I just received the card "A Little Omen" which will raise any of my four main attributes by +30 for about one hour. Do you have any recommendations for when/how/where to use this? It would seem to me to make sense to use it when I have a full 20 actions available. I am a fairly low level character with modified attributes of: Watchful=91, Shadowy=81, Dangerous=88, and Persuasive=107. I have the following levels of "Making Your Name" completed: Alphabet=5 next need to go to the tomb of the seven, Darkness=4 next need to do a rash of burglaries, Blood=6 next need to do acquiring exhibits for the labyrinth of tigers, Flourish=5 next need to do a courtly romance.
I hate dealing with menaces so I spend most of my time on tasks/cards that give me 80+% chance of success.
Do you have any recommendations for where/when/how to use this valuable card? Thanks.
While rare, the Omen card is not exceedingly rare, so once you use it, you’ll find another one at some point. They seem to be more common than they used to be.
If you really want to maximize it’s use, start when you have 20 actions, as you say, but also when you have at least one card that refreshes actions.
As to recommendations, I use Omens for very high-risk/high-reward actions; what that means for each individual varies with their circumstances, of course.
Thank you for the response. Do you have any recommendations for “very high-risk/high-reward actions” that a player of my level (see post #1 for my level) would undertake? I could be wrong but it appears the burglaries in Flit depend on casing level not attribute level. Does the chance of success in the tomb of seven depend on attributes? When I did the previous storylet in the Forgotten Quarter - Deep Blue Heaven, I do not remember if my attribute level was important but I do know that I barely succeeded. I finished with my competitors at level 9.
It’s been so long since I’ve been at that level! Archaeological expeditions are based on Watchful, so that would be a good use of an Omen. One other thing that comes to mind is that an Omen will push any of your base stats over 100; that might be useful if you are currently trying to become of POSI.
To be honest, I do not even know what a POSI is. I know what it stands for but that is all that I know. I will look at the archeological expeditions and see what my % chance of success is with and without the boost from the omen card. One problem with those is that the arch. expedition I need which is the seven tombs is more than 20 actions, I think so that could be a problem. Perhaps if I wait until I get my weekly 10 extra actions, that might help. As I mentioned above, on a 20 supply expedition, I barely made it successfully. I do not know how I can succeed on a 30 supply expedition before my competitors reach level 10.
POSI status unlocks a WHOLE lot of new content (see my "new POSI" thread). You need 100+ in every stat, but not all at once. Once you get one of them, the Ambitious Barrister will appear and guide you through. I used mood cards to get the 100+ in my lower stats. They’re not super rare.
The archaeologist works faster if you can use the more daring approaches. Moods can help a lot here. But I’m mostly using them in my lab at the moment, now that I can buccaneer archaeology. I was using them for the Empress’ court compositions but again I can 100% those now.
Honestly I have the same question but I’m in the late game. I’ve had both mood cards in my hand for months now but I can’t think of anything to use them in that’s worth the action.
If it was me, I’d use it on the expedition. Some people swan through that, but I had nearly 100 supplies saved up and was really unlucky with the rivals. So it’s expensive to do and fail.
There are a couple of these cards floating around (the other is A Dusty Bookshop, which for bizarre reasons I’ve always liked better), and they do crop up regularly.
(As NotaWalrus says, it’s equally hard to find a good occasion to use them later on).
My character has been carrying a mood card around for a couple of years, never quite finding the right situation to use it. At this point it feels like it is pretty much dead weight. :)
Two actions late-game folks might want to use Moods:
Feed it to a Wild Boar (for those who enjoy playing with lacre)
Locate an Impossible Theorem (failure is most vexing)
And of course, a great deal of the new content has challenges that are not guaranteed successes for maxed-out stats, so use a Mood on any of those to avoid unpleasent results of failure.
Using the Mood cards as a POSI is complicated by the fact that a lot of the high risk actions in the later game don’t happen in Fallen London. So the cards aren’t as readily usable one would have to apply them immediately before traveling outside London.
Again, forgive my ignorance. I asked about a card titled “A Little Omen”. Discussion turned to the use of “mood” cards. Is “A Little Omen” an example of a “mood” card? Thanks.
Yes. There is another card ("A dusty bookshop") that works in exactly the same way as "A little omen". Collectively they are known as mood cards.
As for their late game uses, I mostly use them to advance Renown. I save them until I have 7 favours with a bunch of factions that use the same stat and with whom I can no longer raise Renown with my normal stats and use the mood to give them another push.
I just discard them nowadays. Nothing left that I need a stat bonus for.
OP: wait until you have a full candle of 20 (or 40) actions and the weekly 10-action bonus in hand. Then just use the mood to have a higher chance of success on whatever you were going to do anyway.
You should 100% discard the second mood if you couldn’t think of a use for the first one. My opinion is that you should discard the first one too, but that’s more debatable.
In the amount of time you’ve held both in your hand, you would almost certainly have redrawn at least one if you’d discarded them immediately.
The play at Carnelian is much less about stats, and more about acting in ways that are beneficial for the Empire you as governor are representing towards the two factions present there. You gain acceptance, or not, with the two factions while not losing the Imperial Legitimacy quality. Not losing it all and being obliged to depart in haste is by no means a foregone conclusion. Tricky decisions await…
@Notawalrus: Late game use? I had both Mood cards in hand, 20 actions and my weekly +10 action card when going for my final levels of Scholar of the Correspondence. Along with a lot of Plaques, they helped immeasurably! Turned a dreadful and tedious end grind into a piece of cake. I may have actually whistled “Spoonful of Sugar” while doing my last level! :)