anonymous|Posted on Sep 29 2020 at 2:34 am

Let's do a full breakdown of both methods:

Assuming you've got the stats for it and are a POSI, each expedition to the shrine of deep blue heaven costs 18 actions total at worst. At a 10% chance of a skull per expedition, that's 180 actions per skull on average, or actually less because A Sign? Can save up to 3 actions every time it shows up. The average treasure value from the unpredictable treasure is just enough that your expeditions will, on average, finance themselves, but since a lot of the treasures are hard to get from other places you might be better off just paying from your own pockets and keeping the spoils.

Seeking curios on the other hand has only two options that get you a chance of a skull. They show up about a third of the time on average, and have a 3% chance. That's 100 actions per skull on average, but neglects an important factor: Nightmares. See the sights gives nightmares even on a success (1/6 of the time overall) and Poke About Among The Ruins is luck based with nightmares on failure (50% of 1/6, or 1/12). Combined you get nightmares about a quarter of the time. Unless you're going through laudanum like nobody's business you're probably looking at 20-25 extra actions to manage nightmares. With laudanum, it's not that much lower. Also, you are just stacking layers upon layers of RNG onto something already RNG based.

TL;DR: Seeking curios is a fair bit faster, around 120 actions per skull on average compared to a bit under 180, but is substantially more reliant on luck and doesn't get you as many fancy treasures.

SkyHigh|Posted on Jul 15 2021 at 2:49 pm

You don't appear to have accounted for the action costs of gathering supplies for the expedition.

EvelynGlass|Posted on Jan 15 2022 at 6:36 pm

Have we confirmed that it is, in fact, a 10% chance through shrine of the deep blue heaven? I've done 12 expeditions so far and haven't gotten one, but that might just be bad luck.

For me, using a bold approach and getting my strong-backed labour from underclay, it takes on average 29 actions to do the shrine, including getting the strong-backed labour and converting to crates. So if is actually a 10% chance, that's 290 actions per skull, vs. 100 actions by seeking curious. Even dealing with nightmares isn't too bad -- you can use appalling secrets to take away 10 CP of nightmares on a 30% chance, and you get appalling secrets by seeking curios, so it sorta pays for itself, more or less.