Tips & Tricks: Zucceeding on the Zee 2 (Gold!)

and Steam Pinnaces are a luck check - if you are unlucky you are down 3 crew. I prefer to loot them, you can get supplies or things to sell. Nothing like 100 Echoes but then you have to subtract the 20 echoes (or more) you need to replace crew.

as far as I can see the profit margins from honey are much smaller than what you get off of delivering colonists

You get 28 echoes per firkin, but you’re only actually making three echoes on that. Colonists are fifteen echoes apiece; even if they eat 3 Supplies, you’re still making more per colonist than you are per firkin, as long as you don’t buy your Supplies in Venderbight. If you’ve gotten the honey from means other than purchase in London, though, like from Caches of Curiosity, then the honey is more worth the hold space.

I’ll be honest though, the Venderbright-London route, while profitable, is also slow and grindy as all hell; and the profitability isn’t all that great. When you consider that ships cost as much as they do, and the only established port offers such low-profit options, the grind you have to go through becomes ridiculous.

I guess what I’m saying is I hope we get more robust trade ports implemented sooner rather than later.

I tend to ignore grinding to and from Venderbight altogthter - if you keep 15 fuel and a little more than 5 supplies (maybe less - I like to be careful with supplies), you have enough to loop around either Gaider’s Mourn, the Khanate, and Pigmote, Polythreme and the islands on the way back up, or past Whither, the Chapel of Lights, Avid Horizon (if you want - I find it to be not very useful, and the port report is only 10 echoes), Mt. Palmerson, and The Principles of Coral, giving you a lot of port reports to give to the Admiralty. If you have a commission or the Blind Bruiser wants you to go to one of the ports in the route, it’s even better. It does give a fairly large amount of terror (I tend to end up with 30-ish), but it’s fairly easy to carouse those levels off with the profits you’ve gained. So far, this has gotten me at least to 1000 echo cannons - I’m waiting on a new engine in hopes that the magician gets me one, then if I don’t do something stupid again, I may get a new ship.

A couple more points:[li]

If you die, you can save your Satisfied Magician and build a new Serpentine right off once you get 800 echoes, without having to re-complete his quests.

For the Godfall wine route, if you’re headed to Polythreme, you can take wine to Godfall on both legs of that trip.

I was doing the Godfall Wine route, but it stops being profitable after you reach Time 199. Also, they’ve changed the Polythreme shops to your standard grumpy merchant of fuel and food. No more secondary London, alas.

[quote=IHNIWTR]I’ll be honest though, the Venderbright-London route, while profitable, is also slow and grindy as all hell; and the profitability isn’t all that great. When you consider that ships cost as much as they do, and the only established port offers such low-profit options, the grind you have to go through becomes ridiculous.

I guess what I’m saying is I hope we get more robust trade ports implemented sooner rather than later.[/quote]

I only run that route because the only time I EVER saw the chef there was my very first run when I was broke as hell. I’ve run it so many times since and he’s never returned. I had every single other obtainable officer that I know of and still can’t get that damn chef.

[li]
I must have some sort of weird bug where I’m only partially updating – polythreme market is still fine for me. Weird.

So, um, how exactly do I advance the Genial Magician’s story beyond Learning about the magician 1? Do I have to do the ‘Dispel the darkness’ storylet? Because I have no idea where to find an outlandish artifact.

You don’t have to Dispel the Darkness; you can find Outlandish Artefacts in Venderbight sometimes. When you find an Outlandish Artefact in Venderbight there’ll be an option to let the Genial Magician keep it if you’ve gotten that far; I can’t recall if you have to dine with him a few more times before he mentions that he needs one.

Ah, okay! Looks like I’ll just have to wait for it to show up. :) All he’s mentioned to me so far is that he needed a - Serpent Image, I think?

Regina, that should be enough to make him ask for the artifact if you find one (iirc)

Once you found the chief and unlock his ‘card’ in Venderbright, you can recruit him anywhen you want. Just press his card and recruit him, its in one of the 3 options. And once you do recruit him, the other 2 option will stay open whenever you are curious

[spoiler]Once he mention it, go to Venderbright and explore until you get to the Outlandish Artifact option and choose to give it to him.

Then continue speak to him until he mention that he want to go to Khan Heart

In Khan Heart (SE OF Corsair Forest) there are 2 port. One in the North and another in South. The one he is looking for is in the south Complete than return to FL to complete it

be warn, it is very expensive to complete his story, in term of echoes and fuel, especially when you travel from FL to Corsair Forest to Khan Heart. I once underestimated the fuel consumption travel from CF to KH, I am lucky I managed to reach Gaiden Mourn before I JUST ran out of fuel[/spoiler]
edited by N156 on 6/26/2014

Once you found the chief and unlock his ‘card’ in Venderbright, you can recruit him anywhen you want. Just press his card and recruit him, its in one of the 3 options. And once you do recruit him, the other 2 option will stay open whenever you are curious
[/quote]

I finally got him. The last time I found him, it didn’t unlock his card, but it did this time. Did it change or something?

Magician story The option in Venderbight might need you to scroll down to see it. Also when you get to the Khanate - there are three options to continue the Magician’s Story, one is an item that you can get in Gaider’s Mourn. If you go for that option it might be best to have 2 of them as they do have another use that will probably prevent you being killed
edited by reveurciel on 6/26/2014

A token saying “you need key of faces” keeps popping up…where does one attain this key of faces? (or is it like searching for the “any” key on a keyboard?)

It means the content is not in yet.

So, does the Blind Bruiser do anything besides give me collection jobs? You’d think I’d at least get some underworld connections out of all this smuggling.

Right! forget about honey, forget about wine - candles is where the money’s at! get on to Venderbright with a holdfull and sell them for a tidy profit of some ten echos each!

There are also new options up in Whither that trade supplies and Fuel for stories and terrors, which in turn you can use to buy some rare new goods; I think you can sell the Zee monster ivory down in Polythreme?