Should I farm Sudden Insight with "Talk to the Porters"?

I'm investigating the murder of the Senior Reader in _______, and I have the storylet "Talk to the Porters" available, which yields Sudden Insights.

Since I've never seen anywhere else in the game any other place where you can easily farm any Advantage, I wonder if I should farm a lot of them before going on with the story, or if there will be similar opportunities at higher levels, so that I don't need to do it now.

I'm a bit unconfortable with too-powerful actions:

• in part I fear using too-powerful actions/weapons/combos might make the game unfun
• in part just pretending they aren't there is quite arbitrary and unfun too

(this reminds me of Symphony of the Night, which despite being one of the best games I've ever played, it is so easy I had to play it without any armor or protection)

Solution 1:

The investigations into the murder of the Senior Reader in _____ are the only repeatable place to pick up Sudden Insights, and that option will be closed to you once you complete the investigation. When I went through this storyline, it was almost the only method I used in the investigation (after I'd wandered through the rest of the storylets to read the text). It will chew through your supply of Cryptic Clues that you've picked up in other University storylets, but it's quite worth it.

The only drawback is that you're going to finish the University storyline with somewhere in the ballpark of 20,000 Whispered Secrets, which have few uses and are somewhat time-consuming to convert up to useful items. On the other hand, Penstock's Land Agency (in the Bazaar tab) will sell you a lengthy lease on the premises of the Bazaar for 80,000 Whispered Secrets. (Buying the Lease at Penstock's isn't the most efficient way to do it — you can also buy it about 22% cheaper using 50 Bazaar Permits in the Bazaar Side-Streets once you're a Person of Some Importance — but converting from Whispered Secrets to Bazaar Permits is quite time-consuming.)

As for whether having an oversupply of Sudden Insights is overbalanced: it isn't. Sudden Insights are only good for three things:

1. Reducing the number of times you fail a storylet and pick up Nightmares (at best, it'll reduce failures by 50%)
2. Taking the social action to reduce Nightmares
3. Burning them at your lodgings (via "Invite a friend to join you in something terribly intellectual.") to convert directly to Watchful. 200 Sudden Insights is, on average, about 14 points of Watchful.

Fallen London is a fairly long game, and having ~200 second chances is only going to help on 200 Watchful-related storylets. In the final analysis, having Second Chances is only going to save you actions rather than being utterly imbalanced. I quite agree that having those Sudden Insights will allow you to advance faster through the Watchful stories of Fallen London, but other than that it's largely irrelevant. You'll avoid some time in the State of Some Confusion or the Mirror-Marches, or get a high Watchful faster, but that's just time. Fallen London isn't a race, and there isn't any PvP where being ahead of your fellow players is a game-breaking advantage.

As a side note, you could choose to simply never complete the investigation into the Senior Reader's death, but that will block you from the storyline after the University: Embarking on a Voyage of Scientific Discovery.