I know some folks (myself included) are still posting in last year’s Noman Melt Rate thread about our Noman upkeep, but now that the Nomans are built and the Melts have started happening I’m making a new thread for data tracking. The formulas are known so the data isn’t quite so important these days, but it’s also kind of a holiday tradition at this point so why not.
Please post TTH Date (in UTC if it’s different than your home timezone) and Loss of Noman’s Friend for data tracking. We would also love to know your overall progress!
I’ll try to keep this head post up to date with tracking and expectations as much as I can. Maybe even some grafs on the weekends, pending software licenses.
From the Wiki, expected loss formula N days after the Wicket is between (1.75 × N) + 3 and (1.75 × N) + 37, with N starting at 0 on Jan 5. Today N is 4.
TTH came on Friday, 9 January (Day 5). Lost 37 points. Range right now should be between 11 and 45, so this is on the high end.
Current status: 109 to start, 1137 gained from 36 Tears and 32 Pails, 37 lost from TTH, net at 1,201. If I’ve done my math right, I’m above average on ToL from Tears but it’s streaky as heck.
TTH for me on 9th, lost 17. Which looks like it’s quite on the low side, but felt surprisingly alarming!
Noman is at 1505 from I’m not sure how many pails (because I accidentally used pails instead of tears for a while without noticing, thank you all the people who encouraged me to get a good margin of extra pails!) and 53 tears. Hard to tell how my tears usage has been going because of the screwed-up tracking, but I thiiiink probably a bit better than average?
Ah, I hadn’t even realized that it was the old thread!
On the 6th I had my TTH hit and lost 7 NF. Felt lucky. (I’m not sure if my TTH counts as being on the 6th or the 7th for tracking purposes, since it was on the 6th local time, before midnight, but on the 7th in London)
That’s a very good question! I don’t actually know when the day count rolls over, I had assumed at midnight UTC but it’s much more likely to be sometime between 9am and noon UTC, whenever the Wicket itself opens.
I tried looking through the historical threads and found two points of interest. First, no one’s quite sure. Second, I misnamed this thread. Much to my surprise the year is currently 2026, and there was no separate Melt Tracking thread in 2025.
I think I’m all set! My NF is now 2,643, which is above the total possible NF loss for a Wednesday TTH (2586 according to Noman Tattoo (Guide) - Fallen London Wiki) . I’ve already had 1 TTH.
I still have 11 TOL, 2 pails, and 6 tears, so I could get a little more; I’ll save a few tears though, I don’t need to liquidate them all.
As planned I’m out of pails so (barring TTHs) I’m done. 2674 should be above the loss rate for Fridays. I’ll have to keep an eye that the maths is still the same, but I’ve got a massive excess of Tears, so now I just have to make sure not to give up the Noman to the boatman or something.
EDIT: should have mentioned. Overall cost was 90 pails, 95 tears.
I have also crossed my safety threshold according to the wiki tonight, currently at 2685 NF. I still have 20 Pails left, so I’m going to push for 3k NF just for its own sake.
It seems that many players are going to complete their Noman in around a week, so the wiki’s recommendation to build the Noman on January 5th might be too conservative.
It should be safe to wait until mid-January before building the Noman, and save one or two TtH’s worth of NF.
On the other hand, that’s only a saving of ~1k € vs a total cost of 40k-50k €.
Today I hit zero Pails and 2786 Nomans Friend and I am not sure what I will do with my Neathy Life now. This has been the core of my FL activity, it’s weird that all that’s left is waiting.
One week feels about right. I’d rather not be the one who implements the change, but the wiki overstates the importance of starting as early as possible.
I also don’t think it’s necessary to throw in refreshes like Jellied Mushroom Cakes at all. It can help, sure, but if one has the time to flip regularly for two weeks with a Woesel, one should expect to be able to finish.
I only broke 1800 today and it’s not like I’ve been doing anything else in FL in the meantime so I’m really curious what the difference is.
In any case it’s probably a good idea to change the wording on the wiki, but 1 week may not be a goal every player can expect to hit. Two weeks seems to be a reasonable amount of caution, but this may also benefit from some number crunching of expected draws, so players can estimate for themselves the likely timespan.
I hit my target Noman’s Friend (NF) amount of 2649 yesterday. With a 5-card lodging and a woesel equipped (and after some deck-thinning), I had no trouble frequently drawing the Noman’s Progress card. Below are my results, along with a weekly melt rate tracker that I’ll update over time.
Noman creation date: Jan 5th 2026
Days needed to reach target NF amount: 7
Starting Taste of Lacre: 30
Starting # of pails: 151
Pails used to reach target NF: 113 (Note: I over-bought pails, so at some point I started examining pails twice with a Semiotic Monocle before applying Tears of the Bazaar)
Remaining pails after reaching target NF: 39 (+351 NF; does not include a few additional pails from past and expected January snowfalls)
Expected total NF after remaining pails used: 3000
Starting # of vials of Tears of the Bazaar: 237
Vials used to reach target NF: 115
Remaining vials: 122
Estimated NF buffer available (at 12.5 NF/vial): +1525 NF
I think it’s nice to leave as big a margin for error as possible (since card drawers are the only RNG element) but a note couldn’t hurt that in practice this takes a couple of weeks.
Expected draw would be very appreciated data wise. I tried to calculate it a few months back, but in practice had real trouble working out which cards were or weren’t in my deck. The deck thinning guide can be a bit boggling.
I just hit my Noman target, using 91 tears and unknown pails. 108 tears and 18 pails left (but used extra pails for the last few, so could have had more left if I’d wanted). Gonna keep going to have a little margin and use up all my pails because what else am I going to do with them.
I’m not an Exceptional Friend, but have been able to be very present for card-pulling, so I think a busier player who isn’t around as much to pull every card possible could take a fair bit longer; I wouldn’t be inclined to make a change to the time recommendation until we see how long the later people land up taking.
I’m at abut 2300 Noman’s Friend, with about 40 Pails and 50 Tears left. Considering the Pails alone should get me to a safe value of over 2600, I’ve elected to stop using Tears. By my best estimates, I’ve gotten about 4.9 ToL per Tears consumed so even with below-average use I’ve still over-invested.
The Noman guide on the Wiki will be getting some substantial updates when this is over. I think the current guide is lacking as it is simply because there’s not many folks who have gone through it, so the knowledge just isn’t there to write down. Thank yous to everyone sharing their experience here, your contributions will make the guide better for next year.