I’ve been getting into Farkle, and finding it fairly addictive. So I wanted to expand my collection of doctored dice. Presently I have “Odd Dice” and “Lucky Dice” both of which seem to function as advertised on the tin. I will try to avoid spoilers in this thread, so I won’t explain how I came to own those two, lets just say “exploration” is the key.
So I found a fellow in one of the villages with name “place-name_Player” and he was wearing nicer clothing that your avg peasant. Clearly the local Gambler. So i sat down to a round of dice with him somewhat trepiditiously, and kept the wager at the default level of 50 G. Managed to beat him, but I think the Farkle algorithm has a last minute probability roll on the round when your opponent is in easy striking distance of 4000 and there is an at least 50% (maybe higher) chance that the opponent will not make it across the 4000 point finish line if he is let say , below a certain threshold at the outset of the round. At least half dozen times I’ve seen the opponent lose with 3950 or 3900 points and me jumping up from 2900 ballpark to snatch a win from the jaws of defeat. Anyway a tangent . . .
Long story short, this guy had one of those cool “devil head” dice and I think maybe one other dice of the cheaty variety and I decided I wanted them.
I spent all day watching him from the corner of the courtyard and finally found that he bedded down at night inside the kitchen/dining room on one of the benches, Ishmael-Style. With that bit of intell gathered I decided I needed to raise up my pickpocket skill more, so I headed off to a more remote location than I was in to harass some of the rural workforce.
Found a worker’s camp with four workmen all still sleeping and pickpocketed each of them at least twice while the night lasted. My assumption here is: each time you interfere with them, their probability to become alerted is temporarily raised–that is what my observations suggest to me. So the routine I follow is: pickpocket one bloke and if there isn’t an item in an adjacent slot to the “door” exit, and move to the next guy. Repeat and only actually steal if an items is in one of the two adjacent spots. While this method is a bit tedious and more time consuming, I’ve found that I can manage to avoid getting caught much more reliably than if I just stay at one NPC repeatedly targeting him with pickpocket.
The other “method” of crime I’ve come up with (which is the main topic of this thread) is to wait until either morning or noon (they don’t seem to eat an evening meal) and drug them with Lullaby. Here is what I’ve learned.
For the rural workers (charcoal and woodcutters as well as Quarry): they wake up after a nights sleep sometime between about 5:50 and 6:15. They always wake up one at a time, and with time spacing between wake ups so that they don’t interfere with one another. So for example, if there are three guys in the camp, number one might wake up at 5:59, number two at 6:00, and number three at 6:01 (on real time scale, which would be more like 15 minutes of in game time between each wake up).
After waking up they go to the storage locker where clothing is stored and get dressed. Then they go to wherever their bowls are stored and get a bowl. They fill their bowl sit down and eat. Then they take there bowl back to the storage spot, and (without being drugged) go on about their day. In the few times I’ve examined the lunch schedule it is much the same.
The result of this is that, you get two or more NPCs mirroring one another’s behaviors in sequence and only a “few minutes” apart relative to the pace of events in the game. This is obviously a perfect opportunity to use Lullaby in (seemingly) one of the ways the designers intended it to be used: to drug NPCs in order to facilitate player mischief. Here is what I have learned.
You can place the drug into the pot as early as the moment you see the NPC starting to rouse from bed, it will still work. I have not tested whether you can do it an hour or more before they rouse. However, I have my doubts that it would work. My guess is, the potion “wears off” after an Hour or so in game. Much of the game’s behavior cycles seem to be reducible to the “one hour” in game time (around 4 minutes in player “real time”) so that is just a hunch on my part.
Placing two or more doses immediately before an NPC gets his food does not have a more prolonged or powerful effect.
After eating the drugged food, they take their bowl back, then instead of going on about their daily business, they go back to the nearest bed. They do not necessarily go to the bed they woke up from. They then sleep for around one hour (have not taken the time to check this thoroughly but it seems to be one hour max that you can knock them out. . .)
No matter how many doses you put in the pot, one hour seems to be the max, however in some camps, I’ve found that, after the drug wears off and they get up again, they will repeat their morning awakening routine and go for another bowl of stew. So it is in theory possible to drug them multiple rounds. I did not observe this with all camps however.
While they are drugged, they can still detect failed pickpocketing attempts. They don’t seem to be any less cognizant than when they are just asleep normal mode.
So that is one method to level up pickpocketing!
I have yet to try any of the other ingestibles, e.g., Moonshine or poison, to see how that works.
The rules in the tool tip window don’t really seem to describe that mechanic but next time I had a chance to do it myself: EEYUP! That clearly is how the game is played masterfully: keep holding out for clearing the table and doing a re-roll of the whole six. I managed to score about 3300 in my first round on a recent match.
