The Maze-Garden (Guide)

Mid-Game Content

In this activity you bring a piece of clothing through the Garden-maze and eventually it becomes alive.

Getting there

The Maze-Garden is located in Polythreme and require services of a ship. There are two ways to reach Polythreme:

1. The first is to buy a ticket on the tramp steamer at Wolfstack Docks using 150 Map Scraps (typically earned from the Rat Market). Then build your Approaching Journey's End quality to 10, using the various cards and storylets aboard the Tramp Steamer. Once it is at 10, the There at last! storylet will open up. Selecting Polythreme there will place you in the Polythreme Docks, from where you can unlock and access The Maze-Garden.
2. The second method requires a ship of your own (check the PoSI Item Crafting guide to see how to get one) and an assembled Screaming Map. See the Zailing (Guide) for an introduction to how you zail and plan a trip to Polythreme in the Sea of Voices.

When it's time to leave the island the following options are present:

• Board the Tramp Steamer for 80 Surface-Silk Scraps (8.00 Echoes). These can be gained in the carousel.
• Journey home on your own ship

The challenges in The Maze-Garden are variable and thus fit for many levels. Due to the slight difficulty in reaching Polythreme, this guide will assume you have around PoSI- levels or higher.

Useful items and their challenge level

During your stay you may need some specific items. As there is no access to the Bazaar in Polythreme, you will have to bring them with you. One of each item is needed for each cycle. There are cycles that do not require items, but you may want a specific challenge level, that is Polythremean Disposition:, and therefore want to bring some items. The challenge level is given to all main attribute checks ( Shadowy etc.) and also affects the reward. Some pieces of clothing are chiral. This means that the left version or the right version will be easier than the other, which means your disposition may increase or decrease by up to 30, depending on your choice.

Once your disposition has reached 100 or 120, it seems the rewards no longer increase. This suggests using a Prisoner's Mask, if you can do so reliably.

Progress Qualities

There are several important qualities within the Maze-Garden.

• Polythremean Disposition: adjusts the difficulty of the carousel, sometimes together with Temperamental Chirality
• Perambulating... measures how close you are to the end of the carousel. At 11 you reach the end.
• Awakening... measures how alive your clothing has become. This is proportional to the reward you will receive.
• IPSEITY and COMMUNION are qualities used for several of the checks. Some rewards require one of them at level 7.

Progress Through The Maze

Once you reach Perambulating... 5, The Silent Gate autofires which costs an action and raises Perambulating... to 6. Then when you reach Perambulating... 9, The Heart of the Labyrinth autofires which costs an action and raises Perambulating... to 10. Then when you reach Perambulating... 11, The Watchful Gate autofires which costs an action and takes you to An Offering (The Maze-Garden) where you can choose your rewards and exit the maze. This costs one more action and resets your Maze-Garden qualities. However, any unplayed cards will remain when you start your next trip through the maze.

The Cards

Note that Perambulating... is only mentioned when it's not +4

Rewards

The exact conversion rate of Awakening... to items is based on Polythremean Disposition:. This table gives the values with a prisoner's mask and cravat (disposition 120-200). With disposition 60 you gain approximately 2/3 of this number. For other dispositions, see the individual action pages.

Reward table

Action	Requirement/Cost	Reward	Max value per Awakening...
Take some silk scraps	1  / 1 CP	50 x Silk Scrap	0.5
Take some surface-silk	3  / 6 CP	60 x Surface-Silk Scrap	1.0
Take some whisper-satin	5  / 15 CP	30 x Whisper-Satin Scrap	1.0
Take some Correspondence plaques	7  / 28 CP	56 x Correspondence Plaque	1.0
Take some Thirsty Bombazine	11  / 66 CP 7 COM	26 x Thirsty Bombazine Scrap	0.98
Take some Glass Gazettes	11  / 66 CP 7 IPS	26 x Glass Gazette	0.98

Strategy & EPA

In terms of actions needed, it takes 5 actions for gates, starting and ending in addition to the cards you play to gain 49 CP Perambulating.... Assuming 4 CP/card, that's 18 actions for a cycle. If you assume an average of 5 CP Awakening... per card, that's 65 CP for a cycle. Each cp of Awakening... is worth roughly 1 , and you also get 1 Memory of Distant Shores and you end up with a preliminary EPA of 3.64, however this will vary with skill and Polythremean Disposition:. With more experience or following the IPSEITY strategy below, you may average 6 CP/card and end up at around 4.36 EPA. If you can manage to get 7 CP on average (unlikely), EPA reaches 5.08, assuming you get 4 CP Perambulating per card. Using only the 6 CP awakening/2 CP perambulating option is slightly worse at 5.05 EPA.

Based on which rewards you want, you might want to focus on either IPSEITY or COMMUNION, as it's hard to get both to 7. If you're more interested in other rewards, it's worth noting that both qualities have 3 challenges each, but one of the COMMUNION checks is beneficial to fail, and one of the others can be swapped with a Shadowy check. The IPSEITY checks are typically on cards that have no better options which makes this a more important quality, unless you're looking for Thirsty Bombazine Scraps. You need 6 in these stats to get 100% on the checks.

It's generally suggested to avoid playing TRAVERSE, because it gives low rewards. In addition you might want to avoid TRANSFIGURE with Awakening... less than 5, and if keeping high IPSEITY/low COMMUNION you might want to avoid PARTAKE with Awakening... 6+.

If going for IPSEITY: ADORN, DUEL, HARVEST, and SCAVENGE all have branches with +7 cp of Awakening.... Failing the COMMUNION check on DISCERN (90% if you have none) gives +6 cp. Playing TRANSFIGURE with Awakening... at least 5 get you +6, while PARTAKE with at most 6 gives you +7. If you can pass all checks at ~90% this always gives you six cards you can play with an average of upwards of +6 cp Awakening....

If going for COMMUNION: ADORN, HARVEST, PARTAKE, SCAVENGE, and DUEL with Awakening... at most 6 all get you +7 cp Awakening.... The first branch of DISCERN gives +6 cp, but if played multiple times will extend your visit, which isn't ideal if your primary goal is Thirsty Bombazine Scraps. Later in your visit you may get stuck playing one of DUEL, TRANSFIGURE, or TRAVERSE for lower gains. Of these TRAVERSE probably gives the best average gain unless you picked up some IPSEITY as well to pass the checks on the other two at least somewhat reliably.

Seeing as you keep your cards when you leave, it might be worth saving ADORN, HARVEST and PARTAKE for the early stages, in order to increase your attributes quickly. If going for a mix of Thirsty Bombazine Scraps and other things, make sure to clear out TRANSFIGURE when raising IPSEITY so that it doesn't clog your hard if you start COMMUNION next.