Funding an Expedition

If you get into the university, improving your connection with Benthenic gives you a solid 60 whispered secrets per action and that option is available most of the term. The university also provides a nightmare reduction action thats available nearly the entire term and which also gives out primordial shrieks (enjoying the pace of the university or something), thus if you are grinding up materials for the nadir or going on expeditions for skulls, that may be an advisable option.

Also once you get into the university the other option on enjoying the pace of academic life gives whispered secrets and the early term passing option of attending a feast at Summerset reduces wounds as well as giving secrets. It’s been a while but I think they are both around 90 secrets an action.
You need Scholar of the Correspondence to do them though so don’t just buy your way into the University wait until you are a Scholar.

Worth noting that completing an Expedition doesn’t get rid of excess supplies. If you can wait, it might be worth it to max out the amount of supplies you can get at 100, then dig in from there. Just so that you don’t fail because you don’t have enough.

[quote=LukeMcMillan]I think the best grinding-for-the-sake-of-expeditions is getting jade from the unfinished business in Watchmaker’s Hill (240 jade for 2 actions, meaning 120 per action) and convert them in whispered secrets from the Tiger Keeper. But you need to be POSI for that.
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[li]
Just to add some math, this converting-to-secrets method produces 132 secrets per action and raises dangerous (from Unfinished Business). This is superior to the equivalent Unfinished Business methods for amber (higher payout but luck-based*) or rostygold (lower payout). It is also superior to acquiring amber from working for Jasper and Frank at Mahogany hall which ends up producing 123.2 secrets per action.

*Not being too clear about what &quotA matter of luck, pretty good odds&quot means in terms of probability (is that 0.75? 0.66?), I can’t provide a firm estimate on that.

My own perspective is that you’re gonna need the skull, so if you can’t beg/borrow/steal one off someone here, you might as well get your secrets from Seeking Curios in Forgotten Quarter while looking for a skull to pop up. I also think the timesink of trying to get 6 skulls is ridiculous compared to the cost of buying the cinder outright with echos or connections, so just stop when you get the one skull and do something more productive.

I have a few thousand Whispered Secrets and full actions, but the option to trade secrets for supplies remains grayed out even when I meet the requirements for it. Usually this starts happening each time I try to start and expedition, after 3 or 4 times using the “Rumors of Treasure” action. Pretty frustrating, as I have quite enough of the required item to use it.

You probably have 100 supply crates after which you can’t get more. You say that this happens after you try to start an expedition; more details?
And, as many will suggest, use Dock Favours to gain supplies and here’s a neat guide regarding more aspects of the expedition.

Whew, I wish I had 100 supply crates, but alas, this often happens when I have less than 10. I’ll try to be more concise:

I’m in the “Prepare for an Exepedition in the Forgotten Quarter” storylet. I don’t have enough Dock Renown yet to use that option. My best option at the moment is to use “Rumors of Treasure” but when I try to use it, it often allows me to do it a few times and then grays out even though I seem to meet all the requirements to continue to use it. (Enough energy and enough Whispered Secrets, less than 99 supply crates). Its worth noting that i play the game using the mobile app.

If you don’t yet have enough Docks Reknown, you can use the Carnival for the first few levels (up to 5). Note that each action gives you 1 Favour each time, so you’ll want to use some of the Favours in some fashion (Calling in Favours at Wolfstack Docks is an option). You then can use the Tankard to convert extra Favours to Reknown - if you ended the Carnival sequence with 7 of them, that should help you get to Level 6.

Your situation with the Whispered Hints is odd, but note that it uses 200 at a time: even if you have ‘several thousand’ it doesn’t take that many to go through that many of them.

Oh dear, I understand what I was doing wrong now. I don’t have several thousand whispered hints. I have several thousand cryptic clues. Oh, hubris!

If you’ve got access to the Labyrinth of Tigers, and have Jade Fragments stored up (or are a POSI and want to grind for those with Unfinished Business in Watchmaker’s Hill), then proceed through the First Coil until you’re able to Barter with the Tiger Keeper. Trade in 1000 Jade for 1100 Whispered Hints. It’s not as efficient as spending Favours: Docks, but it also doesn’t rely on Opportunity Cards either, which is handy if you need a lot of supplies in a hurry.
(Even if you don’t have POSI, proceeding far enough through the Dangerous storylines to get you to the Labyrinth and then doing its carousels until you have Making Progress in the Labyrinth of Tigers at 7 is enough to let you make the trade using any Jade you’ve already acquired.)

Out of curiosity, which expedition(s) are you going for? :-)
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edited by Kittenpox on 5/18/2016