lord1box
Posts: 62
8/5/2015
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I found a very reliable, if somewhat convoluted way to make a lot of money: selling mirrorcatch boxes full of angry dream-snakes.
It requires:
-1 Clay Man
-1 Mirrorcatch Box
-1 Memory of Distant Shores
-1 Tale of Terror
-1 Zee-ztory
-Get acquainted with the sisters, but don't advance the sisters' story any further.
-Advance the Tireless Mechanic's story so that he asks you to go to Hunter's Keep.
Here's how you do it. The order doesn't matter as long as you go to Hunter's Keep last:
-You get 6 trophies, and exchange them at Godfall
-Go to Polythreme to get your free zombies... err... Clay Men.
-Go to Khan's Heart or Khan's Shadow to buy yourself 6 mirrorcatch boxes
-Go to Hunter's Keep and convert 1 Clay man, 1 mirrorcatch box, 1 memory, 1 tale, and 1 Z-ztory into a Serpent Trap
-Speak to the Tireless Mechanic to convert your Serpent Trap into a mirrorcatch box full of angry dream-snakes
-Sell said Trap at the Traveler's Friend in Khan's Shadow
Pro:
-Very profitable
-Reliable
-Can be combined with other high profit routes
-The ingredients can be obtained in different orders.
-You won't build any menaces
-Mirrorcatch boxes full of angry dream-snakes are totally legal in Fallen London. Who knew? Apparently the Revenue men and the Ministry of Public Decency, who won't so much as scoff at you for carrying lethal dream-snakes with you everywhere you go.
Con:
-Requires a lot of travel
-You are limited to making six at once (you can't pick up new clay men, until you have no more left)
-Requires you to fight sea beasties
-These ingredients are also needed to pick up the Last Tour quest, and to make the Zong of the Zee
-Converting a Serpent Trap into a Mirrorcatch Box Full of Angry Dream-Snakes has a 50% chance of killing one of your crew members.
-Takes a lot of echoes to get started on
-You can't advance the sister's story
Con rebuttal
-If you combine this method with a big run where you achieve other objectives as well, you won't waste fuel and supplies
-You buy in at 1500 with an extra 90 for 6 crew members (the chance of losing 6 in a row is 1 in 64), you will earn 3000 from selling six
boxes, so it will net at least 1410 echoes per run. Not bad for 12 or 6 spots or cargo hold space.
-This is probably one of the biggest cons, but despair not. There are many beasties that have a 100 % drop rate on hunting trophies. Some even drop multiple trophies at once. Most of these are mid-sized monsters, which you can easily take on with one of the lighter double-gunned ships. It is not advisable to try hunting for trophies with less than 2 cannons. Fighting Z-Beasties also means that you will be looting all their fabulous treasure, and raking in lots of fragments. Just try not to bite of more than you can chew.
-Doing the Last Tour is very similar to making dream-snake boxes. Doing the Last Tour can earn you more echoes than making dream-snake boxes, provided that you manage to complete the tour with a full complement of mummies. However, the Last Tour doesn't allow you any freedom in the order of the places you go to. It can easily force you to take a longer route (thus consuming more fuel/supplies), and it takes 1 more memory, tale, and Z-ztory to entice the mummies to go on a tour with you (not to mention the 12 supplies, which can be hard on some boats with a small hold. Making dream-snake boxes is a more consistent way of making echoes as well, since the loss of any Tomb-Colonists will result in a reward that is in fact inferior to making dream-snake boxes. If you really wanted to, you could combine The Tour with making dream-snake boxes. The caveat to that route would be that you would have to earn 13 hunting trophies (and convert them at Godfall) per run. It can be done, but requires more hunting.
-So what? You make these dream-snake boxes at Hunter's Keep. Even if you were to be left with 2 crew (the minimum this action can get you to, I believe) you could still easily make it back to Fallen London without having to fear an attack. The chances of losing all 6 crew are pretty slim anyway. And the cost of getting new crew is easily covered by the massive amounts of echoes that you will be earning. No problem.
-This inevitable unfortunately. Luckily, you can use wine-trade, coffee-trade (there are multiple viable exchanges), exploration, and quests as a way to get that starting capital.
-Well, you can actually. It just makes making dream-snake boxes a lot costlier, since you will need 5 supplies and a foxfire candle instead of 1 memory, 1 tale and 1 z-ztory. This will up the cost of making a dream-snake box to around 380 echoes (excluding crew costs). It will still be profitable, just less so. The benefit to this way of doing it is that you don't need to fight Z-beasties after Hunter's Keep is in Ruins.
Good luck to you all, and I hope this helps you in your journeys.
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lord1box
Posts: 62
8/17/2015
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Gerald Edgerton wrote:
Now, dream-snakes:
-Front-end costs:
-6x Clay men (Free! Just be mindful of the possibility of an Unfinished Man aboard.)
-6x Mirrorcatch boxes (1,500 echoes - 50% of your eventual revenues)
-6x Firefox Candles (180 Echoes if you purchase them in Adam's Way or Khan's Heart with a trading license; we'll assume one of these, but 240 is the London price).
-30 supplies - (600 echoes (here, on principle, I use the London price as a baseline. The Masters carve greedily into your profits, although by fully exploring the zee you can work around them.)
-~3x zailors lost harvesting the dreams: (30 echoes - here the London prices favor you).
Total revenues: 6x500 = 3,000 Echoes, sold in Khan's Shadow.
Total expenses: 2,310. This allows a profit of almost 700 echoes, but the entry level costs (1,500 in mirrorcatch boxes, phew) and hold space requirements are much higher.
Troop costs only get higher, not lower, excluding the occasional volunteers.
1 You compare the Tomb-Colonist Tour Route to the most unfavorable example of dream-snake trade, namely making dream-snake boxes after you've finished The Sister's storyline. This is not what I adviced, but a suboptimal way of continuing the trade if you really wanted to that I elaborated for those who were curious. I would personally steer away from post-sister dream-snake trade like a scrubby Zee-Captain avoids Mt. Nomad. If you do it the way I advice, then the cost of making a mirrorcatch box full of dream-snakes is not 1 clay man, 1 mirrorcatch box, 1 firefox candle and 5 supplies. I have noted this in my first post, and commented on how the value of the trade will go down severely, even though it will still be profitable. The real cost to someone who is trying to earn as much as possible, just as you describe in your evaluation of the Tomb-Colonist Tour Route, is much closer to 1590 echoes (factoring in hiring crew twice and the estimated value that you could have gotten from selling the stories (based on your estimates)).
2 gaining crew does get easier, because if your hearts are high enough, and they don't need to be very high at all, you will gain 2-3 crew when you hire on more crew, instead of merely 1 crewmember.
3 Your estimates of the hold space required to do dreamsnakes vary. It's either 12 (6 mirrorcatch boxes, 6 clay men) or 48 ( 6 boxes, 6 clay men, 6 foxfire candles, 30 supplies). You will probably buy the candles somewhere else, so I'm guessing that's where you get 18 from. So based on the hold space needed post-Sisters dream-snake trading doesn't seem that worth it.
4 The dream-snake trade only requires that you have discovered Kahn's Shadow and Polythreme. The Last Tour requires you to discover The Chelonate, Gaider's Mourn, Polythreme, Irem, Shepherd's Wash and Kahn's Glory.
5 Which lead's me to my next point, the cost of fuel and supplies needed to make the trip. If you're running a bigger crew, a bigger ship, and a bigger engine this can increase dramatically. Typically the cost in fuel and supplies for doing The Last Tour (that includes getting the stories) is much higher than sailing the route from Fallen London to Polythreme to Kahn's Shadow to Hunter's Keep to Fallen London. And the time invested is typically higher as well (it would have to be with a route that's typically longer)
6 Z-ztories, memories and tales are probably worth more than 10 echoes, though not in echoes. Most of their value lies in their use for several story options for which they can be irreplacable. Still 10 echoes as a kind of makeshift monetary estimation is fine by me. Just had to note this.
7 Polythreme is easy, always pay. And in the Chelonate you should not send them hunting. That is in fact the worst option, if you're worried about losing tomb-colonists. Instead you should always let them pray (visit storm's temple). Unless you're really really worried about storm's curse, sending the colonists to his temple is always better. It can even have some amazing effects, if your iron already very very high.
8 Good to see that you're on board with the main point of my post. This is something that you could combine with some other way of earning echoes (hunting, intelligence networks, certain repeatable stories). The point is not for this to be more profitable than The Last Tour. If you discount fuel and supplies, which you can if you're simultaneously profiting from other avenues of monetary acquisition, then The Last Tour will always be more profitable (you can have a 100 % chance of coming back with 12 colonists if you have enough heart and pick the right options), but this trade can be easier, shorter, and more flexible than doing The Last Tour, which has similar requirements on the amount of stories you need. What's more, it will always be better than a failed Last Tour. The last one is not much of an argument, but in the subset of cases where a failed tour is likely it will have some merit.
9 This may be particular to my case, but I find that the Last Tour would often send me to Irem for their final stop, which is handy if you want to buy one of the many things that are available there, but I found myself in a situation where I had little reason to stop by there, except for if The Last Tour were to send me there. I guess I just got sick of shipping coffee to Irem. 
10 I haven't developed any particularly strong arguments for it, but I think that the secure department is not really worth it compared to The Milebreaker or WE ARE CLAY. The Milebreaker will probably earn you back more echoes in terms of fuel saved, compared to the supplies lost from colonists raiding your pantry, and WE ARE CLAY makes you go just a little bit faster, which helps with keeping terror low, while keeping your lights off, which means you spend less fuel, which also saves you echoes. The main benefit to WE ARE CLAY is the Real Time saved on sailing the Zee. My routes tend to be looooong.
Long story short:
Perfecting The Last Tour will make you more echoes than trading in dream-snakes, but trading in dream snakes is more reliable in the early game and will typically take less time.
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Guest
8/20/2015
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Gerald Edgerton wrote:
I have very high London Supremacy (I think the formal level is 14, although I got no rewards past when I first achieved Glorious) and I still commission foreign agents from the Diplomat. I really wanted the Boke of Sharps and can still get it otherwise, but my captain inherited very little and I decided to go with the reliability of intelligence gathering v. risking starving, marooning or mutiny as a career beast hunter, or spending the whole game farming SAY. If London is Glorious, (short of Aestival Island governing long end-game) the only simple way to get the Boke is to Help the Damn dirty Apes have London fall. That raises the Anarchist quality to 10 and should work.
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ThreeTen22
Posts: 8
8/27/2015
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Hrm, Im suprised no one has mentioned the Port Report: Fallen London method.
Step 1: Buy a casket of souls,
Step 2: B-Line it to Mount Palmerson
Step 3: Talk with the Devilress
Step 4: Stall outside of port until it a new day happens then talk to the Devilress again
Step 4: Go back to london, hopping from port to port along the way to grab port reports (for fuel etc).
= Tjos will open up the Brass Embassy
Step 5 (optional, but very recommended): Find saints haven, go the cavies route.
= Yeah they are stuck up buttholes, but the free -25 fear and 5 supplies is just too good to pass up.
Step 6: camp out at saints haven until you are full on supplies an fuel
Step 7: Goto Iron Republic
Step 8: camp out there and get your "days in the iron republic" stat to 15 or more.
Now for the fun part
Step 9: Create a port report, it will cost you an iron (if above 25) and give you some fear.
Step 10: Goto london, turn the port report in to the brass embassy (not the admiralty) for a Lump of Blue Scintillack
Step 11: Go Back to Iron Republic And Repeat Steps 9-10.
Now with these lumps, you have two options, 1. give it to the University for 800g or keep it and make over double the profit (which I will explain later on)
My method is to keep as many as I can until I am running low on money, in which case I will sell one or two to the university.
The cool thing about this specific port report is that unlike other port reports, the days stat does not change, so you can constantly go back and get a port report...you don't even need to wait for a new day.
Now this is where it gets better. If you hold onto enough of them (they dont take up cargo, so get as many as you want), stock up on supplies and fuel and head on over to Varchas.
Once inside of varchas, you can trade those blue lumps for a treasure AND 5 Artefacts each.
So, each "port report run" can yield up to a 1300g profit (generous -200g for fuel and supplies and rest if you don't use the cavies) and muuuch faster and safer than trying to do the tomb colonist run. You can easily do this with the starter ship as well.
Ive tried this with the starter ship, and I can upgrade to a fully decked out frigate in around 2 hours with this method.
edited by ThreeTen22 on 8/27/2015
edited by ThreeTen22 on 8/27/2015
edited by ThreeTen22 on 8/27/2015
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