Now that I have the full Screaming Map, and therefore have something to do other than grinding the Velocipede Squard quest endlessly, I must reduce my capacity to 1. I apologize for the sharp decline, but the action points do add up.

By the way, I managed to get an extra 30 First City Coins recently. Any Marvellers need them?

Edit: Oh, and another request -- no menace-related social actions, please. They're inefficient. Get a Winsome Depressed Orphan for Nightmares, get some Making Waves points for Scandal, and ignore Wounds and Suspicion. You'll be fine.
edited by Little The on 3/17/2012

As for scandal, "making waves" CAN remove it entirely, but this costs a LOT of that quality. While that is the only use for that quality, and I'd encourage folks to take advantage of it if they have enough and their scandal gets too bad, getting the quality itself can be a pain: The only sources I know of are a yearly event (the feast of roses), and winning when doing social actions.

It's not too difficult. There are four storylet options that I mention in my initial post: Finding a way to deal with your nightmares can still be done anywhere as I recall, though dealing with the constables was recently moved to only occur at your lodgings. Dealing with scandal is under "matters of society and scandal", and dealing with wounds is under "something potentially dangerous". Probably the easiest way to understand how they work is to simply give it a shot! You say you're having trouble dealing with nightmares, so get your hands on a sudden insight if you don't have one already (via playing chess with someone), and fire off a nightmare reduction to one of our volunteers, such as myself, or even to several different volunteers if they're getting up high. Here's a little chart to see how many actions you can send out to get as close to 0 without going over, as menace reductions from social actions remove 5 at a time.

1 (1 CP): none
2 (3 CP): none
3 (6 CP): one
4 (10 CP): two
5 (15 CP): three
6 (21 CP): four
7 (28 CP): five
8 (36 CP): Can't send menace reductions from the royal bethlehem!

As you can see, a good rule of thumb is to take your menace level, and subtract two.

Also, on the subject of menace reductions being inefficient, I do not believe that to be the case. While it is theoretically possible to escape from Newgate in 2 turns, the cards to escape are excessively rare. Especially with the action cap per day being removed, it is woefully inefficient to sit around in prison flipping cards. As for scandal, "making waves" CAN remove it entirely, but this costs a LOT of that quality. While that is the only use for that quality, and I'd encourage folks to take advantage of it if they have enough and their scandal gets too bad, getting the quality itself can be a pain: The only sources I know of are a yearly event (the feast of roses), and winning when doing social actions. Unfortunately, the problem here is two-fold: Lower level folks are less likely to win against most folks (and could probably use the added second-chance anyway), and higher level folk tend to not care too much for social actions. Not to mention it seems to increase 1 CP at a time, and did I mention it plummets when you use it? I care enough about social actions that I made this thread in the first place, and even I don't have enough making waves to splurge it. Lastly on the case of nightmares, doesn't the less than laudable laudanum habit decrease the effectiveness of laudanum? The only menace I would say it's inefficient for is wounds, and that's only because past a certain, early point of watchfulness, playing chess on the boat is as effective, if not more. Provided you have the gear to consistently place you down RIGHT before going up a tier. But for folks who don't, I still offer it as an option.

Finally, a side note on reducing menaces: Keep an eye out for opportunity cards that help with them, such as "A Moment's Peace", "Official Incompetence", "A Hearty Meal. They seem to also reduce menaces by 5 CP, for only a single action and no side-effects. The only exception I've found is the "A Moral Afternoon", which has a subtle option and a regular option. I still need to see if there's any difference between the two outside of earning a confident smile for the subtle option. Also, it decreases suspicion by 1, but only by 1 CP, I need to see if it's the same for scandal, or if it's the usual 5 CP.

Apologies for my tardiness, Hex, but I couldn't send you the coins from Polythreme... However, now that I am back in the Sea of Voices, a problem occurs. Even though I am following you on Twitter, your name does not appear in the options list. Is your Facebook name being displayed instead, perhaps?

Also, Urthdigger, those two cards do give a good dollop of the quality. The rose card also increases Persuasive. I believe those cards are where I got most of my Making Waves quality (it's at twenty-something currently).