User:Fishingbrick/Jack-Of-Smiles (Guide)

What exactly is this guide for?

This guide is meant to cover both An Annoyance to Jack-of-Smiles and The Jack-of-Smiles Case. An Annoyance to Jack-Of-Smiles is a quality, and The Jack-Of-Smiles Case is a major storyline. For the sake of simplicity An Annoyance to Jack-of-Smiles will be called AAtJoS and The Jack-of-Smiles Case will be called TJoSC.

An Annoyance to Jack-Of-Smiles

This is an early game quality that has a few uses. Although it unlocks a few useful things, you do not need it to progress in any way.

How to obtain

There are only 2 ways to obtain this quality and both of them require rare successes, the percentages of which are unknown. Below is a table that shows the storylet and requirement to access it.

Storylet	Requirement	Dangerous Recommended
Get to your quarry before Jack-of-Smiles	A Name Scrawled in Blood 3-5	58
Smiles! Put that man down!	A Name Scrawled in Blood 4-7	76

It's recommended to try and get a high enough dangerous to complete the check 90% of the time, that way you'll be able to succeed the check 9/10 times, and possibly raise your dangerous to the next level. Out of the two storylets Get to your quarry before Jack-of-Smiles is better for the following reasons: It has a lower A Name Scrawled in Blood requirement and a less difficult dangerous check. However, Smiles! Put that man down! will also get the job done.

Benefits of An Annoyance to Jack-of-Smiles

There are a few benefits for having AAtJoS unlocked. The list of them is as follows:

• The next victim? Option on The Tower of Knives: Difficulties at a Smoky Flophouse which provides 0-1 Favours: Criminals and 0-1 Favours: Revolutionaries. On a rare success provides 1 Aeolian Scream. This option is a very good menace-free way of grinding Criminal and Revolutionary Favours.
• A glimpse of a dressing-room This is a Red Card in the Mirror Marches that reduces Nightmares by -2 CP.
• Jack strikes again An opportunity card that allows you to tweak 3 quirks, Magnanimous, Heartless, and Subtle. Each option increases your Someone is Coming by +1 CP, which is the most useful part of this card. This card is close to useless past the early game, however it's easily avoidable by having at least Magnanimous or Heartless 6.

A Warning

AAtJoS can go up to 4, but it is advised to only have it at 1. If you raise it to 3, something bad will happen.

Reaching AAtJoS 3, will present the storylet Mess with the Smile, get the teeth. You have no option but to proceed and doing so will lose you several faction favours and connected values. You'll lose one favour for the Bohemians, Constables, Criminals, Revolutionaries, The Church, and Urchins. You'll also lose -4 CP of Connected: The Widow. This is a one-time storylet, but there is no reason to get to AAtJoS 3 as you won't be getting very interesting text.

The Jack-of-Smiles Case

This is a major storyline spanning hundreds of actions revolving around finding out who Jack is. There are plenty of rewards at the end of the storyline with some interesting lore.

Starting Off

Unlike AAtJoS, TJoSC has some few requirements before you start. First, you have to be On the Velocipede Squad which in turn, requires you to be A Person of Some Importance. If you are not currently PoSI consult A Person of Some Importance (Guide) for more information on how to obtain it. There are a few options on how to obtain On the Velocipede Squad and they are shown below.

Option	Requirement(s)
The Inspector Calls	Dangerous 110 and one of the following: Renown: Constables 20, A Bringer of Death 1, or 1x Comprehensive Bribe.
The Velocipede Squad	Dangerous 120

The recommended course of action is going through the The Velocipede Squad as it is always available and it has less requirements.

After that going to Ladybones Road is the next course of action and going to the storylet Your turn at it. Note that you will need Watchful 130 and Dangerous 130. After that you will have TJoSC 1.