Hellworm (Guide)

Early Railway Content and Onwards

Milking Your Hellworm Summary
Semi-Fixed-Length Activity
Setup				Progress				End
0 A				3.5-7 A				1 A
Progress Details			Raise The Disposition of your Hellworm to 7.
Items Inputs/Outputs Start-up In the Company of a Hellworm Boosting Your Very Own Miniature Hellworm, Saddled and Bridled Outputs Bottle of Black Wings Absinthe Bottle of Broken Giant 1844 Bottle of Fourth City Airag: Year of the Tortoise Bottle of Greyfields 1868 First Sporing Bottle of Greyfields 1879 Bottle of Greyfields 1882 Bottle of Morelways 1872 Bottle of Strangling Willow Absinthe Bottled Oblivion Drop of Prisoner's Honey Holy Sanguinarine Ointment Discriminating Aconite Emetic Revelation Amanita Sherry Muscaria Brandy Vial of Tears of the Bazaar Vial of Masters' Blood Vial of Cantigaster Venom Sap of the Cedar at the Crossroads Tin of Zzoup Oil of Companionship Flask of Waswood Wellspring Water F.F. Gebrandt's Superior Laudanum F.F. Gebrandt's Tincture of Vigour Nikolas & Sons Instant Ablution Absolution Hellworm Milk Distillation of Retribution Salve of Righteousness Concentrate of Self A Taste of the Garden Magisterial Lager Starved Expression
Raw EPA						10.07

Once you have built the first station of your Great Hellbound Railway, you get access to the Upper River Exchange.

There you can buy Your Very Own Miniature Hellworm for a measly 200,000 x Hinterland Scrip. If you are willing and able to invest that same amount of money once again, you can upgrade it to Your Very Own Miniature Hellworm, Saddled and Bridled. Equipping either adds a fun and profitable card to your Upper River opportunity card deck.

Why Should I Bother?

A good question, with many possible answers, like:

• Because it's a hard-to-get item. For some players that's motivation enough.
• Because it's just so darling, it's like a big fuzzy puppy and it loves you.
• Because playing with it is the most profitable way to keep the Merry Gentlemen away (also known as reducing Nightmares).
• Because it gives access to more unique items, such as:
  • Hellworm Milk, which you can turn into Ripened Wheel of Hellworm Cheese through the Whitsun festival.
  • Vial of Cantigaster Venom, a pretty good weapon otherwise only available by spending FATE.
• Because it adds a very profitable card to the Hinterland opportunity deck.
• Because its (saddled) stats are exemplary for its slot, and it comes with a free Boon.
• Because it is a Crime against the Chain, and a rejection of the authority of the Judgements.
• Because it makes a much better trophy than The Seven-Fold Knock.
• Because you are A Person of Great Importance and you can, d__n it.

How to Obtain Your Hellworm

Once you have the required Hinterland Scrip, you can buy your Hellworm from the Upper River Exchange.

Typically, obtaining enough Scrip is a months-long process. See Hinterland Scrip-Making for advice on how to go about that efficiently.

To give you an idea of the scale of the task: even if you are a Licentiate, and have enough money (nearly 81 thousand echoes) to buy Bright Brass Skull from the Bazaar, and you have enough Nevercold Brass Sliver, simply turning your Skulls into Scrip through the Licentiate Brass Lollipop grind takes 5164 actions. If you typically spend 100 actions per day playing Fallen London and devote those fully to grind, it still takes over 51 days.

On the other hand, if you start with zero echoes and assume a 10 Scrip-per-Action grind, it takes you 200 days under the same assumptions, or more than half a year.

Upgrading Your Hellworm

After obtaining your Hellworm, equip it and draw cards at the Upper River. Sooner or later you will come across Your Very Own Hellworm. There you can invest another 200,000 Scrip and play Purchase a hellworm saddle, which exchanges your Hellworm for Your Very Own Miniature Hellworm, Saddled and Bridled, a pretty awesome item in the Transportation slot.

There are further options to spend Scrip to obtain more Hellworm accessories, namely the Hellworm-Riding Boots with Brass Spurs and Hellworm-Riding Boot Polish. The Hellworm-Riding Boots are worn in the Boots slot and give +8 Dangerous and +1 Dreaded. Those stats are no better than that of several other boots you probably already own and only add flavour text when riding your hellworm. The Boot Polish does nothing. There's no reason to buy these accessories, but if you have the money, why not spend it? (Additionally, there is no lock on purchasing the polish, so you can own multiple tins!)

Hellworm Mechanics

Equipping your hellworm (upgraded or not) grants the In the Company of a Hellworm quality, which allows you to draw the Your Very Own Hellworm card in the Upper River deck.

There you can play options to increase The Disposition of your Hellworm:

• Play with your hellworm, increases Disposition by 1 point, and decreases your Nightmares by 1-7 CP.
• Ride your hellworm requires the upgraded Hellworm Your Very Own Miniature Hellworm, Saddled and Bridled, increases Disposition by 1-2 points, and also gives you a profitable 2 x Aeolian Scream, but also raises your Scandal by 1 CP.

The card may be drawn at any station in the Upper River save for the City of the Tracklayers. The best location to draw tends to be whichever station has the fewest cards in the deck, though it may also depend on what other grinds you're doing. Assuming you have statues at every station, Balmoral and Marigold Station have the fewest unique cards, with one each.

Once Disposition reaches 7, you can Milk your hellworm, which reduces Disposition by 7 points again, and gives you random liquid (see below).

Milking your hellworm randomly gives you one of 33 possible rewards, ranging from annoying to highly profitable.

Hellworm Milking Rewards

	Reward	Value in	Notes
1	Bottle of Black Wings Absinthe	-	Only useful in Ambition: Bag a Legend!
2	Bottle of Broken Giant 1844	2.50
3	Bottle of Fourth City Airag: Year of the Tortoise	62.50
4	Bottle of Greyfields 1868 First Sporing	0.20	Otherwise somewhat annoying to obtain
5	Bottle of Greyfields 1879	0.01
6	Bottle of Greyfields 1882	0.02
7	Bottle of Morelways 1872	0.10
8	Bottle of Strangling Willow Absinthe	0.50
9	Bottled Oblivion	0.01	Can also be bought from the Bazaar (at an 80x markup)
10	50x Drop of Prisoner's Honey	1.00
11	Holy Sanguinarine Ointment	(0.50)	Must be processed to be cashed out as A Tasting Flight of Targeted Toxins
12	Discriminating Aconite	(2.50)	Must be processed to be cashed out as A Tasting Flight of Targeted Toxins
13	Emetic Revelation	12.50
14	Amanita Sherry	0.10
15	Muscaria Brandy	2.50
16	Vial of Tears of the Bazaar	312.50	Otherwise pretty annoying to obtain
17	Vial of Masters' Blood	1562.60	Otherwise very annoying to obtain
18	Vial of Cantigaster Venom	312.50	Otherwise FATE-locked. Good weapon.
19	Sap of the Cedar at the Crossroads	63.50	Can be sold for 125 , or exchanged for a better value w/ Tinned Ham
20	Tin of Zzoup	2.50
21	Oil of Companionship	(~65)	Useful for Lead an expedition to the strangest point on the horizon
22	Flask of Waswood Wellspring Water	(13.00)	See item page. Also used to Search Parabola for the location of a particular treasure
23	F.F. Gebrandt's Superior Laudanum	0.10
24	F.F. Gebrandt's Tincture of Vigour	0.10
25	Nikolas & Sons Instant Ablution Absolution	0.25
26	Hellworm Milk	(62.50)	Must be cashed out at Whitsun, limit 2/year (worth 312.5 once, then 62.5 )
27	Distillation of Retribution	(312.50)	Can be sold at the Rat Market for 400 or used with other milking results in A Tasting Flight of Targeted Toxins
28	Salve of Righteousness	(65.00)	Must be processed, twice, to be cashed out as A Tasting Flight of Targeted Toxins
29	Concentrate of Self	(312.50)	Can be cashed out by preparing a Curatorial Cocktail
30	10 x A Taste of the Garden	(25.00)	Can be cashed ATotG/card for 2.5 through any of its opportunity cards, which are annoyingly swamping the London Deck until used up.
31	Magisterial Lager	0.50	Can also be sold for 1
32	Starved Expression	(0.50)	Can be studied in the lab or sold for 10 x Stuivers at Hallow's Exchange.
33	Sample of Roof-Drip	(0.10)	Can be studied in the lab or sold for 2 x Stuivers at Hallow's Exchange.

Analysis

Adding up just the milking rewards that can be straight-up sold to any exchange and dividing it by the number of possible rewards gives an average 80.26 reward for milking.

If you raise your Disposition through Play with your hellworm, you need to do that seven times before you can milk (and you need draw the card 8 times total). That gives you 10.03 EPA. Plus lots of Nightmares removed, if you had any.

If you have the saddled hellworm, you ride it on average 4.67 times before you can milk it, giving you just as many CP of Scandal, and giving you an extra 4.67 * 2 Aeolian Scream worth 23.35 . If we add one extra action for getting rid of the scandal, that's 80.26 plus 23.35 for 6.67 actions (and 5.67 card draws), resulting in 15.54 EPA.

If you cannot get rid of the Scandal that easily, organise some Licentiates as acquainces. Then you can Write down a name in Gant which costs 500 x Piece of Rostygold and an action, and reduces both your Scandal and Suspicion by 6 CP each. This still gives you an EPA of 15.47 (discounting travel cost to London).

You can reduce the Scandal load a bit (and thus increase overall profitability) by wearing items that reduce Scandal build-up.

What To Do with the Spoils

You can further raise your EPA by turning some of the items that you cannot sell to the bazaar into other items, and sell these secondary products. A full analysis of this is nearly impossible, because it depends on too many factors. Instead, here are a few ideas on what to do with some of these items:

• Assemble a Tasting Flight of Targeted Toxins (worth 1562.50 ) can make use of several Hellworm products. It requires:
  • 50 x Emetic Revelation, dropped from your Hellworm, or through other means
  • 125 x Discriminating Aconite, dropped from your Hellworm or indirectly from Distillation of Retribution
  • 625 x Holy Sanguinarine Ointment from Salve of Righteousness
  • 500 x Hand-picked Peppercaps from A Disillusioned Fungiculturalist, which you encounter anyway when drawing cards in the Hinterlands
  • 625 x Venom-Ruby Let's just hope you have these left-over, otherwise see Curiosity Grinding (Guide)#Venom-Ruby
• Oil of Companionship can be used in Lead an expedition to the strangest point on the horizon together with 98 x Rumour of the Upper River. This is a good way to turn Rumours from touring the Upper River into a Prismatic Frame, which you can then use as a high-value basis for further Bone Market adventures.
• Concentrate of Self can be used (with other items) to Prepare a Curatorial Cocktail at Station VIII (for more details, see the breakdown in the Strategy section below).

Strategy

Rendering all 33 rewards to funds is no easy task, especially due to the sheer intricacies of some paths taken to cash them out, but for the sake of simplicity, each reward can be broken down into an Action Investment (for performing the conversion and sourcing any necessary items), and Final Total Profit (the cumulative cash-out of the end result).

Thus, the following table comes about:

	Reward	FTP	AI	Path
1		-	-	-
2		2.50	0	The Echo Bazaar!
3		62.50	0
4		0.20	0
5		0.01	0
6		0.02	0
7		0.10	0
8		0.50	0
9		0.01	0
10	x 50	1.00	0
11		(0.50)	0.024	Processing ➤ Tasting Flight ➤ The Echo Bazaar!
12		(2.50)	0.121
13		12.50	0	The Echo Bazaar!
14		0.10	0
15		2.50	0
16		312.50	0
17		1562.60	0
18		312.50	0
19		63.50	0	Upper River Exchange ➤ Tinned Ham ➤ The Echo Bazaar!
20		2.50	0	The Echo Bazaar!
21		312.50	100	98 x Travels between stations ➤ St8 Card ➤ Skelly Recipe
22		11.66	1	Drink it ➤	➤ Tinned Ham ➤ The Echo Bazaar!
					➤ The Echo Bazaar!
23		0.10	0	The Echo Bazaar!
24		0.10	0
25		0.25	0
26		(62.50)	1.5	Whitsun (event) ➤ 2 x Age for a year ➤ Collect your Cheese ➤ The Echo Bazaar!
27		(315.00)	0	Rat-Market
28		(65.00)	4.025	Processing ➤ Tasting Flight ➤ The Echo Bazaar!
29		(429.01)	49.64	20 x Mrs Chapman's ➤ TLC Masterful Trade ➤ 2 x Score a Crate ➤ Make the Curatorial Cocktail ➤ Serve ➤ Tinned Ham ➤ The Echo Bazaar!
30	x 10	25.00	10	London Deck ➤ A Taste of the Garden cards ➤ Extraordinary Implication ➤ The Echo Bazaar!
31		0.508	0	Upper River Exchange ➤ Tinned Ham ➤ The Echo Bazaar!
32		(0.253)	0	Sold at Roof-Markets ➤ Roof-Chart buying ➤ The Echo Bazaar!
33		(0.051)	0

Explanations

This section breaks down the more complicated paths from the table above.

The Tasting Flight Path - All the ingredients to Assemble a Tasting Flight can be sold, either directly or through the Rat-Market, except for the Venom-Rubies and the Ointment/Salve of Righteousness. Furthermore, if you're optimizing for EPA, you will obtain all of the ingredients (again, except for Venom-Rubies) at high EPA values over time via time- or card-limited grinds. Unlimited grinds for the required ingredients are at low EPA (typically around 2.5), and should be avoided. Therefore, for optimal EPA, you should assemble the Tasting Flight once you have the required ingredients, and not sooner. In expectation, this will take 5 'cycles' of 33 milkings each to get enough Ointment (though note that due to the randomness involved in milking, this expectation is only relevant to the long term).

Specifically:

• Emetic Revelation - 5 per Week from Receive the latest 'reports' from your 'agent', and ~1.3 per week from The High Sancta if you prioritize them. You'll also get a small number directly from milking the Hellworm.
  • Even with a saddled Hellworm, drawing cards only in Balmoral, you're not likely to get much more than 1 Ointment every 2 weeks, so this should be more than enough.
• Hand-picked Peppercaps - Buy already-picked mushrooms with Nightsoil gives ~5.5 EPA, assuming Nightsoil is sourced from Hearts' Game Leviathans at the Bone Market.
  • You'll draw the card more than enough times in the upper river while milking your Hellworm.
• Venom-Ruby - The only thing you'll have to grind manually, at 42.75 per action in The Prelapsarian Museum (Guide).

Valuing each ingredient (except Rubies and Ointment) at sell price (including the Rat-Market markup for Distillation of Retribution, and Tinned Ham arbitrage for Peppercaps), the profit for creating a Tasting Flight is (1562.5 - 50*12.5 - 500*.508 - 400) = 283.5 Echoes. Creating it takes 1 action, plus 6 for converting Distillation of Retribution and Salve of Righteousness, plus 14.62 for grinding Venom-Ruby. Overall, that means that creating the Tasting Flight gives

283.5/(1+6+14.62) = 13.1 EPA

The Curatorial Cocktail Path - As the table suggests, this path is one of the most convoluted, requiring a city in the Hinterlands, through a finish of your Railway venture, a Cabinet Noir in Balmoral, a fully enhanced Kitchen for Artists at Station Factory VIII, and most importantly of all, full knowledge of the Station's innerworkings. With these prepared, we can begin breaking down the necessary resources:

To Steep a Dark-Dewed Cherry Liqueur:

• 3 x Dark-Dewed Cherry - 5 per Action - see Supply the Academic with a Halcyonic Tonic option, to a The Nonspecific Academic, in The University.
  • Costs 1 x Halcyonic Tonic and generates 8.5 Echoes per conversion
  • 1 x Halcyonic Tonic - 0.33 per Action (in expectation) via Collect the marked crate; also costs 1 Extraordinary Implication.
• 1 x Bottle of Broken Giant 1844 - Drops from the Hellworm.

To Prepare a Solacefruit Champagne Royale:

• 5 x Solacefruit - Best bought at The Extramurine Trading Company despite the 60% markup, so long as you can make at least 40 Rat-Shillings per action.
• 1 x Fillip of Effervescence - 0.33 per Action (in expectation) via Collect the marked crate; also costs 1 Extraordinary Implication.
• 1 x Crystallised Euphoria - 0.33 per Action - see Trade with the Masters option, from Imports and Exports card, in The City of the Tracklayers (Guide);

To Prepare a Curatorial Cocktail:

• 100 x Memory of Distant Shores - 5 per Action on appropriate weeks via Promenade or An Iremi stew in Mrs Chapman's Boarding House for Those Who Temporarily Have Nowhere Else To Go.
• 1 x Concentrate of Self - You got this from your Hellworm already!

After you go through the Liqueur ➤ Champagn ➤ Cocktail process, you can serve it for a Luxury boosted price of 789 or 400.81 (with Tinned Ham conversion).

Valuing Extraordinary Implication and Bottle of Broken Giant 1844 at their sell price:

• Acquiring 3 x Dark-Dewed Cherry costs 3/5 * (3 + 1) = 2.4 actions and generates 3/5 * (8.5 - 2.5-2.5) = 1.1 Echoes.
• Thus creating the Liqueur costs 2.4 + 1 = 3.4 actions.
• Creating the Champagn costs 3+3+1 = 7 actions and 4 + 2.5 = 6.5 Echoes (for the Solacefruit and Implication).
• Creating the Cocktail costs 20+1 = 21 actions.
• Serving the Cocktail costs 1 action and generates 400.81 Echoes.

Therefore, overall the Cocktail provides (400.81 + 1.1 - 6.5) / (3.4 + 7 + 21 + 1) = 12.20 EPA

London Deck Poisoning

One of the "rewards" of the Hellworm is 10x A Taste of the Garden. When you have that quality, it adds 6 Frequent Frequency opportunity cards to the deck in London. Playing these is pretty low value (gives 1x Extraordinary Implication, 1 CP Nightmares, 10 CP Approaching the Gates of the Garden and reduces Wounds), and so many Hellworm owners are annoyed by this side effect, and would rather spill their Taste of the Garden on the Hinterland soil than consume it. The only saving grace is that if A Taste of the Garden is at 6 or higher, you don't gain more from milking your Hellworm.

One way to deal with this is to avoid drawing cards in London altogether, or at least reducing it (for example until you have drawn An Invitation to Linger after Time, the Healer has visited you).

If you spend a lot of time in London (for example during seasonal events), it might be a better option to stop milking your Hellworm for a time, and instead increase The Disposition of your Hellworm through playing with or riding it whenever you draw its card. In London, you play the annoying Cider cards until they disappear. Then weeks or months later, you can do all of the milking in a relatively short time frame, and benefit from A Taste of the Garden not rising about 10 through the Hellworm cards.