Noman Tattoo (Guide)
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Early PoSI Content and Onwards |
Acquiring The Face in the Snow tattoo, 
A Private Tattoo of your Noman, Inscribed in Gant or 
Memories of a Doubled Spring is a difficult endeavour, requiring a great deal of preparation, timing, and some luck. This guide is meant to help with the first two, and mitigate the need for the last.
Outline[edit]
The creation of a Noman can take place at any point from the opening of Penstock's Wicket (on January 5th, when you play the twelfth visit from Mr Sacks) until when it closes; in 2022, this happened on the 29th. The Noman begins with 100 
Noman's Friend, some of which is taken away each time Time, the Healer arrives - the exact amount depending on the length of time since the Wicket opened and on random chance. Once Noman's Friend reaches zero, the Noman dies, so in order to get the tattoo one must gain enough Noman's Friend to keep it alive until the second week of the Feast of the Rose. In recent years, the Feast has begun on a non-Friday weekday between the 4th and the 6th; as such, the finishline is likely to occur on 13th February 2025.
The best way of getting a large amount of Noman's Friend is to acquire 
Putting the Pieces Together: the Taste of Lacre by warming Vials of Tears of the Bazaar; this has a 4 in 5 chance of giving one PtPT:tToL, and a 1 in 5 chance of giving 2 PtPT:tToL and consuming the Vial. If you have a point of PtPT:tToL, this will allow you to get up to 11-12 PtPT:tToL (depending on luck), with each vial producing 6 on average; then using the Noman card this can be converted to 33-36 Noman's Friend. If you know how to grind Vials, then the tricky part becomes getting that first point of PtPT:tToL, as by this point both the Days of Mr Sacks and Advent will be over. Thus, this method may only be used as many times as you have Unusual Pails of So-Called Snow.
This places a bit of a time constraint on feeding the Noman, as Pails usually melt with the Time, the Healer immediately after the Wicket closes; as such, depending on your exact TtH day and the amount of Noman's Friend you need to acquire, it may be wise to create a Noman sooner than is strictly optimal in order to ensure you get all the converting done. You'll have about a week to draw an Abundant Frequency card at most five times.[1]
Noman Tattoo[edit]
Initial Costs[edit]
The strategy presented here relies on purchasing a Noman at its most expensive, which is 15 ToL. You can fund most of this with the free Pails and Taste of Lacre from Advent, Snowbound, and the 12 Days of Mr Sacks but any shortages (either from picking different options during the Days of Mr Sacks, getting Incarnadine Robes from your Snowbound, or just having already spent it) will have to be replaced with Tears of the Bazaar or purchased Pails. Here are a few ways to get to 15, although there are many other combinations:
Planned in Advance[edit]
Uses 7 Pails, 4 uncapped ToL gains; requires Dangerous 334 (or close to it)
- 0->3: Use 1 x Pail to Examine through a Monocle
- 3->4: Gain 1 ToL from the Advent calendar
- 4->5: Use 1 x Pail to Dip a Soul
- 5->8: Use 1 x Pail to Examine through a Monocle
- 8->11: Gain 3 ToL from the 12 Days of Sacksmas (Days 2, 5, 8)
- 11->15: Use 4 x Pails to Feed it to a Boar. Saving a Mood Card may help you get 100% on the Dangerous challenge.
Planned but undangerous[edit]
Uses 3 Pails, 4 uncapped ToL gains, and 1-2 Tears
- 0->3: Use 1 x Pail to Examine through a Monocle
- 3->4: Use 1 x Pail to Dip a Soul
- 4->7: Use 1 x Pail to Examine through a Monocle
- 7->11: Use 1 Tear, or 2 if you're unlucky.
- 11->12: Gain 1 ToL from the Advent Calendar
- 12->15: Gain 3 ToL from the 12 Days of Sacksmas (Days 2, 5, 8)
Saving Pails[edit]
Uses 1 Pail, 4 uncapped ToL gains, 1-4 Tears
- 0->3: Use 1 x Pail to Examine through a Monocle
- 3->11: Use 1-4 Tears (average of 1.33)
- 11->12: Gain 1 ToL from the Advent Calendar
- 12->15: Gain 3 ToL from the 12 Days of Sacksmas (Days 2, 5, 8)
Past Sacks, No Tears[edit]
Uses 11 Pails; requires Dangerous 334 (or close to it)
- 0->3: Use 1 x Pail to Examine through a Monocle
- 3->5: Use 2 x Pail to Dip a Soul
- 5->8: Use 1 x Pail to Examine through a Monocle
- 8->15: Use 7 x Pail to Feed it to a Boar. Saving a Mood Card may help you get 100% on the Dangerous challenge.
Past Sacks, Yes Tears[edit]
Uses 6+ Pails, 1-2 Tears
- 0->6: Use 2 x Pail to Examine through a Monocle
- 6->11: Use 1-2 Tears. May get you to 12, saving you a Pail in the next step.
- 11->15: Use 4 x Pail (or more, based on your Dangerous and luck) to Feed it to a Boar
Step by Step[edit]
1. Find your Noman creation day according to the table below. If you are nervous about drawing Noman's Progress enough times between your creation day and January 29, you may wish to amass more Unusual Pail of So-Called Snow and 
Vial of Tears of the Bazaar than required and do your creation a week earlier.
2. On Noman creation day after your Time, the Healer arrives, make your Noman at The Noman, giving 100 x Noman's Friend.
3. If you have no Putting the Pieces Together: the Taste of Lacre, use Unusual Pail of So-Called Snow and Examine it through your Semiotic Monocle to raise Taste of Lacre (ToL) to 3.
4. Once you have any ToL, Warm your Tears of the Bazaar until you have 11 ToL. It is possible, but less likely, to end up with 12 ToL if a Vial is used up when warming at 10 ToL. Vials are used up 20% of the time, so you should use the tables below to calculate how many you need to be safe if you're very unlucky.
5. Once you have maxed out your Tear-warming ToL, convert to (3*Taste of Lacre) x Noman's Friend via "Help me. I beg you." This is on an Abundant Frequency opportunity card. Because you will be turning in 11-12 Taste of Lacre, you will gain 33-36 Noman's Friend (NF).
6. Repeat steps 3-5 until you have one more NF than the maximum NF loss calculated in the below table, or whatever higher number if you aimed for a higher target.
7. Watch as your NF drops week to week, until the second week of Feast of the Rose (Guide). Then get An Incident: Get a private tattoo of your noman and you're done!
The Numbers[edit]
Each time Time, the Healer arrives, you will lose between (1.75 × D)+3 and (1.75 × D)+36 Noman's Friend, where D is the number of days since January 5th - so for example, if your TtH came on the 6th (and you'd already made a Noman) you'd lose between 5 and 38 Noman's Friend. Meanwhile, the Taste of Lacre cost for making a Noman only increases by ~0.8 per day, to a maximum of 15 (reached on the 17th), so generally it's a good idea to wait until after the last of your Time, the Healers which falls in the period the Wicket is open to make your Noman.
The numbers that follow are estimates for Christmas 2024, assuming that the Wicket closes on the last Friday of January (the 31st), the Feast opens on the first Thursday of February (the 6th) and the Noman's Friend loss scales as it did last year. These assumptions may not hold true, and adding a healthy margin for error on top may be wise.
Note that the worst-case scenario most years is a loss of 276 Noman's Friend; as such, you need only acquire an extra 176, which may be done with 6 Pails and an average of 7 vials - even if you're incredibly unlucky, you'll need at most 21 vials.[2] On years when the Feast begins particularly early, depending on your Time, the Healer day, you may need no additional vials at all.
Fortunately, it is possible to reach ToL 15 with five pails left over even if you started the season with no ToL, so you'll only need to purchase a single pail from the urchins. You gain 1 from Advent, then use a pail with Examine it through your Semiotic Monocle to get to 4, then Warm your Tears of the Bazaar to get to 11 (uses on average another 1.17 Vials and at most 4), then use the Mr Sacks cards to gain 4 ToL and a Pail (requires that you be a Celestial or a Notary or Doctor). See Christmas (Guide) and 12 Days of Mr Sacks (Guide) for more information on this.
Future Years[edit]
Pre-Season Preparations[edit]
The amount of preparation you need to do depends heavily on what day of the week your Time, the Healer falls on and how lucky you feel, but is at absolute most grinding x 21 Vial of Tears of the Bazaar. The most reliable, though not necessarily most action-efficient, way to do this will usually be to grind 
x 25 Fourth-City Echo per desired Vial and wait for a Vials week at The Rat Market (Guide).
Memories of a Doubled Spring[edit]
The newer noman-survival-based-vanity, Memories of a Doubled Spring, is gained by having a Noman survive to early May so it can experience 
De Gustibus in Whitsun. This is significantly more difficult than the tattoo, not just because of the substantially higher resource investment, but also because the volumes involve introduce multiple new time-limited chokepoints.
Timeline[edit]
- through November
- Gather Supplies
- As a rough estimate, this achievement requires around 100 x Vial of Tears of the Bazaar,
120 x Night-Whisper, and 
840 x Storm-Threnody. You should try to obtain these before the first 
SNOWBOUND!, as you will not have many actions to spare afterwards. - I'll try to get more precise number soon!
- December
- Trading Pails
- Trade your Wild Word items for Pails of Snow. This can be done between the first SNOWBOUND! through 29 January. While it is possible to continue drawing this in January, you may want to accomplish the bulk of this in December to reserve actions for warming Tears.
- You need to draw the Urchin's faction card for each pail. Even accounting for random draws and your free weekly
Favourable Circumstance, you will probably need to force-draw this card around 100 times by spending Notability on Favourable Circumstances. - Favourable Circumstances cost 7 Notability, although you will want to have 8 before you buy one so that you are still Notable afterwards. A character with at least 41 points of BDR can bring themselves up from 1 Notability to 8 by simply calling on the Amanuensis repeatedly, a process that takes 16 actions per Pail. Characters will lesser gear will need to spend additional time generating Making Waves.
- A character with at least 38 points of BDR and a trusted accomplice could perform this process by buying Circumstances with only 7 Notability, and benefiting from a Social Action to gain the first point of Notability.
- January
- Warming Tears
- Making a Noman first becomes available on January 5. As described below, you will probably want to make a Noman early rather than late so that you can draw the card as often as possible before Pails melt. To help draw the card more, review the guide for deck thinning and also make use of deck-refresh options like
Tin of Murgatroyd's Jellied Mushroom Cakes and one of the Perks available in the House of Chimes. - February through May
- Track progress against expectations with the calculators that I will hopefully write before then. If it looks necessary, you can expend more Tears at a less-efficient rate to give an existing Noman a boost.
The Numbers[edit]
Note that, although anything less than these safe values is theoretically capable of ending in failure, in practice the chances of having that many vials get used up first time are vanishingly small. Below is a table of maximum losses and corresponding vial percentiles - that is, the amount of vials you would need to have a given percentage chance of success.
| Noman's Friend Loss | 95% | 99% | 99.5% | 99.9% | 99.99% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2410 | 106 | 111 | 113 | 117 | 122 |
| 2438 | 108 | 113 | 115 | 119 | 123 |
| 2466 | 109 | 114 | 116 | 120 | 125 |
| 2546 | 112 | 118 | 119 | 123 | 128 |
| 2576 | 114 | 119 | 121 | 125 | 130 |
| 2605 | 115 | 120 | 122 | 126 | 131 |
| 2635 | 116 | 122 | 123 | 128 | 132 |
| 2665 | 118 | 123 | 125 | 129 | 134 |
| 2695 | 119 | 124 | 126 | 130 | 135 |
| 2724 | 120 | 126 | 128 | 132 | 137 |
| 2806 | 124 | 129 | 131 | 135 | 140 |
Future Years[edit]
- ↑ As seen in the next section, at most six conversions of ToL into Noman's Friend are needed, so you need to do five conversions and then observe the last pail before the deadline.
- ↑ The method here is to examine each pail with a
Semiotic Monocle, gaining 3 ToL, then warm the Tears until you reach 10 or 11.
