The IroNoman Marathon: Season 2

@Gonen: Not sure exactly when the thaw came last year, but the time between wicket closure and pail melt is very short - again, it depends on your tth, but they won’t last into February. This is another argument against buying last minute. Last year I drew the card often enough to boost her fully within 24 hours, but that was with good luck, manic drawing and an optimised deck. Tbh a lot of this comes down to deciding how much risk and what sort of gambles you are personally comfortable with and acting accordingly; there’s no single answer. I bought earlyish because the thought of missing my chance stressed me more than running out of stuff, and because I’d gone for a bucket-heavy approach so I needed to be sure I’d have time to draw the card. If you’re adequately prepared with resources to spare, you might as well play safe by buying at 9 or 12 taste since the whole enterprise is ruinously expensive anyway - but then, no one knows how vicious tth will be this year, that may be terrible advice. Really it just comes down to what makes you the least stressed.

@Catherine: If you were planning on keeping your noman alive to the feast, you definitely don’t have enough resources. For context, last year I gathered 32 pails and 13 tears - I didn’t use them all, but it’ll be tougher this year. Sustaining a Noman isn’t a case of raising your taste absurdly high, but rather repeatedly raising it to 11 and cashing in. You only need to go above 11 if you’re buying absolutely last minute, which is really only a viable strategy in very specific circumstances. If you just want to see the normal Noman story I’d buy as cheaply as possible, right after your next tth.

Last year the first melting of the pails came 2 days before the Wicket closed from what I can gather.

I would speculate the timeline to be the following (but this is pure speculation based on last year):

22 Jan - the highest prices for Noman become effective
28 Jan - the earliest time the pails melt
30 Jan - last opportunity to buy Noman before midday GMT, then the Wicket closes.
4 Feb - the latest time the pails melt
7 Feb - The Feast of the Rose starts
14 Feb - Lady in Lilac appears

Take this with a ladleful of salt, seasoned liberally.

[quote=Màiread]@Gonen: Not sure exactly when the thaw came last year, but the time between wicket closure and pail melt is very short - again, it depends on your tth, but they won’t last into February. This is another argument against buying last minute. Last year I drew the card often enough to boost her fully within 24 hours, but that was with good luck, manic drawing and an optimised deck. Tbh a lot of this comes down to deciding how much risk and what sort of gambles you are personally comfortable with and acting accordingly; there’s no single answer. I bought earlyish because the thought of missing my chance stressed me more than running out of stuff, and because I’d gone for a bucket-heavy approach so I needed to be sure I’d have time to draw the card. If you’re adequately prepared with resources to spare, you might as well play safe by buying at 9 or 12 taste since the whole enterprise is ruinously expensive anyway - but then, no one knows how vicious tth will be this year, that may be terrible advice. Really it just comes down to what makes you the least stressed.

@Catherine: If you were planning on keeping your noman alive to the feast, you definitely don’t have enough resources. For context, last year I gathered 32 pails and 13 tears - I didn’t use them all, but it’ll be tougher this year. Sustaining a Noman isn’t a case of raising your taste absurdly high, but rather repeatedly raising it to 11 and cashing in. You only need to go above 11 if you’re buying absolutely last minute, which is really only a viable strategy in very specific circumstances. If you just want to see the normal Noman story I’d buy as cheaply as possible, right after your next tth.[/quote]
Thanks for the advice. I may just use some of my Taste on other things, and wait until next year. I ran the Noman story the year before last, and feel no urgent desire to do so again just for the story.

Why is it best to raise ToL to 11 each time, rather than be pail heavy and do 6 by drawing more Noman cards? I’m hoping to save on some tears if I could.

Why is it best to raise ToL to 11 each time, rather than be pail heavy and do 6 by drawing more Noman cards? I’m hoping to save on some tears if I could.[/quote]

I suppose the issue would be in reliably drawing enough cards to spend all those pails. They may be set at abundant frequency, but if you’re an endgame player, even with a bit of deck streamlining, there are just a whole lot of potential cards to draw. If you happen to have access to the finishing school via the recent premium story, it could be a big help. I’m not sure if it’s a bug, but every time you run through the cycle, it refreshes your draw deck.

Why is it best to raise ToL to 11 each time, rather than be pail heavy and do 6 by drawing more Noman cards? I’m hoping to save on some tears if I could.[/quote]

I suppose the issue would be in reliably drawing enough cards to spend all those pails. They may be set at abundant frequency, but if you’re an endgame player, even with a bit of deck streamlining, there are just a whole lot of potential cards to draw. If you happen to have access to the finishing school via the recent premium story, it could be a big help. I’m not sure if it’s a bug, but every time you run through the cycle, it refreshes your draw deck.[/quote]

Someone said that when they sent an email to Failbetter about this they said it wasn’t a bug, so the option should always be open.
edited by The Master on 1/8/2017

Yes, getting to 11 is mostly about minimising the number of times you need to draw the card. Your buckets-to-tears ratio is a personal decision, and like much of the Noman grind the ‘right’ solution is the one that suits your temperament best. Tears are expensive but acquiring them isn’t time-limited (although obviously you need at least 1 level of taste to use them) and they help minimise your dependence on the rng, whereas pails are cheap but can only be gathered for a limited time and then melt. So someone who doesn’t draw a lot of cards or has low BDR might prefer banking tears over the course of the year to a frenetic notability grind for favourable circumstances, for example, especially with notability passing turned off.

I’m pretty sure I wound up taking a middle road using 3 buckets per round to reach 8 and then boosting to 11 with tears. I started preparing relatively late (long story), so I didn’t have a lot of time to grind tears but ultimately I was more worried about my pails melting before I could boost her than the echo cost

Yes, I already have the buckets and am less worried about the echo cost of them. Right now, my main mental barrier is losing the tears to the RNG given that I can also trade them in for M-----'s B—d. I will probably take your route of buckets to 8 followed by tears to 11, and rinse and repeat till I use up all my buckets. Any tears leftover will then be kept as insurance in case I need to feed them directly to the Noman. Any tears after that will then be a bonus for other things.

Thanks for the advice!

cracks knuckles and psyches self up

Mairead, Thank you for that answer. Yes, I understand we have a Fog of War here and I should be careful about my actions. Still, Your answer helps to gain something solid.

Genesis, thanks for that speculated time table. I will consider it!

I have a Noman tattoo, how do I prove it?

Put the Noman Tattoo on your profile(the option to do so should be under your character’s picture in the myself tab) and either give your name or your profle so that others can see it.

This is slightly off topic potentially stupid question, but this is the thread with the noman experts. Is it theoretically possible to keep a noman alive an entire year until the following Christmas? There’s no hard maximum lifespan, correct? Your buckets would melt, but if you somehow stockpiled a ridiculous amount of tears for direct application, could it be done?

It is theoretically possible, now if it’s possible to get that many tears in any reasonable amount of time is something I don’t know. (of course, you could just zail out to the zee since IIRC your noman can’t melt over there, this would mean you would have to stay away from London for a year but hey, it’s probably better than grinding the tears constantly.
edited by The Master on 1/9/2017

I was thinking the same, but I saw that the option unlocks with Season: Christmas which raised another question:
When attempting to get a tattoo you need to wait until the last few days, get Noman, feed it with all your ToL, use monocle, warn tear two times, monocle again and hope the Noman card pops again soon to consume all your acquired ToL. Is this correct or how exactly do you use Tears most efficient as you need one point of ToL to warm them?

I would assume that Noman’s Friend will keep dropping each week, and then the Noman would melt the second you set foot back in London.

Otherwise, people could have hidden their Noman at Zee and only come back in February to grab the tattoo.

NMF does drop at sea, so dov is correct. All the cheesy shennanigans you could get up to got patched out over the last couple of years, thankfully.

@Skinnyman: That’s the general idea, yeah, although you can use different approaches to raise your taste - I did ‘monocle to 8, tears to 11’, but you could monocle to 6 and tear to 11 or even just use pails, although that last one sounds like a pretty big gamble to me. This is why I personally think you are better buying a bit early rather than waiting until the last minute, because otherwise you could easily lose half your resources to melting before you have a chance to use them, but as I said up thread that may be dreadful advice depending on how much harder time is going to hit this year.

@Harlocke: As far as I know there’s no reason you couldn’t keep your Noman alive forever with enough tears, but the grind would be absolutely bonkers - NMF loss gets significantly worse once we’re into February, and I can only imagine that the numbers would get even harsher as time goes by. You’d either have to spend a lot of fate or be prepared for multiple years of grinding wines.

I imagine it to be:
ToL 0 - monocle to 3 - monocle to 6 - tears to 7 then 8, 9, 10, 11.

Or
ToL 0 - monocle to 3 - monocle to 6 - enter penstock’s wicket - take the air to 5 - monocle to 8 - tears to 9, 10, 11

Not sure if feasible though.

I see, thank you both!
But this means that you must use all of your resources between buying the Noman and the Christmas season ending. My guess is that Lacre melts before season end so it sounds very difficult!
After the end you can just wait w/o doing anything? :|

[quote=Skinnyman]I see, thank you both!
But this means that you must use all of your resources between buying the Noman and the Christmas season ending. My guess is that Lacre melts before season end so it sounds very difficult!
After the end you can just wait w/o doing anything? :|[/quote]

I think you can feed a tear directly to the Noman but the results vary from NMF 1-20 if NiteBrite’s guide is still current. Seems like it’s a better bet to convert them to ToL first. The only reason I can think of to apply tears directly is if you’re still hoping to hold them back for something else after the Noman season.

Can’t check as I don’t have any Tears left, but Wiki states that feeding it directly locks if Christmas season has ended.