Never do this.
anonymous|Posted on Jan 15 2022 at 5:41 am
It's monstrously time consuming to get all the materials needed to buy this. In comparison you are likely to have found many Breath Of The Voids before even becoming A Person Of Some Importance.
RagCall|Posted on Jan 15 2022 at 10:57 am
The only other (non GCO) way to get this is trading in 3200 scraps, which is a steep cost, requiring the equivalent of 128 Urchin favours.
Are you thinking of a Night-Whisper perhaps?
anonymous|Posted on Feb 1 2022 at 5:13 pm
No I said what I meant. You can't get many of these items realistically before become a POSI.
Fleshhunter|Posted on Feb 4 2022 at 6:50 pm
Nor can you get Breath of a Void before becoming a person of Some importance, excluding purposeful refusing... Nor will you *ever* be at Moulin before being a person of some importance.
anonymous|Posted on Feb 7 2022 at 5:12 pm
Yes you can. Get 3200 scraps and trade them with the Shivering Relicker. You could do this multiple times before any other source is available. The POINT was that you have a source for this that doesn't cost a whole bunch of INCREDIBLY OBSCURE and difficult to obtain materials. Scrap is common and since the only reason to get something like this intentionally is to have one of everything for your collection, you would ALREADY HAVE one of these LONG ago. The railroad is so hellish to break into at all that you are almost certainly a Paramount Presence before even getting to Jericho. I was one before getting to Ealing. It took so long that I HAVE bought more than one of these before reaching Ealing because I got that much scrap. It's not like there's anything else to do with scrap but buy one of the 3200 scrap goodies.
Doctor Flamingo|Posted on Feb 7 2022 at 7:26 pm
Scrap may be convenient if you already have a lot of it accumulated, but actively grinding it out would take much longer than getting a Breath this way. Outside of grinding Urchin favours via Affair of the Box, the main way to get Certifiable Scraps is through lodgings cards, but they are so inefficient that many players won't use those actions - even more so, now that lodgings can be lent out to remove their cards.
Personally, as someone who's played the game for several years and who actually played most lodging cards, despite their inefficiency, I had nowhere near enough Scrap to get a Breath from the Relicker by the time I reached Moulin. I think you may be overestimating how common it is.
RagCall|Posted on Feb 7 2022 at 10:34 pm
Small addition: there are like seven or so cards that give Urchin favors for 1 action, the Affair is not the only repeatable source.
FWIW, I didn't find the Railroad terrible to break into. I have been playing for close to a year. During that time, I have
developed my Railroad up to Station VIII
finished my Ambition (which only took so long because I waited until December to get an expensive Lodging) have gotten a 5 card-lodging (this makes grinding scraps easier) the Ambition also required me to get an Intriguer's Compendium, which requires 680 Scraps. I think I purposefully grinded like 150 of those via favors and cards? Took me probably a month, not all of which I was farming. Still, 5 scraps per day sounds more than realistic. With this calculation, you could probably get 3200 within 640 days (21 month-ish). I should also note my Urchin Renown was barely levelled. If you level that, it will slow you down I am on my way to becoming a Paramount Presence and will probably get at least my second Innard within the month. I think it is very possible to finish the Railroad within one and a half years or so, OR use roughly that time for the 3200 scraps.
However! It may have been different back in the day, with less efficient grinds for basically everything. We all enjoy the game in different ways, and none is less valid than the other :)
Fleshhunter|Posted on Feb 8 2022 at 5:48 am|Last edited on Feb 8 2022 at 5:51 am
If your a paramount presence before Ealing, you have been playing this game since before 2020(Probably even 2019), and grinds have changed so much that playing lodging cards feels like burning an action with no point.
Personal experience for myself as someone who played from January 2020, I reached 3200 scrap sometime after I reached Moulin... so I could cash in for the Veils-Velvet Scrap. And that wasn't a passive grind. (Also it is 384 urchin favours and 128 actions to cash it in for all the scrap). Also you need 200 Watchful for BotV for scrap (While yes modified), if you have 200 watchful and getting a T8 (or even more than one) while refusing to increase to person of importance, you are 100% purposely stalling for no reason.
anonymous|Posted on Feb 26 2022 at 9:57 am
I also disagree with the initial comment. As a player who began the journey over a year ago and have avoided grinding any one particular resource i got at that moment 800 plus scraps - anywhere near the void requirements. However when you play this game as intended and venture into each avenue of Fallen London, if you follow the golden mini stories to their ends you discover sources (also thanks to this wiki ;-) of many expensive items to upconvert them later. As for the railway, i got to hurlers within a year without much focusing only on the railway. Made a few skeletons in the bone market for bessemer steel, played university, went somewhere new and the progress was pleasingly paced for me to discover the story of each station and to do another skeleton or brawl in the docks for coins. All in all, if you play your cards well (wink,wink) you can enjoy Fallen London without much of grinding.
anonymous|Posted on Apr 1 2022 at 12:42 pm
as someone who done both grinds, farming the items for this option takes less than a week for an endgame character, while farming scraps takes at least a month. this is a no-brainer
anonymous|Posted on May 17 2022 at 5:12 pm
Also weighing in: currently, the only reason you need a Breath of the Void is for an option in London's Marrow. There are four major 3200-scrap items needed for that option: Breath of the Void, the Rumourmonger's Network, Veils-Velvet Scrap, and the Reported Location of a One-Time Prince of Hell. Each also has at least one alternative way to get the item. Rumourmonger requires identity-crafting (not too bad), Reported Location can be gotten a LOT of ways actually (probably because it has several alternative uses), Void's option is here, and the Velvet's option is Discordant Studies (with uses in an ambition and in SMEN).
Why on EARTH would you spend scraps on any of the other 3 when the Velvet's alternative is so costly?
Fleshhunter|Posted on May 17 2022 at 5:24 pm
You need Breath of the Void for a piece of Discordant Studies.
Madsnorlax|Posted on Aug 2 2022 at 4:23 am
This is one of the worst FL takes I've ever heard in my life. I'm not going to lie, I typed a far lengthier comment beforehand and accidentally closed the tab, so I'm going to summarize my findings. Getting a BOTV with scrap takes a bit over 500 actions using cards, and around 5200 without. 3 of these items can be obtained through ratket, making them around 80 actions apiece, crafting a cart hoard takes around 80-90 actions or less with hephaesta, and the surmise takes about as long. This comes out to around 340 actions. Sure, these materials are obscure, but they're actually remarkably easy to obtain. 3 ratket, 2 lab.
"The railroad is so hellish to break into at all that you are almost certainly a Paramount Presence before even getting to Jericho. I was one before getting to Ealing." Is one of the most nonsensical things I have ever heard. Using generous estimates, PP takes ~7000 actions to achieve (a little over 2k for wealth, a little over double that for ubergoat, marriage and influence for the last 2), WITHOUT counting any actions used to gain notability. Starting the RW takes 7 society favours, 200e worth of scrip, or is potentially free depending on ambition, and getting to jericho assuming ~5bsi/action will take <500. Considering that there is a 1-2 week delay between getting to ealing and getting to jericho, this is completely reasonable. Someone else mentioned it took them a year and a half to complete the railroad. (to be clear: i am not trying to flex, merely trying to ensure accurate estimations of these things can be made) I started my railroad on March 16, 2022, and completed my final meeting on July 4th 2022. This is 110 days, less than 4 months. I was already done with my ambition, and was able to focus almost all of my actions (exceptional stories are too fun to pass up on, though) on getting through the railway and enjoying the stories at each location. I didn't rush anything, or do any insanely efficient things- hell, I stopped at the impossible block to go grind an IE. And even given that, it took me less than four months.
In conclusion, L+ratio.
Sarhkais777|Posted on Aug 29 2022 at 11:21 pm
I will also note that 3/5 can also be obtained reasonably easy through Cover Identities, if you don't want to wait for the rat market to 1/16 pick the right one. Since cartographer's hoards are reasonably easy to obtain through the lab even for non-LF players, that leaves the Coruscating Soul as the hardest piece to obtain, requiring either 1/16 Rat Market or a large variety of souls.
Madsnorlax|Posted on Aug 30 2022 at 1:59 pm
yeah totally, when I was getting my BOTV for [redacted] I didn't get anything from RM. coruscating from museum of souls, edicts and cart hoard from lab, LC from clay highwayman heist, and surmise from nonspecific academic. There are several extremely valid choices for all of these.
