I have now assembled 8 uses of villains for my criminal gang, I just have to get my connected criminals back up to 20. It would seem that each stat has a related method of obtaining high value items - unfortunately I burnt through about 8000 cryptic clues to get my villains, when I could simply have used a bunch of actions fighting the war of assassins.
In other news, I finally completed the Case of The Fidgeting Writer.
In my latest run through I had only 10 deja vu's (the starting level result you get from tales of horror), despite that, I got extreme luck, not losing more then a average of 1 per stage, ending up with 1 Last Hope of a Fidgeting Writer (which I turned in for a night whisper), and two Lenses of Black Glass (one of which I traded for items, and the other one finished up the storyline for me).
Extremely lucky indeed.
So, on that run I got about ~500 echos worth of extremely rare goods (two of which can be gotten no other place, and two of which can only be gotten in a single place, and are almost impossible to get even then without using up hundreds of actions to make sure) for about 50 actions and ~50 echos worth of goods.
Well done! I haven't quite made it yet, having had 3 black lens failures so far. I'm stymied at the moment, because I've run out of extraordinary implications - I can't convert my tales of terror due to that unfortunate business at the university. There is probably another solution, but I'm trying to keep away from spoiler diving the wikis at the moment.
Also, It appears that Ronald's plant is, indeed, the crappiest!
I am now level 2!
I want a rematch! I've been level two a few times - you drop back whenever you lose.