An Intimate of Devils and Selling Your Soul (Guide)

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This guide is a combination of two smaller guides. The first section involves An Intimate of Devils, an overview of the opportunity cards and the trick of FEAST OF THE ROSE. The second sections is a more generic guide to selling your soul.

An Intimate of Devils

An Intimate of Devils is a card based story which is usually the first way to reliably sell your soul. As the cards can get annoying, part of the intent of playing this storyline will probably be to lock yourself out of it. Either selling your soul or manipulating your progress during FEAST OF THE ROSE will raise An Intimate of Devils above 18, after which none of the cards can re-appear. Note that regaining your soul does not reset An Intimate of Devils, so you can only sell your soul once via this story.

The main way to start the story is to raise your Renown: Hell to 5 (e.g at Meet some devils the Mrs Plenty's Carnival). This will allow you to draw A devil's taken a shine to you. Note that many or even most of the actions will affect your quirks, if that's something you care about.

If your intention is to sell your soul, you should just play any cards that come your way -- see the following section for details.

However, you can trick the devils into leaving you alone by manipulating An Intimate of Devils so that it reaches 18 without selling your soul. While without doing this you can't normally advance Intimate past 17, during FEAST OF THE ROSE the The Feast of the Rose! card appears which has an option A dance with devils! where you can select Actually, you'll be meeting someone there, which gives +2 CP of Intimate regardless of your current score. As such, it has the power to raise Intimate to 18 and thus lock you out of the story without selling your soul.

If you wish to do this, you should still play the Intimate of Devils cards, except for the final offer cards (A serious offer - Deviless and A serious offer - Devil) that show up once you reach An Intimate of Devils 15. Instead you should hold at 15 until FEAST OF THE ROSE, when you can then play Actually, you'll be meeting someone there on the A dance with devils! storylet until you reach Intimate 18.

Level 15 is 15 * 16 / 2 = 120 CP while level 18 is 18 * 19 / 2 = 171 CP, so at +2CP per draw, that would be about (171 - 120) / 2 = ~25 draws. While that may seem like rather a lot, The Feast of the Rose! is a ubiquitous card appearing 10x as much as standard, so it's not quite as difficult as it may seem at first. However, as A dance with devils! only appears as an option on The Feast of the Rose! with the The Airs of London 0-25, once drawn you wish to cycle the Airs with other actions (see The Airs of London for some suggestions) to get A dance with devils! to appear.

For optimal play, you should only attempt to get Intimate to 15 when the time of the year is actually approaching FEAST OF THE ROSE, as keeping An Intimate of Devils low (0 - 5) gives an easy and frequent source of Church Favours (at 0 - 3) or Hell Favours (at 2 - 5).

Getting the quality that low, however, can be a tiresome affair if you've made the mistake of building it up. If your Intimate is under 15, the best way to lower it is to choose 'Decline' on either of the Abstraction? cards, which knocks the quality back down to 6. However, if you're already into the 'A serious offer...' stage ( Intimate 15+), then you can throw out the Affectionate Devil on A serious offer - Devil to get down to 8. As grinding down from Intimate 8 is an annoying affair that gives lots of Scandal, it's likely best to grind Intimate back up to 12 - 14 to regain the option to 'Decline' on Abstraction? to finally reach Intimate 6.


As an alternative to all of this for those who don't want to have to wait all year for the FEAST OF THE ROSE, Staining your Soul through SMEN and notifying one of the Devils through their final card will wipe An Intimate of Devils completely (albeit at the cost of all Hell Favours), and having a Stain on Your Soul will prevent the quality from starting again through the card A devil's taken a shine to you. The downside to this strategy however is of course actually playing through SMEN, but Seekers who wish to rid themselves of this irritating storyline can consider this a minor boon for them.

Cards

Card Levels Max CP gain Notes
A devil's taken a shine to you 0-3 1 Also has an option to gain a Favours: The Church at the cost of a Favours: Hell if you have any
A Dubious Favour 0
One infernal evening 2-5 2
An evening of music and possible hellfire 2-5 1 Gives 1 x Confident Smile, but also +2 CP Scandal
Actually, you'll be meeting someone there 3+ 2
A welcome for the Iron Republic 4-7 1 Source of Confident Smiles
Dance with a Devil 4-7 1 Source of Confident Smiles
A night at the opera! 5-8 2 'Something heavy' gives 1 x Ostentatious Diamond
Devilish poetry 5-8 4 Will affect quirks
Dinner with devils 7-9 4 Raises UP
A game of croquet 7-9 3
A quiet picnic 8-10 4 Affects quirks and menaces

'Remain Quiet' is the only option which advances the quality

An elaborate gift 8-10 4
The Art of Beauty 9-11 3
Hell's tailor 10-13 3 Gives 40 x Silk Scrap
A leisurely boat trip 11-14 3
"My Lady's Bat is Dead." 12-14 3 Gives +1 CP Wounds and 3 x Relic of the Second City
Abstraction? 1 (Deviless) 12-14 3
Abstraction? 2 (Devil) 12-14 3 Declining sets Intimate to 6
A serious offer - Deviless 13-17 3, up to 17
A serious offer - Devil 13-17 3, up to 17

Selling your Soul

In addition to the story mentioned above, selling your soul can be done in several ways. It should be noted that your soul isn't very attractive if you have a Stain on Your Soul or if you're In Possession of a Peculiar Personal Enhancement -

Pros and cons of having a soul

Why would you want your soul, anyway?

  • Several profitable Term Passing... Storylets at the University require you to have your soul if you haven't proceeded too far in the story.
  • Having your soul is required for an option to increase Counting the Days.
  • Having your soul is required for parts of Seeking Mr Eaten's Name. Furthermore, having lost a stained soul is problematic in the Forgotten Quarter.
  • Being soulless adds a (bad) opportunity card in your deck (Where's my soul?).
  • It opens up for you to sell it again!

Why would you want to stay Soulless?

Actually selling your soul during An intimate of devils above requires you to fail a 90% luck check after playing a long series of opportunity cards, so unless you're desperately in need of Devilbone Dice, this probably won't be profitable. Both of these opportunities raise An Intimate of Devils to 20, preventing you from selling your soul repeatedly. This also prevents the initial opportunity card to show up, which may be what you wanted all along...

Seasonal

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"Let's get down to business."
  • During Hallowmas:
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Attend a lecture on 'spiritual hygiene' (7 FATE)
  • If you have completed A Trade in Souls, you will be able to draw a new City Vices card, allowing you to sell your soul for a far more profitable price. This opportunity does not appear if you have a remote lodging. Using this option, selling your soul becomes very profitable, and selling it as A Person of Some Importance - gains you a Fabulous Diamond

Regaining your soul

There are a few ways to regain your soul. You may either spend Fate on the Where's my soul? opportunity card, or you may start searching for bundles of oddities. Bundles with a value of exactly 200 contains your soul. See Bundle of Oddities (Guide) for a comprehensive list of these. For the highest chance of retrieving your soul, the option should have a max value of as close as possible to 200, without being lower than that.

Some particularly useful options:

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