User talk:Orthogon

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P.S. Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything else! -- Asarta (talk) 16:18, 18 August 2021

On behalf of the Tentacled Servant...

It's Bird week. Lots of people discuss what skeletons to make and which buyers to sell to and such. I sell skeletons to the Tentacled Servant during Bird week, based on the following:

1. The most important thing to me during Bird Week is not [Profit], it's [Echoes converted to Hinterland Scrip]. Bird week just allows converting echoes to scrip to also be profitable (meaning the ratio of scrip:echoes is bigger).
2. The part of the bird that is converting echoes to scrip is Brass Skulls.
3. Therefore, the most important metric to maximize for me is [Brass Skulls]:[Actions (see note)].
note: only the actions while Bird mania is rampant, so ideally just the actions involved in building and selling the skeleton - the actions to collect the ribcages and nevercold brass would ideally happen before Bird week

If assertion #1 is not true for you, the rest won't be either. But if #1 is true (basically you are someone with more echoes than you can actually convert in one Bird week), then I recommend you sell to the Tentacled Servant too!

Given those three fundamental assertions, I will use Brass Skulls for all 7 skull slots to support assertion #3, and I will use Wings of a Young Terror Bird for the wings (because the ribcage stockpile comes from Balmoral, and each one came with 3 terror bird wings).

That means my skeleton will have 14 Self-Evident Implausibility. If I sell to one of the more profitable buyers (the ones that lock you out when Bone Market Exhaustion>=4), I'll have a Shadowy 1050 challenge (1750 Shadow = 100%) to get past to make the sale, since they all have a multiplier of 75. With my 300ish Shadowy, I have about 17% chance of success, or about 31% with a Hastily Scrawled Warning Note. So it will take an average of roughly 4 actions to make the sale (around 3 to make the sale, around one to get the second chances via Loitering).

But if I sell to the Tentacled Servant, the Shadowy challenge is "only" 630 (1050 Shadowy = 100%). So I have about a 29% chance of success, or about 49% with the second chances. This is about 2.66 actions to make the sale.

Dealing with Suspicion would technically widen that gap even further, but the point is that the Tentacled Servant is better at helping with the metric I want to maximize: [Brass Skulls]:[Actions] at 7:13.66 vs. 7:15. For every 10 skeletons I would be able to sell to one of the more profitable buyers, I can sell almost 11 skeletons to the Tentacled Servant, and therefore convert almost 7 more skulls into scrip.

Mrs. Plenty deserves a mention: the only reason I defer to the Tentacled Servant over Mrs. Plenty is that the secondary rewards can be sold directly for scrip. Normally this bird build would yield an extra 2.50 Echo item from Mrs. Plenty (3 Menace vs 2 Amalgamy), but this week is Amalgamy + Bird, so the Tentacled Servant is on even ground there too. Orthogon (talk) 02:53, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Upper River Card-Drawing Strategy for Hellworm Owners (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love God's Editors at Burrow-Infra-Mump)

google docs version: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JFfuNza_bNagifpRKy_US6v4IQjQyjOsQc0B5HkBIX8/edit?usp=sharing

Overview:

This is an Upper River card-drawing strategy I adopted after purchasing |Your Very Own Miniature Hellworm|.

It involves primarily drawing cards in three Upper River locations and making skeletons in the Bone Market. All of the actions outlined here work in tandem toward one goal: efficiently producing as many Prismatic Frames as possible. The Prismatic Frames are stockpiled and used in the Bone Market to make very profitable skeletons during advantageous weeks. This strategy is of particular interest to hellworm owners since all cards are drawn in Upper River locations, so playing/riding/milking hellworms can be done consistently and in tandem with the rest of the actions here.

Prerequisites:

Resources

Most of the items required for this strategy are obtained naturally during the cycle, or efficiently obtained from non-card sources, but there is one major exception: |Antique Mystery|. Two of these are required each time |Elation at Feline Oration| is collected, which will be often.

I already had a large supply of Antique Mysteries on hand when I started coming up with this strategy, and I believe anyone who has not stockpiled them in advance will only be able to apply it intermittently, since there don’t seem to be any efficient ways to acquire them in the necessary quantities while also drawing cards in the Upper River.

The best way to acquire a lot of these is probably to buy materials from the Rat Market and convert them, eventually getting Antique Mysteries from Presbyterate Passphrases. But that final conversion also costs one |Favours: Tomb-Colonies|, so I believe these conversions would have to be done in advance, while you are still drawing cards in London, as there are no available sources of these favours while following the strategy outlined here.

In the Rat Market, start by selling your item of choice, then buy Maniac’s Prayers. Then convert using this cycle: Maniac’s Prayers -> Correspondence Plaques -> Visions of the Surface -> Mysteries of the Elder Continent -> Presbyterate Passphrases -> Antique Mysteries. The conversions take about 2.2 actions per Antique Mystery (counting a Tomb-Colonies favour as one action). One full Tribute voyage of Night-Whispers should net enough Rat Market materials (apart from the favours) for nearly 100 Antique Mysteries (which will be enough later for nearly 50 Prismatic Frames).

You could produce a lot of Presbyterate Passphrases in Arbor, but at quite a high opportunity cost, since you could otherwise spend your Attar on the much more profitable Favours in High Places option (which produces greater value AND uses fewer actions to cash in).

After beginning to draw cards in the Upper River, a few Antique Mysteries can be obtained periodically from these sources:

Any character can obtain 5 Antique Mysteries every 4 weeks by converting 4 Professional Perks (one obtained each week) into one Trade Secret, then turning that into 5 Antique Mysteries and a Searing Enigma. (my character has been a resident of Fallen London for over a decade, so this has contributed a lot to my stockpile)
A Correspondent receives 4 Antique Mysteries each week as part of their wages (my character was a Correspondent for 8-9 years, and this was the primary source of my stockpile).
A Crooked-Cross can receive 1 Antique Mystery each week at the Wellspring of Moulin as part of that profession’s unique rewards for the expedition |The Wellspring of the Waste|.

Progress

While some of the progress below is not strictly required, each of them contributes to the profitability and efficiency of the strategy.

|Involved in a Railway Venture| 110 (You’ve built railway stations as far as Moulin)

|Moulin Commemorative Development| 10 or 20 (Statue of Clio, Muse of History, or Statue of Yourself, Preeminent Archaeologist)

|Burrow-Infra-Mump Commemorative Development| exactly 2: Statue to a Custom-Made Saint (You must complete enough of the Church in the Wild storyline to dedicate your church to a Custom-Made Saint before you can build this statue)

|First Delivery| 2 (You’ve explored Station VIII enough to be allowed into the lab there, and have already delivered the Overseer’s message to Pinnock)

|Jericho Locks Commemorative Development| exactly 3: Statue to the Bishop of Saint Fiacre's (you must have the Bishop of Saint Fiacre’s on the railway board to build this statue, but can remove him after it’s built)

|Ossification| 20: (you’ve completed the Exceptional Story Upwards; a small percentage of players may have gotten the Five-Pointed Ribcage without completing Upwards - this works too, really we just want the ribcage)
NEW: The Segmented Ribcage introduced in Whitsun 2022 is much more efficient and profitable than the Five-Pointed Ribcage for the uses outlined here, so if you stockpiled those, it’s unnecessary to complete Upwards.

|Your Own Stall at the Bone Market| 3: You have a moderately-sized stall in the Bone Market (you have access to the Bone Market and have a large enough stall to use Prismatic Frames as bases for skeletons)

|University Laboratory| 1 (also see item requirements below - you must complete the experiment that provides the recipe for scintillack snuff, and you need to be able to create bird, reptile, and insect/spider skeletons

Items

|Your Very Own Miniature Hellworm| or |Your Very Own Miniature Hellworm, Saddled and Bridled| - (This is why you’re drawing cards in the Upper River after all!)

|Membership of God’s Editors| - I know, this is an extra card in your Upper River deck, what am I doing recommending this?! But without the extra source of Church favours, thigh relics take twice as much time to grind, and Burrow materials, which already pile up faster than they can be used, pile up even faster.

Church favours are pretty much the most foundational component of the strategy as a whole. Most of the Prismatic Frames we will be collecting come from selling skeletons to the Bohemian Sculptress, which requires a constant supply of thigh relics, which come entirely from trading in Church favours at your Jericho statue.

|Five-Pointed Ribcage| - From Upwards, or from a one-time reward for certain players when the Bone Market was rebalanced.
NEW: The Segmented Ribcage introduced in Whitsun 2022 is much more efficient and profitable than the Five-Pointed Ribcage for the uses outlined here, so if you stockpiled those, it’s unnecessary to complete Upwards.

|Counterfeit Head of John the Baptist| - You can get by without this, but duplicating his skull is useful for certain skeletons when selling to the Bohemian Sculptress. For Licentiates, supplying the skull of a victim is a perfectly-acceptable substitute (it is arguably even preferable since it removes the need for a supply of both bone fragments and handpicked peppercaps).

|A Device for the Duplication of Bones| - Required for duplicating the head of John the Baptist. Giving one to the butcher in Ealing Gardens unlocks a lot of efficient bone options, but they are not required for the core of this strategy.

Qualities

Mithridacy is my most-used advanced skill, and I recommend having at least 10 (100% success for Brass Skulls and Carved Balls of Stygian Ivory). Having 14-15 will give 100% success when adding Holy Relics of the Thigh of Saint Fiacre to a Five-Pointed Ribcage/Segmented Ribcage, but failure on these checks is still very profitable, so succeeding 100% of the time is not required to make use of this strategy. Having at least 8 will give you a 100% success rate when adding thigh relics to a Flourishing Ribcage base.

Shapeling Arts 10 is useful for guaranteeing success when adding Helical Thighbones to a skeleton.

Artisan of the Red Science 10 is useful for guaranteeing success when duplicating the skull of John the Baptist to use as a skull for a skeleton.

Monstrous Anatomy has several key break-points for 100% success:
7 for Wings of a Young Terror Bird and Fin Bones, Collected
9 for Jet Black Stingers
10 for Sabre-toothed Skulls (and Horned Skulls) <- this is the minimum level I recommend
*Horned Skulls only used for high-exhaustion bird skeletons with this strategy
11 for Ivory Femurs (I don’t recommend farming these, but they can be cashed in profitably in insect/spider weeks if you have them)

Bone Market buyers have various BDR requirements. The ones I use the most often are:
A Familiar Bohemian Sculptress (0 Respectable) for skeletons that support a Counter-Church theology.
An Author of Gothic Tales (7 Dreaded AND 7 Respectable) for skeletons with Menace and Antiquity.
The Tentacled Entrepreneur (14 Bizarre) for high-exhaustion skeletons with Amalgamy.
A Zailor with Particular Interests (7 Bizarre and 7 Respectable) for skeletons with Amalgamy and Antiquity
A Tentacled Servant (3 Bizarre) for bird skeletons. Requires one point of Amalgamy (never a problem since the Skeleton with Seven Necks is used for these).
Mrs Plenty (3 Dreaded) for bird skeletons. Requires one point of Menace (never a problem since the Skeleton with Seven Necks is used for these).

Profession

I recommend taking up one of these professions, depending on your individual circumstances. They are ordered by how impactful their advantages are, so if multiple conditions apply to your character, I recommend taking the first profession in the list that applies.

Correspondent, if you need to supplement your supply of Antique Mysteries. (Bonus: easier to reach 10 Artisan of the Red Science for adding Baptist skulls, which is a fairly minor boost)
Crooked-Cross, if it helps you reach 10 Mithridacy. (Bonus: receives a reward which is worth roughly 40.00 echoes more than other professions when doing the Moulin Wellspring expedition, part of which is a single Antique Mystery. This expedition can only be done once a week.)
Monster Hunter, if it helps you reach 10 Monstrous Anatomy. (Bonus: much more efficient at hunting Pinewood Sharks than other professions - might make Prismatic Frame-based fish competitive with reptiles)
Licentiate, if you have all the qualities that the other three would help with. (Bonus: supplying a victim’s skull is a cheap and useful option for skeletons that you are making for secondary quality rewards. This applies primarily when selling to the Bohemian Sculptress or the Zailor with Particular Interests. Brass Lollipops continue to be a useful way to convert echoes to scrip as well.)

I have not been able to think of any advantages for employing this strategy while practicing any of the other professions.

Locations:

How to decide which of the locations I should be drawing cards from?

You should move to desired location as determined by conditions listed below. Go to the first location in the list that you meet the conditions for.

1. Church Favours >=4*? -> go to Jericho Locks
*exact optimal number here is undetermined, but it is at least 4
2. Connected: Benthic >=20 AND/OR Saintly statue hanging up in bone market? -> go to Burrow-Infra-Mump
3. >=98 rumours of the upper river and >=1 elation at feline oration? -> go to Station VIII
4. >=98 rumours of the upper river and 0 elation at feline oration? go to London and get elation at feline oration
5. otherwise -> go to Moulin

As you draw cards besides the useful ones outlined in this guide, your actions will accumulate. You may run into conflicting priorities for what to do with these actions, but here are some guidelines:

-Make skeletons at the bone market if there is a favourable fad and you have the materials to do so.
-Collect Nevercold Brass Slivers at the Sunken Embassy - required to use Bright Brass Skull and Segmented Ribcage on skeletons (good numbers to aim for: 60000 or 120000)
-Collect Skeleton With Seven Necks and Wing of a Young Terror Bird in the Balmoral woods - base for bird skeletons (good numbers to aim for : 40 or 80)
-Collect Cartographer's Hoard: University lab - turn into Five-Pointed Ribcage or sell at Rat Market (recommend having at least one on hand if you don’t have Segmented Ribcage stockpile, for fueling Burrow statue)

General Upper River

The following are the general Upper River cards that I find useful. These can be drawn in any Upper River location.

|Your Very Own Hellworm| is of course why we are all here. One habit that may take some getting used to is making sure you actually have your worm equipped to make sure you have a chance to draw this card! I have edited the names of my outfits that include the worm by appending them with “WORM” so I can easily see if I am properly outfitted and re-attire myself before drawing cards if necessary.

|A Jurisdictional Dispute| is one of the primary sources of Church favours. It is a tough Persuasive challenge which achieves 100% success at 334 Persuasive. A more profitable option, with the same challenge level, that gives a Church favour and 75 Proscribed Material is available if you are the Bishop of Watchmaker’s Hill (a quality rewarded for a certain ending of the Exceptional Story The Sinking Synod, from my understanding). There is also a lucrative option that trades a Verse of Counter-Creed for 36 Hinterland Scrip, available if you have the Submerged Rector (I only do this last option if I draw it while I already have 7 Church favours).

|God’s Editors at Burrow-Infra-Mump| is the other primary source of Church favours. Unlike the other source, this one doesn’t have a skill challenge, it will always grant a favour. It only requires a modest supply of Surface Currency.

|A Disillusioned Fungiculturist| has an option to trade 10 nightsoil for 21 peppercaps, around 5.5 EPA. This is the best source of peppercaps, which you will need a supply of if you are using Baptist skulls on skeletons for the Bohemian Sculptress. This card can be ignored when you have more valuable uses for your actions, or if you just don’t need peppercaps.

Jericho Locks

|Under the Statue at Jericho Locks| - primary source of |Holy Relic of the Thigh of Saint Fiacre|

IF you have |Your Very Own Hellworm, Saddled and Bridled|, there is one more useful card in Jericho:

|Fill a stomach| from |Indulge in Illicit Charity|, despite being an unattractive option when judged on its own merits (spend 1 action and 1 |Crate of Incorruptible Biscuits| for 1 |Favour: Urchins|), provides a useful way to convert your always-growing supply of |Aeolian Screams| into |Storm Threnodies| without leaving the Upper River (each conversion turns 25 screams into 5 threnodies with possible bonus items, and requires an Urchins favour). The threnodies can be sold at the Rat Market periodically for 22.50 echoes more than selling the screams outright, which makes playing this card (1 action, 1 crate of biscuits) + converting the screams (1 action) + selling 5 threnodies (1 action) net around 22.00 echoes profit (7+ EPA).

I recommend increasing Jericho Locks: Darkness to whatever level you need to 100% the check on this card if you plan to play it (I like Darkness 5 because I can succeed without even having to change outfits). Note also that the option does not lock when you have 7 Urchins favours, so be aware of how many you have and don’t play it if you have 7 favours already (unless you are feeling truly charitable).

Burrow-Infra-Mump

|Under the Statue at Burrow-Infra-Mump| - primary source of |Flourishing Ribcage|, also provides |Helical Thighbone| and |Jurassic Thighbone|, |Rumour of the Upper River|, and occasionally a lucky |Prismatic Frame|.

|Burrow in Twilight| - If you have the |Submerged Rector| and a source of Moon-Pearls (you can profitably get 9100 or 18200 weekly from board meetings, depending on whether you’ve completed your railway), this card is a profitable way to turn them into |Verse of Counter-Creed|, which, as mentioned in the Upper River section above, can be traded for 36 Hinterland Scrip on |A Jurisdictional Dispute|. |Burrow-Infra-Mump: Darkness| 5 is required to unlock this option.

Station VIII

|Lead a Dig| - primary source of |Prismatic Frame|, with the option |Lead an expedition to the strangest point on the horizon|.

You will frequently use the laboratory here to collect materials and create |Oil of Companionship|, which is a requirement for the Prismatic Frame option on Lead a Dig. (You will occasionally get the oil from your Hellworm too)

Milking your Hellworm will sometimes provide a Concentrate of Self, which is the most valuable ingredient used in creating a Curatorial Cocktail in the kitchen here. Serving the cocktail yields almost 800 Hinterland Scrip.

London

Most of your time in London will be spent assembling and selling skeletons at the Bone Market. The following pages detail the recipes I have used while developing this strategy.

The Anthropomorphic Ant
Flourishing Ribcage
Duplicate the Head of John the Baptist*
Carved Ball of Stygian Ivory
Holy Relic of the Thigh of St Fiacre (6)
Decide it needs no tail
Declare it to be an insect
Sell to Bohemian Sculptress

• Licentiates can supply a victim’s skull instead

The payout per skeleton is 45 Preserved Surface Blooms (51 during insect mania), and 25 Rumours of the Upper River. The rumours are the primary purpose for the skeleton, and are used to get Prismatic Frames from |Lead a Dig|. A small supply of blooms is needed to make Consignments of Scintillack Snuff, but most of them can be sold for echoes as needed (primary use for echoes is to buy Brass Skulls during bird weeks).

Note: You may wonder “Why not use a ribcage that gives more rumours of the upper river per point of counter-church support?” (tldr is: hope for a reliable source of Segmented Ribcage!)

This skeleton’s main advantages are:
1) Flourishing Ribcages are effectively a by-product of the Burrow statue, which we draw mainly to try for the prismatic frame rare success. Using them here makes them into a profitable by-product instead of a valueless one.
2) They have low penny value - this skeleton pays out a much higher ratio of rumours:blooms than any of the others below (except the new Segmented Ribcage).
3) Even though the rumours/limb is lower, being able to put 6 limbs on the skeleton means we can efficiently use up the limbs in a smaller number of actions, and get more rumours per skeleton (again, the new Segmented Ribcage is better now).
Mammoth Ribcage - Actions to gather these are low in profitability, counteracting the small increase in payout per thigh relic.
Ribcage with a Bouquet of Eight Spines - Making a bird out of this would only allow two thighs per skeleton, and the skeleton is very action-intensive to gather materials and build.
Leviathan Frame - No profitable source available since we are drawing cards in the Upper River.
Prismatic Frame - The goal of this strategy is to turn rumours of the upper river into prismatic frames, not the other way around. This is a very profitable option though if one reaches a point where scrip is no longer needed/wanted, and each one you make gives a nice start on materials to use to build another.
Five-Pointed Ribcage - See the Sanctified Spider recipe further on for more information about this ribcage.
Segmented Ribcage - See the Superior Sanctified Spider recipe further on for more information about this ribcage. (with a reliable source, these will really be much superior to the Anthropomorphic Ant)

The Amalgamous Antique Ant
Flourishing Ribcage
Bright Brass Skull
Carved Ball of Stygian Ivory
Jurassic Thigh x3
Helical Thigh x2
Unidentified Thigh x1 (buy from Anning & Daughters in Upper River Exchange if needed)
Decide it needs no tail
Declare it to be an insect
Sell to Zailor With Particular Interests

The primary payout per skeleton is 1129 Nodule of Warm Amber. These can be used to add limbs to skeletons or as part of the Ealing Gardens Butcher’s fee for bones, but you are sure to end up with more of these than you need, and can sell the excess for echoes to fuel scrip-converting bird skeletons.

The secondary payout per skeleton is between 18 and 21 Knob of Scintillack (depending on the quality fad). These can be sold for scrip if they pile up, but a stockpile should be kept on hand to supply materials for getting Prismatic Frames from the Station VIII card (Consignment of Scintillack Snuff->Elation at Feline Oration->Oil of Companionship).

The Amazingly Amalgamous Ant
Flourishing Ribcage
Any skull that doesn’t add Amalgamy (this skeleton needs EXACTLY 14 Amalgamy, already accounted for)
Carved Ball of Stygian Ivory
Helical Thigh x6
Decide it needs no tail
Declare it to be an insect
Sell to Tentacled Entrepreneur

This skeleton is used to maximize exhaustion-based profitability during Amalgamy weeks. It produces 7 points of Bone Market Exhaustion and the secondary payout is 1021 Final Breaths.

The goal here is to sell this skeleton during an Amalgamy week right before your Time the Healer comes. Time the Healer will reduce exhaustion by 4, putting you at 3, so you don’t spend any time without access to the exhaustion-affected buyers.

For the non-Amalgamy week following selling this skeleton, I recommend waiting again until just before Time the Healer and making an appropriate skeleton that will produce 1 exhaustion (probably a bird).

For other non-Amalgamy weeks, I recommend waiting until just before Time the Healer and make a single bird that has either 14 Menace/7 Antiquity or 14 Antiquity/7 Menace, to produce exactly 4 exhaustion which will completely be erased by TtH.

This exhaustion strategy provides the following benefits:
Only one skeleton is needed to benefit fully from Bone Market Exhaustion every week
No time is spent locked out from selling to exhaustion-conscious buyers
Minimal actions are spent farming exhaustion materials that are not part of the strategy outlined in this guide (skulls for the birds).
The Conversational Chimera
Five Pointed Ribcage
Bright Brass Skull (5)
Holy Relic of the Thigh of St Fiacre (5)
DON’T DECLARE IT!

This skeleton is never actually declared or sold. You build it at an opportune time, when you can afford to leave it in your Bone Market stall and go without making other skeletons, and use it to build up Connected: Benthic by playing the option |An Evening of Palaeontological Discussion| on |Under the Statue at Burrow-Infra-Mump|.

After building the skeleton, you should play the discussion option exclusively until Connected: Benthic is >40 (around 5 draws). After that, play it whenever it dips back below 40 again. This way when you do take the skeleton down, you’ll be able to play |Trade Favours for Bones| around a dozen times before running out of Connected: Benthic.

When you take the skeleton down, you’ll get your Five-Pointed Ribcage back, and 387.50 worth of either Whispered Hints or Bone Fragments. The fragments are more useful, so to improve the odds of getting them, wear equipment that drops your Dangerous as low as possible. With end-game stats, I can only get down to about a 50% chance.

It may seem more intuitive to use Duplicate the Skull of John the Baptist for the skulls, but Brass Skulls have such a high penny value that they are more valuable for the paleontological discussion calculation, and the Nevercold Brass Slivers required to attach brass skulls add fewer actions to the preparation than collecting Handpicked Peppercaps and Bone Fragments for Baptist skulls.

You will have to think about the state of the Bone Market and of your stockpile of bones to decide when it’s a good time to put one of these skeletons up. I try not to put one up right before the fads of the Bone Market change - if it turns out to be a reptile or bird week, you might have the tough choice of tearing down your Chimera without building up Connected: Benthic vs. missing out on cashing out some Prismatic Frames or converting echoes to scrip with bird skeletons.

The Brass Bird
Skeleton with Seven Necks
Brass Skull (7)
Wing of a Young Terror Bird (2)
Declare it a bird
Sell to A Tentacled Servant or Mrs Plenty

The strategy outlined here generates some income that is not directly convertible to scrip (mainly Preserved Surface Blooms and Nodules of Warm Amber), and you have a Hellworm, so you will get a lot of non-scrip income from that. Bird week is probably the best way to turn that income into scrip.

The skeleton above provides maximal conversion of echoes to scrip during bird weeks with minimal preparation requirements (the ribcages, and nevercold brass for the skulls), and is best sold to the Tentacled Servant or Mrs. Plenty. The lower difficulty checks on these buyers allow you to save actions when attempting to sell to them compared to the higher-paying buyers, so you can make and sell more skeletons, and convert more echoes into scrip for the week.

Brass Skulls are used for all seven slots for the same reason, maximizing the echo-conversion.

Wings of a Young Terror Bird are used simply because they don’t require any extra farming - the best place to get Skeletons with Seven Necks is Balmoral, and you receive 3 wings with each of those, so you’ll have plenty of wings on hand just by farming the ribcages.

I slightly prefer the Tentacled Servant over Mrs Plenty since the secondary reward converts directly to scrip, and having nightsoil on hand allows you to acquire peppercaps at a fairly profitable rate from the card |A Disillusioned Fungiculturist|. The peppercaps and nightsoil are both convertible directly to scrip too, so any excess can be sold with no additional action cost.

The Tripod Triceratops
Prismatic Frame
Sabre-toothed Skull (1)
Carved Ball of Stygian Ivory (2)
Femur of a Jurassic Beast (3)
Jet Black Stinger (1)
Decide it needs no tail (counter-intuitive, since we just added a tail)
Declare it a reptile
Sell to An Author of Gothic Tales

This is the recipe I use for all reptile fad weeks, regardless of which quality is fashionable, and always sell to the Author of Gothic Tales. The payout is best in Antiquity weeks, followed by Menace, then Amalgamy, but the difference is very small compared to the overall value of the skeleton. It pays out 862 Hinterland Scrip and 18-21 Carved Ball of Stygian Ivory

Note: You may wonder “Why not insects or fish for prismatic frames (15% fad boost compared to 10%)?
-Insects require a source of Trembling Amber, which is not readily available while using this strategy, so this would have to be stockpiled in advance. 35.00 echoes worth of materials are required to add the legs, which is likely more than the 5% boost in profit. The extra limbs require 1 action to add and 4 more actions to fill, reducing EPA further. It would allow us to make use of some of the extra Wing of a Young Terror Bird that pile up though!
-Fish would be a better choice than reptiles if an efficient enough source of Amber-Crusted Fins existed. With the current options, a Monster Hunter hunting Pinewood Sharks with Nightmares 5+ is the most efficient way I can see. This adds actions to hunt the shark, more to dissect it in the lab, and more to convert the basic fin bones to amber-crusted ones in Helicon House. These actions are lowish EPA compared to others in this guide (4ish), diluting the 5% additional profit. These actions can instead be used to stockpile nevercold brass slivers or seven-necked skeletons, which is why I opt to make reptiles.

The Sanctified Spider
Five-Pointed Ribcage
add limbs
Carved Ball of Stygian Ivory x5
Holy Relic of the Thigh of St. Fiacre x8
Withered Tentacle (almost certain to fail, but only adds 1 implausibility and negligible value loss)
Declare it to be a spider
Sell to Bohemian Sculptress

If sold during a spider fad week, the primary reward is 196 Preserved Surface Bloom and secondary reward is up to 80 Rumour of the Upper River.

This spider is very expensive and action-intensive to create, and I estimate that building it can only reach about 4.75 EPA given a top-grade lab with Hephaesta as an assistant.

(Disregarding the stygian ivory and withered tentacle: approx 80 actions to make Cartographer’s Hoard, 11 actions to trade that for ribcage, 20 actions to collect legs, 75.00 echoes spent to add limbs, 18 actions to assemble and sell). It also requires Trembling Amber, which this strategy does not provide a source for.

I am not confident that I make optimal choices every time in the lab - it’s possible that with an optimal lab strategy, the actions for building the cartographer’s hoard could be reduced and improve the estimated profitability of this skeleton.

The Superior Sanctified Spider
Segmented Ribcage (torso)
Segmented Ribcage (skull)
Holy Relic of the Thigh of St. Fiacre x6
Segmented Ribcage (tail)
Holy Relic of the Thigh of St. Fiacre x2
Plaster Tailbones OR Withered Tentacle (or tailless, or any other tail really)
Declare it to be a spider
Sell to Bohemian Sculptress

The Segmented Ribcage introduced for Whitsun 2022 allows the creation of extremely profitable spider skeletons to sell to the Bohemian Sculptress. The primary payout for this skeleton is 55 Preserved Surface Blooms during spider fad week, and the secondary payout is up to 88 Rumour of the Upper River (avg 84 with Mithridacy 10).

Given that the promised future source of these ribcages is compatible with the rest of the strategy, I am hopeful that Segmented Ribcages will become the best farmable base for spider fad skeletons.

This skeleton can still be profitably used to fuel the burrow statue even outside spider weeks since the bulk of the profit comes from the massive secondary reward (receive 48 surface blooms instead of 55, or loss of 17.50 echo value when selling this way, about 5% of the overall value). A modest stockpile gathered during Whitsun could potentially be rationed out for this purpose until we see what non-seasonal sources are provided. Orthogon (talk) 19:20, 22 May 2022 (UTC)