The first warning for Pails melting has been seen, so in two time the healers from now, your buckets will melt (according to this update).
The Noman is now priced at 15 ToL and 1 Pulsating Amber.
Well, I’ll be attempting it with 12 buckets and 9 (possibly 10) tears. Probably enough?
Probably yeah.
I wonder if anyone will try to beat my high score of survival until March 18th haha.
I currently have 400 Noman’s Friend, which at 70 loss per week gets me 6 weeks before he dies, which should put me right around mid-March. But we’ll see how much actually melts each week. I’m determining whether I’m going to add more. I have 3 ToL, 3 buckets, and 5 Tears left. I had one Tears that gave me 19 ToL!
I used a total of 12 Pails and 5 Tears towards both the Wicket price (bought it on Saturday at 12 ToL) and the Noman himself.
So far I’m at 232 Noman’s Friend and have 3 Pails left. I may also yet grind out a Tear, but that remains to be seen.
This is Noman II since Noman I already became an Elemental Secret. Fingers crossed for him.
Update: 15 Pails and 6 Tears resulted in the initial 12 ToL and 283 Noman’s Friend, which should be enough lest something unexpected happens. And now we wait.
And since the Wicket closes on Monday 1st this year, could’ve safely delayed more and avoided one week of Noman’s Friend loss. Ah well.
edited by xenopus on 1/31/2016
I’ve used 18 Pails, evaporated 4 Vials of Tears and this, together with an unexpected bonus of 18 Noman’s Friend I got from buying cheap, took me all the way up to 337 Noman’s Friend (including the 100 you get at creation). My first Time the Healer since creation has just come and brought me down to 281, which means, if the upper limit of 70 loss per week still holds and Lilac turns up as expected, that I should be fine until the tattoo parlour opens again for business. Here’s hoping it won’t all be in vain!
Whelp, I’ve thrown my hat in for another attempt. Just bought my Noman, and have cashed in my first pail, with 12 taste waiting to be given, and 4 pails left to go. Plus 40 tears. I’ve already lost three tears to huffing, but I’m pretty sure I can make it.
I actually tried this on the first year that the Noman showed itself - bought on on the first week, and kept it going until the first week of the Feast, by feeding it tears direct. Gave up at that point because I thought the reward would be for the beginning of the feast, as tattoos hadn’t been a thing up until then. Here’s hoping I do better this time.
edited by RandomWalker on 1/26/2016
Well, it’s disappoint to see that I COULD have waited until today to get my Noman, but no great loss. Unfortunately, I decided to try for a couple replacement tears in the Nadir and managed to lose two tears to heating (as I was trying to get to 7 Taste). So… that was probably foolish of me.
My Noman is formed and all lacred up. Both of my tears popped on the first huff so I’m currently sitting at 364 Norman’s Friend with 6 taste I can throw on it if things look like they’re getting close. It should be enough. Hopefully. Maybe. I guess there’s not much left to do but wait and see.
For anyone that hasn’t noticed, this just got a lot harder all of sudden:
http://community.failbettergames.com/topic21457-nomans-friend-loss-data.aspx?Page=7
Interesting. Distressing, but interesting. Three weeks should still be feasible with those numbers. But I guess we’ll see.
Hi there, i wasnt aware of the thread :) i dont do forum that much…
I had 21 pails and 11 tears to start with
now im on 0 pails 5 tears and 229 Noman’s friend (and 0 of FBG’s friend)
I’ve spent money to get those tears, well most of them, i could have gone higher with my NF quality, but i had 300+ and i didnt see need to waste more tears. Now i know im not going to get the tattoo because even if i’d give the remaining tears to noman it will most likely wont be enough to keep him alive through 3 more Tim the Hitler’s visits.
Im disgusted by the cheap shot like this, no heads up what so ever is very much unlike FBG regarding established content changes.
5 Tears, or 50 Noman’s Friend average, 3 weeks, 1400 actions if you’re only spending 100 actions a day, 1250 echoes of Tears if that’s all you did, or exactly 4 Tears/40 Noman’s Friend. Assuming average luck, you’ve got a reasonable chance to make it.
5 Tears should be 65 Noman’s Friend on average.
For anyone who’s curious about melting rates based on this year’s data:
- first week of melting (Jan 9-16) 21-50 (average 33)
- second week of melting (Jan 16-23) 34-64 (average 48)
- third week of melting (Jan 23-30) 42-61 (average 52.5)
- fourth week of melting (Jan 31-present) 93-119 (average 102)
I’m going to hazard a wild guess that you’re likely to lose an average of 210 Noman’s friend for this week and next week combined, but that could be as high as 240 or as low as 180. After that, you probably have one more TTH to go, and hmm… I’m going to guess that the melt rate won’t increase again until close to the end of February.
If I were setting this up – given the assignment of "balance one of the hardest challenges in FL, only for the truly dedicated and accordingly rare" – I would probably peg the "100% guaranteed a Noman" cost at 11 months of grinding Tears, plus every pail and ToL you can get at Xmas without Fate. No room for anything else, no getting lodgings and a tattoo in the same year, no popping Nomen for elemental secrets (or quirks, if you’re me), no throwing your pails in the river for science. Anything less than that – you can maaaaybe get a Noman, but it’s a gamble. That’s probably more difficult than the current requirements, but ramping up difficulty as the community learns to optimize clearly has its drawbacks, and it’s probably feasible to calculate the maximum possible difficulty.
Furak, you clearly still have a shot at a Noman, but it’s not guaranteed. (Maybe around a 50/50 chance.) And perhaps it really shouldn’t be guaranteed unless you did every single last thing correctly and rigorously for most of a year; otherwise, from what I understand the intended way the tattoo works would be broken. If you’re averse to gambling, it’s a very long haul (or a Fate spend).
edited by metasynthie on 2/3/2016
[quote=metasynthie]5 Tears should be 65 Noman’s Friend on average.
For anyone who’s curious about melting rates based on this year’s data:
- first week of melting (Jan 9-16) 21-50 (average 33)
- second week of melting (Jan 16-23) 34-64 (average 48)
- third week of melting (Jan 23-30) 42-61 (average 52.5)
- fourth week of melting (Jan 31-present) 93-119 (average 102)
I’m going to hazard a wild guess that you’re likely to lose an average of 210 Noman’s friend for this week and next week combined, but that could be as high as 240 or as low as 180. After that, you probably have one more TTH to go, and hmm… I’m going to guess that the melt rate won’t increase again until close to the end of February.
If I were setting this up, I would probably peg the "guaranteed a Noman" cost at 11 months of grinding Tears. Anything less than that would be a gamble.
Furak, you clearly still have a shot at a Noman, but it’s not guaranteed. (Maybe around a 50/50 chance.) At it really shouldn’t be unless you did every single last thing correctly and rigorously for most of a year; otherwise, from what I understand the intended way the tattoo works would be broken. If you’re averse to gambling, it’s a very long haul (or a Fate spend).[/quote]
i dont care anymore, i canceled my subscription, i’m stopping playing too. The noman tattoo was one of the things i was looking forward since the last February. Changes like these are unfair and just plain nasty. Im not going to support developers who think it’s fine to do that.[li]
The developers are not the ones who led you to believe your preparations were sufficient, and it’s very nasty of you to blame them for that. Especially when all that’s been removed is your "guarantee of success," not the success or its possibility.
Edited to add, for anyone who isn’t giving up, there are quite a few people (including me) who are happy to help people get as many Tears as possible, see the other thread: http://community.failbettergames.com/topic21457-nomans-friend-loss-data.aspx?Page=9
edited by metasynthie on 2/3/2016
I guess it is the problem with expectations - most of these players merely saw "A Noman Tattoo requires a Noman in Feburary" in game, the in game text merely says "No extra reward if you bring Noman to speak with Lilac", and some such. It is a huge undertaking, but it is not explicitly stated as a perilous undertaking, or that it has to be rare and prestigious.
It doesn’t really tell the player "This is a significant challenge with moving goalposts" and some such. Granted, games are not obliged to coddle players, but on the flip side Fallen London is not exactly hardcore survival something something. It doesn’t help that Noman, so far, seems to be a war of attrition to me.
I suspect most players who were expecting they could definitely get a Noman (or that they’d have a good shot) read NiteBrite’s guide on what to do. Without that guide and some related comments on forums, practically everyone would be rather lost as to how to proceed – or what to expect.
It’s a very thorough guide – created, I’m sure, out of a sincere desire for community collaboration and to help more people pull off a very challenging task!
A more experienced player reading the guide can look at it and see that there’s a lot of uncertainty involved, not just from random melting amounts but even in exact dates that can change from year to year. It may be worth worrying that less experienced players, or people who didn’t read closely enough, might get the impression that the guide is, in fact, “instructions on how you will be able to get your Noman tattoo” when that’s not what it ever was.
The guide and forum activity also have the effect of making the Noman tattoo easier to get, as Chris posted. This almost always happens over time in a community of players, and it’s what necessitates either making things extremely difficult to begin with, being very sneaky, or upsetting people with a difficulty increase. The only other alternative is “give up on what the Noman tattoo was supposed to be, let it become an easier box to check off your To-DO list” which, I suppose, is what you do if you feel you need to avoid upsetting people.
It feels right, anyone that’s taken part in the IroNoman so far is now getting one free Starveling Cat from the Café. I will still have more than 77*2 Starveling Cats left, so this is easy for me.