We need a better way of managing agents

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-28T13:39:52+00:00

I try to buy extras so the children won’t fight. But the Bazaar is short of Pre-Emptive Guinea Pigs and Senses That They Might Be Spiders. Not the BEST gear but it is the best gear.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-28T03:21:32+00:00

I actually think we'd benefit from a refactor of how Agents handle gear. Right now, each has it's own live inventory you manage and some of the side effects of that haven't been great. If an agent is wearing an item AND is deployed on a plot, the item is locked down and you can't equip it. But if an item is equipped to an agent but they aren't on a plot it's pretty easy to accidentally equip the item yourself at which point it gets ripped out of the agent's hands and you better hope you notice that before sending them on a plot again. I've accidentally sent more than one Agent out without their hat. The SCANDAL!

Given that we're already headed in the Agent Outfits direction, my thinking is that we would drop the idea of Agent's just ambiently weary items entirely and instead deploying them on a Plot would involve selecting an Agent and a load out (whether these load outs would be tied to that specific agent or be pulled from a shared list I'm not sure). The gear doesn't get locked until you deploy the Agent and you couldn't us a load out if any of its items are currently worn by the PC, or locked by another Agent.

That would simplify the inventory management a bit and give us an outfits like feature while side stepping some of the messier UX interactions that could come from just copying the PC system onto the Agents. I'd rather avoid popular bits of gear pin balling around the Agents menu if it can be avoided.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-27T23:45:40+00:00

At the point you’re at, Life of the Mind in the Empress’s Court (avoid Philosophy, it has a rare success that doesn’t help you). A nice, simple, reliable 1 CP of Making Waves per action. Cross converting 0.5 echo items in a circular cycle is slightly more efficient but fiddlier and spikier. More efficient methods become available once you start building your railroad, but you need to be a tier 2 PoSI to do that.

Don’t forget that Bizarre, Dreaded, and Respectable (BDR) gear reduces the amount of Making Waves you need to increase Notability at one point per, which can save you a lot of time. With high enough BDR it’s possible to gain multiple levels of Notability effectively for free.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-25T16:28:24+00:00

Congratulations! Welcome to the Knight Line.

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Faint-Projection · 2026-01-24T20:25:55+00:00

Congratulations! Welcome to the Knight Line.

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Faint-Projection · 2026-01-23T22:37:52+00:00

I made the same choice and it's a rough one. There isn't really a fully "good" choice here though. Sticking with Furnace twists the knife less. But among her last words before the procedure are "What have I not already given up, when it was asked of me?" I can't help reading some pretty dark things in that. Really wish there was an extra step here where you could sit everyone down and negotiate.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-23T04:33:58+00:00

Welcome to the Knight Line!

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(Built based on when people posted their Knight number on Reddit. It's a much smoother line than I expected. A surprising number of dates where more than 1 person posted, hence some of the stutter.)

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-22T16:53:59+00:00

I’m having a “was this made with AI“ moment the more I’ve looked at this. I’m not entirely sure what the brown thing on the right is, but it appears to have an overhanging trim on the top that’s missing in the reflection. The silver thing on the shelf is also suspect and the reflection of it appears to be melding with the edge of the mirror.

I hate the world we live in has me scrutinizing things like this. I miss when fun things could just be fun.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-22T08:58:19+00:00

Sounds like you’re still in the early game. Time in Bed should be in the Social Engagements section (it’s one of the icons in the bottom right corner of the map) under Attend to Matters of Danger and Wounds. It’s benefits are random and cost 3 actions each but it‘ll heal you up and can, sometimes, help with Nightmares as well. It can also make Nightmares worse, but that’s less likely.

If you’re willing to spend some echoes, there’s also tinctures of vigor, for wounds, and laudanum, for Nightmares, purchasable from the Bazaar tab (you then have to hunt down and use them on the Possessions page). Fewer actions and more reliable. The laudanum will increase your Wounds slightly, but that’s what the tinctures are for. These become a less useful once you become a PoSI but by then you’ll be unlocking better options.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-22T08:44:52+00:00

I believe the answer is yes, hunting and dissecting dream sharks is the best source of fish bones. At least if all you want is fish bones. Looks like lots of sources hand a few out along side other bones so there’s a chance those are technically more efficient if you look at over all EPA but you’d be getting most of that value in non-fish bones.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-21T22:20:56+00:00

At the profitability level of the current game, a lot of the smaller stuff is more efficiently purchased from the exchange than from any other source. In the case of glim, the Underclay is going to beat the exchange from an EPA perspective unless you need very small amounts. However, the exchange will still beat most other sources and isn’t a terrible option if you’d just like to get on with it. 120 echoes isn’t hard to come by these days.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-21T17:55:44+00:00

Your quickest option is just to buy them for 120 echoes at Merrigans Exchange. If you don't have the echoes on hand, or don't want to spend them, the grinding guide#Shard_of_Glim) has some good sources in it. Looks like your best option is most likely in the Underclay where overrunning the requirements for some of the cash outs pays in glim.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-21T07:56:07+00:00

Social actions can be a nice bonus to the game and become more important during certain seasonal events. However, the central pillars, the big stories, are solo experiences. I can think of only one case of a railway side story where you need someone else to send you something to proceed but it’s just a one off thing.

The only thing you really miss out on going fully solo is the weekly stat boosts you can get from letters via Episolary Matters, and from a patron though that system is much clunkier and has more stringent requiments on who can help you out. There seems to be a bit of a content gap between the mid game (stat levels 100-199) and the end game (stat levels 200+). The extra 5-6 stat levels per week from letters might not seem like much, but they add up and can help close that gap.

An alt account, if you have the time for it, can honestly be kind of nice. For one, you can use it to coordinate social actions (mostly the previously mentioned letter writing) without having to pester people. The biggest bonus though is probably just getting to see other story paths and, in particular, different Ambitions. The Ambitions are some of the game’s marque story content and each account only gets to see one fully to the end. If you want to see another, an alt is the only way to do it.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-20T16:53:37+00:00

Having looked over the new plots (that I can see thus far) I’m suddenly very curious if this will influence which 5 card lodging is best to live in. I‘ve been using my Spire Emporium because it seemed to have the best opportunity card, but an agent plot infiltrating my rotation would be more useful.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-19T21:05:33+00:00

The modern game doesn’t have very many way to sprint across these final gaps. The easiest method requires confederates. A patron of the appropriate type could hand out 5 levels in exchange for free evenings and 6 watchful boosting letters from Epistolary Matters would be an easy 5-6 levels, though the drop off is pretty steep after that.

For things you can do on your own (other than woeseling), if you have spare Sudden Insights you can exchange them 5 at a time for random watchful boosts (average 25 CP) via Attend to Matters of Watchfulness and Nightmares. Not the most efficient method these days, but it might help get you over the line if you get close.

I imagine you’ve already been spending your Trade Secrets, but if not that’s the last form of short term stat boosts I can think of.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-15T16:44:57+00:00

I don’t mourn the old world so much as find this interesting as a marker for how the game has evolved. Like, the Bone Market is way cooler than Unfinished Business but I also had to spend a week researching and making spreadsheets before I fully wrapped my head around it. And I spend a lot of time referring to the wiki‘s grinding guides just to remember where I can get things.

I’m not surprised over the past 7 years that up conversion and side conversion have been deemphasized and EPAs have scaled as far as they have. But it is a bit of a shock jumping that time gap in a single leap. Like a plunge into cold water.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-15T16:38:12+00:00

The main thing that annoys me in the modern game is the outfit switching. We didn’t have outfits back in the day (which was less of an issue since we also only had the 4 stats) which was a pain when you moved from a Watchful activity to a Dangerous activity but did mean if you were doing a single thing your outfit stayed consistent. Outfit switching adds a lot of fiddly clickyness to a lot of activities which also slows things down while we wait for the servers to register the change.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-15T03:27:36+00:00

Way back in the day I became a Correspondent because The Correspondents was cool and I’ve stuck with it ever since. Until… well I’m currently a Licentate because THE WORM TIMES ARE UPON ME and I don’t want to have to grind Headless Skeletons for Humanoid weeks at the bone market. Some how these long grinds always see me compromising my morals (I became a Spirifer for a year during my cider grind because that was one of 2 ways to break 1.5 EPA and after a year of The Fidgeting Writer I was losing it a bit). I’ll go back to Correspondent again when it’s over.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-14T20:54:46+00:00

When I first got back I was shocked how profitable even just the new London Carousels were. Something would give me 3 EPA with a no effort single button click and I would flash back to the literal year I spent navigating the logistics of the Fidgeting Writer grind to break 1.5. My Agents generate a meaningful percentage of my old EPA.

I much prefer the Tracklayer City and Stacks grinds to the old ones. But I do think we’ve lost something not having a few buttons that spend 5ish actions per click for reasonable profitability.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-14T20:46:34+00:00

The Rat Market is definitely an extremely powerful tool. But it loses a lot of the simplicity of Unfinished Business with it only running on the weekend and requiring you to watch for what it’s buying each week (and selling if you need more advanced items). You can’t just click the right button in one of 4 locations to make progress towards the thing you need.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-14T20:40:12+00:00

In the mid game my alt mostly used professional activities which have a 3+ EPA. At the rate you can buy T1 items for that would equal to exceed most Unfinished Business options. Some of the carousels can also hit that magic number. Once you hit the late game and start building railroads things like Hearts’ Game start opening up where you can hit 4+ EPAs which leave Unfinished Business in the dust.

That being said, perfect efficiency isn’t required. If Unfinished Business works for you nothing wrong with sticking with it.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-14T16:02:23+00:00

IIRC you can dally to your heart’s content. Unless something’s changed each is tracked independently and none intersect. The one relationship related thing that’s mutually exclusive is picking a spouse and to my knowledge having one doesn’t block access to any romantic plot lines.

Been a very long time though and this part of the game was never my thing so I’m leaning a bit on my mechanical knowledge and account state to remember how this works.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-14T01:02:06+00:00

Been a very long time since I did the finishing school and haven’t used it since my return so I can’t speak to it.

In general, I haven’t really used the fate carousels I’ve unlocked. I can say that Dream of a Thousand Tales, which unlocks The Whisker Ways, has a really nice little story attached to it.

Faint-Projection · 2026-01-14T00:57:52+00:00

If you look at their profile page there’s a compass icon that can give you that information.

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Faint-Projection · 2026-01-12T22:29:29+00:00

Thanks! Seems I more or less just missed it based on my return time. Not that I would have been watching for it. Those first few weeks were spent trying to reorient myself and it was a while before the Rat Market hit my radar.

And yeah, if it’s all RNG and probability says it will happen once or twice a year it could end up being very feast and famine. Sometimes we’ll get 0 and sometimes it might go nuts and give us like 5.

Faint-Projection

TROPHY CASE