New Trade routes for Zubmariner? (SPOILERS)

[Skinny Pete]

I've found at least one good one on par with the Wine (Fallen London) --> Coffee (Empire of Hands) --> Parabola-Linen (Irem) exchange routes, and this one has the advantage of occurring all in shops so no nonsense of clicking the same dialogue 50 times in a row.

Buy Prisoner's Honey at Fallen London for 25 Echoes at Wolfstack.

Exchange for Carboy of Primordial Shrieks at the Gant Pole. It can then be sold at the Gant Pole for 37 Echoes for a profit of 12 Echoes per unit.

However, go on and exchange it for Mutersalt at Scrimshander.

Now it can be sold for 56 Echoes in the Nephrite Quarter, for a profit of 31 Echoes per unit.

But wait, that's not all.

You can exchange Mutersalt for 2 Foxfire Candles at Aigul, which can then be sold for 33 Echoes at Venderbight, for a total of 41 Echoes profit per unit (although the doubling thing means your last leg needs more hold space).

I'd generally skip the last step, although it's effectively a way of getting Foxfire Candles for 12.5 Echoes a pop, which if you're doing Wisp-Ways farming, could be a way of doing something exceptionally profitable for practically free.

[Akninirith]

Well, an extreme one that has been noticed in part by several individuals. First, buy 11 mirrorcatch boxes. Second, fill boxes. Third, travel to Nook, and exchange for 77 units of sapphires. Fourth, trade up to 7 captivating treasures in Dahut. Cost of 2750 echoes for mirrorcatch boxes, gain of 7000 echoes when trading in treasures to appropriate parties; profit can easily be gauged in the range of 3000-3500 echoes per trip. Easily indefinitely renewable, no. Light on cargo space, no. Highly profitable, yes.

Another, that requires some careful toeing of a line with Wrack's community. First, make sure that Wrack is brought to prosperity, then buy up an arbitrary number of torpedo components in batches of 12 units at a time. After buying all torpedos in the Neath, go and bring Wrack to ruin by warning prospective adventurers. Now the poor souls of Wrack will buy back their torpedos at the rate of a bale of Parabola-linen per 12 projectiles, which equates to 48 echoes - more expensive than the going rate of 34 echoes if one trades in coffee. However, this approach has two interesting advantages. One is that a spaceless resource can be traded for Parabola-linen (and there are several reasons that this is useful, none of which seem important or profound enough to enumerate here). The other is that Dahut, which can be quite close to Wrack in some cases, will also buy it for 66 echoes per unit (profit of 18 echoes per unit), meaning that in such cases a lesser profit rate can be overcome by extremely quick trading runs and a lack of intermediate trading stages.

There are many such interesting new routes made possible to those under the Unterzee, some of which will likely surprise the average person, some of which may have very interesting circumstantial uses (the scintillac/mutersalt trade in Anthe has proven a boon on several occasions).

[Stickasylum]

Instead of trading for foxfire candles, trade your Mutersalt for Scintillack at Anthe. You'll get 50 Echos per hold slot and be able to use your whole space (effectively doubling your profit). If you've bumped Wrack up to prosperity, you can trade the Scintillack for Sapphires for a 65 echo profit in London (or 74 in Chelonate, but that's usually too far out of the way)!

For a shorter (but slightly less profitable) loop, once you've got a hold full of Sapphires, you can sell half in the Chelonate, then take the rest to Hideaway and trade each for 2 x Mutersalt, refilling your hold.

If you like clicking and gambles, you can purchase Ambiguous Eoliths for 30 Echo in Anthe and give them to the Scholar in London for an average profit of 5.5 Echo per Eolith. Since Eoliths do not take up hold slots, you could increase you Echo holdings by an average of 18% per run, but would likely destroy your left mouse button in the process!

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by Stickasylum:

Instead of trading for foxfire candles, trade your Mutersalt for Scintillack at Anthe. You'll get 50 Echos per hold slot and be able to use your whole space (effectively doubling your profit). If you've bumped Wrack up to prosperity, you can trade the Scintillack for Sapphires for a 70 echo profit in London (or 79 in Chelonate, but that's usually too far out of the way)!

I forget why I didn't like that one, because that sounds like a better option, although I still like just stopping at mutersalt and selling that, or else using this whole route as a way of filling up entirely on Foxfire Candles and then actually using them at Mangrove College.

For a shorter (but slightly less profitable) loop, once you've got a hold full of Sapphires, you can sell half in the Chelonate, then take the rest to Hideaway and trade each for 2 x Mutersalt, refilling your hold.

I like this, too.

If you like clicking and gambles, you can purchase Ambiguous Eoliths for 30 Echo in Anthe and give them to the Scholar in London for an average profit of 5.5 Echo per Eolith. Since Eoliths do not take up hold slots, you could increase you Echo holdings by an average of 18% per run, but would likely destroy your left mouse button in the process!

I generally prefer to avoid these, although I think it wouldn't be terribly hard to automate this task (or mod the specific interaction to include options for 10x or 50x or whatever is most appropriate), but then you'd probably have to do it again whenever the game gets updated.

There isn't really much of a gamble here in big batches, and I can't imagine the "risk of ruin" from pure bad luck is more than minuscule. I think it's a straight 50/50 shot, so you're basically just betting a big batch of coin flips will turn out roughly normal. Most of the time anyway.

[Stickasylum]

Originally posted by Skinny Pete:

There isn't really much of a gamble here in big batches, and I can't imagine the "risk of ruin" from pure bad luck is more than minuscule. I think it's a straight 50/50 shot, so you're basically just betting a big batch of coin flips will turn out roughly normal. Most of the time anyway.

There's about a 7% chance of losing money on 100 Ambiguous Eoliths, so no - not so much!

Originally posted by Skinny Pete:

I forget why I didn't like that one, because that sounds like a better option, although I still like just stopping at mutersalt and selling that, or else using this whole route as a way of filling up entirely on Foxfire Candles and then actually using them at Mangrove College.

This is more of a gamble, especially with the potential for losing crew and gaining wounds if your stats aren't all close to 135. Sounds like more fun than driving around in circles, though!

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by Stickasylum:

This is more of a gamble, especially with the potential for losing crew and gaining wounds if your stats aren't all close to 135. Sounds like more fun than driving around in circles, though!

I usually like combining actual gameplay with trade routes for less of a pure grind.

For instance, when I'm doing the Honey --> Shrieks --> Mutersalt thing, I'm also doing the Haruspex storyline and the various Archives mining tasks in Scrimshander.

Another combo I like (although this isn't Zubmariner-specific) is the Dread Surmise farming thing. Which is get up to 18 or 27 Searing Enigmas, take them to the Iron Republic with Another Day at 1, and buy Dread Surmises for 9 Searing Enigmas, then sell them at Irem for 10 Searing Enigmas. If I'm close to 36, 45, etc., then buy more Searing Enigmas with Extraordinary Implications or farm the Wisp-Ways.

However, this involves sailing diagonally in maybe the longest route in the game (since there is nothing to farm at the Dawn Machine).

However, on the way, you pass pretty much every place Lorn-Flukes occur, and at the Chelonate, you can farm the Eater-of-Names. Or stop by Saviour's Rocks to farm the Tree of Ages which gets you, again, more Searing Enigmas.

But you can almost always get 2-3 Fluke Cores per trip. Another thing you can do at the Iron Republic shop that sells Dread Surmises is trade Fluke Cores for Judgment's Eggs. That avoids having to go to the Alarming Scholar and take a Terror hit, plus you can sell them for 100 more Echoes apiece for 600 Echoes each, at Polythreme.

Eventually you're hitting 5,000+ Echoes per trip easily, it's not terribly boring farming, and it just takes a couple hours of it at the end of a long game to ensure the next 3-4 captains you have will be rich enough not to have to care about money.

There's also usually other stuff to kill/farm on the way back and forth, depending on the map layout, so it's not like you just mindlessly do this and nothing else.

(And with Live Specimens much more easy to obtain now, you can keep your ship in tip top shape at the Fathomking's and, while you're there, farm Judgment's Eggs with the SAY method via the "Witness an execution" interaction setting SAY to 100 then going Beachcombing at Mangrove College or Aestival).