Philosofruits (Guide)

FATE-locked Mid Zailing Content

Philosofruits Summary
Locked Limited-Length Activity
Setup				Progress				End
1 A				3+/8+/9+/11+/18+ A				1 A
Progress Details			Raise Asceticism, Curiosity, Frivolity, Philosofruit Yield and Fruitful Rot to reach desired result.
Items Inputs/Outputs Boosting Honed Ushanka Vigilant Chitin-Fur Boots Moray Heels A Hunter's Instinct for Nightmares Special Dispensation Outputs Blackmail Material An Identity Uncovered! Antique Mystery Presbyterate Passphrase Uncanny Incunabulum Extraordinary Implication Comprehensive Bribe Correspondence Plaque Fourth City Airag: Year of the Tortoise Cellar of Wine Storm-Threnody
Raw EPA						5.76

This guide is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.

What needs work: Missing optimization and strategy

This guide covers the repeatable activity unlocked after completing the Premium Story The Mushroom's Dream. This content is FATE-locked, so per this Wiki's Content Policy, the covered content will not otherwise be included on the Wiki, and the guide may contain mechanical descriptions but not narrative content.

Overview

This activity is located in the Mangrove College, a zee location in The Sea of Voices. Philosofruits are accessed from a Gold-bordered Storylet visible while docked, which takes you to a new location. Leaving this location costs an action and resets activity progress.

Mechanics

This location makes heavy use of the Opportunity Deck. It is infinite-draw with a three-card hand. There are no discardable cards, although several effects will discard all cards, including at least one playable card. Progress is made in three phases:

• Play cards to increase Yield and either Rot, or the three "regular" qualities with Quirk icons.
• From a Storylet, Harvest to gain Fruits based on the above qualities and re-set them. The three "regular" fruit qualties use the same icon as Solacefruit.
• From a Storylet, create a Philosophy from the above Fruits and earn rewards. This resets all of the above qualities and wipes your hand.

You may Harvest multiple times for a single Philosophy. This is required to receive the Fourth City Airag: Year of the Tortoise reward (as it requires both regular and blackened fruits). More harvests decreases action efficiency, but attempting to produce a larger harvest will put a penalty card in your deck.

Each time you create a Philosophy, a hidden quality is incremented by 1 up to a cap of 7. When it reaches 7, leaving and coming back to the island will reset it and grant a quality that allows you to play an option in Exploring the Mangrove College once before being removed, giving you some text and a Wild Words reward - 4 x Aeolian Scream the first time, a Storm-Threnody the second time, a Night-Whisper the third time and a Storm-Threnody all subsequent times.

Vanity title

Every time you cash in fruits for rewards, you increase your A Synthetic Philosopher quality by 1 (regardless of how many fruits you've turned in). This currently has no effect other than bragging rights.

Mechanics in Detail

There are five tracking qualities for growing fruit:

• Philosofruit Yield, which determines the total fruit harvested
• Fruitful Asceticism, Fruitful Curiosity, and Fruitful Frivolity, which determine the distribution of fruit harvested
• Fruitful Rot, an alternative harvest

Playing a card will let you raise one of these qualities by one level on success.

When Harvesting, the total number of fruits will be 50 × Yield. The other qualities do not impact the total amount of fruits, but the distribution of fruits. If you are using the Rot option, then Yield is the only quality which impacts the result, earning 50 Blackened Fruit per Yield. Otherwise, you merely have to hit the minimum values to play the action.

If you are playing the "normal" harvest action, then Asceticism, Curiosity, and Frivolity impact the distribution of fruits received but not the total amount. For example, if you have 4 Yield, 1 Asceticism, and 1 Frivolity then you will receive 100 Ascetic Fruit and 100 Frivolous Fruit. If your Asceticism and Frivolity were both 2, then you were received the same rewards. If you had 1 Asceticism and 3 Frivolity, then you would receive 50 Ascetic Fruit and 150 Frivolous Fruit.

Harvest fruit resets the above five qualities. You can accumulate fruit over multiple harvests. This is necessary to receive the Fourth City Airag: Year of the Tortoise reward, but otherwise should be avoided as it spends unnecessary actions. Note that Harvesting does not wipe your hand.

If your current Yield is 3 or higher, a card is added to your deck which does not increase any qualities. The purpose of this card is to make large harvests more difficult. For this reason, it is better to focus on flavour first and yield second, subject to the whims of the RNG.

If your current Asceticism, Curiosity, or Frivolity reach 3 or higher, a corresponding frequent Card is added to your Deck to convert 3 of that quality into 3 extra Yield. Usually you only want these qualities to equal 0 or 1 (depending upon your desired reward), but if your hand is full of Cards without a Yield option this may be a slightly inefficient way to get your missing Yield.

Constructing a Philosophy is a simple matter of playing the action when you have harvested enough fruit. Excess fruit will be converted into Memory of Distant Shores. Then all relevant qualities (excess fruit, yield, rot, and flavours) are wiped and you are moved back to the main area of the Mangrove College.

Restrictions

You need a minimum Philosofruit Yield equal to 2 for Rot Harvests, and for Regular Harvests equal to the sum of your Asceticism, Curiosity, and Frivolity (this sum is unofficially referred to below as "Flavour"). A Rot Harvest also has a minimum Rot requirement of 3, or equal to your Flavour if that's higher than 3.

A Regular Harvest is also prevented by a Maximum Rot value, which can be raised with more Flavour:

• 1 Rot is acceptable (but useless)
• 2 Rot requires 5+ Flavour
• 3 Rot requires 8+ Flavour
• 4+ Rot cannot allow a Regular Harvest (tested as high as 17 Flavour).

Restriction	Regular Harvest	Rot Harvest
Minimum Philosofruit Yield	Asceticism + Curiosity + Frivolity	2
Minimum Fruitful Rot	n/a	Higher of: Asceticism + Curiosity + Frivolity 3
Maximum Fruitful Rot	3	n/a

References

Cards

Unless otherwise noted, challenges against Primary stats are Broad with difficulty 180 (100% success rate with level 300). Challenges against Skills are Narrow with difficulty 5 (100% success rate with level 10).

Card Icon	Frequency	Options	Challenge	Success	Failure
	100%		Shapeling Arts 2	+ A	-
			Dangerous	+ R	-
	100%		Kataleptic Toxicology 2	+ C	+2 CP Nightmares
			Persuasive	+ R	-
	100%		Mithridacy 2	+ F	-
			Watchful	+ R	-
	80%		Dangerous	+ C	+2 CP Nightmares
			Persuasive	+ A	+2 CP Wounds
			Shadowy	+ F	-
			Mithridacy	+ R	-
	50%		Watchful 150	+ C	- C
			Dangerous 150	+ A	- A
			Persuasive 150	+ F	- F
			Shadowy	+ Y Clears Hand	-
	80%		Watchful 150	+ Y	+2 CP Wounds
	50%		Dangerous 150	+ Y	+2 C
	100%		Persuasive 150	+ Y	+2 CP Nightmares
	80%		Kataleptic Toxicology	-4 CP Nightmares +2 CP Wounds	+2 CP Nightmares
			-	+ Y +1 CP Nightmares
			Watchful 150	+10 Solacefruit	- Y
Drawn with 3+ Y	80%		Shadowy	-2 CP Wounds	-2 Y
Drawn with 3+ C	200%		-	-3 C +3 Y
Drawn with 3+ A	200%		-	-3 A +3 Y
Drawn with 3+ F	200%		-	-3 F +3 Y

Rewards

Excess fruit beyond the minimum requirements is paid out in the form of Memory of Distant Shores, at a ratio of 6 Fruit per Memory.

Initial Harvest Rewards

When you first begin harvesting fruit, Fruitful Rot is not possible and your possible rewards are constrained. The first three rewards you turn in must be, in any order, the three pairs of Fruitful qualities, with 50 each. These give you the Delivery of a Transcendental Philosophy, Delivery of an Aesthetic Philosophy, and Delivery of an Egocentric Philosophy qualities. These harvests have different rewards from their later repeatable counterparts.

After those, you must fulfill the reward for Delivery of an Absurd Philosophy. This temporarily locks any harvests until you follow a chain of storylets which investigate Rot, starting outside the Wisp-Ways. After completing the investigation and returning to the Wisp-Ways, you must deliver The Dream of the Hintershroom; from this point, Fruitful Rot options on cards are unlocked. After a short series of storylets, two new possibilities open up, each of which requires both rotten and fresh fruit. After fulfilling either request and a short group of storylets, the story is complete.

Asceticism	Curiosity	Frivolity	Rot	Step	Reward
50		50		1	10 x Memory of a Much Lesser Self
50	50			1	1 x Antique Mystery 5 x Presbyterate Passphrase
	50	50		1	1 x Uncanny Incunabulum| 5 x Extraordinary Implication
100	100	100		2	4 x Storm-Threnody
			300	3	5 x Direful Reflection
100	100	100	100	4	1 x Searing Enigma 1 x Direful Reflection
	200	100	100	4	1 x Primaeval Hint 1 x Antique Mystery

Repeatable Rewards

Once the story and all the initial harvests are done, the advanced recipe rewards open up.

A	C	F	R	Min. Actions	Reward	Max EPA
50		50		5	1 x Blackmail Material 3 x An Identity Uncovered!	4.00
50	50			5	1 x Antique Mystery 3 x Presbyterate Passphrase	4.00
	50	50		5	1 x Uncanny Incunabulum 3 x Extraordinary Implication	4.00
150	150	150		13	4 x Comprehensive Bribe	3.85
			300	10	90x Correspondence Plaque	4.50
200	200		250	20	1 x Fourth City Airag: Year of the Tortoise 2 x Cellar of Wine	4.375
	200	200		11	4 x Storm-Threnody	4.54