CHRISTMAS IN THE NEATH: A GUIDE

Fallen London
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This month’s Exceptional Story is about twice (or more) the length of a normal one since it came out across two months. If you purchase Exceptional Friendship and begin the story in the House of Chimes before the last Thursday of the month, it will remain open to you indefinitely and can be completed at your leisure. Each month’s Exceptional Story is always released on the last Thursday of the previous month so you would likewise be able to begin that one and finish it whenever.

As with various “regular” fate stories, Exceptional Stories do often give unique items or unusually valuable rewards.

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If you’re in it for the long haul, you might as well be safe, invest the extra resources and make a week early - getting a noman tattoo is very expensive anyway, so a few extra pails/tears are worth it to ensure victory. Nitebrite’s excellent guide emphasises allowing you to prepare to the maximum amount ahead of time, but keep in mind you could also (as they suggest) use more pails and fewer tears if you’re willing to grind favourable circumstances to pull the urchins card once the snow begins. You might want to invest in gathering society connections and favours in high places if you have a salon, as this can massively reduce how long it takes to make waves. Similarly, you may want to steal a bunch of tales of terror ahead of time plus a university feelowship and abominable salts money; on average you get better waves per action by side converting, but if you have a stock of ToT it will enable you to grind waves more effectively in a short period of time.

If you’re looking for cash, mourning candles from the affair of the box is great epa and reliable, or alternatively use the old collection of curiosities/tomb colonists route, which is more rng dependent but better epa. If you still have access to the velocipede squad I believe that’s a better wines grind. Favours also come from the affair of the box, by upconverting stolen kisses.

Getting a tattoo at the feast of the rose will boost your bdr. Apart from that you’d be looking at fatelocked items.

Grinding the items you need should only take a couple of months - if you want greater security, I’d invest in extra tears, as you could wind up being unlucky with them. Using more pails makes you more dependent on favourable circumstances/the rng, but if you can nab them I think you’re more secure.

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Let’s be clear here, I don’t have a rubbery spouse at present as was stated above. I am player married with 2 tattoos. Check out the outfit I am currently wearing on my profile to see how the BDR works. But yeah this means capped BDR possible is even higher than what I have which is ridiculous. I get to N4 for free and N7 costs me 15 MW. A person with capped BDR gets N5 for free, and N7 for a mere 12 MW. Which is ridiculous. Utterly, totally, ridiculous.

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It is very much possible to gain a point of Respectable by choosing to not get a tattoo. I’m fairly certain the lack-of-tattoo occupies one tattoo slot so doing so means you can still only get one more point of BDR via tattoo. (Unless they add more tattoo slots by then.)

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This is wrong. If you choose no tattoo then you can’t get a &quotsecond&quot tattoo. Choosing the respectable option locks you out from future tattoos. You also have to spend fate to reset it if you end up regretting not being able to have more than one permanent point of BDR.

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Depending on if you make your Noman on the last week of January (risky!) or the second to last week of January, you’ll need like between 298 to 364 levels of Noman’s Friend (NF for short) to more or less guarantee survival until Lilac shows up. You start with 100 Noman’s Friend, and you can convert 1 ToL into 3 points of NF. So you’ll want to have like 66 to 88 spare ToL to go for the Noman, although if you feel lucky average luck (as opposed to a guaranteed survival) is closer to 199 to 232 levels of NF required (33 to 44 spare ToL). If you have the devils luck and the RNG has pity on you, it is technically even possible to have a noman survive off of just the initial 100 points of NF (the odds of this happening are terrible). In any case, the noman tattoo is considered an expensive end game grind for a reason, but if you do chose to pursue it I wish you good luck :-)[/quote]
Thanks, Nite. I’ve read your guide on Noman - it was great, but I’ll have to reread it sometime later to check whether I have enough stuff.

I currently have 8 ToL, 9 Pails and 5 Tears, and I’ll be buying more snow every time Urchins show up, and I’m just not sure I need much of anything from the Wicket. I’ll have to make some calculations once Wicket opens to see if it’s worth it!

It’s also probably a bit silly to go for Noman tattoo since I don’t really believe in bragging rights. I might decide to spend everything on Tears in Nadir after all.

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ok im back so what exactly should I focus on do forgotten quater runs to get the scholar thing?
and how do I sell my soul to the devil? can I get it back? are there any negatives?
and how do I raise melancholy so I can change my celestial poet school?

ok but where do I sell my soul?
and how do I use fate to get more taste of laquer?
edited by Deatheye on 12/22/2015
edited by Deatheye on 12/22/2015

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You have enough for an average luck run I would say Danko. You could reasonably make it with that amount of supplies but it’s far from a guarantee.

I don’t remember how SoTC works anymore, I did it a long time ago. I think you run the tomb of seven and get a correspondence stone to get your first level. Then you write a play at the empress court or something to get to 10. Someone else will remember it better.

You can sell your soul on a card called &quotThe Western Tower&quot. The card picture is a bunch of fire. !!! You need watchful 70 (can use gear to boost to 70 if lower) to draw this card. !!!

Selling your soul has a minimal negative effect. It locks you out of a couple story options at the university and adds a worthless card to your hand. You can get your soul back but it’s a tricky luck based thing, and you probably want to own a ship before you try it which is a mid to late game thing.

You can use fate for ToL based extra stories when Mr Sacks Day 4 shows up. The Mr Sacks event doesn’t start until like Christmas day, and it appears as special cards added to your deck. It’s available to play for most of January. So it’s just a matter of waiting for it to start in a few days.
edited by NiteBrite on 12/22/2015
edited by NiteBrite on 12/22/2015
edited by NiteBrite on 12/22/2015

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There are some opportunity cards that pop up that allow you to sell your soul. I’m not sure if you’ll have access to them all:

  1. City Vices: What Profit? - you can sell it directly for a rather low price, unless you’re PoSI. I think this card unlocks with Connected: Hell 10. You can go to the Carnival to meet devils to get that to 10.
  2. Intimate of Devils story line - this requires raising you Intimate suitably high (17?20?) and then selling it
  3. Brass Embassy card - you can sell it for 1 Night Whisper and 7 Storm Threnodies, but only during the Christmas season. This card unlocks only when you have bought lodgings at the Brass Embassy

If you’re in a hurry, I think your best bet is to keep flipping cards for the first option.

You can get your soul back - either by opening various bundles of oddities (through various means, but the chances run between 1/1000 to 1/200 and are very much card dependent). Otherwise, pay fate to get it back immediately. Multiple soul selling increases the fate price though.

[quote=Deatheye]ok im back so what exactly should I focus on do forgotten quater runs to get the scholar thing?
and how do I sell my soul to the devil? can I get it back? are there any negatives?
and how do I raise melancholy so I can change my celestial poet school?

ok but where do I sell my soul?
and how do I use fate to get more taste of laquer?
edited by Deatheye on 12/22/2015
edited by Deatheye on 12/22/2015[/quote]

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Only the third one, the western tower gives you the material for a pail though. What profit is good cash if you are late game person of some importance (posi for short). Western tower needs watchful 70 before it will show up in your deck.
edited by NiteBrite on 12/22/2015

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NiteBrite, I just wanted to say that I absolutely love the name of your yacht! :-)
(your owl is adorable, too)

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Buying the Brass Embassy room to unlock the relevant card is quite difficult though. It either costs 625 echoes of Brilliant Souls or 250 echoes of Brilliant Souls, 100 bottles of Muscaria Brandy, and a Brass Ring with the additional requirement of Connected: Hell 50 and An Intimate of Devils 1. The latter option is cheaper in goods but getting all the materials and building up the qualities is more complicated.

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ok so I need tons of briliant soulsfor the sell soul option what about fate somone said you can buy pails of snow or ToL with fate where do I do that and how much?

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Okay truthseeker, I think I have a better grasp of what you’re asking.

I wasn’t sure if you had a salon or an orphanage - different materials needs different advice. Repeated salon use absolutely eats society connections (I’ve used up the massive excess I had of both bohemians and society from getting 1000 spirit of hallowmas), but the likelihood is we’ll have switched over to the favours system by next Sackmas so you’ll need to work out the best way to get them.

I believe that the riding the savage cobbles carousel gives 7 broken giant for 14 or 15 actions. Grinding strangling willow through the affair of the box is slower, but siding with the revolutionaries gives you a handful of correspondence plaques each loop, which makes it better if you have time to burn. I don’t know about cross converting as I’ve never really done it. As you’re playing the long game, you can get a lot of airag from the nadir, which saves massively on time and money, so you can factor that in.

I don’t think the goat helps with the noman as you already have the owl and it doesn’t involve any watchful challenges.

If you take the tales of terror approach, you’ll need to keep topping up your connection. Again, this will likely be changed to favours by next year. I usually just buy abominable salts, but I’m not using this method myself so I can’t really tell you how much this would be. As for how many tales of terror you need, here’s my example: I have 24 BDR. For each FC, I get the first two levels for free (pass from an alt, leftover waves from level 7, and then I need 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 waves. That’s 7, 33, 72, 126 and 189 CP, which is 427 CP total. Each conversion of ToT gives 10 CP, so I’d need 2150 tales for each FC. Now, upconverting implications gives 2-30 CP so the actual number would be less (from this many ToT, you’d get 430 implications, which is 17 upconversions averaging 16CP, or 272CP total). So the answer to your ToT question is ‘a truckload’.

You’ll need to calculate the connection loss/salts yourself, I’m afraid - I’m using side conversions.

To give you some idea of the process: I decided to pursue the Noman in October, and took a break for hallowmas. I didn’t start out with much in the way of materials, and I had to work out some stuff as I went along (changed strategies part way through). For much of this I wasn’t an EF (I got my prize about a month ago). I didn’t have time to stock up on ToT, so I’ve been using side conversions, and I estimate 80-90% of my card pulls have been from FC. I am now on track for having 12 tears and about 25 pails of snow, plus a truckload of extra cellars (I ground more wine than I needed, as I was originally going for MB and significantly fewer buckets). All my night whispers came from the fidgeting writer, and I got my threnodies from converting whatever prayers I had rattling around.

@Deatheye You can’t buy pails with fate. If you choose to help the widow or the Duchess on day 4 of Mr Sacks (12 fate), you get a net gain of 2 taste and a rare item, or 7 if you chose not to fulfil your promise. The 7 fate options give taste, but also use it up.
edited by Màiread on 12/22/2015

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I have a quick question, I’ve obtained a Robe with Snowbound. A friend just sent me a message with this text:
“…has arranged for you to draw an unpredictable gift from Mr Sacks’ stolen stash.”
I’m assuming this will provide me with another Robe; does anyone know if I’ll have two Robes. or if it will simply overwrite the one I have, nulling the gift?

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That won’t give you a robe; a generous someone has given you an opportunity to play lucky dip with Sacks’s sack, and you’ll get a random (possibly unique) item as a result.

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sweet, thanks

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To level your Melancholy as a new player, there is a card in your opportunity deck called Weather at Last. If you choose the options “So much has been lost” it will give you 3 cp of melancholy (and removes 3 cp of hedonist if you have that). The wiki says it can level you all the way up to 10, and its a standard frequency card so you should be able to see it quite often if you are looking for it.

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I have Taste of Lacre at 8 from first dipping pails into souls and then examining one with my semiotic monocle. Is there anything else I can do until Christmas, or am I just waiting around and doing other non festive things until Mr. Sacks arrives?

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just waiting around. hold onto pails recieved past this point.