Reminder: Prep list for Noman Tattoo

Fallen London
1

For those who’ve got the ingredients to keep your Noman alive lined up already (I’m at 15 tears, 30 pails ingredients), a reminder of what you can already do to prepare beyond just getting the ingredients:

-Get an Urchins opportunity card in your hand
-Get a Favorable Circumstances built up to draw a second one
-Get to 7 notability to draw a third one
-Convert all your Tier 3 items into Tales of Terror or one of the other Making Waves-producing side conversions (For more FC)
-Build up a ton of casing to turn into Tales of Terror, which can then bleed into Making Waves (For more FC)
-Pull the trigger on that Rubbery Spouse you’ve been going back and forth on (For more FC)

Here’s hoping for a successful tattoo run for all of you!

2

30 pails? Really? What’s the math behind this?

Up to now I thought 15 pails would be plenty?

3

[quote=Krampus]30 pails? Really? What’s the math behind this?

Up to now I thought 15 pails would be plenty?[/quote]
You can get 3 Noman’s Friend per point of Taste of Lacre through the Noman’s Progress card. That’s 9 NF per pail.

As of last year, you needed ~350 NF to make it until mid February for the tattoo, and that’s with waiting until the third week of January to create the Noman.

Given that you start with 100 NF, you need ~250 more. 15 Pails would get you 135 more, which is not enough.

28 Pails would put you over 350 total, but we don’t know if everything’s the same this year.

4

That’s actually not the most efficient way to use pails. The best way is a combo of pails and tears where you repeatedly get to PtPT:11 and then convert that 11 to Noman’s Friend.

5

Warming Tears (to raise ToL to 11) doesn’t use pails of snow. It just uses the Tears (20% chance to lose it).

Whether this is a more efficient way to raise ToL (i.e. not most efficient way to use pails), really depends on whether it’s easier for you to get Tears of the Bazaar or to get pails.

Tears give you - on average! - twice as much ToL as the pails do. But they are also harder to acquire (and obviously also are worth more).

6

By now, most people will already know the number of Tears they have (will have). With this, keep in mind that it’s best to have at least the same number of buckets as tears.
You need ToL to use Tears properly and, &quotworst&quot case scenario, you end using Monocle once and Tears up to 11 and NOT lose any Tears!

EDIT: Did some napkin math some time ago and I think the best preparation for side conversion is by farming honey; this includes cashing all Boh favours via the palace and using the Criminal R25 card to get 220 sweet stuff.
Honey to RN, RN to Visions in stacks of 50 (2 MW), Visions all the way to Documents, Documents to Kisses and Kisses to Favours, Favours using the Forger card. If there’s an emergency you can convert RNs in stacks of 500 which will get you less MW in total, but more per AP.

edited by Skinnyman on 12/14/2017

7

Why, exactly?

8

Why, exactly?[/quote]
Safety precaution to be able to get the first level of ToL to use Tears. Even thought it seems awful impossible considering Probably Random Number Algorithm. :D

9

I would appreciate directions to a detailed, recent guide to optimizing the use of Tears & Pails for Noman purposes. I’ve seen like half-a-dozen guides on using Pails, but they all seem to be optimizing towards obtaining real estate (which I already have) rather than the Noman, and they are leaving some ToL on the table for that purpose. The only noman guide I’ve seen is several years old and I’m not sure what updates to mechanics or player knowledge have happened since then.

10

Have you seen this thread?
http://community.failbettergames.com/topic23254-noman-tattoo-math.aspx

11

The harder part to optimise is probably when you get the Noman, tbh. That will depend on when your TtH comes, whether you have a Dreadful Surmise, as well as the ratio of your pails to tears.

Optimising the use pf pails and tears after that is fairly trivial, as the number of ToL you get to doesn’t really matter, you get 3 Noman’s Friend per ToL point.

As Skinnyman noted, have at least as many piles as tears. Once you convert ToL to Noman’s Friend, you are left with ToL 0 and you need at least one ToL to use the tears. More pails is better in case you get absolutely lucky with your tears and manage not to lose them for many tries.

SotC 10 and a Semiotic Monocle are absolutely necessary to optimize NF.

  1. Use tears on ToL if you have any left after creating your Noman. Get as high as possible. Do this as long as you have ToL 1 to 10. Convert into NF at 11 or 12.

  2. Use the Monocle on a Pail, end up with 3 ToL. Use tears as above, convert. Repeat this until you have no tears left (and no chance of getting another vial before pails melt) - see 4. if you think you might get another vial yet.

  3. Once you are left with pails only use the Monocle on them. It doesn’t matter whether you convert at 3 or 6 ToL. Keep a pail.

  4. You can keep some pails almost to the end if you feel like you might still get another vial of tears before the pails melt. If you do, then use the pail -> tears, pail -> tears until you have no more tears.

  5. Use the final pail before they melt, let it stay as ToL at the start of February. You still have two weeks or so, you still can get a vial of tears and then you can use it with the ToL and get some late NF. If you don’t get a vial, just convert the ToL when things get hairy.
    edited by alekth on 12/14/2017
    edited by alekth on 12/14/2017
    edited by alekth on 12/14/2017

12

Thank you both! Dima, I had not seen that post, it was very helpful. And alekth, thank you for the from-the-basics explanation. Almost everything else I had found seemed to be building off of previous work that wasn’t directly linked, so it was nice to have something that started from the beginning.

13

This may also be of use: http://britetimes.tumblr.com/post/120307092714/noman-faq-and-guide-spoilers

14

I will also leave this here: http://community.failbettergames.com/topic23798-the-ironoman-marathon-season-.aspx

15

[quote=PSGarak]Thank you both! Dima, I had not seen that post, it was very helpful. And alekth, thank you for the from-the-basics explanation. Almost everything else I had found seemed to be building off of previous work that wasn’t directly linked, so it was nice to have something that started from the beginning.[/quote] That post with the math was mine, so if you have any questions I’d be glad to help.

Building on that information (since that was before the actual Noman process), I can give more/better information now. First off, I personally believe Pails to be the way to go, with Tears as a backup. Pails are easier and quicker to obtain, since Tears require drawing the PLO card along with grinding high tier wine.

Pails are much easier, since you just have to grind/upconvert items from the Wild Words category. You could even just straight out buy Primordial Shrieks by the thousand and convert them up to Storm Threnodies. Expensive but simple. Night Whispers are gotten through Fidgeting Writer or now the Court of the Wakeful Eye. That takes some resources and time, but it’s a dependable grind.

Plus, you need Pails to get the first point of ToL (Trading ToL to NF on the Noman card resets your ToL, and Warming the Tears requires ToL 1), so Tears can only be used as long as you have a Pail to start the process. So either an equal number of Tears/Pails, or more Pails is my suggestion. I’d lean toward more Pails since they’re cheaper and easier to obtain, as stated above. Tears are good as well, but not even necessary, due to the &quotAbundant&quot Frequency of the Noman’s Progress card. You can do the whole process with Pails if you wanted to.

And since everyone always asks: &quotHow much Noman’s Friend do I need to make it?&quot It’s tricky because it depends on when you create your Noman and when your TtH is. And we can only estimate based on previous years’ melting rates, i.e., how much NF you lost per week to TtH. Each week, more and more NF is taken. For this past (2017) Noman season, you lost ~360 Noman’s Friend if you made the Noman in the middle of January. Making it in the third week of January (right after TtH) is the best choice, I think. That way you lose ~320 between creation and Lilac’s.

Summary of weekly melt rate / NF loss here: Imgur: The magic of the Internet

I’d say you’d need 350 NF minimum to be safe. That’s 250 NF you have to grind after the 100 you start with. If you were using just Pails along, that’s 28 Pails needed. For every Tear that you add, you can take away 2 Pails, since Tears (on average) give twice as much ToL as Pails. So, for example, 20 Pails and 4 Tears would work just as effectively as 28 Pails. Furthermore, and equal amount of 10 Pails and 10 Tears would also get you there. Any combination works, as long as you get to that 250 mark (minimum).

Keep in mind that FB could always increase the melt rate this year, similar to what happened two years ago. Sustain your Noman at your own risk! But, based on last year’s numbers, this is the current state of Noman Math.

Hope that helps.

16

I am with idyl on favouring pails. I used only Pails last year and even though I vastly overcompensated it was still more painless than a comparable number of Tears would have been

17

The pails/tears balance doesn’t have a right answer and depends on which form of risk you prefer. With tears, you can gather them well in advance & therefore alleviate the pressure on time-limited notability grinding during the season itself, but they’re expensive and you run the risk of a really bad run of luck leaving you short of the necessary ToL if they evaporate too soon. With pails and 10 SotC you are guaranteed a certain level of ToL, but obtaining the pails requires a combination of luck and a truly bonkers high-pressure notability grind, since they’re available for such a limited amount of time, & you may not want that level of stress & micro-management over real-life Christmas, Hanukkah etc. Personally I’m pretty sure I used pails to 8 taste & then tears to 11, but I would imagine you could do it using just pails if you don’t mind needing to draw the Noman card more often. Of course by now you probably already have most if not all of the tears you’re going to get, so that’s more for future reference, but I digress.

Regardless, if you’re arranging your 50p items to help make waves I would recommend stockpiling visions of the surface rather than ToT. Upconverting ToT isn’t great for grinding notability with a time limit since you’ll be burning resources (and you’d need a billion ToT & university connection not to run out) and don’t want to be wasting actions gathering more. Side converting ToT also isn’t great since they give a max of 8 MW CP as opposed to the other conversions which can give 10. The advantage of stockpiling visions is you’re only one extra step away from the next waves-granting conversion (visions +waves -> mysteries of the elder continent -> incendiary gossip +waves -> memories of distant shores).