It appears that the optimal I-just-want-the-tattoo route now is to do full pails, no tears necessary, since it’s stabilized at taking about three TtHs for the tattoo.
Plus is cheaper to get Night Whispers and thus pails!
But Tears are nice for people who can’t log it constantly and draw cards hoping the Urchins will pop.
What’s the best way to acquire Storm-Threnodies these days, other than the Overgoat card? I’m trying to work out how much grinding the tattoo requires these days.
If you’re stockpiling for next year, probably stealing Journals of Infamy, side-converting to Plaques, and then upconverting. That requires Urchin favors, so it can’t be done on-demand, but you can start acquiring materials now and then using Favors as you get them.
On-demand, the best advice I’ve received is breeding the Rubbery Hound, but that’s Fate-locked.
Adding to Garak’s response, if you don’t have an Orphanage and thus have no fast way to use the Urchin favours, getting Primordial Shriek form Tomb favours cash in and up converting it is a bit faster than stealing Journals.
Another alternative for people who can’t log in that much is to go for the AotB to get wines (for Tears) and plaques as a little bonus!
And how big is the reward for the Rubbery Hound? AP vs outcome if possible.
Spoilers because Fate
[spoiler]Everything is from memory, because I’m not running it again just to find out.
I want to say the reward is 5 Storm-Threnodies. I think that’s what it was. It certainly was an awkward number to collect batches of 7, and I don’t remember it being odd for any other reason, so I’m pretty sure it was 5. I did not encounter any luck-based results, although I only did four-ish batches.
The action count is extreme. The Breeding option is Pulling Out All the Stops, so the max of 22 actions. And replacing your Rubbery Hound requires a full run of Flute Street, which I think is 39 actions (10 to arrive, 24 in the carousel, 5 to return) that have to be spent as a single uninterrupted chunk.
So 61 Actions for 62.5 Echoes worth of Storm-Threnodies, plus around 10 Echoes in Whispered Hints from the back half of Flute Street. It’s not abjectly terrible EPA like grinding Favors is, but you wouldn’t do it unless you very specifically need Storm-Threnodies. Which you do. At least it’s 100% deterministic.[/spoiler]
IIRC there’s a better way of obtaining Correspondence Plaques than Thefts: breeding Somnolent Hyaenas. Using Fungus and Pious Wrath gives Maniac’s Prayers, and according to my Fidgeting Writer math from a couple years ago, upconverting those is at least 2.6 Plaques per action compared to Theft’s 2.45 PPA. That was calculated around using UB for honey, but with the rare success, A Merry Sort of Crime, and Bohemians favours you could do even better.
[quote=Mordaine Barimen][quote=]You’ve lost 126 x Noman’s Friend (new total 28 - The Noman is almost gone).[/quote]My Noman shall see April.[/quote]Congrats on such longevity!
Would have been nice to see all of that data for the ten or so weeks though.
Edit: Thanks for the data!
[i]edited by idyl on 3/28/2018[/i]I had quit the forums for good nearly a year ago, but came back to share this.
Still, if you want data…
3/27 You’ve lost 126 x Noman’s Friend
3/20 You’ve lost 127 x Noman’s Friend
3/13 You’ve lost 110 x Noman’s Friend
3/6 You’ve lost 118 x Noman’s Friend
2/27 You’ve lost 111 x Noman’s Friend
2/20 You’ve lost 103 x Noman’s Friend
2/13 You’ve lost 114 x Noman’s Friend
2/6 You’ve lost 110 x Noman’s Friend
1/30 You’ve lost 65 x Noman’s Friend
for Threnodies, if you’re an Exceptional Friend, the Hound is definitely the way to go. When you wake up and you’ve got 40 actions on your candle, a roundtrip to retrieve the Hound is 39, so you won’t even miss out on any card draw. By the middle of your day, you’ll have the thing bred, and can devote yourself to whatever else you like. Won’t take more than a month or two of this to get the necessary threnodies for pails.
I’m wondering how much of the different items you would recommend having for keeping the Noman around til the Feast of the Exceptional Rose.
I’m currently grinding totb, having 5 of those and 29 Storm-Threnody. How many should I go for?
Apologies if this has been answered before.
Apparently just getting Pails is now optimal, with the Tribute grind making Night-Whispers substantially easier to get.
In case anyone was interested, I did an analysis of the melt rate data to best figure how much Noman’s Friend would be lost each week. Originally posted on the subreddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/fallenlondon/comments/8a61eq/2018_noman_data_melt_rate_for_those_interested/
Anyway, here are the basics:
Summary of Expected Losses (2018):
[table][tr][td]From[td]Til[td]Low[td]High[td]Average[tr][td]1/6[td]1/15[td]20[td]50[td]35[tr][td]1/16[td]1/22[td]35[td]65[td]50[tr][td]1/23[td]1/31[td]50[td]80[td]65[tr][td]2/1[td]2/21[td]90[td]120[td]105[tr][td]2/22[td]3/27[td]105[td]150[td]
127.5
[/table]
This is based on the data collected, where actual results align fairly close with expected results: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
And here’s a chart showing the "weekly" changes: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
I hope this is of some interest to you all. Enjoy!
Got around to doing the math for pails only. If you get the Noman at the very last moment and it lives for three TtH, you’ll need (given this year’s data) 20 pails to survive average losses and 25 to survive three high rolls.
Far more doable than I expected, really. After about five weeks of Thefts (not even beast-breeding) I have far more than enough Correspondence Plaques. Getting 25 pails takes 175 Threnodies, and I have enough Plaques to get around 250. And that’s with starting from basically nothing, plus dumping a bunch of the newly-acquired Plaques into SotC 21.