A lack of lacre [#fifthcityproblems]

[Apologies to Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook for hijacking the hashtag][li]
Delicious friends, I hope our hive mind will help me solve a predicament concerning this latest whim of mine, acquiring a Novel Birthmark.
On one side, I do have some Master Blood (just in case) but wouldn’t want to lose my connections w/ the Revolutionaries.
On another side, I only have 4 Taste of Lacre (I spent some on a Eyrie, some on a Temple and a lot on a Tear), with 2 pails left. I should have enough to acquire an extra one from the Urchins (if the little brats decided to stop avoiding me).
I figure I could wait for them to show up, buy a pail, dip a soul in it (+1), examine another with a monocle (+3), which would raise my taste to the required 9. But what to do with the extra pail?
Or I could go ahead, thereby losing all chance to ever pass the Wicket.

What would you advise me to do?

Your math is off; dipping a soul then examining gets you to 8, then you huff some tears once. I’m in a similar situation; one vial of tears, one bottle of M-----'s B—d, 4 taste of lacre, seven threnodies, and a night whisper. Per advice in another thread, I will be examining a pail, then huffing the tears as much as required. I am informed that if the tears are consumed, taste of lacre is increased by two, such that this plan can not fail, though it may cost me the tears.

Yes, I think the monocle only raises it by 2 these days?

Oh yes, the math is off… Mmh. But I do not have any tears left (I sold them in a presomptuous opportunity…). Well, it’s still early in the month to worry about it. Is it?

But @inkypetrel, unless a change in the last 48h, the monocle gives +3 (I switched from 5 to 8 just a couple of days ago)

I’m at Taste of Lacre 6 with 3 pails on-hand, and I’m making a push for the 5-card Sanctum.[li]

Will looking at a pail through a monocle get me to the 8 ToL that I require for this? Or does the fact that I am already at 6 ToL mean that the monocle will not impart any further bonus? I ask because I’d hate to buy a monocle that is otherwise useless to me, only to find that it is also useless as regards gaining ToL…

And Dangerous is my lowest stat, meaning that feeding boars is very risky proposition for me…

You’d need to drop your Taste of Lacre to 5 to get any benefit out of the monocle. You can do that easily enough in the Sundered Sea- Search the Shore consumes 1 point of PtPT. So go down into the Sea, search the shore, use the monocle to get down to PtPT 5, use a bucket from your inventory to get to PtPT 8 and then go through the Wicket again. A bit on the action-heavy side, but you’ll still have two spare buckets of lacre, so you can get PtPT back again (you need at least a point to buy pails or huff Tears of the Bazaar, so it’s useful to keep around)

Thanks for the confirm and advice, Spacemarine9! I will say that it’s a bit peculiar (to say the least) that at ToL 6 I am actually further away, strategically speaking, from achieving ToL 8 than if I had ToL 5. But then this is Fallen London and some peculiarity is to be expected I suppose.

Anyway, glad to see that this is still achievable in principle. Now to grind the extra 100 echoes or so I need to afford a monocle…

[li]

I’ve run out of my buckets and it seems one can only purchase one from the urchins if one already has Taste of Lacre 1; similarly, I need ToL 1 to use my Tears of the Bazaar. Is there any way to get it up to 1 again?

I was hoping/assuming they’d let us buy buckets straight out for Nex, but it seems not, so far.

[quote=Gabriel Morgan]I’ve run out of my buckets and it seems one can only purchase one from the urchins if one already has Taste of Lacre 1; similarly, I need ToL 1 to use my Tears of the Bazaar. Is there any way to get it up to 1 again?

I was hoping/assuming they’d let us buy buckets straight out for Nex, but it seems not, so far.[/quote]
Nope, nex only gets you unlikely circumstances; not outright miracles.[li]

You can get the Wild Words you need from the Shivering Relicker (you’ll have to draw that card 4 times to get everything {3 STs for 120 scraps apiece and a NW for 160}), you can get 4 Storm-Threnodies for 500 pages of Crypto-Something Notes, you can randomly get Threnodies, Night-Whispers, and 4th City Airag from Archaeological Digs (as well as Unearthly Fossils which can be ground up into Crypto Notes), and then use the ST/NWs to buy buckets or use 7 4CAs to buy Tears from the Portly Sommelier. Any of those will take a while, though. Also, if you get an unwanted treasure, you can donate to a college for Making Waves.

[For propriety’s sake, most of that information I stole from MidnightVoyager]
edited by OPG on 1/10/2014

The problem isn’t affording the pails of lacre, it’s that if you spent all your Putting the Pieces Together, then you can’t buy them at all, and likewise can’t use Tears of the Bazaar to increase it, as that option also requires PtPT 1 or higher. Basically, spending all your PtPT and not having a pail on hand means you can’t get it any more, from any source, barring something we haven’t discovered yet.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I’m glad I insist on having quality buffers for myself.

EDIT: That’s actually not the OP’s problem, nevermind. It’s still useless if you have no taste, though.
edited by OPG on 1/10/2014

If you get far enough in the Fidgeting Writer story, you can get a Night Whisper. [li]

Actually, OPG, I still accept Affluent Photographer requests.

Thank you for correcting me, and I have edited my signature accordingly.

[li]
Might want to add that to your signature. Most people assume no-one does, considering the overwhelming number of individuals who dislike them.

Perhaps we should remain on-topic, however.