Thread:ZDee/@comment-1264592-20130728081339/@comment-6042046-20130728220231

Well...it's tricky. I'd like to reserve the category for cards that people will likely never see even if they play for years. That's honestly the case for the ones FL marks as "Rare". They're accompanied by warning messages: "This is a Rare Opportunity - you lucky thing! Allowing your Menaces to get too high, or leaving Fallen London, may mean losing this card. Use it wisely!"

"A dusty bookshop" and "The Departed" are sorta uncommon but not rare. In a simpler way, I'm treating it as the difference between the odds of 100:1 (uncommon) and 1,000:1 (rare).

At a low estimate, the total of all my characters' card draws is 2,800 per month. (I'm excluding outer city draws like menace and ambition areas.) That's been the rate for the past 4 months.

A player with 1 character might merely have time twice or thrice a day to draw 16-26 times. If they log in thrice and fully draw their deck every day for a 30-day month, that would be 780 draws. My month is akin to this player flipping for 3 1/2 months.

There are surely other 1-character players who log in and flip far less, perhaps once a day. Upon login, they'll only be able to draw the 6 cards saved in their deck. After a month, that's 180 draws. My month is similar to this player drawing cards for 15 1/2 months. That's over a year! (Once my classes begin in August, I'll probably join this 6-card-daily-draw player's ranks.)

Each of my 5 characters has a Rare pet. I can tell you the approximate amount of draws they went through (using their initials): Z - Haunted-Looking Dog 1,800 K - Salt Weasel 30 A - Haunted-Looking Dog 30 D - Rubbery Euphonium 1,875 H - Salt Weasel 336

Z, D and H were instances of camping at certain areas to draw the related pets. Z flipped diligently in Veilgarden for 6 weeks. D went half mad as he flipped in Spite for 10 weeks (the # of draws to Z is very close, but D had a slower draw rate). H vacationed in Ladybones Road and lucked out at 2 weeks. K and A weren't even trying! They just happened to draw the pet cards as they were passing through (at the time, my routine was to draw cards in different areas every login); they were extremely fortunate and that's all there is to it.

Other times I've intentionally sought out a rare card: 4,266 Lodgings draws produced 2 A commotion above! 2,700 Wolfstack Docks draws produced 3 The battle hymn of the Drownies and no The Bonfire of the Decencies 6,600 Shuttered Palace draws did not produce A really nice haircut and I'm beginning to think it may not be there at all... I've never seen the The Velocipede Squad races by but we don't know where it's located.

A little omen is a citywide card. It used to be a very common card. Earlier this year, there was a short period when it was temporarily retired as Mood hats were developed for the card, and its frequency also dropped for the sake of Knife & Candle. Solely counting the past 4 months, that's at least 10,000 city cards flipped and I've only seen it once or twice (but the second time could have been imagined; I was drowsy). :P I've also seriously questioned if it had been retired. No... It's just rare to the point of people not knowing whether it exists anymore!

A dusty bookshop is the citywide counterpart to A little omen, but its frequency in the past month has risen a lot. After I made my comment about having spotted it 5 times in the past 3 weeks, I drew it again for the 6th time last night!

I've been staying at Watchmaker's Hill for The Departed and it comes up every few hundred draws (I'm also averaging past experiences when it popped up as I was searching for the Regretful Soldier). I know many players haven't seen it. But many of them haven't been looking in the right place! (This can also be said for other location-specific cards which are common but "nonexistent" if they're never drawn in their designated area.)

In closing my "Rare Opportunity Card" thesis, I'd like to say that people's draw rates can vary drastically month by month, so they should take theirs into account when they want to draw a rare card or listen to others advice saying "Oh, it'll only take you a few weeks at most." Regardless, the personal experience of trying will still leave people feeling butthurt because FL is serious when they say "Rare".