So, I wrote out the steps to get noman tattoo! The reason I did this is mostly for my own benefit - I wanted to make sure I have all my ducks in a row and know what I need to do, to make sure I don’t waste a lot of resources and then find out I’m missing a key piece and wasted everything. But maybe it’ll help others too. This is mainly compiled from many other sources, following links from/to: the curious clothier , https://www.reddit.com/r/fallenlondon/comments/bipbfu/weekly_small_questions_thread_20190429/em2e5vq/ , https://community.failbettergames.com/topic23254-noman-tattoo-math.aspx , https://community.failbettergames.com/topic25212-noman-tattoo-prep-getting-down-to-brass-tacks.aspx , https://community.failbettergames.com/topic25418-reminder-prep-list-for-noman-tattoo.aspx, and wiki, and probably other forum threads.
So here’s my best understanding of how Noman Tattoo prep should go. I’ve also included links to wiki pages and threads with details, because I’ve just spent a while digging through lots of pages and I appreciated when posters included links.
First, before 12/10, get the required items - accumulate tears of the bazaar, night-whispers, and storm-threnodies (required numbers discussed later.) Get as much BDR as possible and materials for grinding notability. Be associated with a school: Celestials, be a Notary or Doctor, have a consonant violin. Have 7 notability, one Favorable Circumstances, and the slowcake’s amanuensis and the urchins card in hand. Have 1 Skyglass Knife, 1 Pulsating Amber, 3 hard-earned lessons, 3 sudden insights, and Melancholy, Hedonist, Magnanimous, and Forceful at 3.
Sidenotes - ACCUMULATING THESE ITEMS. This can be done over a long time, so here is how I accumulated them or plan to…
[spoiler]I got storm-threnodies by, over the course of a long time, playing the "Use the Goat’s… unique talents" on the "All fear the overgoat!" card, using a sudden insight each time to raise possibility of success. I also got them by upconverting Aeolian Screams to storm-threnodies, using urchins favors. There were many ways of getting Aeolian screams, that happened over time, many listed at https://fallenlondon.fandom.com/wiki/Aeolian_Scream (and https://fallenlondon.fandom.com/wiki/Storm-Threnody for Storm-threnodies).
I got night-whispers at the court of the wakeful eye (https://fallenlondon.fandom.com/wiki/Court_of_the_Wakeful_Eye). This is fairly straightforward - spend echoes to buy Winsome Dispossessed Orphans at the bazaar, trade them for Tribute in the fifth coil of the Labyrinth of Tigers, travel to the Court of the Wakeful Eye, spend all the tribute for night-whispers by spending time with the Minister of Culture. Tribute can be stockpiled as high as needed so this only needs one trip overseas.
I already got my BDR to +30 a while back via https://fallenlondon.fandom.com/wiki/Bizarre,_Dreaded,Respectable(Guide) and stockpiled a bunch of Visions of the Surface, Incendiary Gossip, Tales of Terror, Zee-stories, and Extraoirdinary implications for notability grinding.
Getting Tears of the Bazaar was the most intentional and long grind. I got them by repeatedly catching a Plated Seal at zee, breeding the Hound of Heaven from the Plated Seal in the 4th coil of the labyrinth of tigers to get Cellars of Wine, Broken Giant, and church favors; I would use the church favors to up-convert broken giant and strangling willow absinthe to more cellars of wine. Then, I would wait for the Slowcake’s Amanuensis card, get to 7 notability, trade it for Favorable Circumstances, using the Favorable Circumstances to draw the Portly Sommelier and trade the cellars of wine for fourth city airag, and then fourth city airag for tears of the bazaar. (The Portly Sommelier card was just too rare to keep waiting for it.)
Getting the skyglass knife, and pulsating amber is easy, buy at the bazaar. I already have hard-earned lessons and sudden insights, those are easy to get.
Getting the quirks isn’t hard - there’s a variety of minor quirk increases on cards - but just need to know the right ones… I already have Magnanimous at 10 from https://fallenlondon.fandom.com/wiki/To_make_a_point_of_treating_them_well (which I’ll have to stop playing to get some Hedonist) and Melancholy at 15 from a renown grind, I’ll get some Hedonist from a few polite invitations (concentrate on the food, and dance with the delightful young thing) and from an entanglement with an old friend, Forceful from bringing the revolution, I suppose. [/spoiler]
12/10: Begin collecting the free pails of so-called snow - one each time you’re snowed in, plus advent calendar!
Begin converting Storm-Threnodies and Night-Whispers to Pails using the urchins. Whenever you draw the Urchins card, buy a pail of snow with 7 storm-threnodies and a night-whisper. Use favorable circumstances to re-draw that card when you can, trading in 7 notability for favorable circumstances as often as possible, spending actions to grind for notability.
Get to 15 Taste of Lacre the following way:
- Use the semiotic monocle on the pails to get as high as you can. If you start with 0 Taste of Lacre, the best you can do us use 2 pails to get to 6 ToL; once you have 6 or more, that option is no longer available. If you start from a bit left over from last season, or from the Advent calendar if it gives any ToL, you can possibly get to 8 by using the semiotic monocle on the pail when you have 5.
- Get to 10 Taste of Lacre by using Tears of the Bazaar.
- Get to 15 Taste of Lacre by choosing the right options on each of the 12 Days of Mr Sacks: days 2, 5, 8, 11, 12. (I’m probably actually gonna skip day 5 - I’m associated with the Mycogenes and not Celestials, and my persuasive is overcapped, so I’ll have to get one more ToL from tears…)
On other days of mr sacks, make sure to take the options that give pails if possible.
A few days before 1/31: Go down to the Sundered Sea and obtain the Noman using 15 ToL, some quirks at 3, second chances, and items.
When to do this is a tradeoff between two factors. If you do it late enough, you might have your noman avoid one visit of Time The Healer; the fewer times Time visits between Noman creation and Tattooing the better. On the other hand, the earlier you do it, the more time you have to increase Noman’s Friend by spending your pails before they melt. So you want to leave yourself enough time to draw Noman’s Progess as often as you need to spend your hard-grinded resources.
Since my Time the Healer comes on Thursdays right now, it looks like for me the best option is to make the Noman on Thursday January 23rd after my TtH.
Before 1/31: Convert your resources to Noman’s Friend. The process for this is:
- Examine a pail with a semiotic monocle to get to ToL 3. (Or do it twice for 6).
- Warm tears of the bazaar eight (or five) times to get to ToL 11.
- Draw the Noman’s Progress card and play "Help me. I beg you." to get Noman’s Friend equal to 3 times the ToL spent. This will reset your ToL to 0.
You have to have at least ToL 1 to use the tears, so you can’t make it on tears alone; you have to have at least 1 pail per tears.
In the past few years, the numbers have been that the BIGGEST POSSIBLE noman loss between creation and tattoo was 520, the average/expected value 380. So you need to get a total of between 280 and 420 NF, so between 94 and 140 ToL total, with each pail giving you 3 and on average each tear giving you 6. So, something like 15 pails/15 tears gives you probably around 135 ToL. 30 pails/10 tears gives you probably 150. 10 pails/18 tears gives you 138. For any of these, you need 7 storm-threnodies and one night-whisper per pail.
This is with pretty strong safety margins, so you could do with a bit less… IF the loss rate does not change. Which we don’t know about. I’m planning to aim for 520 NF if I can get to it.
…so, that’s how I think IroNoman acquisition works. Am I missing anything? Any places where I’ve done or am planning to do something suboptimal?