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Grinding as a person of some importance
Alva St-Snow
Posts: 21
3/8/2012
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Finding myself stat-capped and perhaps a little low on content, I'm now trying to find the sweet spot in my quest to accumulate a vasty amount of echoes for some supercaprine-related business. Perhaps this question has been asked but I have failed to pull up anything in my searches (not entirely sure what terms I should be using when perusing this library's indexes).
Thus. I've been looking at the financial returns of Unfinished Business sections in the starter Locations, Mahogany Hall and the Labyrinth of Tigers.
So far, it seems to me that on Watchmaker Hill, the 2-turn Jade Fragments at 1.2 E per turn (the 5-turn Rostygold gives 1.1 E) is good and possibly the Spite's 2-action Stolen Correspondence a bit more (1 Echo per turn usually but sometimes a 2.5 Echo Touching Love Story bumps up the value - haven't calculated the odds so not entirely sure what the decimal value may be). The nice thing about these multlturn actions is that you can quickly grind them out and then be on your merry way to other distractions such as knocking back more gin and doing poetry readings.
Veilgarden and Ladybones Road don't seem to yield more that 1 Echo per action (correct me if I'm wrong).
I think some actions in Mahogany Hall can yield something similar but it's slower because it's not multiple actions (Working for Jasper and Frank: 1.12E, Box Office Burglary or Cutthroat Advertising less, Forged Tickets 1.16 but at a connection price).
The Labyrinth's does not seem to provide anything above 1 E per turn... Again, I'm not really keeping a spreadsheet (but I'm starting to think I should).
Am I missing something?
Echoing with unadulterated greed,
Alva
edited by Alva St-Snow on 3/8/2012
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Alva St-Snow An irresistible individual of mysterious and indistinct gender. Fond of cats, books, gin & searing enigmas. Possibly photosynthetic. http://twitter.com/AlvaStSnow
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squiddles
Posts: 7
10/13/2012
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I have a slightly elaborate grinding loop that leaves nothing to chance - I thought it was crazy-lucrative (like 2.5 E/A), but I just did the calcs and came up with a saner overall return of 1.475 Echoes/action. Still seems to be the best RoI going, though.
Main limitation is that you have to be following the "Light Fingers" ambition and be far enough along to have access to A Secluded Coastline. You also need to be running a newspaper and be a Person of Some Importance, and to have a high Shadowy stat.
Here's how it goes:
1. Zee voyage to Dr Vaughan's encampment.
2. Use "Stopping Along The Coast" to grind lots of Phosphorescent Scarabs: a 5-action turn yields 65x Phosphorescent Scarab, for 13 per action.
-Whenever you have less than 5 turns but you're about to be away from Echo Bazaar for long enough to max out your candle(s), use "Enough! Burn them!" to convert Phosphorescent Candles (500 at a time) to Memories of Light. Just don't overdo it - you need about 7x as many Scarabs as Memories of Light. I count this as part of the action cost, since it scales with the amount you're grinding.
3. Zee voyage back to London.
4. Go to the Downward Engineering Company in the Bazaar Sidestreets and convert all your Scarabs and Memories into Whirring Contraptions. This will take time, and is counted as part of the action cost for this loop.
5. Go to Doubt St, and print newspapers until you run out of Whirring Contraptions.
I think it's 14 actions per edition, yielding a default 110x A Journal of Infamy (the Wikidot wiki says 90 but it's incorrect) for 55 Echoes.
Personally, I'm just printing "A gossipy and tantalising edition" each time - 60x Salacious Copy.
As a bonus, I now always go for "Employ a little theatrical accountancy" in "The Temptations of Power" - I always have spare copy anyway, and it's a free 500x Rostygold for an extra 5 Echoes per edition.
OK, doing the calcs now - let's look at one edition:
1x Whirring Contraption
200x Phosphorescent Scarab (15.4 actions)
30x Memory of Light (10.989 actions for the Scarabs, and 0.286 actions for the conversion - total 11.275 actions)
14 actions printing the newspaper.
Total 40.675 actions per edition, with a return of 60 Echoes (plus occasional bonuses from rare successes while constructing editions).
Return is 1.475 Echoes/action guaranteed, plus assorted bonuses from time to time.
Note that actions spent in zee voyages aren't counted, because you can grind arbitrary amounts for each voyage.
... I might possibly be a huge nerd. I'm OK with this.
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