Fretling
Posts: 529
2/14/2015
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It's a thing that some farther-along captains can do if they want, not a thing that every captain needs to do (and certainly not new captains).
If it's a wall, it's a decorative wall in a garden somewhere off by the roadside; if you want to get off and have a gander, that's your prerogative, but nobody's telling you to go out of your way to climb it.
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NiteBrite
Posts: 1019
2/14/2015
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Trading isn't there for profit, its for quest completion and survival in a pinch. Like, paying 30 echos for 1 fuel is ridiculous, but if you've run out of fuel right as you pull into a port that sells fuel at that price you aren't going to say "no". Similarly you might need a very specific item sold only at that specific port to complete a quest (ex. a mirror box from the khan's shadow, mutersalt from wither, etc.). Some goods are unique and require travel to acquire. Other items are a matter of convenience. Maybe you want to take coffee to the khanate but don't want to zail all the way back to london just to pick some up. Thankfully, Adam's way sells some so you are set. And so trade goes. Its more a matter of convenience and emergency life support than profit.
That said, there is quite a lot of legit profitable trades out there (souls to the brass embassy, wine to godfall, the merchant venturer quests, etc). They are just difficult to find when you are new, but that's where the community, the wiki, and just plain experience playing over and over step in to help fill the gaps in your knowledge. We can be very accomodating min-maxers and profiteers if you have very specific questions 
edited by NiteBrite on 2/14/2015
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I AM currently accepting calling cards.
Stats loss counter: reset, irrigo equivalent: none
[00:34] <@ortab> NiteBrite's laugh is that of a condemned soul gazing into the abyss.
Merciless Modiste avatar by Paul Arendt (based on an original image by Joe England)
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/TheBriteModiste
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SporksAreGoodForYou
Posts: 291
2/14/2015
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I noticed the text at the beginning saying trading wasn't profitable. And it's not, really. In my mind, the trading was less about finding routes which make money, and more about having places to buy things you need for quests, and places to sell booty you acquire in your adventures.
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penknife
Posts: 85
2/14/2015
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Trading exists because there are a few ways to make money from trading in the late game when you have a big ship and can make long voyages safely, and because various goods are needed to play through storylines -- you'll often need some wine, or honey, or souls, or candles -- and you have to be able to buy them somewhere, and so that you can sell the things you acquire from sinking ships, killing beasts, and doing storylets. But, yes, you mainly make money by exploring, fighting enemies, and playing through stories. I'm not sure why trading is so powerfully attractive to some players despite the message you get the moment you first visit the shops in London telling you it's difficult to make a profit that way.
edited by penknife on 2/14/2015
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Penknife
Most social actions welcome, no SMEN or Boxed Cats please.
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Gideon Xanthous
Posts: 36
2/14/2015
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Trade in this game is about forward thinking and planning. You need to know how much you're going to need to make a decent way into the trip, where things cost more or less, where you can sell things for a bargain where, and how to balance that all out in your cargo space.
Is it really that hard to figure out that you need to PLAN these things out from what you SEE when you go from port to port? Of course fuel for 30 echoes a barrel sucks, don't buy fuel there, buy it from Mt. Palmerston, The Iron Republic, Apis Meet, or Khan's Heart or Shadow where they are all cheaper. Pick up tons of supplies from the Mangrove College, other places where they're cheaper.
Trade is not going to handed to you on a silver platter, nor is this specifically a trading sim! You have to figure out ways to beat it at its own game. I did, and I didn't even use the mirrorcatch boxes and surface exploit in order to beat the wealth goal. Its not easy, nor is it quick, but the stories are there to keep you interested and playing as you work towards that eventual goal.
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Christian Nicholls
Posts: 54
2/14/2015
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I tend to think of the shops like real life. I'm probably not going to be able to make money buying things from shops and reselling them, although some people do manage to do so using ebay etc, but sometimes I need something and have to give someone money for it and sometimes I have stuff I don't need and appreciate being able to give it to someone and get some money.
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Impish Axile
Posts: 50
2/14/2015
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SporksAreGoodForYou wrote:
I noticed the text at the beginning saying trading wasn't profitable. And it's not, really. In my mind, the trading was less about finding routes which make money, and more about having places to buy things you need for quests, and places to sell booty you acquire in your adventures.
Very succinct!
TBF though, technically they DO describe the game as "A game of survival, trade and exploration", and really probably shouldn't :P
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Fretling
Posts: 529
2/14/2015
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Yeah, that should probably be changed to match the tagline they're using elsewhere: "A game of exploration, survival, and loneliness."
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GerbilSchooler
Posts: 86
2/14/2015
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You can make money trading (It's harder with the starting ship, but doable) Sapphires From Carnelian to Polythreme, for one (9 echoes profit on each crate) and Coffee to Vienna (52 echoes profit about per bag?)It helps to have the merchant cruiser. But, trading works. I always make sure to do at least two trade runs of something on my ventures out
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Nocculi
Posts: 22
2/15/2015
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Yeah, I don't really think of this game as "having trading?" Rather, it has:
1) A whole bunch of storylets that give you stuff!
2) Another whole bunch of storylets that require stuff, and
3) A bunch of ways to offload stuff you got that you don't need.
4) Plus some minor variations in buying and selling prices to make things a little more interesting. ("I'm going to need a bunch of candles for Godfall, but since I'm swinging by the south anyways I can pick them up at the Carnelian Coast and save a little money...")
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FreedomFighter
Posts: 17
2/15/2015
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GerbilSchooler wrote:
You can make money trading (It's harder with the starting ship, but doable) Sapphires From Carnelian to Polythreme, for one (9 echoes profit on each crate) and Coffee to Vienna (52 echoes profit about per bag?)It helps to have the merchant cruiser. But, trading works. I always make sure to do at least two trade runs of something on my ventures out
Work but doesn't worth. If trading is stuck with quest then i wouldn't mind. The game make it like this is kinda bait new player to think that they need to grind for echoes before they can do anything. Sure that the game is about learning and exploration but trading show up first before anything else, you think what are they going to do? Trading, because they need some funds for their expedition.
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Riesbyfe
Posts: 6
2/15/2015
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Well, with merchant ship and some particular complex route you can get up to 3400 Echos per run(not counting fuel/supplies but port reports will partly cover them). If this is not trading then I don't even know what do you want.
edited by Riesbyfe on 2/15/2015
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FreedomFighter
Posts: 17
2/15/2015
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Riesbyfe wrote:
Well, with merchant ship and some particular complex route you can get up to 3400 Echos per run(not counting fuel/supplies but port reports will partly cover them). If this is not trading then I don't even know what do you want.
edited by Riesbyfe on 2/15/2015
Wasting time to do somethings that is not the strong part of this game? It want you to dive into the story but restrict you to do so by don't give player a clue on how to do it. Forget trading, just praise the sunlight.
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FogChicken1
Posts: 29
2/16/2015
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Sunless Sea is not a trading game, it's a story/exploration game with trading.
You can trade profitably (sometimes very profitably) if you have a lot of capital and a lot of game knowledge, and once you know the routes and opportunities you can often make trades to add some margin on your longer trips even if it's not enough to pay for the trip on its own. However you can't bootstrap as a pure trader. I really wonder if they ought to put this in the tutorial, given how many people we hear about who have tried to do exactly this and ended up frustrated - although I think the splash screen is intended to make the point.
People forget that Elite wasn't a pure trading game either. The heart of the game (and most of what made it a great game for its time) was space combat. The trading aspect, while required to make money, was actually extremely simplistic and would have become boring very quickly if it had been a standalone game. What made it interesting was the interaction - the best trading destinations were often the most dangerous and pirate-infested ones, so you needed to get good at space combat to be a good trader and vice versa. Sunless Sea is not a space combat game, it's a story and exploration game - particularly the long-running stories like the officer stories, or the port stories that play out over multiple visits. But the interaction is similar. If you try to be a trader while skipping the story and exploration element entirely, you won't succeed, any more than you would have succeeded as a trader in Elite by avoiding all the worlds with pirates/space combat.
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SouthSea Rutherby
Posts: 224
2/16/2015
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To be honest, I like the fact that I have to look for trade opportunities that actually make a profit. Until I find a few good ones, I usually will only use trading to offset fuel costs -- fuel in Fallen London is 10 echoes apiece, but if you bring wine to Venderbright suddenly it's only eight, because the profit from the wine offsets the fuel costs.
It's supposed to be rare, not a grind, after all.
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Now the proud captain of Mr. Eaten's Revenge
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Shadow
Posts: 49
2/16/2015
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I suppose some of the confusion concerning trade comes from the mixed messages the game gives you. A loading screen tip might tell you trading isn't specially profitable, but then it includes trade and smuggling in its key features (check Steam page), which coupled with the very existence of the Merchant Cruiser gives a stronger, contradictory message. Why does a ship completely dedicated to an unadvisable playstyle even exist?
In more ways than one, Sunless Sea is a game of contradictions. A game which tries to be different from Fallen London, but at the same time consciously attempts to stamp out the potential of most everything that isn't FL-like story-chasing. There's plenty of room for more than stories, more cross-factional interaction, world life, better trading, more combat integration, upgrade mechanics which are more than a single step to late-game stuff (because everything inbetween is a waste of time and echoes). But the game takes a step in the right direction and then, at least, half a step back.
The ultimate paradox is that it's a game which encourages exploration and risk-taking above all, but doesn't dare explore and take risks itself, with its own formulae. It's poetic irony that Sunless Sea stays too close to Fallen London, something the game itself should know, better than anyone else, that is not the way to riches.
Shadow's Judgement is coalescing...
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In Her Enduring Majesty's Service
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ElectricPaladin
Posts: 43
2/16/2015
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Hi, this is my first post here. I only just started playing Sunless Sea a couple of days ago. I've died a lot. However, I can confidently respond to this with three points:
First, I've played a lot of Angband, and the thing I've seen in that procedurally-generated game is that caution kills. If you play it safe, you will eventually encounter an unlikely critter that kills you. If you delve boldly, you stand a chance of finding something good or accumulating the necessary resources to survive those chances.
Second, try the Iron Republic. Some of their market's permutations sell stuff for a price such that you can resell it in London at a profit.
Three: if you can find the Funging Station and you have enough fuel (easy to acquire from doing port reports, because you both get fuel AND get favor, which you can trade for fuel), I think you can set up a pretty decent trading route between the Funging Station and Abbey Rock. The nuns there will buy supplies for 20e a pop.
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A dangerous and persuasive gentleman recently returned to the 'Neath, eager to respond to any and all invitations. You can find me at my lodgings
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Garthand
Posts: 17
2/16/2015
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The only ways I've found to make any money, which in turn help finance exploration and the accompanying stories, are through the Salt Lions, running coffee to the surface, or sunlight. My first voyage is generally a mad dash to try and find the Salt Lions, while my subsequent trips are just completing that storyline. Then I usually run coffee up to the surface via the Cumaean Canal and take some of the Mediterranean trading routes when possible. Once I've finished that storyline too, I usually go straight for sunlight trading if I can find Khan's shadow. Since the Blind Bruiser pays the same as the Isle of Cats does on a successful Veils challenge (and only requires you to click once to sell all of your crates), he's pretty much my favorite person. Occasionally you'll need to do a smuggling run for him to stay on his good side, but it's still the best way to make money I've found.
If they nerf/remove sunlight trading (as most people seem so eager for), then you won't really be able to make money aside from those two stories without grinding out trade routes (like clay men to London) several hundred times.
edited by Garthand on 2/16/2015
edited by Garthand on 2/16/2015
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fortluna
Posts: 306
2/16/2015
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From the Sunless Sea roadmap: "Trade is not, and never will be, the focus of the game - but there is a modest internal market for opportunistic traders."
People would probably ask for a merchant ship if one wasn't available, in between being annoyed about opportunities not taken, too much focus on combat, lack of verisimilitude without trade, etc etc. Trading/smuggling may be a part of certain storylines, but I have to say on my own that I never thought about exclusively playing this game to trade stuff. (?)
Maybe the venturer is activated too early and gives zee-captains a bad example to follow? I got the impression that trade wouldn't be a big part in game since he's singular enough to be the only Merchant Venturer your captain gets to know.
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WormApotheote
Posts: 725
2/16/2015
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FogChicken1 wrote:
Sunless Sea is not a trading game, it's a story/exploration game with trading.
You can trade profitably (sometimes very profitably) if you have a lot of capital and a lot of game knowledge, and once you know the routes and opportunities you can often make trades to add some margin on your longer trips even if it's not enough to pay for the trip on its own. However you can't bootstrap as a pure trader. I really wonder if they ought to put this in the tutorial, given how many people we hear about who have tried to do exactly this and ended up frustrated - although I think the splash screen is intended to make the point.
The text of the wolfstack exchange pretty much says that already though. "It is difficult for a small trader to turn a profit buying at bulk prices. Look for other opportunities." I'm not quite sure how much more clear you can get.
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No, I don't pull the Eater of Names.
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