Echo Bazaar is going to involve a lot of goods-farming for the forseeable future . . .

The browser game Echo Bazaar has just added a bunch of new content for high-level characters. These give you opportunities to open up Storylets that give you access to cool stuff.

Like, right now, I have a chance to become an editor at Saint Cyriac's Illuminated College. In order to do this, I need to get 12 instances of Collated Research. You buy Collated Research with goods.

In order to become a editor, therefore, I need to get 12000 Cryptic Clues, 3000 Proscribed Materials, and 12000 Whispered Secrets.

These are three of the different kinds of goods that you get as rewards for doing quests in Echo Bazaar. Think of them like gold drops in more typical games. And you can buy and sell these goods at the Bazaar: you can buy 1 Proscribed Material for 8 pence, or sell one for 4 pence; Cryptic Clues are 4 pence to buy, and get you 2 pence if you sell them; Whispered Secrets cost 2, or get you 1. (And 100 pence makes 1 Echo.)

So, we're talking about a thousand echoes' worth of stuff, if I buy it all, or 500 echoes' worth, if I earn the goods directly.

The highest level things I can do can net about 1 echo's worth of stuff per turn, and I get up to 100 turns per day. So it's probably around a week per Cool Thing To Get.

The trickiest one is going to be the 3000 Proscribed Materials. The best way I know of to get them is to rob the Ministry of Public Decency, which nets you 300 of them, along with a good deal of other stuff. The thing is, to do that, you need to case the joint first, and raising your ". . . Casing" quality to 20 takes about 40 turns. So, doing that ten times is 400 turns, or 4 days.

So, it's going to be a bunch of grinding quests for loot-drops for a while.