The High Sancta (Guide)

Mid Firmament Content and Onwards

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

What needs work: Economic analysis of items that can be used as Law-Furnace inputs to produce Rat Marketable items, and items that can be smuggled via Hillchanger Tower.

The High Sancta Summary

Locked Semi-Fixed-Length Activity

Setup

1 A

Progress

2-24 A

End

2 A

Progress Details

Play cards to raise Towards a Violant Sky to 12 while passing Counterlight challenges.

Items Inputs/Outputs

Outputs

Memory of a Much Stranger Self

Raw EPA

9.79 / 10.10

How to unlock

Though The High Sancta is accessible as part of the Firmament storyline, the action cost and exact mechanics are slightly different. This guide focuses on the repeatable activity unlocked after the first visit.

Access to The High Sancta is in Zenith, unlocked with Firmament 300. The storylet Sneaking into the High Sancta begins this activity.

Progress

From Sneaking into the High Sancta, there is a resource cost of 30 that can be paid with 12 x Anticandle, 60 x Memory of Light, or 300 x Khaganian Lightbulb. While not all of this is necessarily consumed by the activity, it is staked. Note that Shield yourself with Memories of Light also requires Irrigo to play.

These options set the hidden quality Counterlight Source to 1, 2, or 3 respectively for changes to the text. They also set Counterlight to 100 and redirects to The Violant Threshold. This sets Towards a Violant Sky and Blindfolded, For Your Own Good to 1.

The activity enters a two step cycle, controlled by Blindfolded, For Your Own Good.

When Blindfolded, For Your Own Good is 1, the player draws 3 cards. The drawn cards come from three pools based on Towards a Violant Sky. Each card gives a 12.50 in items and Impressions in Violant equal to 850 + 100 x Towards a Violant Sky. This changes Blindfolded, For Your Own Good to 2 and clears the hand.

When Blindfolded, For Your Own Good is 2, the player again draws 3 cards, though they are each identical copies of Lost in the Black, and the only option is Stumble onwards. The odds of success are equal to the current value of Counterlight. On success, Blindfolded, For Your Own Good is lowered to 1, the hand is cleared, and (at Towards a Violant Sky 3 and up) 5 x Counterlight is lost, although if Counterlight is 65 or less, then only 1 is lost.

On success or failure, the player loses resources based on Counterlight Source: either 1 x Anticandle, 5 x Memory of Light, or 25 x Khaganian Lightbulb. On failure, the player is forced to leave the area, returning to Zenith. This gives the Burden Wings of Change (see Wings of Change for details).

After 12 cycles, the player is forced to leave. If Firmament has been advanced to 780, this can be via Press your ear to the door (which gives the terminal bonus of a Night-Whisper); otherwise it must simply be by turning back (which does not). Alternatively, if the player wishes, they can leave early through Leaving the High Sancta, as long as Blindfolded, For Your Own Good is 2 (i.e. took a Lift your blindfold action). Leaving in any way gives the quality Violant Sights which locks the activity until Time, the Healer comes around.

Wings of Change

Wings of Change is the cost of involuntarily leaving when failing the Counterlight challenge on Lost in the Black. This is a Burden that raises Wounds, Scandal, Suspicion, and Nightmares gain. It adds a card called The Sound of Wings to several locations.

It can be removed in the Cave of the Nadir to gain 25 of items. However, this requires a card which you may not be able to draw before being forced out due to Irrigo exposure, so do not count on this ability. Otherwise it is removed with Time, the Healer. To minimise your exposure to this burden in case the Nadir can't clear it, you can, ideally on the day before Time, the Healer comes:

• Make the journey to the High Sancta, keeping your Irrigo from a previous Nadir visit to allow the use of Memories of Light as your Counterlight source.
• Proceed through the High Sancta until you are discovered.
• Return to London and clear your Irrigo.
• Visit the Cave of the Nadir to regain your Irrigo for next week and attempt to confront the Wings of Change. Failure to do so is not so bad because Time, the Healer will clear it the next day, anyway.

A day's worth of actions should be more than enough to do all this, as long as you start early, pay attention to time, and aren't busy doing other things (either in-game or out).

Cards

Cards are grouped by the required Towards a Violant Sky to draw them. There are 9 playable cards in each group.

Analysis

Each card played when Blindfolded, For Your Own Good is 1 gives an amount of Impressions in Violant proportional to Towards a Violant Sky. This pays out in Memory of a Much Stranger Self when leaving according to the integer division of Impressions in Violant / 1250. As a table:

Sky	Self
1	0
2	1
3	2
4	3
5	4
6	5
7	7
8	8
9	9
10	11
11	12
12	14

Average

Based on Counterlight loss on Lost in the Black at certain values of Towards a Violant Sky, we can construct a table of the probability of progressing to the next value of Towards a Violant Sky (Which is equal to Counterlight/100), as well as the probability of a run ending on a given floor if the player always takes the Counterlight check. This table also assumes that Unsigned in Triplicate is always played when drawn due to its slightly higher value. Payout assumes each successful Counterlight check costs 2.5 .

Sky	Payout	Actions	Counterlight	Chance of Run Ending Here
1	10.0	4	100	0
2	32.5	6	100	0
3	55.0	8	95	5%
4	77.5	10	90	9.4%
5	100.03	12	85	12.8%
6	122.57	14	80	14.5%
7	157.6	16	75	14.5%
8	180.13	18	70	13.1%
9	202.63	20	65	10.7%
10	237.63	22	64	7.1%
11	260.13	24	62	4.8%
12	295.13 / 357.63	26	N/A	7.9%

The expected profit for a run in which the player always takes the Counterlight check is 166.57 in 16.5 actions, for an expected EPA of 10.10, or 161.63 and 9.79 EPA if Firmament is less than 780.. A given run may have an EPA higher or lower than this, but over the long run the EPA of the activity approaches this value. With some luck this may be boosted further by removing Wings of Change in the Nadir.

Stuiver Grinding

In addition to the payout in Memory of a Much Stranger Self ( 250 each), there are four cards that pay out entirely or partially in items which can be sold for Stuivers:

• Borrowed Scripts in the first level gives 1 x Caustic Apocryphon worth 254.
• Waning in the second level gives 1 x Memory of Moonlight worth 250.
• Hands and Blades in the third level gives 5 x Relic of the Fifth City worth 250.
• Drowned Wars in the third level gives 12 x Tempestuous Tale worth 120, along with 13 x Zee-Ztory.

If these cards are prioritised, with Hands and Blades given priority over Drowned Wars, the player can expect to gain an average of 2410 x Stuiver per run. For an expected StPA of 146.