An early trade route and it's viability

[zaku_zelo]

Just made my first trip to the surface. It's so brutally beatiful, but more importantly, I think I found my big break.
Coffee shop buys coffee for 80, one of the potential shops in Iron Republic sells coffee for 38. Supplies on the surface cost 5(!!!), said Hell shop buys the stuff for 25.

Is this as good as it looks? I'm still running the numbers, 22 fuel for a round trip is pricy even with IR as a port, and means I've only got 18 slots to work with, less counting fuel for travel between the two ports. I'm not entierly sure how the Iron Republic shops work either, which is pretty damn important.
Assuming this DOES work, how would you say stops at London would measure out? Giving news to the surface folk has pretty good returns, and gonna be losing crew regularly doing this anyway.

God I wish I had that big merchant ship right now. Wouldn't even be a question about this with that monster. Someday!

[Elitewrecker PT]

Spoiler: coffee trade isn't infinite

[Cultist]

You can't depend on the IR shop having coffee when you need it, but you can buy cheap coffee in Adam's Way which isn't too far from IR.

You can do this for a while and make some cash but in the end, you make the big bucks and progress the game by exploring new places and completing quests and challenges.

Some good places to make money early on is Port Cecil (need decent pages score + you need to do further trading but it makes lots of money for a while), Curator's Quest in Venderbight and Visage. Visage is a good place to farm money in general, as you can get 2 artifacts (200 echoes) and a snippet (50 echoes) every time you visit at 0 cost (you even lose terror!). It's possible you can mess this up by making the wrong choices during the pilgrimage.

It's also a good idea to plan your trips around where the admiral wants you to pick up info. If you can pick up strategic info every time you head out, your trips will quickly start paying for themselves and anything you do along the way is pure profit.

If you have the Zubmariner DLC, the game becomes much easier once you can submerge. You have a whole load of new ports to visit, many of them offering critical resources like fuel and supplies cheaply in locations where such things are usually in very short supply.

[zaku_zelo]

Tried it out, finally made some cash, realized how unreliable Hell was, let's move on.

I'm sure exploring pays off eventually, but in 16 hours I haven't reached that point. Port reports barely maintain my crew, work for the admiral doesn't help much and was locked behind some nightmare voyage to nowhere for the longest time, and all I get out of exploration is a bunch of dead ends and not nearly enough actual profits. Maybe that'll change, I sure as ♥♥♥♥ hope it does, but I don't have the resources to wait until then.
Visage. Gotcha. Gotta find Visage, gotta find those salt mines, gotta find...whatever the ♥♥♥♥ the Curator wants, for god's sake it could all be literally anywhere aaaaugh.

[Cultist]

If you really want I can give some directions to completing some of the more profitable early quests, but part of the fun is exploring, getting lost and eating your crew like the game states. But if you start to get to frustrated rather than have fun, I'm happy to help.

[zaku_zelo]

Hell seems to have a lot of good trade routes coming in and out of it. Dice from Palmerson, trade them for skulls in IR, 6 echos profit per dice from selling them in London. That's trash, though. Bring them too Codex instead, trade each skull for 3 logs, sell those at London, ends up as 281 echos per dice and holy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is so much money what the ♥♥♥♥.
Comes with the noticable stipulation that you have to hate both fun and yourself to be willing to sit on your ass outside Codex waiting for something to await you for an hour each trip, to say nothing of clicking a button in London inumerable times. Should expect that from dealing with Hell, though.

Originally posted by Cultist:

If you really want I can give some directions to completing some of the more profitable early quests, but part of the fun is exploring, getting lost and eating your crew like the game states. But if you start to get to frustrated rather than have fun, I'm happy to help.

Haven't quite reached that point yet. Could answer a few questions, though.

Other ships, pricier ships. How much are they worth it? It's a bigger boat, more cargo and more health, great, but it also needs more crew and therefore more supplies, and I'm assuming the higher weight means less speed and thus more fuel to get places, which would mean a stronger engine to not take literal years to get places, which would ALSO mean more fuel, and I can't imagine this working out. A bigger hold doesn't mean longer trips and more cargo space when you have to fill it with that much more supplies. Right? Right?
Like, that mighty Caligo. 3 times the space as my Liegia, it's true, but also 3 times the crew requirement and 5(!) times the weight. It sounds like it'd be in the same state as now. Or do I not understand how supply math works?

Also, monsters. Large crabs, Lifebergs, etc. Seen em around, avoided them every single time because I absolutely cannot dodge their attacks even a little bit and they have double my health at least. At LEAST. Hostile ships I can deal with, though it's almost never worth it, but how the hell do you deal with these things?

[Cultist]

Originally posted by zaku_zelo:

Other ships, pricier ships. How much are they worth it? It's a bigger boat, more cargo and more health, great, but it also needs more crew and therefore more supplies, and I'm assuming the higher weight means less speed and thus more fuel to get places, which would mean a stronger engine to not take literal years to get places, which would ALSO mean more fuel, and I can't imagine this working out. A bigger hold doesn't mean longer trips and more cargo space when you have to fill it with that much more supplies. Right? Right?
Like, that mighty Caligo. 3 times the space as my Liegia, it's true, but also 3 times the crew requirement and 5(!) times the weight. It sounds like it'd be in the same state as now. Or do I not understand how supply math works?

You more or less have the gist of it. Don't upgrade to the big ships (8000 echoes and up) until you have the funds to support it. But honestly, if you manage to scrap 8000 echoes together you probably already have a pretty good idea of how to make money or a very high tolerance for grinding.

The key here is the much more affordable 4000 echo ship. On paper, it doesn't look that much better than your starter ship apart from the hull value. But its real advantage is that it has a forward weapon slot, which your starter ship does not. With the right setup, this means you can challenge almost any zee-monster and at least come out alive with this ship. This opens up new ways to make money, as well as letting you easily aquire key components for some very profitable quests.

Also, monsters. Large crabs, Lifebergs, etc. Seen em around, avoided them every single time because I absolutely cannot dodge their attacks even a little bit and they have double my health at least. At LEAST. Hostile ships I can deal with, though it's almost never worth it, but how the hell do you deal with these things?

For me personally, the answer to this is more veils. A high Veils stat lets you bypass or even run from fights you can't win (you need to turn off your lights for this to work) and with the right tactic, avoid damage completely as you bombard unaware enemies from the shadows. It's kind of a cheap tactic, but the combat in this game is not great or even fun. I prefer to just get it over with as quickly as possible.

You should be able to kill the small crabs and bats even with your starter ship and its useless cannon. It's worth it if you're low on supplies.

Avoid anything bigger until you have a better gun or even a forward weapon. With the ship I mentioned earlier, good deck and forward weapons and 50+ veils you should be able to tackle most things.

[zaku_zelo]

Left London heading south and returned from the north. What a wonderful voyage. Pity fate denied me a Deviless wife, though. Not to deface the memory of our dearly departed strumpet spy, but honestly, we met once. I'm not that easy.

Okay, but ship weight. How does it work? A Phorcyd's twice as heavy as my current ship, would I need a twice as powerful engine to get the same speed? What about engine power, I know it eats up more fuel too, would a 1600-power engine chew through twice the fuel as my rusty old 800? With the same size hold as before, that sounds like a dreadfully bad deal.

And running from fight is easy. That's been my go-to response for anything with more than 50 health. Surviving encounters is no problem; kill the lights, ahead full, remember not to get so close next time. What I want to know is how to kill them, ideally without just trading hits.

[Fire and Glory]

I don't know the particulars but I am fairly sure that twice the ship weight does not mean twice as slow.

The bigger zee-beasts can be a challenge, I've killed eels around the corals with a tramp steamer and Caminus Yards's Hellthrasher by engaging at maximum range and moving backwards* (A good tactic with any zee-beast, really), but anything else tends to be a large risk with just one gun.

I'd say the Phorcyd is worth it, it's twice as sturdy and as it has a forward gun it also doles out twice as much damage** which makes it a lot more viable for fights, and I haven't had any real issues with fuel and supply consumption on that ship.

*I'm not sure if moving backwards really works out with just the basic engine, I've used Leadbeater & Stainrod's 'Boadicea' and the clay stokers from polythreme for such fights.

**The Caminus Yards Bandersnatch turns any fight into a farce, by the way, it deals 8s of stagger which means with decent mirrors, there is a good chance the enemy will never be able to attack once in the entire fight, shame about the torpedo price though.

[Cultist]

Originally posted by zaku_zelo:

Left London heading south and returned from the north. What a wonderful voyage. Pity fate denied me a Deviless wife, though. Not to deface the memory of our dearly departed strumpet spy, but honestly, we met once. I'm not that easy.

Okay, but ship weight. How does it work? A Phorcyd's twice as heavy as my current ship, would I need a twice as powerful engine to get the same speed? What about engine power, I know it eats up more fuel too, would a 1600-power engine chew through twice the fuel as my rusty old 800? With the same size hold as before, that sounds like a dreadfully bad deal.

It doesn't quite work like that. Weight imposes a penalty to your speed, but it's not as bad as you think. Bigger engines consume fuel faster, but they also make you move faster. There isn't really a downside here, it's just a matter of balancing the weight of your ship with the right engine - the starter engine is crap no matter how you look at it, but putting the stongest engine on a small ship creates a different issue, because you are now moving too fast and will have to hang around ports for a while unless you want to miss events there (Something Awaits... mechanic). I find that the 2000 echo engine or the Serpentine are the best ones for small ships, going bigger is a waste early on.

And running from fight is easy. That's been my go-to response for anything with more than 50 health. Surviving encounters is no problem; kill the lights, ahead full, remember not to get so close next time. What I want to know is how to kill them, ideally without just trading hits.

Crank up Veils as high as possible (60-70 should be enough but it's also a very good stat for making money through skill checks so might as well put in a little extra). Turn off lights when you're close to enemy and get close enough that you can start aiming. Once you shoot, they will investigate. Full speed backwards. If your engines are strong enough and your Veils are high enough, you should be able to stay just out of detection range while still doing damage. A high Iron stat helps speed up the process and therefore reduces the risk that you'll take some damage in return. Don't turn on your lights until the enemy is close to death, so you can finish them off quickly.

It works better on some enemies than others and doesn't work as well on ships. It's also harder to pull off near islands as you can't always back away in the direction you want. And obivously, it's not going to work if you only have a starter cannon and no forward weapon (well it might, but you're going to gain tons of terror because your light are off for a long time).

To clarify, when I say crank Veils to 60-70 I don't mean base value but with whatever your officers add on top. You'll likely not need more than 40-50 base depending on your crew.

[zaku_zelo]

I gave someone to the Pirate King today.
I knew what it meant. I knew what the result would be, both for me and for her. I did it anyway.
Some squinty-eyed sailor from the surface. Took a trip down the Canal too see the zee under the sea. Tanned, eyes full of wonder, delight beaming off her face like the sun she lived under at our stories. Innocent. Oh, she'd have argued against that quality vehemently, but no. Perhaps on the surface and it's sun-dappled seas, but here, bellow, with us and the zee and all it's horrors, innocent as a babe. She never saw it coming.

Not half a day into her delivery she awoke. Panic. Screaming, cursing, pleading, sobbing.
Terror.
I have sailed the Zee for years. I've seen...so many things, so many men and women, good and bad, feel the most horrible of fears. Nothing like this. We of the Unterzee, we know fear. It's a part of life. It gets too us, but is a part of us. A day without a chill down the spine or a lump in the got isn't rare, they simply don't exist.
Not for her. Sun-dappled seas. Innocent. Like me, thinking I knew fear. No. Not yet.

It went on the entire trip. All of it. She did not sleep. On our tiny, leaky steamer, a cry in the hold can be heard throughout. Hers tore through deck and hull and gag and sweat-drenched palms alike.
Not yet.

We reached the Isle in a week.
She calmed some, then. Some. Exhaustion. We hauled her up to the Garden. The cages paled her sun-drenched skin. The Lady silenced her cries. She enjoys describing the honey and bees. Only polite, she says.
Not yet.

The silence was brief.
The screams started again. Useless struggles, desperate pleas, anything but this, anything. On and on and on and on and on ando n and on andon ando n adnn anon on on andonandonadonandon and
on
Now.

I saw her again, latter. At the meeting. There was nothing left but silence.
For her. For them. Not me. Never me, never again. They echo ceaselessly.
Her blank, mindless face. Wonder and awe and joy and so much muchness, too this, by me. Why.

Why?
Money? No. Had that.
Less. Curiosity.
That's it.

That's it.

oh gods gods gods please im sorry im sorry im so sorry please stop please stop it im sorry stop stop it stop screaming im sorry im sorry

[zaku_zelo]

In less eloquent terms, too many mistakes, kick myself every time I go to London for jilting the Bruser and getting my wife-to-be dead, time to retire. Or die. Got a house full of loot, got a Magician to pass on, got this sweet heart book, that's good enough. Hope that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ from the slums appreciates this. Maybe he won't feel compelled to run horrible drugs for no reason! That'd be nice.


Kinda leaning away from a forward slot ship, honestly. I'm sure it tears stuff apart, but again, I can just run from everything easily, and that fire and retreat strategy is enough to inefficently kill big stuff if I ever need something for a quest. And really, how much do you actually get from killing zee beasts? Less then you'd get from stories, quests, and trading, that's for sure.
An aft slot seems more interesting. More than just guns. Does that surpressor work as well as it sounds?

Also, is there an actual ratio of engine power/fuel consumtion/weight somewhere? I'm the sort of person who'd want actual math.

[Fire and Glory]

The math is somewhere pretty sure, some forum searching would probably dig it up.

Lifebergs get you 300 echoes when the RNG is right, Mt Nomad drops over 1000, and Lorn Flukes drop 500 or so IIRC, it's a nice bit of money when you're going from A to B and the quests start running out.

Plus you can dissect corpses to earn fragments, that's nice too when there's less places to discover.

It's nice to be able to go full speed without wondering if RNG is going to punch your guts although apparently it's less efficient than regular speed. Not sure if it'd be worth getting the cargo ship for it though, seems dreadful boring.

Never did get into trade, I'll admit that it's probably more profitable than monster hunting.

[Cultist]

Nobody's saying you can't do both. While the merchant ship can make bigger trades, it also eats up more resources and isn't suited for hunting monsters. It's a different playstyle, but I doubt it's more profitable in the end. The major advantage of having a large cargo hold IMO is that you can carry a bunch of random stuff around and always have the right item for a quest.

[Wlerin]

Weight has an effect, but it's very small. I couldn't tell you the exact ratio, only that the best way to compensate for it is Avid Suppressor + Full Power everywhere always rather than upgrading your engine. That or the Fulgent Impeller. Not both. Never both.

[zaku_zelo]

Oh, forget it, I'll just get the frigate eventually. Seems the best of all worlds.
Damn this underpowered yacht! If it just had a fore or aft slot this wouldn't even be a discussion. Why is it so weak!? And don't tell me it's because it's free, it's not, you're giving up other rewards to get it, it effectively costs 7k. That's nearly as much as the cargo ship! Nearly as much as the cargo ship for all the downsides of the frigate with almost none of the gains. Why!? 40 extra stats ain't worth THAT much.
Damn the lack of ship storage too, for that matter. Really now, how much favor with the admiralty does it take to get an extra parking space?

Starting with such an obscene amount of money in the bank doesn't feel great. I wasn't a fan of the early game issues that started this thread, don't get me wrong, but skipping that phase entirely is...eh.