Tips and Tricks thread

Sunless Skies
1

Given that the economy is so crushingly hard, we need to do whatever it takes to survive.
Post here your advice, tricks, lucrative quests, hunting grounds, exploits, cheats, anything that comes to mind.

Firstly, theres a quest at port prosper (which seems to be in a fixed location northeast of new winchester) which gives 800 guineas. However, you need to take along 250g worth of materials, namely 1x bronzewood and 1x stained glass. Try to get them on the first trip to save two journeys. You can pawn one of your guns to get the cash for materials, then buy it back when you return.

Secondly, at lustrum, there’s a quest unlocked after you climb the mountain (its a hard iron check, but its infinitely retryable with no penalty(that’s probably a bug)), which requires 1x bronzewood,1x stained glass and 1x carefully packed ammunition. This quest does not use up those three items after you hand them in, and you can go sell them back once you’re done (this is definitely a bug).
This quest rewards a rare curio that i’ve not yet found a way to sell or profit from, so it may not be worth your time when strapped for cash

Thirdly, a general tip: All ship equipment, including your starting guns, and the bronzewood plating you can buy, can be bought and resold anytime for 100% value. So feel free to pawn things when you need money, then buy them back later at a total cost of nothing. Conversely, this also means you can buy new gear when you have the cash (like after the quest in the first point), and pawn it later if you regret the purchase

Fourthly: A questline that involves going to hybras and back, unlocks a new shop in new winchester. it buys curios from you for a healthy amount of money. Although you do need these same curios to pay for mental treatment so be careful

Fifth, this is very definitely a bug; Any gear that you sell while equipped, will remain equipped on your train and is useable, though you no longer own it. You can fix this by attempting to remove the bugged piece of equipment. Or you can not-fix it and exploit the bug for free cash from selling and still keeping the same piece of gear. up to you

Sixth: If you ever run into the bug where ports show on your map, but don’t appear ingame, you should know that this is caused by loading more than once in a session. To both fix and prevent it happening in future, quit the game, relaunch from steam, and use Continue on the main menu. Always do this when loading, such as after you die

Last but not least, if you do ever allow your terror and condition to reach the max levels (rank 5, 100 terror) the game will immediately end. I wont spoil what happens, but the event at that point kills you instantly, and there’s no way to avoid it. Avoid reaching that high at all costs
edited by Nanako on 9/2/2017

2

You can test whether an area is safe to fly using your guns. It may be a little uncouth firing at islands, but nobody seems to mind. And hull repairs are -very- expensive. Ammo is free!

Terror resets to 0 when you dock at new winchester. But your condition (the number of full terror bars accumulated) does not.
Also the options to reduce condition at magdalene’s seem to be bugged right now, as far as i’m aware there’s no way to reduce condition. Keep an eye on terror and get back to NW frequently. four stops in a voyage is pushing it, more is too much

When your engine overheats, your cannon stops working til it cools. But your shotgun does not. This is probably a bug
edited by Nanako on 9/2/2017

3

I haven’t actually done this yet, but:

If you know where Carillion is, can afford extra cargo space, and your Veils is high, you might be able to profit in the soul trade. Harvest them at Port Avon, fly to Carillion, then - instead of using them to purchase Indulgences (not even sure what those are for), sell them for 30 apiece.

I’m still a big fan of selling the Condemned Experiment to Mme. Lumiere; so far, it seems to be the most profitable transaction in the game (buy it for 0, sell it for 500), and if it has another use, I haven’t seen it yet.

4

You can make manual backups to essentially have manual saves. good for reloading if you dont like how something turned out, or you get stuck in an unwinnable state

Go to
C:\Users<Your name>\AppData\LocalLow\Failbetter Games\Sunless Skies\storage

copy the folders there into a backup folder whenever you please, give it a useful name, like the last port you visited. Its a good idea to make a new backup whenever you stop at new winchester, at least

to reload, copy them out and overwrite the existing ones
Personally i’ve gotten into a habit of making a backup at every unique port i pass through

5

[quote=madflacc]
If you know where Carillion is, can afford extra cargo space, and your Veils is high, you might be able to profit in the soul trade. Harvest them at Port Avon…[/quote]
I have a better idea
Use the hearts option in the avon ruins, it gives Visions of Heaven with each use, which IIRC sell for 50 apiece in lumiere’s shop in winchester.
to gain access to avon, use salon stewed gossip which you can buy in abundance from company house in winchester, either by handing in port reports or tackety nameplates at port prosper for gossip

6

You’re totally right - although I’m surprised to hear you suggest this, given your comments elsewhere about selling stuff at Lumiere’s vs. keeping it for use at Magdalene’s.

What other uses do we have for Visions of the Heavens? I forget if they pay for treatment at Mag’s or what.

7

[quote=madflacc][quote=Nanako]
Use the hearts option in the avon ruins, it gives Visions of Heaven with each use, which IIRC sell for 50 apiece in lumiere’s shop in winchester.
[/quote]

You’re totally right - although I’m surprised to hear you suggest this, given your comments elsewhere about selling stuff at Lumiere’s vs. keeping it for use at Magdalene’s.

What other uses do we have for Visions of the Heavens? I forget if they pay for treatment at Mag’s or what.[/quote]
Yes, they do, when used with Salon-Stewed Gossip or an Unusual Specimen. But frankly a 25-terror reduction for 75 Sovereigns worth of items isn’t really worth it unless you’re desperate, and it doesn’t reduce Condition.

8

[quote=madflacc]
You’re totally right - although I’m surprised to hear you suggest this, given your comments elsewhere about selling stuff at Lumiere’s vs. keeping it for use at Magdalene’s.[/quote]

yea, it turns out magdalenes is broken. you cant reduce condition there. So disregard what i said earlier, may as well sell the darned things

9

I’ve found delivering settlers to be fairly lucrative if you’ve unlocked the curio shop via the Hybras miniquest. While most of the settlers will reward you 100-150 sovereigns upon delivery, if you happen to pick up one that’s sick and let them die en route, you can choose to keep their corpse which gives you a Condemned Experiment. You can sell the experiment to the curio shop for a cool 500 sovereigns.

As for farming the Sky Stories required for picking up settlers, I get mine either via doing chores for the circus and watching their shows, or by farming Salon-Stewed Gossip from ships and then trading them in for Avon Welcome which can in turn be traded in for Sky Stories at a 1:1 ratio by reading stories at the Nowhere Inn. There’s more than one story option that rewards Sky Stories, but I just read the first option.
edited by Inchoatl on 9/4/2017

10

it seems like port avon is the home of all the infinite moneymaking exploits

11

the easiest way i’ve found of making money right now, is to buy tea in winchester (60g) and use it to gain 5 favor at port avon. Then go to the avon ruins and use the hearts check to gain an easy Vision of Heaven, 50g each.
There’s a small chance (seems to be about 10%) to gain variation at the ruins that only reduces favor and gives no items, but that still averages about 225 gross revenue from each caddy of tea, 165 net.

It’s kinda boring and grindy, but you can rack up a huge stack of Visions of Heaven quickly and sell them all
I’ve reported it too, so maybe it’ll be patched in future like FBG did with sunlight, coffee and sphinxstone
edited by Nanako on 9/14/2017