A Trade in Reputations (Guide)

Early PoSI Content and Onwards

A Trade in Reputations Summary
Fixed-Length Activity
Setup				Progress				End
0 A				15 A				0 A
Progress Details			Raise Name Recognition.
Items Inputs/Outputs Boosting Violantly Mercantile Cuttlefish Outputs Intriguing Snippet Zee-Ztory Memory of Light Shard of Glim Proscribed Material Blackmail Material
Raw EPA						3.33

The Artful Advertiser has employed you to conduct advertising campaigns that will elevate certain products in the Neath into everyone's hearts and minds! The Naga Advertising Agency is available in the Bazaar Side-Streets after unlocking it from your lodgings anytime after becoming a Person of Some Importance. Currently, there are four advertising campaigns one can go on, each with differing rewards.

General

Your goal in each campaign is the same: Draw cards to raise Name Recognition as high as possible before the 5 levels of Campaign Duration disappear. The rewards for the Mrs Winthrop's Purifying Soap, Spirit of the Zee and The Cosmic Matchmaker campaigns scale with the penny value of Name Recognition gained. For example, Intriguing Snippets can be sold for 0.20 each at the Bazaar, so if you finish the campaign with 1000 Name Recognition, you will receive 50 Intriguing Snippets. The last two campaigns are an exception to this: Sterling's Solar Hearth's Memories of Light only gives half of the expected penny value and The Cosmic Matchmaker pays in varying amounts of Proscribed Materials, depending on the amount of Name Recognition gained.

Campaigns

Campaign Name	Rewards			Payout if 3500
Mrs Winthrop's Purifying Soap	/20		Intriguing Snippet	~175 ( 35)
Spirit of the Zee	/50		Zee-Ztory	~70 ( 35)
Sterling's Solar Hearth	/100 /2		Memory of Light Shard of Glim	~35 ~1750 ( 35)
The Cosmic Matchmaker	≤1249	/4	Proscribed Material	N/A
	≥1250	( -1250) /4 1	Proscribed Material Blackmail Material	~563 1	( 35.02)

Campaign Structure

The Enterprise quality changes the difficulty of most challenges and affects the quantity of Name Recognition you receive from most cards. Each venture has a starting Enterprise value which can then be further increased up to a maximum of 25 (for no action cost) or decreased for an action cost. This is done at the Raise the stakes storylet.

Each campaign starts with 5 levels of Campaign Duration, and every action decreases the remaining Duration by 1 Change Point. Thus, each campaign has a fixed duration of 15 actions all of which are spent playing cards. Choosing a campaign and cashing out do not cost an action. Along with increasing your Name Recognition, certain cards provide a chance to increase your Shadowy and Persuasive skills or gain Confident Smiles and Hastily Scrawled Warning Notes. The majority of cards can be played at any point during the campaign, but there are a few exceptions:

• Sampling the product requires Duration 5, meaning it can only be played as the first action in a campaign.
• A serialised novel requires Duration 2-5, meaning it cannot be played at the end.
• There are a handful of cards that can only be drawn at Duration 1. You can play up to two of these cards during a Campaign, because of how Change Points work. These cards give more Name Recognition than regular options, and the upper cards on this list give more recognition.
  • A stroke of luck
  • A trade show ( Violantly Mercantile Cuttlefish puts this above A stroke of luck)
  • One of the following cards depending on your Campaign:
    • Directly into London's hands
    • A convivial affair
    • A Workshop Tour
    • A questionnaire
  • 'Tis the Season (only during Christmas)

Recruiting The Guileful Copywriter & The Genre Painter via cards will allow new opportunity cards to be drawn that can increase the amount of Name Recognition gained per turn. Increasing qualities such as Respectable, Bizarre, etc. will also affect the quality of the cards drawn in a similar fashion.

Mixing campaign profiles can lead to to complications, in the form of new cards:

• A troublesome ambiguity ( Bizarre + Dreaded)
• An awkward misunderstanding ( Dreaded + Respectable)
• An inconvenient duality ( Respectable + Bizarre)

After each successful campaign, you are rewarded with 1 x Prolific Advertiser. Increasing this quality unlocks more options in the A cup of spiced tea storylet. Gaining 3 of these will unlock the final "The Cosmic Matchmaker" campaign.

Cards

In the below tables

• E refers to the value of Advertising Profile: Enterprise.
• Standard + Rare means the following distribution, while Standard means only the first row is applied:

Enterprise	0	1	5	6	10	11	15	16	20	21	25	26
Name Recognition Gain	167	167	172	174	200	212	267	279	305	307	312	312
Name Recognition Rare Gain	221	222	228	231	265	280	353	368	402	405	411	412

Regular Cards

Card	Requirements	Campaign Duration	Challenge type	Reward	Notes
An urgent assignment				167+2E
Freshly-printed trade cards				167+2E
A bizarre campaign	Bizarre			All face options: Standard+Rare Distance from ...: 215 or 230 Increase focus: 167+2E
A campaign of dread	Dreaded
A respectable campaign	Respectable
The efforts of the competition			Luck	100+10E	Often gives a random focus
Sampling the product		5	None	50+10E
A commission for the Genre Painter	The Genre Painter	2-5		depends on choice; at most Standard
A serialised novel	The Guileful Copywriter	2-5	, or None	depends on choice; at most Standard+Rare
Have (Campaign Focus) Reviewed		2-4		Standard+Rare	Extra option with Newspaper
Meddle with the competition		2-4		depends on choice; at most Standard+Rare	Extra option with Gang of Hoodlums

Special Cards

Card	Requirements	Campaign Duration	Challenge type	Reward	Notes
Cards that unlock options
The Genre Painter					Unlocks The Genre Painter
The Guileful Copywriter					Unlocks The Guileful Copywriter
The face of the campaign					Unlocks options on BDR cards
Finishing Cards
A trade show		Exactly 1	None	275+10E(with Violantly Mercantile Cuttlefish) 225+10E(without)
A stroke of luck				250+10E	Very Infrequent Frequency
Directly into London's hands	Mrs Winthrop's Purifying Soap			200+10E	Depends on Campaign
A convivial affair	Spirit of the Zee
A Workshop Tour	Sterling's Solar Hearth
A questionnaire	The Cosmic Matchmaker
'Tis the Season	Christmas			175+10E
Menace Cards
Attend to your reputation	5+ Scandal		/ / /None	-	-2 or +2CP Scandal
Suspicious behaviour	5+ Suspicion		or	Standard, but will keep card	-(2-3) or +2CP Suspicion
A troublesome ambiguity	Bizarre & Dreaded	1-4	+ or +	167+2E	Conflict Card Pick which way the campaign should go
An awkward misunderstanding	Dreaded & Respectable	1-4	+ or +
An inconvenient duality	Bizarre & Respectable	1-4	+ or +

Strategy

General principles:

• Start whichever campaign you'd like, depending on which rewards are more useful to you. The EPA is the same for all campaigns (At 3500 x Name Recognition, the EPA is 2.3). Once started, increase the campaign's difficulty as much as you can without making the checks hard. Remember that failing the checks decreases the amount of Name Recognition that you have. With highest difficulty, highest stats (enough to 100% every check you pass) and using only actions which give you 312+ Name Recognition, you can expect getting 5000 x Name Recognition (or more), bringing your EpA to 3.(3)+.
• Go for the BDR stat that you can get the highest. This will typically be Respectable or Dreaded, but depends highly on your selected Club, tattoes and Ambition Rewards. As for now, it looks like BDR-conflict cards (i.e., An inconvenient duality) aren't worth it, so try focusing on one quality. Conflict cards can be drawn during duration 1, so it is best to have no conflicts nearing this threshold to maximize chances of getting rare cards. For ease of use, you can try combining your BDR-gear with your stats-increasing gear to allow passing all of the checks without switching gear.
• Make sure to draw your cards so that you have few when you reach duration 1, so that you can draw new cards and have more chances at drawing good cards.
• It may be best to skip getting help from The Guileful Copywriter and The Genre Painter by rejecting services of both of them/just one of them, if you can reliably pass checks on other opportunities. Rejecting costs zero actions and clears one slot in your hand.
• It is best to have 5-sized Lodgings to maximize chances of getting Spokesperson from your first draw (and make some cards more profitable) and to almost guarantee getting rare opportunities with duration < 2.
• A trade show(with ) > A stroke of luck > A trade show > campaign-specific cards (i.e., A questionnaire) > seasonal ones (i.e., 'Tis the Season).
• You may in addition have a goal to increase shadowy and/or persuasive as much as you can, and/or gaining second chances for improving your stats.
• Menace-reducing actions with black borders (i.e., Suspicious behaviour) are bad for EpA of grind; consider using other sources to reduce your menaces (like social actions). They may become profitable during Hallowmas, but only if used to increase menaces.

To maximize raising your Shadowy and Persuasive:

• Lower your difficulty so you can 100% all checks.
• Grab help from The Guileful Copywriter ASAP. He is key for several good options on other cards and brings potential for grabbing Shadowy Second Chances.
• To maximise Persuasive gains, gain help by recruting The Genre Painter. He will help you with A commission for the Genre Painter; they do give you Persuasive Second Chances, albeit at a slower pace than Shadowy Second Chances. Try not to mix help from both hirelings; it lowers your chance to effectively grind both of Stats.
• Use Buy advertising space in an existing serial in A serialised novel whenever possible. "Rare success" seems to occur around 40-50% of times, so you'll get plenty of Hastily Scrawled Warning Note, which can be converted to Shadowy in your Lodgings.
• Use Ask the Guileful Copywriter to review the product in your own paper on Have (Campaign Focus) Reviewed if you have your own Newspaper; if you're unlucky with The Guileful Copywriter, use the common option (beware: it is more difficult without Copywriter's help, and it accrues more Scandal on failure).
• Acquire Gang of Hoodlums; those fellows will help you with Meddle with the competition (they effectively lower the challenge, thus making you proc rare successes more often, which turns out to be better for overall Shadowy gains; they also make you accrue less Scandal on failures, which is unexpected, but nice). Without the Gang just use the usual option on Meddle with the competition.
• Don't try to gain more stats by raising challenges too high (and thus get more stat from failures); it is better to get some resources from the end of grind and get no Scandal than to get lots of Scandal and then clear it up somehow.

To maximize your grind EpA outcome:

• Grab 5-sized lodgings.
• Be sure to have less than 5 in both Scandal and Suspicion.
• Start with choosing any campaign.
• Choose some campaign focus (according to your highest BDR stat).
• Immediately raise difficulty to the highest threshold that still guarantees passing all checks.
• Start drawing cards.
• On duration 5 it is better to play The face of the campaign than any other card. Choose anyone except for yourself. Playing this card raises your difficulty a bit (and may make it impossible to raise difficulty further afterwards), but this raise will come handy at duration 1. If unable to choose Spokesperson immediately, play Sampling the product - with 5-sized Lodgings you'll always have this in your first draw if you're unlucky with The face of the campaign.
• On duration 4 to 2 play any card that allows you to pass its check and give maximum possible amount of Name Recognition while looking for The face of the campaign (if not drawn earlier), except for those: An urgent assignment, Freshly-printed trade cards, The efforts of the competition. The efforts of the competition may seem like a good card, but it can shift your campaign's focus which will spawn conflict cards, and those conflicts are both bad for overall EpA and can proc on duration 1, thus blocking rare options.
• On duration 1 discard any discardable cards and use cards with colored borders (other than black-colored). Remember: A trade show(with ) is better than A stroke of luck which is better than regular A trade show; they are both strictly better than campaign-specific cards (i.e., A questionnaire and the others), and seasonal ones (i.e., 'Tis the Season) are worse than all other rare options. If your difficulty is higher due to selecting face of the campaign, rare cards will become more profitable and can help you grab another item or two during final conversion. If you chose your Spokesperson, have no conflict cards, no cards with black borders and no undiscarded helpers, you are guaranteed to spawn at least 1 rare card on draw, which helps with your overall EpA.