July 1629 - Day 52

The dragon quest still ongoing, the housekeeper needs to manage on his own. Luckily, after the initial (verbal) reaction, everyone seems to have realised the advantages of having cheaper production instead of expensive.

This has mirrored to consumables prices so that - after a good yield admittedly - even SuperVEG is selling for 1,500 m! Since its healthiness is better than VEG (which btw was asked 2,800 m just last month and spoiled with no takers), the housekeeper does a "Wonderful bomb", a hack to squeeze the last bit out of health challenge. It works as follows:

The health challenge gets progressively more difficult to extinguish completely. When it is closer to none, the consuming gives less benefit. See the spex for exact details. Consuming a huge quantity of same item is usually not the best way to go forward, but that also has an advantage - it might jump several levels of healthChallengeRemaining, causing an apparent reduction in total cost. Let us try:
CONSUME VEG 185
=>
The eating/drinking felt Wonderful. I feel the remaining health challenge to be Moderate. I could still eat 15, drink 150 and use 150 units of wisdom this year.

Now, with such a bomb, all Martti needs to do for the remainder of the year is to consume a slice of ham here and some mead there, to cash in the frequencyBonus, which loads at a rate of 2 items per realhour with the cap at 40. So 3 more logins, 3 more consumes, and 120 health points extra will be applied to the challenge, in addition to the items' health points.

The above hack works very well with high-potency items such as W1603A, but they are out of reach of commoners (and luckily not needed for young people). This time the total cost was 0.25 mil, and as the reader can see, it was basically enough to take care of the whole year (although Martti plans to go further).

Martti's Wisdom is still at 5, but that needs to be taken care of. Currently wisdom rating has little meaning, but the development doctrine of the game is to give ample rewards later for those who act now. It has happened already with the early CKG, it happened with the old town land, more recent example is CON, and currently the players are agonising whether to invest in B.22, Counties, Versailles, or to hold on to the battered gold and wait for CKG-proxies to be listed in altcoin exchanges. If the game is still alive in 1-2 years, they all will probably be regarded as incredible foresight.

To increase wisdom, CAN is the way to go. It is a bit pricey at 2.5k/1.8k, and the fact that the price did not go down at all with other consumables, proves that CAN is regarded as a store of value by many. The marketcap of CAN is still not too big, in the range of 1,000-1,300 mil. To give perspective, the development of Versailles borough just announced, is about 40,000 mil and the marketcap of CKG is 700,000 mil.

Another announcement came that B22 conversion ends this year with a "double-year". This underscores the fact that usually things are only given about 48-72 hours deadline, even important ones. So to play the game actively is best if almost-daily attention is given. At the same time, care is taken by the designer to allow a relaxed play of a few times per week, and the mandated requirement is just once per calendar week, to do the health challenge in one go. This is especially good combination with the "Wonderful bomb" as frequency bonus is lost anyway. If weekly attention cannot be guaranteed, FOC investment account is an option.

Also the conversion announcement places a huge stress in Martti's finances - 80 SCI to tap into the "minimum level of maximum benefit" is not cheap.