Noman Cost & Melt Rate Tracking (2023)

Fallen London
82

Well, there’s always North! :slight_smile:
But even that doesn’t stop the inevitable. I haven’t logged since the deed was done so, technically, even if it’s 0, that Noman is still alive.

1 Like
83

Ah, Schrödinger’s Noman, or a Schröman, if you will, whose state is fundamentally changed by the act of verifying it!

6 Likes
84

Bhahahaha, I tried to think of something to the cat, but this never came to mind! I love it! :smiley:

85

5th May, ~14:21 UTC:
Noman “Déjeuneige” lost 225 x Noman’s Friend (new total 288/2531)
next melt: 225 - 259
melt date currently at May 19th: 100%

2 Likes
86

I’m afraid of what FBG has cooked for the Noman during Whitsun!

3 Likes
87

11th May, ~12:35 UTC:
Noman “Déjeuneige” was brought to the Apicius Club. They did not leave. (new total 0/2531)

11 Likes
88

Great accomplishment, but I feel very bad for the fella by the way.

1 Like
89

And with that, I expect all the active Nomans have left us. Let us cherish the time we had with our snow children, hold them in our stomachs hearts, and learn what we can from this wonderful experience. This possibly unprecedented amount of continuous Noman’s Friend Loss offers us some useful information going forwards:

  1. There’s a new Vanity associated with a Noman reaching Whitsun!

Memories of a Doubled Spring: For a while, as the lacre turned to steam and fungi bloomed between the cobbles, there were two of you. You taught yourself to feel, to walk, to live as humans live. You experienced this springtime through two sets of eyes – and then, when the melts swept through one final time, you came home.

Is it expensive and very silly to get this? Obviously. Like the Noman Tattoo, this isn’t functional but it is very pretty. I only started planning for this in November, so a late-game player can certainly achieve this next year with sufficient disregard for echoes and willingness to be online to draw Opportunity Cards. Some quick facts about my run:

  • Created January 6th
  • Survived 125 days
  • 17 melts totalling 2243 NF
  • With 2531 total NF, could have survived one more melt
  • consumed 36445.83 Echoes worth of materiel:
  • 214 Nightwhispers, 1498 Storm-Threnodies, 31 Tears of the Bazaar, plus 2 “free” pails to build
  • average melt luck: total was 3 NF below average, or -0.17 / week.
  • unlucky Tears: 25.44% break rate (expected 20%)

There’ll be an official guide at some point, and there’s a rough calculation table already available, although it still needs some work. Getting a Noman this big unfortunately means a lot more random noise, the biggest factor being Opportunity Card draw: To get an extra 2250 Noman Friend, you’d need to draw the Noman Card at least 70 times, which means building it in the last week could leave you with pails bought but insufficient chances to add all of them to your Noman before they melt. Held against the total Noman’s Friend required, though, those extra January melts are fairly insignificant.

In terms of inputs, my low-prep choice was 214 Pails and 31 Tears of the Bazaar, which should have totalled 2584 NF on average. The downside to pail-heavy strategies is drawing the Urchins Card once per pail, which necessitates using Favourable Circumstances and grinding more of them with Notability. The upside is that Night-whispers and Storm Threnodies are much easier to source than Tears, and more efficient to boot (625 echoes of pails gets you 5 pails * 9 NF / pail = 45 NF, vs 625 echoes of Tears which is 2 Tears * ~18 NF / Tear = 36 NF; a 25% difference). Consider a less Card-intensive strategy: 100 pails, 88 Tears (2584 NF again, but 40000 echoes). That’s a lot of Tears, though; better hope for another good Tears week at the Rat Market!

2. Melt rate remain predictable through May!

a graph of noman melt rates for 2023, with time on the x-axis and melt values on the y-axis. The dots representing recorded melt rates fall between two diagonal lines representing minimum and maximum melt rates. These lines are parallel, beginning at the y axis at 3 and 37 respectively and increasing over time. There are fewer data points as time goes on, ending at day 125 around 225 melt.
a graph of noman melt rates for 2023, with time on the x-axis and melt values on the y-axis. The dots representing recorded melt rates fall between two diagonal lines representing minimum and maximum melt rates. These lines are parallel, beginning at the y axis at 3 and 37 respectively and increasing over time. There are fewer data points as time goes on, ending at day 125 around 225 melt.706×453 20.3 KB

This is less exciting than the first point, but it does support the Noman Calculator’s results at least as far as Whitsun. However, ~17 weeks of random results can leave a fairly wide range of possibility. My initial range estimate was 1955 - 2534, and while we expect it to be somewhere near the middle, for a venture this expensive we really want to be closer to certain. But on the OTHER hand, we can usually discount the extremes. Planning below the maximum but holding some extra Tears in reserve could be a valuable strategy; they’re less effective once your pails are gone (~13 NF vs ~18 NF), but an average week can save you a Tear, and a good week could save you 2.

  1. Although gone, Déjeuneige shall be immortalized as the first Noman to fully experience a Fallen Londoner’s life for a third of a year

a mantlepiece showing 0 Nomans named Déjeuneige, but 1 Memory of a Doubled Spring

And with that I thank you for providing data, following updates, and I hope you’ll join me next year in making a cadre of improbably healthy Nomen.

9 Likes