The Maze-Garden (Guide)

Mid Zailing Content

The Maze-Garden Summary
Locked Fixed-Length Activity
Setup				Progress				End
1 A				15 A				2 A
Progress Details			Build up , gaining, or along the way.
Items Inputs/Outputs Start-up Free Boosting Outputs
Raw EPA			4.36			Raw SPA			-

This guide is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.

What needs work: Missing info on fate locked Ostentatious Paisley Suit

The is a carousel in the . Each time you pass through the Maze-Garden, you bring with you a piece of clothing and "usher your garment towards independence". At the end of your journey, your item of clothing will wander off to a life in Polythreme, and you will be rewarded by a clay man bearing various gifts. The more alive your sartorial pupil is by the time you leave the garden, the better the rewards offered to you!

Getting there

is located in Polythreme and require services of a ship. There are two ways to reach Polythreme:

1. The first is to buy a ticket on the tramp steamer at using 150 s (typically earned from the Rat Market). Then build your quality to 10, using the various cards and storylets aboard the Tramp Steamer. Once it is at 10, the There at last! storylet will open up. Selecting Polythreme there will place you in the , from where you can unlock and access .
2. The second method requires a ship of your own (check the PoSI Item Crafting guide to see how to get one) and an assembled . See the Zailing (Guide) for an introduction to how you zail and plan a trip to Polythreme in the Sea of Voices.

When it's time to leave the island the following options are present:

• Board the Tramp Steamer for 80 s (8.00 Echoes). These can be gained in the carousel.
• Journey home on your own ship

The challenges in are variable and thus fit for many levels. Due to the slight difficulty in reaching Polythreme, this guide will assume you have around PoSI- levels or higher.

Useful items and their challenge level

During your stay you may need some specific items of clothing. As there is no access to the Bazaar in Polythreme, you will have to bring these garments with you. One item of clothing is needed each time you enter the Maze-Garden, and you will lose whatever item of clothing you select. The easiest and most difficult items of clothing to choose are always available at the Maze's front gates, which is to say selecting them does not require an item from your inventory. However, if you want a specific challenge level (that is ) in-between those two extremes, you must bring the item corresponding to that level. The challenge level is given to all main attribute checks ( etc.) and also affects the reward. Higher challenge levels have harder checks, but greater rewards.

Some pieces of clothing are chiral. This means that the left version or the right version will be easier than the other, which means your may increase or decrease by up to 30, depending on your choice.

It seems as though the rewards for a trip through the Maze-Garden do not increase beyond or (shown in-game as "Spirited"). This suggests that repeatedly choosing a Prisoner's Mask is the easiest way to get the maximum reward, if you can do so reliably.

Clothing Table

Piece of Clothing		Chiral?	Item needed
A leftover stocking	70	✘	✘
A scarlet stocking	90	✔
A Magician's Glove	100	✔
A Prisoner's Mask	120	✘
A Shabby Opera Cloak	160	✘
A Horrendous Cravat	200	✘	✘

Progress Qualities

There are several important qualities within the Maze-Garden.

• adjusts the difficulty of the carousel, sometimes together with .
• measures how close you are to the end of the carousel. When you hit 11, you reach the end of the Maze-Garden.
• measures how alive your article of clothing has become. This is proportional to the rewards you will receive.
• and are qualities used for several checks inside the Maze-Garden. Some rewards require one of them at level 7.

Progress Through The Maze

Once you reach 5, The Silent Gate autofires which costs an action and raises to 6. Then when you reach 9, The Heart of the Labyrinth autofires which costs an action and raises to 10. Then when you reach 11, The Watchful Gate autofires which costs an action and takes you to An Offering (The Maze-Garden) where you can choose your rewards and exit the maze. This costs one more action and resets your Maze-Garden qualities. However, any unplayed cards will remain when you start your next trip through the maze.

The Cards

Note that every card option will increase by +4, unless it's otherwise mentioned in the table below:

Rewards

The exact conversion rate of to items is based on . This table gives the values with a prisoner's mask and cravat (disposition 120-200). With disposition 60 you gain approximately 2/3 of this number. For other dispositions, see the individual action pages.

Reward table

Action	Requirement/Cost	Reward	Max value per
Take some silk scraps	/ 1 CP		0.5
Take some surface-silk	/ 6 CP		1.0
Take some whisper-satin	/ 15 CP		1.0
Take some Correspondence plaques	/ 28 CP		1.0
Take some Thirsty Bombazine	/ 66 CP 7  COM		0.98
Take some Glass Gazettes	/ 66 CP 7  IPS		0.98

Optimally cashing out

For true EPA minmaxing:

• You want to cash out in an order that avoids ever doing the trade, as this loses 0.5 each trade.
• You also want to avoid the and trades as this loses 1 each trade.

A dynamic programming solver for this is available here. The zero loss trades for 66-91 CP (66 being the minimum to unlock the 2.5 trades, 91 being the max possible doing +4 ) are:

Zero-loss Trade Pattern (High to Low)

66	0	0	11
67	1	1	4
68	2	0	2
69	0	1	9
70	1	0	7
71	2	1	0
72	0	0	12
73	1	1	5
74	2	0	3
75	0	1	10
76	1	0	8
77	2	1	1
78	0	0	13
79	1	1	6
80	2	0	4
81	0	1	11
82	1	0	9
83	2	1	2
84	0	0	14
85	1	1	7
86	2	0	5
87	0	1	12
88	1	0	10
89	2	1	3
90	0	0	15
91	1	1	8

For example, if your was 89 CP, you would do 2 trades, then 1 trade, then 3 trades for a total value of 89 .

Strategy & EPA

In terms of actions needed, it takes 5 actions for gates, starting and ending in addition to the cards you play to gain 49 CP . Assuming 4 CP/card, that's 18 actions for a cycle. If you assume an average of 5 CP per card, that's 65 CP for a cycle. Each cp of is worth roughly 1 , and you also get 1 and you end up with a preliminary EPA of 3.64, however this will vary with skill and . With more experience or following the IPSEITY strategy below, you may average 6 CP/card and end up at around 4.36 EPA. If you can manage to get 7 CP on average (unlikely), EPA reaches 5.08, assuming you get 4 CP Perambulating per card. Using only the 6 CP awakening/2 CP perambulating option is slightly worse at 5.05 EPA.

Of course, you will spend some actions zailing to the Maze-Garden and back as well. Assuming no profit from zailing (unlikely), it takes roughly 18 actions to zail back and forth to Polythreme. This means you may multiply your EPA from the garden with (x/x+1), where x is the amount of cycles done in the garden, in order to find your actual EPA for the whole venture. With one cycle, this gives only 50% of the above EPA, but e.g. with 9 cycles it raises to 90% of the above EPA.

IPSEITY and COMMUNION

It is best to focus on raising either or (based on which rewards you want), as it's hard to get both qualities to 7. You will need 6 in either of these two qualities to get 100% on their respective checks. If you're more interested in rewards unrelated to these two qualities, it's worth noting that both qualities have 3 challenges each, but the check in DISCERN is beneficial to fail, and the check in SCAVENGE can be avoided by choosing the Shadowy check instead. The checks are typically on cards that have no better options, which makes favouring the generally advisable strategy (unless you specifically want the s that unlock with 7 or more ). However, unless you are a late-game player and already have access to , you should pick if you want pure Echoes.

It is suggested to avoid playing TRAVERSE, because it gives low rewards. In addition, you might want to avoid TRANSFIGURE with less than 5. If keeping high /low you might want to avoid PARTAKE with 6+.

If going for :

ADORN, DUEL, HARVEST, and SCAVENGE all have branches with +7 cp of . Failing the check on DISCERN (90% if you have none) gives +6 cp. Playing TRANSFIGURE with at least 5 gets you +6, while PARTAKE with at most 6 gives you +7. If you can pass all checks at ~90% this always gives you six cards you can play with an average of upwards of +6 cp .

If going for :

ADORN, HARVEST, PARTAKE, SCAVENGE, and DUEL with at most 6 all get you +7 cp . The first branch of DISCERN gives +6 cp, but if played multiple times will extend your visit, which isn't ideal if your primary goal is s. Later in your visit you may get stuck playing one of DUEL, TRANSFIGURE, or TRAVERSE for lower gains. Of these TRAVERSE probably gives the best average gain unless you picked up some as well to pass the checks on the other two at least somewhat reliably.

Walking the Maze-Garden Multiple Times

Because the cards you have are preserved for your next time through the Maze-Garden, you can influence the cards you start subsequent Maze-Garden trip with. It might be worth not playing ADORN, HARVEST and PARTAKE cards you get in the late-stage, so you can use them in the early stages of your next Maze-Garden adventure in order to increase your garment's attributes quickly. If going for a mix of s and other things, make sure to always use TRANSFIGURE when raising , so that it doesn't clog your hand if you start next.