User:IudexMiku/The Stacks (Guide)

Early Firmament Content and Onwards

The Stacks Summary
Variable-Length Activity
Setup				Progress				End
2 A				6+ A				4 A
Progress Details			Play cards to raise both Perusing the Stacks and Finding the Centre to 40.
Items Inputs/Outputs Outputs Shard of Glim Tantalising Possibility Roof-Chart Caustic Apocryphon Glim-Encrusted Carapace A Glimpse of Anathema
Raw EPA						8.79

How to unlock

You'll need to progress the Firmament storyline until you've completed the story at The Midnight Moon. Afterwards, access to The Stacks is available from the storylet The Bone Gate.

Progress

There are two main qualities that track progress - Perusing the Stacks and Finding the Centre. Progress is gained by playing cards. See the card overview for specifics.

When In Search of Lost Time is 1, cards raise Perusing the Stacks. This must be increased to 40 to proceed. The next card drawn will be (Apocrypha Found), a High Urgency card. This sets In Search of Lost Time to 2, and now cards increase Finding the Centre instead.

Once you have 40 Finding the Centre, another High Urgency card is added to your deck, The Reading Room. This card lets you read the particular book determined by Apocrypha Sought:.

The menace quality for this area, Noises in the Library, will cause WE WILL HAVE SILENCE to autofire at level 8. However, this quality is reset when leaving, so don't be too concerned about lowering it.

Afterwards, you are redirected to Winding back the Thread. Passing the challenge (or failing three times) will let you return to where you entered.

Resources

While in The Stacks, you can obtain some qualities that can assist your progression in various ways.

Disposition of the Cardinal, obtained on the card The Grey Cardinal, can be exchanged for progress on A Gaoler-Librarian once you've met the cat on A Library Cat.

Fragmentary Ontology are used to increase your Chthonosophy up to the level cap, as on A Tea Room? and A God's Eye View, or they can lower challenge difficulty on An Atrium.

Route Traced through the Library can be exchanged for progress on several cards - A Tea Room?, A Flowering Gallery, A Grand Staircase, and The Shape of the Labyrinth.

Library Key can be used on A Locked Gate for 10 progress or, rarely, they can be used to change Apocrypha Sought: on A Chained Volume.

A Chained Octavo

To get A Chained Octavo ( 1001 Apocrypha Sought:), it requires:

• Apocrypha Sought: 201-1000
• An Interloper in the Library 4
• In Search of Lost Time exactly 1
• A True Denizen of the Neath
• Anathema Unchained exactly 0

If you haven't read A Chained Octavo before, and meet the above requirements, the card A Chained Volume (First time) will appear in your deck. If you have done this before, a version with Rare Frequency can be drawn instead.

Playing Unchain it on this card (consuming a Library Key) will set Apocrypha Sought: to 1001, set In Search of Lost Time to 2, and give 10 Anathema Unchained. This quality decreases by 1 each time you complete this activity. This cooldown which prevents players from getting A Chained Octavo too often.

Note that because this sets In Search of Lost Time to 2, the actions spent on the activity can be signifcantly lessened as there is no longer a requirement to raise Perusing the Stacks at all.

Reward Overview

Rewards are chosen when entering The Stacks from A Card Catalogue.

Apocrypha Sought:	Storylet	Reward	Stuiver Value	Value
201 (A Ministry Index of Banned Works)	Open the Index	9 x Caustic Apocryphon 35 x Tantalising Possibility	2320	116
202 (A Starved Registry of Dead Stars)	Open the Annal	1 x Glim-Encrusted Carapace 495 x Tantalising Possibility 400 x Shard of Glim or 40 x Roof-Chart	2240 / 2000	116 / 100
1001 (A Chained Octavo)	Open the iron-bound octavo ( ) Open the skin-bound octavo ( ) Open the leather-bound octavo ( ) Open the marble-bound octavo ( )	1 x Glimpse of Anathema	6250	312.5

Card Overview

No cards are discardable, with the exception of The Grey Cardinal, although A Dead End?, A Grand Staircase, and The Shape of the Labyrinth can clear your hand. In the card summary below only the relevant progress quality is gained.

Analysis

Optimal Single Run

In an optimal run of The Stacks, only relying on a single Library Key from a previous run:

• Play Open the way from The Bone Gate, then choose any of the Apocrypha Sought: options available in A Card Catalogue.
• Draw A Chained Volume and play Unchain it with a Library Key from a previous run.
• Draw A Dead End? and play Take advantage of the vantage point twice for 4 x Route Traced through the Library and 100 x Tantalising Possibility.
• Draw A Tea Room? and play Consult your maps of the library four times for 40 progress.
• Play the Ambition-specific option available on The Reading Room and its follow up for the Glimpse of Anathema.
• From Winding back the Thread, play Find your way back to your entrance, then Return to the Midnight Moon.

This loop earns 100 x Tantalising Possibility and 1 x Glimpse of Anathema for a profit of 6450 Stuivers or 322.5 in 12 actions for 26.88 EPA. Unfortunately, this number is misleading, as this optimal run cannot be performed every time.

Now there some caveats to the optimal run - it requires passing luck checks, drawing the right cards, and it relies on a Library Key from an earlier attempt (a Library Key cannot be obtained from the first card played). The biggest issue with this is that due to the gradual decrease of Anathema Unchained, it is not possible to perform an optimal run every time; A Chained Volume won't be drawn for the next nine runs of The Stacks.

Multiple Optimal Runs

While most cards give 5 progress, it is possible, as above, to build up and cash out Route Traced through the Library for more than 5 progress per action. A combination of the options on A Dead End? and A Tea Room? suggest a maximum of 16.67 x Tantalising Possibility and 20 / 3 = 6.67 progress per action.

On a run for A Ministry Index of Banned Works ( 201 Apocrypha Sought:), which requires 80 progress total, 1 actions to enter, 1 to pick up the book, and 4 to read it and leave, this gives 80 / 6.67 = 12 actions on the two cards above. This gives us a total of 136 over 18 actions for 7.56 EPA.

Do this loop 9 times for 1224 in 162 actions. To 100% the check on A Tea Room?, you can play A Dead End? twice more. Grab a Library Key too and bring this to 1234 in 165 actions for 7.48 EPA.

On the 10th loop, do the optimal loop described above, which increases the profit to 1556.5 in 177 actions for a final optimum 8.79 EPA or 175.88 StPA.