I will go for the two lodgings first, and then play around with the Noman. Sacksmas seems far more complicated than Hallowmas, so I won’t try to achieve the most comprehensive outcome this time.
[quote=Optimatum]Having multiple remote addresses or five-card lodgings has no effect outside of collecting. Upgrading to the Brass Embassy Sanctum does open two options on its card which allow you to purchase the two devil companions with fate; these are only otherwise available at the Feast of the Rose. I believe their cost in Masquing at the Feast is equivalent to their fate cost from the lodgings.
If you want a Noman for its storyline, buy it right when the Wicket opens and the price is cheapest and you should be able to draw its card often enough to not worry about it dying. If you want the Noman for the tattoo during the Feast, you have essentially no chance of managing it with only one Tears. It would take an extraordinary number of Night-Whispers and Storm Threnodies to get enough snow even if you lucked out and drew the Urchins card enough.[/quote]
I will go for the two lodgings first, and then play around with the Noman. Sacksmas seems far more complicated than Hallowmas, so I won’t try to achieve the most comprehensive outcome this time.[/quote]
Sacksmas does have a broader range of actions to take, but I personally would say it’s simpler. You don’t have to focus on managing social actions/menaces and maximizing action efficiency. The winter content can much more easily be interspersed among regular play and any min-maxing just applies to planning out the order you’ll do things. There are only really three separate phases:
Collect snow and convert it to Taste through some options
Draw the Mr. Sacks cards starting at Christmas and each day choose whichever options give the desired result
After finishing the Sacks story, go to the Wicket and spend your accumulated Taste
Even if you get the lodgings first I highly recommend getting the Noman immediately as the price increases every couple days. You should’t have any trouble though with a little preparation. You’ll likely need to buy some extra snow though, so make sure you have enough Night-Whispers and Storm Threnodies when the season starts. (Assuming things are the same as last year, if you currently have your soul you could sell it on the Connected: Hell card for the materials to purchase a bucket from the Urchins. If you want the Brass Embassy Sanctum you’ll need to be soulless anyway.) Maybe something like:
Use monocle twice, get at least four levels of Taste through Mr. Sacks: Taste 10
Upgrade Bazaar lodgings for 9 Taste and 3 Notability: Taste 1
Use monocle twice: Taste 7
Upgrade Royal Beth lodgings for 7 Taste and 3 Notability: Taste 0
OR (since I don’t know which your second four-card lodging is)
Upgrade Brass embassy for 8 Taste and 3 Notability: Taste 0
> requires being soulless and getting a fifth level of Taste through either Mr. Sacks or using another bucket for 1 Taste before doing step 3
Use monocle once: Taste 3
Buy Noman for 3 Taste and assorted items: Taste 0
Use monocle once: Taste 3
Buy a Remote Address for 3 Taste: Taste 0
If you haven’t ever done so, and if this is your first Sacksmas you likely haven’t, you could purchase a Soothe and Copper Long-Box and use it in a Wolfstack storylet for a permanent starting bonus in Sunless Sea. (This does not require you to have Sunless Sea when you use the box and the bonus can be received on any number of Sunless Sea copies by linking your FL account.) Unusually, this requires Taste 6 but only uses up 5 levels. As such you could get one fewer levels of Taste from Mr. Sacks, use a monocle twice from Taste 2 or lower (such as after step 2 in my example), and then buy the Long-Box for the same net gain.
Might I be so bold as to ask how many Night Whispers and Storm Threnodies I should stock up in order to get to this level of Taste? Anything else I should get more of?
What I already have:
Storm Threnodies 2
Night Whispers 2
More than 1000 Tier 3 items that can be cross converted for Tales of Terror/Journals of Infamy
Extraordinary Implications 74
Broken Giant 1844 20
Greyfields First Sporing 33
Magnificent Diamond 4
Dreadful Surmise 1
Consonant Violin 1
I will go for the two lodgings first, and then play around with the Noman. Sacksmas seems far more complicated than Hallowmas, so I won’t try to achieve the most comprehensive outcome this time.[/quote]
Sacksmas does have a broader range of actions to take, but I personally would say it’s simpler. You don’t have to focus on managing social actions/menaces and maximizing action efficiency. The winter content can much more easily be interspersed among regular play and any min-maxing just applies to planning out the order you’ll do things. There are only really three separate phases:
Collect snow and convert it to Taste through some options
Draw the Mr. Sacks cards starting at Christmas and each day choose whichever options give the desired result
After finishing the Sacks story, go to the Wicket and spend your accumulated Taste
Even if you get the lodgings first I highly recommend getting the Noman immediately as the price increases every couple days. You should’t have any trouble though with a little preparation. You’ll likely need to buy some extra snow though, so make sure you have enough Night-Whispers and Storm Threnodies when the season starts. (Assuming things are the same as last year, if you currently have your soul you could sell it on the Connected: Hell card for the materials to purchase a bucket from the Urchins. If you want the Brass Embassy Sanctum you’ll need to be soulless anyway.) Maybe something like:
Use monocle twice, get at least four levels of Taste through Mr. Sacks: Taste 10
Upgrade Bazaar lodgings for 9 Taste and 3 Notability: Taste 1
Use monocle twice: Taste 7
Upgrade Royal Beth lodgings for 7 Taste and 3 Notability: Taste 0
OR (since I don’t know which your second four-card lodging is)
Upgrade Brass embassy for 8 Taste and 3 Notability: Taste 0
> requires being soulless and getting a fifth level of Taste through either Mr. Sacks or using another bucket for 1 Taste before doing step 3
Use monocle once: Taste 3
Buy Noman for 3 Taste and assorted items: Taste 0
Use monocle once: Taste 3
Buy a Remote Address for 3 Taste: Taste 0
If you haven’t ever done so, and if this is your first Sacksmas you likely haven’t, you could purchase a Soothe and Copper Long-Box and use it in a Wolfstack storylet for a permanent starting bonus in Sunless Sea. (This does not require you to have Sunless Sea when you use the box and the bonus can be received on any number of Sunless Sea copies by linking your FL account.) Unusually, this requires Taste 6 but only uses up 5 levels. As such you could get one fewer levels of Taste from Mr. Sacks, use a monocle twice from Taste 2 or lower (such as after step 2 in my example), and then buy the Long-Box for the same net gain.
If you use Optimatum’s method, you’ll need 6 (Royal Beth) or 7 (sanctum) buckets in all, plus 2 more if you want the long box. I believe you’ll get 4 or 5 buckets from snowbound, plus one from the advent calendar, so you should gather materials for between 1 and 4 extra pails. (1-4 nightwhispers and 7-28 threnodies) - you could gather more to make sure you’re not hanging about waiting for TTH once the wicket opens to make sure you get your noman at the cheapest price.
So I am slightly confused by the dates. Some people say the event lasts only 1 month but then it also looks like the entire span of all seasonal content is 2 months - 1 Dec to 1 Feb. Could someone kindly summarise the key events in a brief chronological fashion? In particular I am not very clear on when Snowbound first appears (1 Dec? 25 Dec? When the access code removes the Clear Path quality?) and when snows stop falling. Also does the first day of xmas come on the 25th (the same day as the last advent code) or on the 26th? Is 5 Jan the earliest that the Wicket opens? And does Xmas segue straight into the Feast of the Rise or is there a gap?
Also, am I understanding this correctly that getting an Incsrnadine Robe loses you an opportunity for a pail? So the more home comforts you want to get the more pails you would have to pay for?
Advent Calendar will start on 1st December up to 25th December.
Starting sometime in December you will be locked out of your lodgings by snow every time Time the Healer comes - there you can either get a pail or choose to spend Fate and get an Incarnadine Robe. If I remember correctly snow will fall 4 or 5 times over the Season.
I think the 12 Days of Mr Sacks start on the 25/26th December and they run until you have received all 12 visits. So I think the earliest the Wicket can open is 6th January.
There is definitely a short gap between Xmas and the Feast of the Rose. Maybe two or three weeks after the Wicket closes.
From what I remember from last year, the snow starts falling in the first week of December and comes with your TTH. It will fall once a week for 4 - 5 weeks. From December 1st to the 25th there will be an advent calendar code each day. I believe the first Mr Sacks becomes available on Christmas Day, and then the next card is added each day after that. The wicket opens once you have completed the Mr Sacks cards as long as you have 3+ taste, so the 5th of Jan is the earliest you can get there. The Wicket remains accessible until the back end of January - once the Noman costs 15 taste, your time is almost up. The Feast starts in mid-February, so there’s a gap.
Taking the incarnadine robe option does not grant a pail, so you will need to buy extras if you’re planning on spending a lot of fate.
Edit: ha! Your question was answered. Thanks lady ciel! edited by Màiread on 11/21/2015
Aha, thank you both! So the first TTH on or after 1 December seems like a reasonable guess for the beginning of snowfall. In my case TTH comes on Mondays. So since 30 Nov is a Monday I am likely to be one bucket short :S
I wouldn’t worry about missing out; generally Failbetter make sure that everyone gets the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if the snow starts on the 30th this year.
As I cannot conceivably buy a 4-card lodging in time for the holiday, I was wondering if the Wicket sold the 4-card lodgings at a discount as well, or if one can only acquire the Remote locations and the upgrades there.
[quote=malthaussen]As I cannot conceivably buy a 4-card lodging in time for the holiday, I was wondering if the Wicket sold the 4-card lodgings at a discount as well, or if one can only acquire the Remote locations and the upgrades there.
– Mal[/quote]
The latter. There is no four card lodgings sale in the wicket. For a full list of what you can buy in the wicket and their prices, please see this wiki article: Click Here
The latter. The 4-card lodgings already have something of a discount available if, instead of buying them from Penstock’s, you use your friendship with Devils + some infernal items (for the Room at the Embassy), give Antique Mysteries to the Merry Gentleman (for the Room at the Beth), or give Bazaar Permits to Baseborn & Fowlingpiece at the Side-streets (for the Premises at the Bazaar).
All the four-card lodgings are much cheaper with the discount and the best way to acquire the necessary items is Thefts of a Particular Character in the Flit. The only issue is that the Brass Embassy discount requires that you have Connected: Hell 50 (if I remember right from when I bought it) and Intimate of Devils as well.
Yes, I believe the hell one is on the devil’s connection card. The Royal Bethlehem is on A Merry gentleman. And I believe the Bazaar can be found in the side-streets or the temple club, though this one is not on a card. edited by suinicide on 11/24/2015
Ah I just realized no one in this thread has mentioned the dark carapaced crustacean companion. Possibly because it was given (extremely generously) in an advent calendar code last year. Its an expensive and luck based companion to craft on your own as it requires you to feed Pails of Snow to either a malevolent monkey or to a Talkative Rattus Faber (for reduced odds). You have like 20-30% odds to succeed with the monkey, and 10% odds to succeed with the rat.
It’d be very generous if we got a crustacean in the advent calendar again but who can say. This may be something to consider spending excess pails of snow on if it isn’t.
[quote=NiteBrite]Ah I just realized no one in this thread has mentioned the dark carapaced crustacean companion. Possibly because it was given (extremely generously) in an advent calendar code last year. Its an expensive and luck based companion to craft on your own as it requires you to feed Pails of Snow to either a malevolent monkey or to a Talkative Rattus Faber (for reduced odds). You have like 20-30% odds to succeed with the monkey, and 10% odds to succeed with the rat.
It’d be very generous if we got a crustacean in the advent calendar again but who can say. This may be something to consider spending excess pails of snow on if it isn’t.[/quote]
That was only given out in the advent calendar two years ago. My trust in you has been shattered :y