I have managed to acquire three night whispers, one through the case of the fidgeting writer and two through an archaeological expedition. Is it safe to sell two of these off or will I ever need a whole bunch of night whispers for something?
I know you can exchange one, and some storm threnodies, for lacre during christmas. I don’t think theres any other major uses.
edited by suinicide on 5/23/2016
One of the ambitions requires two night whispers. Otherwise- unless you want "Closest To: urchins" or some other "Closest To:" (i believe one other needs night whispers), the only use is buying lacre, which is completely optional and rather expensive besides.
Lacre is very useful though. You can use it for a Remote Address, a cheap five-card lodgings, a Soothe-and-Cooper Long-Box, a Noman, Tears of the Bazaar via the Nadir, and more.
If we get our usual 4 free buckets and one free point from the calendar, with good lacre management, you can get a 5-card lodgings (7 points- 2 buckets and 1 point), the noman (assuming you won’t head for the tattoo, the noman should be bought on the first day for 3 points- one bucket), and a remote address (3 points - 1 bucket). That’s not even counting the 12 days of mr. sacks, which are tolerably generous with them as well. iirc, mr sacks can give an additional 2 buckets of lacre.
Anything beyond that point is optional- a soothe and copper longbox is only useful if you play sunless sea or are a dire completionist/collectionist, as it sells for 30 echoes and a handful of docks favors, or 62.5 echoes in inklings of identity. Tears are availible from out-of-season sources.
each bucket from the urchins is 150 echoes. if you will be able to spend that kind of money, you should be able to grind up enough night whispers 3 months from now, when you’re not poor enough to be considering selling something. You might want them in the future, but they’re really not that hard to get, and unless you’re a collectionist, most of the useful stuff the holiday season offers is perfectly attainable without buying a single bucket of lacre from urchins. The only thing where you’d need every night-whisper you have, rather than, say, two or four, is making a noman, and i really cannot recommend that to a player during their first christmas. (IMO, if you’re using your docks favors on expedition supplies like you sould be, two or four night whispers should be entirely within the realm of plausibility before christmas with no active effort.)
Yes, you can get Tears of the bazaar with them, but it effectively costs 750 echoes for two vials worth of points, and you can only find them in the nadir so it’s only profitable if you’re going for master’s blood- and if you’re doing that, you can afford to throw some expeditions in to speed things up.
Almost none of what it’s useful for actually is worth the number of echoes the lacre costs, unless you missed some buckets or some similar mishap that made you miss out on the lodgings- ToTB is the sole exception so far.
Also note i am not a fate player yet,and as such cannot tell if, say, rubbery murders adds an option where 77 night whispers get turned into one rubbery goat. (Well, i can tell you that’s complete hogwash i made up on the spot, but you get my point. anything behind the curtain of fate is a mystery to me.)
edited by Grenem on 5/24/2016
Is there some option in the Nadir that I don’t know about? Or do you mean that it’s possible to get Tears with PtPT: ToL (acquired from Pails)?
I know of no Fate option to use Night Whispers anywhere.
Is there some option in the Nadir that I don’t know about? Or do you mean that it’s possible to get Tears with PtPT: ToL (acquired from Pails)?[/quote]
Yes, we’re talking about getting Tears via Taste of Lacre. It’s actually a pretty reasonable method in my view. Acquiring Tears normally requires drawing the Presumptuous Opportunity card eight times, seven for converting Airag and once for converting those to Tears. Given each Vial of Tears is worth 312.5 echoes and the seven Airag is collectively worth 437.5 echoes, it’s much better in my view to spend about 350 echoes of goods on Taste of Lacre and use that instead. Two buckets is 300 echoes for six levels of ToL, and with good planning it’s possible to get the final point from the seasonal sources at the right time.
In theory you could even sniff Tears for the final point - it’s consumed one in five times for an extra point so that would basically be giving up 1/6 of the Tears. So that means 300 echoes plus 1/6 of a Tears per Tear, or 5/6 of a Tear is worth 300 echoes so the full thing is worth 360 echoes. That’s 77.5 echoes cheaper than getting them through Airag, though I’m admittedly not quite sure what the EPA for getting the Night Whispers through Fidgeting Writer and the Storm-Threnodies through whatever would end up being compared to getting Absinthe through AotB.
Really the limiting factor is the short season and the amount of Nadir visits. At best you’d get about one Catafalquerie draw per visit (and using it multiple times in a visit would be very inefficient) so to avoid losing money through melting you’d have to purchase two buckets and convert to ToL once after every successful visit.