The other most important component is having enough BDR that you can force-grind Favorabld Circumstances without having to wait for the Amanuensis card!
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I’m going for Doubled Spring this year and have hoarded 200 Tears and supplies for around 150 pails. Here are some other tips that I’ve come up with:
- Snowfall (and pail-buying on the Urchins card) starts on December 8th, so have the Urchins card in your hand and ready to use before then.
- One of the possible branches on the agent plot “A Disposable Network” (“Extra-Strong Cheddar”) gives you Favourable Circumstances that you can use to force-draw the Urchins card. You can have that plot completed and ready to go when snowfall starts.
- You can cash in 9 points of the “Corresponding…” quality (obtained from writing letters to other players) via the branch “For a grand scheme” in “The Rewards of Correspondence” storylet in exchange for Favourable Circumstances.
- If you have access to the House of Chimes, one of the voting options there also gives Favourable Circumstances.
These tips should save a few actions for you, although having sufficient supplies stockpiled and a high enough BDR to repeatedly grind Favourable Circumstances is still the most important factor for a successful Noman tattoo run.
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I should be set for that, I’m up to 43, but thank you for the reminder, I need to set it up as an outfit!
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Oh, thank you, this is really helpful!
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I got myself a little carried away this weekend, and managed to reach the 800k Rat Market saturation cap… That’s around 2k€ of future Rat Market profits lost.
But now I’m sitting on a more comfortable pile of 176 Vials of Tears of the Bazaar, and 165 (potential) Pails.
That’s almost half a Cider worth of materials 
Any leftover materials at the end of January can go back into my actual Cider fund anyway 
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Without James’ tips, with 43 BRD (1 MW for Nota 7 and 5 for 8) you can easily grind around 3-4 buckets per day if you’re active enough. Now, this means that you can reach, probably, 5/day.
Not sure how much BRD I had in '21, but I know I didn’t push it too much and had ~3.34 buckets/day.
Best of luck!
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With an active accomplice to donate you Notability after buying circumstances, 7 is enough and should push the daily limit even further.
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You can also get a one-time only supply of 3 extra Favourable Circumstances buying a Sheaf of Poetic First Drafts from the Unsanctioned Relicker in the Medusa’s Head.
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PSA: if your Time the Healer arrives and provides you with a sweet free Favourable Circumstance, CLEAR THE PATH TO YOUR LODGINGS, before you use it to draw the Urchin card.
Otherwise it is a 16 action loss.
Remember kids, don’t be me.
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Well, with a big AP investment, I see that I managed to get 6, 9 and 8 FCs during the course of 3 days. I have a feeling that an average of 8 buckets/day can be reached with FCs, TtH, free ones, Agents and Urchin’s card.
…
…
Darn!
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First week report: I unexpectedly reached the minimum target of 80 Pails already today, after only 7.5 days of Notability grinding.
This week I’m going to keep grinding up to 100-120 Pails for safety, but I can relax a little and maybe have some fun throwing snowballs at the Urchins for a change.
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Dang, that’s impressive, I made “only” 40 pails in the first week.. I know I took some time off for weeklies and lost a few actions to inefficiencies, but I’m shocked someone could double that number!
Still I’m quite satisfied with my pacing. I have 130 tears, and at this rate I should be able to match that in Pails well before the Wicket opens.
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I reached 80 so I’m probably going to stop and farm a few more tears while I have the Presumptuous Opportunity in my hand. I’m sitting on ~210 tears at the moment so that should hopefully sustain me, and (unlike pails) I can sell the remainder if I have any left or use them less efficiently if I haven’t managed to draw 80 Noman Progress cards by the time the season ends.
I’m at 73 pails, budgeted enough supplies to get to 100. Though now that I’m reading a bit more carefully, maybe I needed more tears than I have… I have just over 100… but, well, if I end up falling behind I’ll top off with inefficient-use tears during post-january grinding, they’re back in rat market in february. We’ll see what my luck is like.
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I also took time off for weekly activities.
I got a nice boost by burning all of my banked sources of Favourable Circumstances however: Corresponding, a Disposable Network, 3 from the original access code Poetic First Drafts, and 3 more from the Unsanctioned Relicker First Drafts.
I won’t be able to sustain the same rate in week 2, but it shouldn’t be necessary hopefully.
Oh, yeah, I am definitely unwilling to spend some of those. I will go to almost any lengths to claim a unique mantlepiece quality, except for spending a different, unrecoverable mantlepiece item even if it’s one of lesser value. Disposable Network though, I should take a second look at that.
I did claim one bonus circumstance from the House of the House of Chimes. I also just realized I forgot to complete a season of Hearts’ Game before snowfall, because I was so focused on the tree, and now I’m trying to figure how to squeeze that in between Slowcaking.
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While 80 Pails are sufficient, I suggest grinding a little more than 80 as a safety margin against misclicks.
If you accidentally examine the Pails through your Monocle twice in a row, you risk running out of Pails before you can apply all of your Tears, so having a few spares is useful.
You can always start to double-examine your Pails to use them up once you’re close to your target.
Damn, some of you are fast, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself for being at 63!
I see some of you are planning to get 100 or more pails, is that just being very careful in case of misclicks, or is there some reason more is better that I’m missing?
Mostly paranoia caution about the RNG.
Each Pail yields exactly 9 points of Noman’s Friend. A Vial of Tears gives 18 points of Noman’s Friend on average before evaporating randomly, but with considerable variance, down to a minimum of 6.
So you can swap one Vial of Tears for two Pails or vice-versa for the same expected result, but a Pail-heavy strategy will give more predictable NF gains.
On the other hand, a Pail-heavy strategy also means more Notability grinding in December and more fishing for the Noman card in January, so throwing Tears in the mix is probably better to preserve your sanity.
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For me it’s the inevitability of screwing up a couple of times. I have a history of forgetting what I was doing after klicking Onwards. Probably because I play a lot in bursts of only a couple of minutes between tasks on the other side of the Gorilla-Glass. That being said, for some reason the Favourable Circumstances loop kind of annoys me, so I will stay beyond my target and will settle for roughly 100 pails, which is 22 more to go. Maybe I will source some more Tears through the Sommelier instead.
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