) (adding one extra turn)
Deal: 7.29 turns, 4.4 echo cost, trade in for Brass Ring (E12.50) (adding one extra turn)
Room: 12.56 turns, 8.19 echos cost, trade in for 2xAntique Mysteries (E25.00 total) (adding one extra turn)
Last Hope: 27.12 turns, 21.37 echos cost, trade in for Night-Whisper (E62.50) (adding one extra turn)
Black Glass: 56.24 turns, 47.74 echos cost, trade in for 1xSearing Enigma, 1xPrimaeval Hint, 1xBazaar Permit, 1xComprehensive Bribe (E149.70 total) (adding one extra turn)
Soul: 114.47 turns, 100.48 echos cost, 1xCoruscating Soul (E312.50) to cash in (no extra turns this time)
Of course, the developers have stated that challenges with the same difficulty text may not have exactly the same odds of success - so there will be some variation from this. Also a lot of people like to assume 70% for "pretty good odds" which makes these numbers much better (I have those too; but in general it cuts about 15% off the time and 10% off the cost)
Unfortunately, to pin down those numbers to within a few %, with a 95% confidence, takes a couple thousand attempts... which is more than I'm willing to put into it. But this should give you a general picture.
--
The Dave, a terrifying, lethal, inescapable and sagacious gentleman
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Spacemarine9
Posts: 2234
9/12/2014
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It's entirely possible that the odds could have been switched without anyone really noticing; the descriptor for both 50% and 60% odds is "it could go either way", so there'd be no obvious tell. Or there could be some cross-pollination between both spreadsheets, though I dunno how much that'd affect things unless it was pretty major.
Those are more likely than there being some weird doppelganger of Luck which looks and behaves exactly like Luck in all regards but is Narrow 5 instead of 10 and only Fallen London uses it and only for like two checks in the whole game, at least. That's not impossible, but it's also not very likely.
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Vyrlokar
Posts: 75
4/8/2012
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I'm grinding an overgoat too, and I've found that the most lucrative thing to do right now is this little story. Check my sig for my numbers. I'm currently at 18 brilliant Souls, having spent 1415 actions, and 1307 echoes worth of goods, for a total benefit/action of 3.05159010600707 echoes/action (2.19035176403603 echoes action once you take into account the actions needed to grind the materials, instead of their cost) [The link at my sig is constantly updated thanks to Google Docs magic]. With my percentages, it's worth following the story until the end.
Current success percentages:
Tale of Terror->Sense of Deja Vu: 72.5738396624472%
Sense of Deja Vu->Glimpse of something larger: 72.6726726726727%
Glimpse of something larger->Deal with a Devil: 74.8936170212766%
Deal with a Devil->A Room Number at the Royal Beth: 61.9318181818182%
A Room Number at the Royal Beth->The Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer: 50.4587155963303%
The Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer->A Lens of Black Glass: 60%
A Lens of Black Glass-> Coruscating Soul: 54.5454545454545%
Given the data on my sig, could any armchair statistician calculate the confidence intervals and standard deviation for these percentages? Been a while for me.
edited by Vyrlokar on 4/8/2012
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Profile: http://www.fallenlondon.com/Profile/Vyrlokar
Overgoated thanks to the Fidgeting Writer story, follow my progress here! http://tinyurl.com/CSGrind
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Aspeon
Posts: 311
4/8/2012
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Ooh, data. I'm not quite sure how you get the 2.19 number, since if I just calculate rewards/(actions + Echo cost) I get 2.06 E/action. But using that, here's the Echo/action cost if you cashed out at each earlier stage:
Sense of Deja Vu (for Extraordinary Implication): 0.815165877
Vision of the Surface (for Collated Research): 0.838445808
Deal with a Devil (for Brass Ring): 1.178361007
Room Number (for Antique Mysteries): 1.266263941
Last Hope (for Night-Whisper): 1.386368219
Lens of Black Glass (for a pile of goods): 1.864188679
In the earlier stages, the action it takes to cash out is a pretty big hit. But it's a pretty good source for any of those goods after Collated Research (and the Research too, if you're Unwelcome at the University).
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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
3/18/2016
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Guy Scrum wrote:
Since there seems to be a flurry of activity on this topic, it might be a good time to update the fidgeting writer simulation I wrote a year and a half ago. I never advertised it very well (I just now added a link to it in my signature), and I don't think I ever did a super good job of describing what it does. But, before I spend an afternoon improving it, is there anyone that would actually find improvements useful? Is there any particular feature that users would like to see? I think that the biggest thing that it needs is a way to take into account the actions used in acquiring the materials rather than just subtracting their cost from the total profit. Maybe I'll also make it less ugly. Feedback is welcome though. Yes, I was never really sure what it was good for! So I'm not sure I can suggest improvements without knowing that. But, if there's a way to add +/- either to the spreadsheet or via the simulator, I think people might find that useful.
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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
2/26/2016
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an_ocelot wrote:
Here's the updated version.
Use the tabs at the bottom to choose what you want to convert. You'll get back what items you need for the Fidgeting Writer itself, plus what raw materials you'll need, with the actions it'll take (one of those is just a conservative estimate).
Thanks to the kind data-gathering skills of NiteBrite, I have determined that Jade via the Temple Club is only advantageous if you don't have to grind Society first (details below); otherwise, you want Unfinished Business. Spreadsheet updated accordingly.
[spoiler]NiteBrite found that the Jade Fragments you get at the Temple Club average your Persuasive level. My max persuasive is 251, which is fairly close to the overall max. Every 1 action of trading Connected: Society for Jade at the Temple Club consumes 44 CP of Connected; being erudite at the Duchess's salon gains 33 CP per action, so it takes 1.33 actions to generate enough Connected: Society to cash in, for 2.33 actions total: 251/2.33 = 1.08 EPA. Meanwhile, the wiki says that in Unfinished Business, the range of Jade obtained per 2 actions is 51-501; if this is an even distribution, the average should be 276: 276/2 = 1.38 EPA. [/spoiler]
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Gonen
Posts: 817
10/2/2015
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That is pretty neat, thank you.
Very fine work there!
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Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness.
The long journey to eccentricity:
On March 10th, 2018, reached 15 on all quirks, simultaneously. The Quirky Anesthesiologist
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xKiv
Posts: 846
10/3/2015
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NotaWalrus wrote:
I guess the question then becomes whether the bonus from the conversions offsets this.
Tier-3-to-tier-3 side-conversions convert 25 echo of stuff at 0.5 epa.
Tier-1-to-tier-2 mass-conversions convert 10 echo of stuff at 0.5 epa. This is bad for the total epa, even though tier-2-to-tier-3 mass-conversions convert 50 echo of stuff at 2.5 epa. (tier-1-to-tier-3 chain has 5 1-to-2 conversions, so it converts 50 echo of stuff at 5e/6a=0.83 epa)
JoI to inc.gossip is 4 steps, so this chain converts 50 echos of JoI to 51 echo of inc.gossips in 8actions, leaving you with 6 echo worth of extras.
Tier-1-to-3 converts 50 echos of proscribed materials to (52.5 echos of inklings in 5 actions, and then) 57.2 echos of inc.gossip (in 2.08 more, which means the chain finishes) in 7.08 actions, with no extras.
Therefore:
If your basic grind for p.mat. is at 1.00 epa, then you are getting 57.2 echoes of inc.gossip every 52.08 actions (gossip epa=total epa: 1.098).
If you are getting JoI at 1.263 epa, then you can get 51 echoes of inc.gossip every 47.59 actions (gossip epa: 1.0717), with 0.126 bonus epa in other resources (total epa: 1.1977).
NotaWalrus wrote:
Unless there's a better Proscribed material grind I'm ignoring, that is.
Only if you allow opportunity cards. Get firefox candle stubs from clay sedan/for a little sport, then use the nocturnal visitor card to convert them into inklings. That's ... 40.5 actions to get 52.5 echoes of inc.gossip (gossip epa: 1.296), with almost 10 echoes of bonus stuff (total epa: 1.54)
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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
1/24/2016
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GeorgeEarlslight wrote:
I've worked on ancusohm's google sheet
(http://community.failbettergames.com/messages.aspx?topicid=376&Page=6#post71580)
to create a shopping list for the Fidgeting Writer carousel.
[...]
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_wHGKJCG9SnhiGEwPihKiMJGM6VC4EkJJSsZTYR9xJY/edit?usp=sharing
I have also built on those before me: this spreadsheet was incredibly useful, but I had to do my own calculations for how many of the raw materials were necessary, so my version of the shopping list tells you that. It was also updated with the suggested conversions in this thread.
As noted in the "credits & how-to" tab, use File / Make a Copy to run your own calculations.
I have cleverly saved doing this until I already had a giant headache, so corrections are more than welcome! I tried to be transparent about my work so that people could check it more easily.
Further update: fixed the Brilliant Souls/Correspondence Plaques in a still ugly, but more accurate way.
I'm still running down the Antique Mysteries and Collated Research--they seem to be giving me excitingly different results and I find the formulas used here to be entirely impenetrable. So if you're trying to calculate how to grind those, maybe do that math by hand for the moment.
edited by an_ocelot on 1/24/2016
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Spacemarine9
Posts: 2234
9/10/2014
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Luck's a Narrow quality, so there are no 55% odds. The actual probability of getting a Coruscating Soul is more probably around ~2.5-3%; 70%/70%/70%/60%/50%/50%/50%, though the last one might be a 60 (it could go either way is the descriptor for either 50 or 60% odds, the estimated odds for looking through the lens over ~200 attempts are somewhere near 55% so it's hard to tell one way or the other.)
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Guy Scrum
Posts: 197
9/12/2014
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A quick calculation shows that producing the above data for the last three conversions is about 8400 times more likely given a probability of 55% than it would be if the probability were 50%. So it seems highly unlikely that the probabilities have been set to 50% this entire time. But, as Gillsing points out, the devs could have tweaked them mid-way through.
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Interactive fidgeting writer simulation
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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
12/16/2015
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Okay, I gotta rebuild my Enigmas after Cider, so let's sum this up.
Tale of Terror!! = directly from Thefts of Particular Character
Vision of the Surface = side-convert from Journals of Infamy (Thefts of Particular Character)
Correspondence Plaque = side-convert from Journals of Infamy
Brilliant Soul = directly from Thefts of Particular Character
An Identity Uncovered! = get Jade (either from Society at the Palace to Jade at the Temple Club, or from Unfinished Business at Watchmaker's Hill), buy Incendiary Gossip at the Labyrinth (Take some refreshment, Coil 1), then convert up.
Extraordinary Implication = convert up from Tales of Terror!!
(stop here if going for Enigmas, but if going to end)
Mourning Candle = Affair of the Box
Yes?
edited by an_ocelot on 12/30/2015
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xKiv
Posts: 846
3/17/2016
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Some of the source materials may be faster from breeding hyaenas. I am pegging extraordinary implications (devils away) at 132 ppa, for example.
Maniac prayers (fungus+pious wrath) are 137.5 ppa, and therefore correspondence plaques 140.4 ppa .. which also makes visions of the surface 135.6 ppa.
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Guy Scrum
Posts: 197
3/18/2016
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Since there seems to be a flurry of activity on this topic, it might be a good time to update the fidgeting writer simulation I wrote a year and a half ago. I never advertised it very well (I just now added a link to it in my signature), and I don't think I ever did a super good job of describing what it does. But, before I spend an afternoon improving it, is there anyone that would actually find improvements useful? Is there any particular feature that users would like to see? I think that the biggest thing that it needs is a way to take into account the actions used in acquiring the materials rather than just subtracting their cost from the total profit. Maybe I'll also make it less ugly. Feedback is welcome though.
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Interactive fidgeting writer simulation
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xKiv
Posts: 846
3/21/2016
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MrBurnside wrote:
xKiv wrote:
I got the "better" success rate as 85% from somewhere (I think I just kept records ...). You seem to be using 70%.
They are listed on wiki as luck challenges (with pretty good odds, which means 70% or 80%), which suprises me. I remember them as just randomly having a different result.
The storylet shows "pretty good odds" as well. And it's true that the odds could, then, go as high as 80. Normally the ranges seem more for show, however; experimental data (both here and on individual story pages on the wiki) showing that the back-end usually uses the lower number. I assumed in this case that that was the same here as well, but I don't really have any confidence in that assumption. It was lazy of me.
I am now on the computer where I have the records I used, and there are two interesting things in them.
First, a very old comment stating "and only gives 50% rewards 30% of the time; which is *0.85". That's probably where the 85% thing came from.
Second, it lists 79 successes and 29 failures, which is 70.7% success rate.
That makes XIs 126.9 ppa, maniac prayers 130 ppa, correspondence plaques 133 ppa, and visions of the surface 128.8 ppa.
This is also the computer where I have my "find the best way to grind resources" script (work very in progress, needs total rewrite), which, perhaps surprisingly, uses the correct success rate (70%). And I am not very confident in its outputs, but even though it places breeding hyaenas slightly above converting JoIs (when the goal is extraordinary implications), it probably only does so because it values the spent honey as if it only cost enough actions to replenish 200 pences with AotB ...
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Optimatum
Posts: 3666
5/6/2016
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Re: exact chances for luck checks, the iOS app helpfully states the exact chance. I can check particular things if necessary.
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SmallFish
Posts: 62
5/19/2012
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The gambler in me got interested in this storyline. The maths have been done, but here's my two cents.
At first I tried to go to straight to the end, didn't work once. Now I've been trying out the whole process four times by getting 10 deja vus and then proceeding by going through all the same level stages before advancing further. Almost every time it broke down approx. something like this: 10 deja vus --> 8 glimpses --> 6-7 deals with the devil --> 4-5 rooms --> 2-4 --last hopes > 1-2 lens. I never got more than two lens of black glass. I also haven't succeeded in getting the coruscating soul yet, but that's mainly because I sort of decided that when I'm down to one chance in a stage, I'd cash in (losing out at the lens stage is brutal).
This has nothing to do with propabilities, but thought I'd just share my experience. I'll keep trying. 
edited by SmallFish on 5/19/2012
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Nikki
Posts: 19
6/2/2012
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Vyrlokar wrote:
for a total benefit/action of 3.05159010600707 echoes/action (2.19035176403603 echoes action once you take into account the actions needed to grind the materials, instead of their cost)
edited by Vyrlokar on 4/8/2012
I am certainly not a statistician, but I can say that I'm netting over 2 echoes per turn. I decided to run through all 48 of my tales of terror and keep track of profit and loss.
It took 179 actions, when you consider that I needed 20 actions for prisoners' honey and then 2 actions to convert the honey.
48 tales of terror
39 sense of deja vu + 39 visions of the surface @ 50p
30 glimpses of something larger (60 correspondence plaque @ 50p)
20 deals with devils (40 brilliant souls @ 50p)
10 room numbers (10 identity uncovered @250p)
6 last hope (6 extraordinary implications @250p)
4 lens of black glass (4 mourning candles @250p)
The bazaar value of the 159 items I had to burn through was 119.5 echoes.
I got 2 coruscating souls, total value 625 echoes.
Therefore my profit was 505.5 echoes, and at 179 turns, that's 2.82 echoes per turn.
My net will probably be lower next time, because I'll have to stop at some point and replenish the supplies needed. I'm really glad we have Thefts of a Particular Character to help us out with a few aspects of that.
--
"Lalia" in the Neath, Correspondent
@moxie_rocks on Twitter
Nikki Marquita on FB
Unwisely seeking the Name
Open to accepting Proteges and going out on the town.
Reluctant to accept cats or photographer requests.
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Aspeon
Posts: 311
8/1/2012
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I'm on this quest now, so here's what I'm doing: (Numbers from Urthdigger and http://community.failbettergames.com/topic707-spading-the-fidgets.aspx?Page=1)
- I do Tales of Terror, Brilliant Souls, and Journals of Infamy via The Big One in the Flit (126 PPA with Gang of Hoodlums). The latter can be converted to Correspondence Plaques and Extraordinary Implications (which reduces the yield, but I don't have time to do the math on just how much at the moment)
- Identities Uncovered are the trickiest ones for me at the moment. "Have a chat in the shadow of the wheel" at the Carnival grants 100 PPA in Incediary Gossips (before conversion to Identities). Unfinished Business for Jade to spend on Rubbery Lumps in Labyrinth coil 2 is slightly better at 106 PPA (agan before conversion), but lowers Unaccountably Peckish.
- For Mourning Candles, A Boxful of Intrigue, which is currently considered the best money option in the game. (143 PPA)
I have enough Visions of the Surface from Someone Is Coming, so I haven't investigated a good way to grind for them. (Cryptic Clues are also easy to get via Opportunities, but there's another caveat for seekers of the Name- the bulk conversion from Appalling Secrets to Journals of Infamy requires Connected: the Duchess, which Pass-the-Cat drains.)
--
A raccooning will not be postponed indefinitely.
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Aspeon
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BaronElectric
Posts: 68
9/3/2012
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Just wanted to chime in with more data - I did 100 runs with ToT which led to 76/49/36/21/11/6/3 of the remaining items. Once I finish everything else up (need 1 more lodging, a gym, and to visit the Iron Republic) I'll start a 1200 ToT run to get an overgoat.
As an aside, if anybody from FB reads this, can you put a Try Again link on the intermediary items? It's annoying to remember to click Myself and then find the item again when I'm trying to bulk convert.
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Profile
Twitter: @flbaronelectric
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Abraham Bounty
Posts: 251
11/10/2012
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Well, I am disappointed. Moreso, I am in fact quite angry about the results of my second run with The Fidgeting Writter.
Step # %
Tale of Terror 429 71.56%
A Sense of Déjà Vu 307 70.68%
Glimpse of Something Larger 217 74.65%
Deal with a Devil 162 70.99%
Room Number at the Royal Beth 115 52.17%
Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer 60 40.00%
Lens of Black Glass 24 37.50%
9 Coruscating Souls
I spent over thirteen hundred actions on this run, not including gathering the needed materials or recuperating from the wounds the run caused, and wound up with an average of € 1.19 per action.
To see why this both angers and disappoints me, you must understand that my initial run started with barely a third of the Tales of Terror (172) and in the end netted me more souls (12) and averaged more than five echos per action. It also of course, took less than half the actions and therefor half the time.
As this rather starkly demonstrates how widely varied the rewards of this storylet can be, I can quite readily understand why some people have sworn never to touch it again.
--
News in the Neath: Noted citizen of Fallen London, Abraham Bounty, has acquired six hundred and sixty six souls. Additionally rumour has it that the lion's share of those souls was from a theft of The Brass Embasy itself. We are quite certain that this portents nothing ominous for him. Well, nothing unusually ominous anyway.
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Corran
Posts: 401
12/10/2012
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I did a run early in November and forgot to report it.
Now, I'm sure the random number generator is totally server side (cheating would otherwise be quite simple) so the computer or browser used should not matter, and yet... I got much better results for the turns I played on my parents' pc when I was visiting them (I did about 50 A Deal with the Devil actions there).
I've done smaller runs before and I have always had bad luck (although I did not keep track those times and the human mind is easily tricked).
Same for 'I've brought something for you to try, dear'; I've *never* had a single success with this card and I've been getting it for over three months now... 30+ times and not a single succes... And the card text says it could go either way...
Anyway; here are my stats:
Tale of Terror - Did not track these unfortunately
100 x A Sense of Deja Vu
70 x A Glimpse of Something Larger (70.00%)
61 x A Deal with the Devil (87.14%)
41 x Room Number at the Royal Beth (67.21%)
22 x Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer (53.66%)
7 x Lens of Black Glass (31.82%)
4 x Coruscating Souls (57.14%)
I'm now spending my time in Spite, grinding Survivor of the Affair of the Box. If it would be easier to grind the The Fidgeting Writer (a Try This Again button would help) then I might do another run just to see if I'd get very different stats.
And speaking of making grinding easier; I realise this would take quite a lot of effort but I'd love it if storylets that have a set maximum of times you can play them before hitting the boundary and having to move on to the next one (like Doing the Rounds, etc.) would have also a button to play it exactly that many times. This only works if there are no random results of course. But for Doing the Rounds, etc. it would just give me my increase in A Boxful of Intrigue, allowing me to move on after one click instead of having to play the storylet three times.
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My Fallen London profile
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protonsinthedark
Posts: 106
4/21/2013
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Guy Scrum wrote:
Nagato-01 wrote:
The total probability, from Tales to Souls is the product of all the raw probabilities, which is 3.754%. The total fractional uncertainty is 26.3%, which means that 95% of the time, the number of Coruscating Souls you should get is 3.754±0.987% of the number of Tales of Terror you started with.
Sorry for being pedantic, but as a budding scientist I'd like to correct this.
The more Tales of Terror you start with, the more accurately you can guess the percentage that turn into Coruscating Souls, but the less accurately you'll be able to guess the number of souls you'll end up with. For example, if you start with just one Tale of Terror, you're guaranteed to get either zero or one souls out of it, so you only have an error of 1 soul. But this is also an uncertainty of 100%, which is not so good. If you start with 1000 tales then you'll likely end up with 37 souls, plus or minus a few, but it's a much better percent uncertainty.
The actual probability comes from the binomial distribution. If you start with enough tales, then the binomial distribution is well-approximated by the normal distribution with a standard deviation of sqrt(np(1-p)), where n is the number of tales you have and p is the probability to get a soul from a single tale. If you want the 95% confidence interval (about 2 standard deviations), then starting with n tales you should get 0.0375*n ± 0.38*sqrt(n) souls. For 1000 tales, this comes out to about 37.5 ± 12 souls, or ± 32%. For 10000 tales, you'd expect 375 ± 38, or ± 10%. Of course the formula breaks down for small n (you can't get negative souls), at which point you'll have to take the actual binomial distribution instead of the approximate normal distribution (for example, with n = 95 you get 104% uncertainty). And for very large n the uncertainty will be dominated by the accuracy with which we have currently measured the probability, which I'm guessing is a fair bit better than ± 26% by this point.
I'm pretty sure I just had a nerdgasm over this. <333
--
Mio, a midnight, sinister, irresistible, and breathtaking lady of mysterious origins.
Calling cards, social actions, menace reduction requests, and newspaper interviews (Nemesis ambition) welcome. No boxed cats or Affluent Photographer requests please.
Other Characters:
tinyassassin, an orphan trained as an assassin, currently hunting the Vake.
Alexandre and Adriana, a pair of hedonistic twins betting their souls on the Marvellous...if they don't lose them to the devils first.
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Nigel Overstreet
Posts: 1220
4/22/2013
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Okay, so if I'm starting out with 15,000 Tales of Terror, then by the end of my travails I should have 562.5 souls ± 46.54 or 8.2737% ?
Of course this is entirely theoretical because I believe the method we've been using of gathering data is skewed and because I suspect 6 months of doing nothing but turning Tales of Terror into Deja Vu will drive me mad. Well madder.
In any event I hope to have a more definitive numbers by he end of it. Either that or there will be a big puddle of what was once Nigel crying on the floor.
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The Romantic Egotist: Most Hedonistic Man in All of Fallen London
Are you or someone you know Overgoated? Please, let me know!
Cider Club
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Fhoenix
Posts: 602
4/22/2013
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Converting Tales of Terror is relatively fast, it is after that the real horror starts. The problem is, each time you try to convert a Sense of Deja Vu you end up on the main story screen (because there is no "Try this again" button, only "Onwards!"). So each time you have to reload your inventory, find the item, click on it, try the conversion, end up on the main story screen, open the inventory... it gets old really fast.
edited by Fhoenix on 4/22/2013
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My Character
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Guy Scrum
Posts: 197
4/22/2013
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This raises an interesting question: to what extent is it ok to automate some of this? It seems like it should be fine to write a script that automatically converts one Tale of Terror (without having to search for it in the inventory and such), but maybe converting 10 tales at a time is going to far. And it'd definitely be a violation of the terms and conditions to have a script that converts one tale every 10 minutes for 6 months (right?). Where's the line? Or is any script at all a prohibited?
--
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Guy%20Scrum
Interactive fidgeting writer simulation
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Kade Carrion (an_ocelot)
Posts: 1372
12/22/2013
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I have just created 30 Enigmas via the Fidgeting Writer, out of 503 Tales of Terror.
I didn't keep track of actions, because I was often on my tablet, but that was 16.8 Tales of Terror per Enigma. This is significantly under the 70/70/70/50/50/50 calculation (23.3 Tales of Terror/Enigma), or even putting the Deal with the Devil --> Room Number at 60% (19.4). However, I had some incredibly good luck with my last five, which took 17 Tales of Terror for 3 Enigmas and then just 2 for 2. Before then, I was exactly at 19.4 Tales/Enigma, and was under 23.3 for all except my first Enigma.
Again, I didn't keep track of the Deal --> Room conversion separately, but these results are more consistent with that being 60% than 50%. For what that's worth given the relatively small sample size.
edited by an_ocelot on 12/22/2013
--
Social Actions: send them to Kade Carrion (she/her; no Tournament of Lilies, please). an_ocelot has gone NORTH and cannot benefit from social actions!
Possibly-Useful Things: Spreadsheets and hints and link collections, oh my.
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Gillsing
Posts: 1203
9/19/2014
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ancusohm wrote:
... if my math is right, I think it may be more profitable than people think. Looking at the Extraordinary Implications, it seems like you're getting slightly more than two per Action, which seems strange when they originate from the 1.26 Echos/Action Tale of Terror!! grind. Which might explain how you can magically improve upon a 1.89 Echoes/Action grind by combining it with a bunch of inferior grinds, when all my experience tells me that doing so would actually even out the grinds to an average level between the lowest and the highest number of Echoes/Action. Not to mention that if I could get two Extraordinary Implications for one Action, that'd be a 5 Echoes/Action grind, so I wouldn't bother with piddly 1.89 Echoes/Action.
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Guy Scrum
Posts: 197
11/9/2014
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I've finally taken some time to write up a script which automagically does all of the fidgeting writer math, and it outputs some nifty graphs as well. You can find it here: http://guyscrum.github.io/fidgeting-writer-stats/. Enjoy!
Oh, and if anyone wants to make improvements and is sufficiently git-savvy, just fork the git repo and I'll happily merge in changes.
edited by Guy Scrum on 11/9/2014
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Guy%20Scrum
Interactive fidgeting writer simulation
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Sara Hysaro
Moderator
Posts: 4514
11/18/2014
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Individual experiences can vary. It's easy to hit a run of bad luck and feel like things have been changed to not be in your favour (like just recently when I got An Instrument 3 times in 4 expeditions).
--
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Sara%20Hysaro
Please do not send SMEN, cat boxes, or Affluent Reporter requests. All other social actions are welcome.
Are you a Scarlet Saint? Send a message my way to be added to the list.
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Maelwys
Posts: 7
1/25/2015
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I just started a Fidgeting Writer run, with a plan to do about 1000 Tales of Terror and see where that leads. I read somewhere that there might be a time-of-day factor to the story, but in my 200+ ToT conversions thus far I haven't seen any evidence of it (currently 67.9% success across different times). I'll report my numbers once I've finished to add to the DB if anyone is still managing that.
Regarding confidence intervals, you would have to select a sample size (say 100 attempts) and see what success you have for that sample. Repeat that across 100 samples (for 10,000 conversions) to get a range of success probabilities. Stdev comes from the comparison of the sample sets. Of course, ideally, all sample sets should be identical (same user, same time of day, same whatever-else-might-impact-the-result) to ensure repeatability.
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Nigel Overstreet
Posts: 1220
1/26/2015
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Solomon Husher wrote:
Side note: JESUS CHRIST NIGEL!!! How did you get 114 Hedonist!?
Because Narci is a very close second: http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/narcissus_echo
We both started at Hedonism 40 3 years ago. Back then it wasn't too terribly hard as Hedonism had no level cap and you could grind it at the Palace for at a pretty decent rate while getting the honey you needed for a Royal Beth address.
But at the '90 Feast, there was an option to increase your Hedonism by 5 cp per action. They had also just released the daily action cap. So we ground up the stat like crazy during the Feast and ended up at about 85 and 80, respectively.
But that wasn't enough. There is an action in the Labyrinth of Tigers that used to increase it at less than 1cp per action, but it was a dedicated source.
So we both ground it until I reached 115 and Narci reached 100. At that point we called a truce because no one was even close.
Due to other story requirement, we've both lost a level, but it's still higher than anyone else in the game by a lot.
I called it the War of Hedonism. I'm convinced it was part of the reason Quirks have caps now.
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The Romantic Egotist: Most Hedonistic Man in All of Fallen London
Are you or someone you know Overgoated? Please, let me know!
Cider Club
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SeanH
Posts: 65
3/2/2012
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Thanks, Dave! Your numbers are more pessimistic than my gut feeling, but still with the result that - if I'm reading it right - the expected return for a full run is a little over 1.85 Echoes/action, which is much better than the Velocipede Squad (and actually better than any opportunity card I'm aware of, except maybe "A presumptuous little opportunity" which can get you 4 Echoes/action, albeit with a prohibitive item cost).
I've been lucky so far and got two Coruscating Souls since yesterday. Naturally I'm keeping one on my mantlepiece, to provoke conversation and disorient burglars.
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Passionario
Posts: 777
3/2/2012
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SeanH wrote:
**This also has significant curiosity value, since currently the only other way to get a Night-Whisper is to trade with the Shivering Relicker, an option that requires Watchful 150 and is thus, I think, only available to those with Overgoats.
It is possible to reach Watchful 150 without the Overgoat, provided that you are otherwise wearing/wielding the best Bazaar-sold Watchful gear, are affiliated with a newspaper, and picked your Mysterious Benefactor and Constant Companion wisely.
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Passionario: Profile, Story, Ending
Passion: Profile, Appearance
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Dave
Posts: 215
4/1/2012
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Namrael Vivian wrote:
Unfortunately, statistics are statistics, i.e. they're not really THAT useful. I've spent... 30? 40? actions already, and I only got to the room. Once. And failed. Even not counting the ~10 actions spent to make items neccessary to try again and again with the deja vu and glimpse, I am still way behind your approximate arrivals. For example, only 1 out of 5 times did the deal with the devil work for me. 
By my estimates you should get to the room on average in 27 actions (not counting actions to gather materials!), so you're actually right on track. It's around 56 actions to get to the next step, and 114 actions to take the grand prize - again, on average. Of course, my estimates are considered "pessimistic" by some here; but they track reasonably well for me. "Statistics" are unfortunately only useful for large numbers of iterations - meaning if you are trying for the grand prize you could reasonably expect to get 50 in 5,700 actions; but your odds of getting one in 40 actions have a huge variability.
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The Dave, a terrifying, lethal, inescapable and sagacious gentleman
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