User:Kislev/Opportunity Deck (Guide)

The aim of this guide is to have one central location to explain how the Opportunity Deck works. Bits and pieces of this information are scattered around the wiki, but none of it is centralized, and eventually I'll migrate it all here.

Opportunity Math

To understand how the Deck works, let's get one thing out of the way: the "deck of cards" is a metaphor and a gameplay contrivance, and the actual opportunity deck is not mathematically similar. This is a fairly common design contrivance in software, including games, called skeuomorphism, and it's fine for the purposes of everyday gameplay since the idea of a deck of cards gets across what's important about the opportunity deck to most players: it contains a random selection of options, of which some you can keep available at any time by keeping them in your "hand", and you may choose not to take others by "discarding" them. However, since we are now discussing the Opportunity deck as a computer program, this is unhelpful for us. Since metaphors are sticky, and it's unhelpful to keep referring to something as a "deck" that really isn't, I'm going to refer instead to the hypothetical function which draws cards, which I will call draw().

The first thing draw() does is check which setting we're in: London? Upper River? The Salt Steppe? The University Laboratory? This determines the list of cards it is possible to draw from in the broadest sense. Next, we narrow it down by removing all copies of cards it is impossible to draw: if we're in London and we have An Agent of the Cheesemonger, we remove all the cards which progress On the Trail of the Cheesemonger, since all of those lock on its presence. This gives us a list of all the cards which the player qualifies for.

Next, draw() removes from the deck all cards which the player has in their hand. This is a bit trickier than it sounds, since some cards look identical but arent (e.g. Discordant Ripples) and some cards appear to be different but actually are all the same card which updates variables to look completely different every time (e.g. (Southern Wind Dreams). And sometimes additional identical copies of a card are added to the deck at certain points in a story (e.g. The Fleet of Truth gains an Abundant frequency copy in every zee-location during a certain point in the Evolution (Guide) storyline.) Still, once we have done that, we now have a list of all legal possible draws.

Now we construct the deck proper. We multiply each card by a constant which represents its frequency: this is how many copies of the card exist in the opportunity deck. Then, the game checks if any legal cards are High Urgency: if so, those cards are drawn immediately, regardless of their probability. If not, then it selects one item from this list at random: this is drawn card that ends up in your hand. It then removes all copies of the card it drew from the deck and repeats this process until either your hand is full or the deck has no cards left, at which point it terminates.

Choosing between different decks

This is a major difference between playstyles of different people--when is it worth it to spend actions in order move locations ane use up Opportunity cards most profitably?

As in all things, first we have to adk what our goals are. Players interested in grinding Stuivers will likely find the Burgundy deck to be the most useful, whereas opportunities to earn Hinterland Scrip are more likely to be found in the Hinterlands themselves. The London deck is the best source of most Favours and scales very well with the player as they level up throughout the game, with seasonal companions and premium stories occasionally adding extremely valuable options to the deck.

The London and Risen Burgundy decks both have extremely valuable cards that are time-limited: An Invitation to Linger for the former, and Colour and Sound: Market Day and A Deluge of Charity for the latter. If these cards are still available, it is always worth drawing cards in those locations.

One way to look at it is to consider the average echo value of a given card draw in a given location. For those In the Company of a Hellworm, for example, the value of the Upper River deck rises considerably, especially given the hellworm card's Frequent frequency; therefore, all else being equal, optimal play is to draw cards in the Hinterlands, in order to maximize the number of actions spent on the worm gacha.

Which cards do you actually play? Every deck has chaff cards you'd rather discard than play. Almost nobody wastes an action on Trailing the Affluent Photographer outside of the early game, after all.

Therefore, the best way to think about it is as such--how many actions will it take to move to my desired card-drawing area, how many actions am I likely to take playing my desired cards, and how many actions will it take to then move to wherever I'd like to spend my last actions on? Remember to keep in mind the small reimbursement you get for your travel options, both on the Roof and the Hinterlands.

It's perfectly OK to merely ballpark these numbers rather than compute them yourself, though your humble author is hardly immune to the siren song of a well-made spreadsheet.