Digging in the Hurlers (Guide)

Post-Railroad Content

During Breaking the Ice you do some digs in The Hurlers. This is the guide on how to gain Frigid Intuition the most efficiently, as well as which dig sites are best. This is also the guide on how Crystallised Curio can be gathered and spent. Breaking the Ice is also required for Cold Comfort and Crystalline Knowledge.

A minimized "map" over the Hurlers, with spoilers can be found to the right. While it's convenient to relate to the separate actions in The Hurlers as separate areas, they are technically just a web of interconnected storylets.

• The tables on this guide are also found on Digging in the Hurlers (Guide)/Tables

Overview

Meeting the Deviless

Breaking the Ice can be started by talking to A Disembarking Deviless in The Hurlers Station. You will have to fund her excavations with Hinterland Scrip. Once this has been done, you should meet her Around the Embers.

The deviless will want you to bring her Crystallised Curio from excavations in the area. In order to start excavating, you will have to first prepare on the Excavating the Hurlers storylet. The options are shown on the Frigid Intuition table below.

It's worth noting that each action gives 1 Frigid Intuition + 1 Intuition for every 2.5 worth of items spent. This means that it will probably be more efficient to use the more expensive options, assuming you can source the items efficiently.

The Dig Sites

Each of the locations, except for Around the Embers has its own Digging option, and the cost of digging varies. See the Dig Site Table and the map for more info. In order to get Crystallised Curio for the deviless, you will want to increase Hurlers: Darkness as much as possible, and wear Watchful reducing items. A regular failure typically give 3 curio per intuition, with rare failures giving 4.5 curios per intuition.

In addition to Dig Sites, there's an option in The Salt Steppes that's only available with certain choices regarding the Tracklayer's City.

Expending the curios

While Breaking the Ice you will probably want to give your curio to the deviless, as that progresses the story. That means you first have to find her, with enough curios at hand. Her current location is shown in the table below. After receiving your Dictionary, you may visit her again with an active Discordant Law, in order to get a special companion.

Table for Locating the Deviless

Breaking the Ice	Location of Deviless	Curios cost	Reward
0-1	Hurlers Station	N/A	N/A
2	The Encampment	11	11 x Extraordinary Implication
3	On the Ice	22	1 x Primaeval Hint
4	The Encampment	33	1 x Devil's Dictionary
5	Amongst the Standing Stones		Companion with +1 or -1 Steward of the Discordance

After you've done the story, you should look in the following table instead.

Strategy

It's hard to beat sourcing Frigid Intuition with Correspondence Plaques, indirectly from The Rat Market, but they can be combined with Volume of Collated Research in order to get an even 15 Intuition. You will probably want to spend them in The Adulterine Ruins, using 3 intuition at a time. Assuming modified Watchful 200 and Darkness 7, you will "fail" roughly 2/3 of your attempts. So from 42 x Correspondence Plaques and 2 x Volume of Collated Research you end up with roughly 30 x Crystallised Curio and 17 worth of other rewards. The Crystallised Curio are probably best exchanged for Hinterland Scrip, giving 150 scrip. The whole conversion should take 15 actions with the improvement, giving around 4.4 EPA, mostly in scrip.

Another option is to give the curio away for free and gain Charity Is Such A Filthy Word. Increasing it to level 5 and entering a carriage gives 90 , and you could do it twice with 30 curio. This gives 180+17-21-5 over 41 actions or ~4.17 EPA, in addition to two resets of Suspicion.