The Prelapsarian Museum (Guide)

Early MYN Content and Onwards

The Museum of Prelapsarian History is a location in Veilgarden released during the F.F. Gebrandt's Prelapsarian Exhibition event in the summer of 1899 (2022). It has a variety of options available, most of which focus around Curator's Gratitude. Each point of Gratitude is worth 0.01 , and may be cashed in with the 0-action options available in Speak with Gebrandt, the Museum Curator.

Curator's Gratitude Gain

Gratitude can be gained in three main ways: by identifying bones in The Osteology Lab, which requires a Volume of your Cryptopalaeontological Work (see Embarking on a Voyage of Scientific Discovery (Guide)) and some bones; by donating relics in The Archaeology Wing; or by hunting and destroying rogue ushabtiu for The Department of Menace Eradication.

Identifying Bones

Identifying Bones Summary

Limited-Length Activity

Setup

1 A

Progress

4+ A

End

1 A

Progress Details

Raise Identifying... and then Assert about the bone. Succeed on this 3 times.

Items Inputs/Outputs

Start-up

• 1 x Femur of a Jurassic Beast
• 1 x Fossilised Forelimb

Boosting

• Flask of Abominable Salts

Outputs

• Bessemer Steel Ingot
• Venom-Ruby
• Discriminating Aconite
• Crate of Incorruptible Biscuits
• Hand-picked Peppercaps
• Searing Enigma
• Antique Mystery
• Favour in High Places
• Intriguing Snippet

Raw EPA

4.38

Raw SPA

8.63

Two bones can be identified: Femurs of a Jurassic Beast and Fossilised Forelimbs. Each follows the same process:

1. Build up Identifying... with various options in the storylet, then
2. Either Assert that the specimen is (first option) or Assert that the creature is (second option), which resets Identifying... on success;
3. Repeat this process twice more; and then
4. Complete a monograph on the subject to receive your reward of Gratitude.

Identifying... options	Challenge	Success	Failure
Catalogue its morphology	120	+4	+1
Analyse its composition	1	+4, -10	+1
Compare its anatomy to extant creatures	7	+4	+1
Request help from a University colleague	180	+6	+1

Each of the identification options has a Narrow challenge of 5 Identifying... – that is, your chance of success is one-tenth of your level of Identifying.... The strategy is to only spend one action on Identifying... and then keep Asserting. While the probability seems low, it is actually more efficient to attempt the low probability check than to spend more actions on increasing Identifying... for more than a couple of levels since the CP per level keeps increasing. In general, choose the option that has the highest success chance and get to 2 Identifying... before asserting.

Following this strategy, you'll spend 1 action beginning your identification; then complete 3 cycles of Identifying.../Asserting (each time spending 1 action to gain Identifying... followed by repeated attempts at Asserting); and finally 1 action to Complete a monograph on the subject.

With 200 Watchful (if you are looking at Curator's Gratitude as a source of Bessemer Steel Ingots then you will have this anyway), Catalogue its morphology once and assert an average of 4.04 times. Repeat 3 times for a total of 17.12 actions per bone identified.

After the buff to the above action, neither Analyse its composition nor Compare its anatomy to extant creatures are worth using anymore compared to the likely guaranteed Watchful check.

If you have 300 Persuasive, the check on Request help from a University colleague is 100%. The optimal strategy is then to request once and then assert an average of 3.12 times, for a total of 14.37 actions per bone identified. At lower Persuasive, Request help from a University colleague technically gains more Identifying... than Catalogue its morphology at 120 Persuasive on average, but the idea is to succeed once and move on so unless you are feeling lucky you shouldn't do this (we all know that feeling). It also gives +1 CP Scandal per failure to deal with. See below for a more detailed discussion.

The Femur of a Jurassic Beast has a payout of 6500 x Gratitude, while Fossilised Forelimbs have a payout of 8750 x Gratitude. With the optimal strategy, this reaches 3.13 EPA with Forelimbs purchased from Anning and Daughters. Forelimbs will generally be less efficient than Femurs of a Jurassic Beast, unless your best source requires more than 6.4 actions per Femur on average (unlikely by the time you have access to Anning and Daughters; see Osteology Grinding (Guide) for more information).

The peak for identifying femurs would appear to be 4.28 EPA, if managing 12 Femur of a Jurassic Beast in 10 actions from Brawling with Dockers ( 292 Dangerous required to 100% the checks, Flash your Special Dispensation or MAGCATS option once, then Fight without taking your eye off the goods! 8 times).

Strategy for lower stats

If you cannot guarantee success on the Persuasive or Watchful checks, it is not immediately obvious which action you should take to raise Identifying..., if any. When only considering one possible action that raises Identifying..., the process of finding when said action is preferred over spamming Assert is relatively straightforward. Since the Identifying... gains for the Monstrous Anatomy and Kataleptic Toxicology checks are the same as for the Watchful check, we will list breakpoints below for the Watchful and Persuasive checks only. If your advanced skills give you better odds on their checks than the Watchful one, you can convert the given Watchful values into success probabilities on Cataloguing and compare those to your probability on the advanced skill checks.

For Catalogue its morphology, we have:

Watchful range	Highest CP of Identifying... where Cataloguing is a good option
77 - 82	0
83-89	1
90-199	2
200+	3

For Request help from a University colleague, breakpoints will be slightly less universal since they depend on the efficiency at which you can get rid of the 1 CP of Scandal you get on failure. At the extreme end, we can ignore the menace to find:

Persuasive range	Highest CP of Identifying... where Requesting help is a good option
77-87	0
88-107	1
108-223	2
224-272	4
273+	5

It is of course also possible to compare the two actions, but then the decision naturally depends on both your Watchful and Persuasive, which makes it significantly harder to convey in a neat table as above. In general, as noted earlier, choosing the option with the highest success chance and clicking it until it succeeds once is a decent approximation to the optimal strategy. However, we can make some general statements in order to do slightly better (still ignoring the Scandal gain as above):

• If your Persuasive is at least 153, opening with Requesting help is preferred
• If your Persuasive is at least 236, Requesting help is always better than Cataloguing and we can refer to the table above to see when it is also better than Asserting
• If your Persuasive is between these values then there may be a scenario where failing Requesting help brings you to an amount of Identifying... CP where it is best to use Cataloguing. Unfortunately, at this point it quickly becomes very unwieldy to try and list all possible combinations.

The breakpoints listed above are calculated for a modified Watchful of at least 200. Since a lower Watchful means Cataloguing is less efficient, these are minimal values that always hold regardless of Watchful. However, if your modified Watchful is lower than 200, your actual breakpoints are likely lower.

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Donating Artefacts

Three kinds of relic can be donated; Second City, Third City and Fourth City. Each option allows you to donate 3 worth of one type of relic, and receive in return 300+ Base Persuasive Gratitude. Thus, although buying relics from the Bazaar to donate results in a net loss of value, and more endgame options will give better value for the relics, this is reasonably profitable - especially for those with high base stats but without equipment good enough for identifying bones.

Hunting Ushabtiu

At The Department of Menace Eradication you can accept a contract to hunt down a stray Malicious Ushabti. Choosing to Destroy the d__ned thing! upon successful conclusion of your hunt gives a bounty of 800 Gratitude.

Cashing in Gratitude

There are several options for cashing in Gratitude.

Option	Gratitude cost	Payout
Enter an agreement for the production of steel	1000	x 20
Gain access to her stores of unused materials	1000	x 100
Ask Gebrandt for her help with a chemical conundrum	1250	x 5
Secure a shipment of dubiously preserved food	5200	x 15  x 29
Converse on the Correspondence	7600	x 1  x 1
Discuss business – yours, specifically	1450	x 1  x 10

Note that the food option pays out in items sellable for Hinterland Scrip; as such, bone identification with Fossilised Forelimbs is a self-sustaining 6 SPA grind. This is also the best source of Venom-Rubies in the game by a significant margin, and only slightly underperforms Professional Activities as a source of Bessemer Steel Ingots - and even then has much less strenous requirements.

In addition to these, there is a one-off option to exchange 10000 Gratitude and a full set of 7 filled Mirrorcatch boxes for F.F. Gebrandt's Patent Neathoscope, Containing and Displaying All Seven Colours of Exotic Light (a Home Comfort), and another one-off option to exchange 50000 Gratitude for F.F. Gebrandt's Patent Illuminating Cap (a Monstrous Anatomy Hat).

Other Actions

There are a variety of other options available within the museum. In The Natural History Wing, Stroll in the garden of bones gives Base Watchful/2 x Cryptic Clues. In The Inorganic Sciences Wing, Have a taste of the Toxicology Exhibit gives an average of 2.4 CP of Wounds, and has a 10% chance of giving an Emetic Revelation, and Gaze into the Neathoscope gives ~1.57 CP of Nightmares along with other minor effects, making these interesting options for Hallowmas.

The Archaeology Wing also has an option to exchange an Unprovenanced Artefact and x 375 Cryptic Clue (total sell value 10 ) for one of 10 random items. Most are worth 12.50 , some are harder to convert into other things, and a couple ( Emetic Revelation and Memory of a Shadow in Varchas) are otherwise difficult to obtain. On a rare success, this instead gives one of 5 random 62.50 items.