The Nocturne, the Khanate, & the Merchant Venturer

Sunless Sea
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Separately, that is. So, three things:

  1. I’m far enough in with the spiders that they’ve asked me to investigate the shipwreck and bring back &quotsomething&quot, and obviously I need candles to see where I’m going. The wiki doesn’t have anything past the first interaction where you enter and lose a candle, and normally I’d just go in and risk it with the ten candles I have (stopping once I’ve lost five to go back) but the story window’s telling me that if I enter I can’t leave until I’ve found the something. Does anyone happen to know how many candles are actually needed?

(Randomly, I’m being a horribly bad person - I got my three tomb colonists to advance with that story by offering to take them on a tour of the Unterzee. In my defense I was already down to ten after hitting the Chelonate so either way he won’t be happy with me! lol)

  1. Just want to check before I spend more money on coffee whether there’s a cheaper way to get Khanate Suspicion down. I have the Nephrite ring but can’t get into the Nephrite Corner until the Taimen likes me. From memory I need 3 of the Taimen’s regard to drop my suspicion, and I’m not sure how many points it will drop by. So far I’ve gotten 2 by bringing coffee to the tiger and getting him to intervene but that’s 1250 echoes per point of tiger’s regard and you need 4 or 5 to get him to intervene. The other way obviously is appealing to the Taimen directly, which uses drowning-pearls. I got 4 of them from a random event but as far as I know the only way to get more is to rely on the RNG. So I have the option of buying I think another 1k of coffee, or grinding explores on Mutton Island or wherever. Does that sound about right, or am I missing another possibility?

  2. I’ve done almost nothing with the Merchant Venturer this game because the first thing he asked me for is either 7 romantic notions or 21 bales of spider silk, both of which require travelling to the other side of the map and doing a whole bunch of storyline before I can access enough of them (hence previous two questions). Originally I thought I’d trade supplies for the spider silk before remembering he wanted 21, not 7, and even with 100 hold I can’t get there and back with 84 supplies. So at least two trips and I’d be barely scraping a profit even when you account for doing other things on the way there. Anyone else had this one before? What did you do - let it sit for ages and picked up spider silk here and there like I’m currently doing, or sink money into it? Any other tough ones people have struggled with? I miss when he just wanted seven devilbone dice! I guess they can’t all be that easy.

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  1. I believe you’ll only need one to get in, and the rest of the process is just stat checks but doesn’t actually require candles, making it very different from things like exploring Godfall or the Wisp Ways. The entire story is actually one surprise after another, enjoy!

  2. You can trade 7 scintillac to the drownies at the fathmking’s hold, though it uses up your SAY, it gets you an absurd number of pearls, which helps with the Taimen and in turn suspicion.

  3. Can’t say I ran into anything too difficult from the venturer, at least one option was doable every round. I think you can buy the silk in London, though it may not be profitable that way? He tells you how much he’ll pay so check the math and see if it’s worth it.

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As far as I remember you should have enough candles for the Nocturne.

As for Moon Pearls I trade 7 Scintillack for 30 at the fathomking’s Hold, expensive but I think worth it to keep suspicion down. The other option involves siding with the Khanate during a fight at Gaider’s Mourn which gives an amulet which you can trade in the Khanate to reduce a point of suspicion. As for coffee I think the cheapest place to buy it is Apis Meet down near Adam’s Way on the southern coast.

Once you have reduced your suspicion you can buy the Romantic Literature in the Nephrite Quarter.

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Re: The nocturne, haven’t got that far yet, it’s still a dead hulk for me, but now I’m interested, I’ll take a look over there at some point and see what the score is, is there any way to advance the storyline with giving the spiders the wriggly bait?

Re: The Khanate, I tend to use the scintillack from the principles storyline to get drowning pearls to bring down the suspicion, it’s not a brilliant way of doing things and you lose a lot of potential income this way, but it’s cheaper to do it this way than it is to try and buy your way down the suspicion ladder using Coffee. I’d like to see options within the Khanate in the final build to allow you to do jobs for the Khanate to reduce suspicion, but as with all things when you’re looking at the potential for playing politically and raising some factions at the cost of alienating others, there’s a balance to be struck. Has anyone given intelligence to the Khanate? Does that reduce suspicion or do they just consider you the typical Gaijin and give you your thirty pieces of silver?

Re: The merchant Venturer, the notions/silk option is the hardest one I’ve found, but I also look at it from the point of view that now I know where that path leads, it’s not something that I do unless it’s something I’m passing in those directions anyway. My problem was also the amount of space required to get that much cargo back, a problem if you’re running one of the smaller ships to be sure and something that I think probably needs addressing. Reducing the fee paid for bringing back seven bolts rather than twenty one would be a better solution unless there’s some particular reason why there’s twenty one required.

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Giving them Strategic Information increases Taiman’s Mercy, some echoes and (if I remember correctly) reduces Admiralty Favour.