Dreadful Surmises aren’t supposed to be easy to get your hands on though.
And they aren’t, even with this trade route. It would take a lot of grinding to get even one, at 50 Extraordinary Implications, and having the route actually be worthwhile would require a whole lot of them.
It’s only 85 Zee stories, assuming you didn’t get any Extraordinary Implications or Searing Enigmas elsewhere (which the rest of the zubmariner content has made quite a bit easier to find). That’s by no means a daunting goal, especially if you’re converting any spare memories of distant shores and Tales of Terror in Irem.
That would still be a lot to make the Iron Republic/Irem Dreadful surmise trade worthwhile. Mostly because waiting for Another Day The Iron Republic to hit the right values is so aggravating.
And if you need a quick searing enigma, you could always go Dawn Fluke hunting, assuming your pages stat is respectable. I don’t think I’ve ever passed by Grand Geode under the waves and not seen one spawn.
The sub under Chelonate (The Irrepressible) offers a nice alternative to trade routes, since it’s an easy kill and it’s always very close to the port. Killing it and passing the checks nets you either (5 Irons) or (1 Mirrors, 1 Hearts, 2 Drowning Pearls and a Lump of Blue Scintillac). It’s a pretty good deal for the mid-game
You can refuel and resupply at the Gant Pole, which is a pretty big plus.
Parabola linens in Dahut. Forget tracking them all the way back to FL! Profits now, plus free cargo space!
Found a decent enough trade route ( not as good as the one in Gant Pole, but still). Buying a ton of caskets of sapphires in Port Carnelian for 86E each then trading them in Hideaway for 2 Mutersalt each then further trading those in Anthe for 1 Scintillack each nets around 70E at London or 74E at House of Pleasures in Iron Republic. Not counting the resupply costs for the trip, that should net you 54E per casket traded.
[quote=Chafe][quote=Scienceandponies]
What ended up making me an absurd amount of money was hanging out with the old zailors in the Gant Pole and sharing zee stories. This resulted in a mountain of Extraordinary Implications. It also means a quick trip north to Irem will see you buried in more Searing Enigmas than you know what to do with. I use searing enigmas to light my cigars now.
edited by Scienceandponies on 10/17/2016[/quote]
This! Currently sat on over 100k echoes by running stygian ivory to wither to turn into tales of terror, then to irem to trade tales for zee ztories, then to the gant pole to transform into Ex. Implicatons. The gant pole turn in also gives you back 3 ToT’s to add to the routes efficiency and you can turn in the Ex. Imps while trading at Irem. Just wish there was a way to easily sell intriguing snippets now…[/quote]
Was currently trying to check this out -is there something in particular you must do to be able to trade with the Zailors? I cant seem to find that option. Do you have to finish with the Haruspex? Thanks for any help you can give!
You have to bring candles and go to the center of the Gant Pole, iirc.
I figured out that working as a historian in Scrimshander is more profitable than trading as a zee-captain. This method involves the Nephrite Quarter and copious amounts of coffee.
Gross Profit per Hold
What you’ll be doing is acquiring historical tales for the Drownie/Chelonate champions at the Stage of Histories, for 300 Echoes each. The tales are acquired by searching in the Archives, consuming 6 Time in the Archives without fail (1 to enter, 3 to find the tale, 1 to find the exit, 1 to exit).
Each tale therefore yields a price of 300 Echoes per 6 Time. Time is purchased at a rate of 2 Time per one sack of coffee beans. Thus, you would be "selling" coffee at a rate of 100 Echoes per sack. (You will get Tales of Terror! and Strange Catches, although I advise you dumping the catches since they’re only worth 10 echoes per hold.)
Since coffee is sold in Khan’s Heart at 40 echoes per, this works out to a gross profit of 60 Echoes per hold.
Fixed Costs and Minimum Cargo
Fixed costs for the Khan’s Heart-Scrimshander-Khan’s Heart ("KSK") circuit are low, as Scrimshander usually spawns in the Wisdom tile. In turn, the Wisdom tile always spawns adjacent to the Khanate, due to it being a prison of the Khanate.
It will generally take 10-12 fuel and 8 supplies to operate the KSK route, based on my experience with the Eschatalogue, a Fulgent Impeller and 23 crew. The cost of navigation therefore works out to be around 344 Echoes per round trip.
Terror build-up also will generally be at about 10 per round trip, which works out to 50 echoes per trip if you clear Terror at the Stage of Histories.
Finally, the cost of leaving Scrimshander is 5 Zee-stories or 1 Hunting-Trophy (the other options are not worth it). This works out to 50 Echoes if using Zee-stories or 65 if using Hunting-Trophies. I generally prefer using Hunting-Trophies since they’re easier to obtain than Zee-stories.
Using these figures, you will thus require a minimum 8 sacks of coffee per round trip to turn a profit, based on the equation below:
60n - 344 - 65 - 50 = 60n - 459
60n - 459 > 0
n > 7.65 (where n = no. of sacks of coffee)
Using the Ligeia as an example, your ship can carry up to 20 coffee with 12 fuel and 8 supplies. This works out to a profit of 741 Echoes per trip, or 37.05 Echoes per hold. The closest competitor would be the Khan’s Heart-Irem-Dahut route, which only yields a profit of 26 Echoes per hold without taking into consideration fixed costs. Furthermore, the profit per hold for the KSK circuit will increase exponentially if you are using, for an example, the Caligo-class merchant cruiser, due to economies of scale (i.e. selling more for the same fixed cost).
The profitability of this method depends on:
- Having enough Mirrors, Irons and Hearts to 100% Scrimshander’s Archives
- Scrimshander spawning 1 tile away from Khan’s Heart
- The tale required being at a fixed location of 3 clicks deep in the Archives (true as at date of writing)
- The player’s willingness to click incessantly for half an hour or so just to see numbers increase
If FBG wants to nerf the Archives, these would be the best ways to do it (please don’t nerf the Archives, FBG).
There has been a change to trading stories at the Gant Pole. It now costs 5 Zee Stories and 2 Intriguing Snippets and only gives an Extraordinary Implication so no Tales of Terror. I don’t know if this is the result of the latest update or if the more time you spend with the Zailors the less you get from them.
I’m pretty sure Scrimshander is always in the Wisdom tile. Wisdom and the Khanate are part of the same tileset but aren’t always next to each other; at maximum they can be 2.24 tiles apart as the crow flies (separated by two tile lengths vertically and one horizontally).
I’ve yet to chat with them with my current captain so I’ll let you know.
In my case, Wisdom was fairly close to the Empire of Hands, so I just traded wine for coffee instead - though not with any profit in mind, I was just exploring (so I might have lost money). There might be a limit as to how many times you can help them. When my Tides of History reached 8 the option to look for heroes on behalf of the Cleonite Champions seems to have disappeared. I’ll go back at some point to see what’s up.
edited by Anne Auclair on 10/23/2016
Done it, they just stare at me.
Done it, they just stare at me.[/quote]
You do have to feast with them to get the relevant quality up to 3. I didn’t start doing it until I finished the Haruspex quest line, since I don’t know if doing so interferes with it, but sending injured monsters there joining the zailors raises the quality you need.
An interesting, though perhaps not optimal, Zee-spanning chain of deals I’ve discovered is possible:[ul][li]Acquire lots of supplies. For 250-ish Echoes’ worth of fuel/supplies you can load up on them in Naples for 5 Echoes apiece. [/li] [li]In Wrack, while it’s in its early phase at least (‘in want’), you can trade crates of supplies for firkins of honey one-to-one (or sacks of coffee three-to-one)[/li] [li]At the Gant Pole, firkins of honey can be swapped for carboys of shrieks one-to-one[/li] [li]At Scrimshander, you can get Mutersalt one-to-one for Shrieks[/li][li]Finally, at Anthe, 1 Mutersalt can be swapped for 1 Scintillack. [/li] [/ul]
It’s a lengthy chain, supplies will be used up in the process, and its practicality varies with map alteration, but it turns however many 5~10 Echo (adjusting for number of supplies vs. Surface-travel expense) supply crates you can sell in Wrack into 70-Echo end products, if you can haul it.
You can get 7 caskets of sapphires for a sunlight-filled mirror-catch box in Nook. For me this is fairly close to both Aestival and the Chelonate, where you get 99 echos per casket of sapphires. So that’s nearly 700 per box, when the best you’ll get out of the Isle of Cats is 400 plus your empty box worth 250. Downside, it takes up way more hold space.
edited by HelenDamnation on 10/31/2016
You’re very lucky there. For me Nook is on the other side of the map from the Cleonite sapphire markets, so I just sell my sunlight in London and get sapphires trading House of Harms souls in the Empire of Hands.