Value of Secrets/Fragments

[\tg/ World Peace]

In this game you frequently have opportunities to choose between cash/valuables and secrets/fragments, notably when most zea beasts have a butcher and a dissect option. What would be a reasonable conversion rate in a middle game scenario where you need both and just want the best deal?

[Silver]

depends how close your fragment bar is filled in the lower left of the screen, i.e. how close you are to the next secret.

but mostly, i always check if my crew is hungry or the hunger meter has just been emptied. if it has, i always dissect the smaller crabs since i cant turn them into supplies, and if i have less than 10 supplies i always choose to butcher the bigger ones.

[aardvarkpepper]

I think it's better to consider what's best in terms of real time expenditure. and that changes depending on the situation.

For example, Isle of Cats. At the start, you can use 5 Zee-stories, like 60 fragments was it, 10 fuel, Lamentable Relic, or Recent News.

Say you use Zee-stories. Well, they sell for what, 10 Echoes per to the Alarming Scholar. Not great. But a lot of storylines use zee-stories, and you need them to trade for mutersalt at Whither (if you want to get mutersalt, which you very well may). So you could trade off your Zee-stories here but probably you'll have to do a load of grinding elsewhere - for example, each Recent News can be traded for a Zee-story at a light-ship.

What about Recent News? You can use it at Adam's Way, was it? to visit the city, or a Port Report for Mount Palmerston, or an Unread Log or something like that. If you want to only stick to Port Reports and not use Recent News for whatever reason, you'll need to spend a load of fuel and supplies going back and forth. Sure, your Recent News gets replaced, but that's only once per docking at Fallen London.

if you use Recent News at Isle of Cats it's not the worst usage, you get 5 Mushroom Wine that you can sell for what, 100 Echoes at Fallen London, or 150 Echoes at Godfall? But then, when are you doing this? In what ship? If it's the starter ship then you might want to reserve 6 space for Clay Men and another 20 for Sphinxstone, then with supplies, fuel, and sundry quest items, you may not really have room to spare. If you've already scouted Godfall and it's pretty nearby, and if Days Passed of whatever it's called is 199 or less then you can dump the wine pretty quick. But who's to say?

So you could do it with 10 fuel, which is costly and even worse in terms of hold space. But even then you can't really say that's definitively a wrong choice. Suppose you're loaded down with Port Reports so will be getting loads of fuel when you get into London, yet you *also* have a load of fuel on ship. How? 10 Fuel from the Pigmote Isle opening if you chose certain options, 5 fuel from the Fathomking's Hold if you asked for a boon and randomed into that, or maybe you happen to have a load of fuel because you were planning a trip but decided to cancel because you ran into an enemy that beat up your ship so you want to return to London for repairs.

All things told, what with hold space and trips back and forth being such limiting factors, it's probably down to Lamentable Relics and fragments. You can get Lamentable Relics pretty easily at Mount Palmerston but that requires luck and a load of supplies, and who's to say if you happened to have done that at that point in the game?

So it's really situational. I'd say it comes down to you can spend fragments or secrets as a matter of convenience, but you shouldn't do it as a matter of course. Like what is it, you can spend Secrets at Irem to get bales of parabola-linen and sell them? Seems great, but if you don't use Secrets to boost stats you have problems doing a lot of challenges for story events. One or two secrets won't end your game, but if you're regularly dropping secrets then your stats will feel it.

And you don't *have* to spend secrets much if you know what you're doing. Like all right, you don't have Soothe and Cooper Long-Boxes and it's convenient to get them for, what is it, 3 Secrets at Irem? But you can also get them at Khan's Heart if you're willing to spam SAY Wander and can sit in port for a bit, or you can buy Strange Catch for Echoes at Irem and trade them (after a certain number of days passes). It's more a matter of when and how you do things.

[\tg/ World Peace]

I think that's over complicating the question because fuel, port reports, and trade goods can be bought and sold. The prices fluctuate, but you can come up with reasonable cash values for almost everything. Fuel, for example, I would put at 10 because that's the London price and many ports around the map sell it for 8-15. Supplies I'll pt at 20 because of the London price and the ability to sell at Abbey Rock and Gaider's Mourn. Supplies at 20 means 2.5 hunger relief is 1 echo. If you prefer a certain item over its cash value that's just a function of supply and demand. We might also come to slightly different values on some items and that's fine.

Fragments and secrets are probably the most significant resource that you can't really buy, sell, and barter with, which is why I wanted to pick everyone's brain.

[RJJameson]

Secrets can be bought at Irem for 999 echoes. Call it a round 1,000.

300 fragments = 1 secret**. So each fragment is worth 3 echoes. I only go for supplies over fragments if I need the supplies before I get to my next restocking point (Empire of Hands, Aestival, Port Carnelion, etc.). Otherwise, fragments are far more valuable to me.


**As you get more pages, the value of a fragment goes up. But since you almost always waste some fragments when getting a secret, I figured 300 for one secret is a fair baseline.

[KG]

More towards late/endgame, with good enough stats and a decently equipped Frigate or Dreadnought you can hunt certain zee-beasts (Lorn-Flukes) with relatively low cost in ship damage and fear, then make a Pages (84) challenge to get 3x Secrets and a Colossal Fluke-Core.

If you have Zubmariner it is pretty likely that you'll be able to resupply at decent rates close enough to one or more of the monsters' hunting grounds to make the activity sustainable, at least until you run up too much Terror or need to return to London for repairs/crew.

I think this beats pretty much any other repeatable activity for time cost. If you're piloting a heavy warship anyway (and have decently high Pages) the net cost in echoes also seems very favorable compared to buying them at Irem, particularly if you're making use of the Fluke-cores, trading/quest opportunities, and slaying other zee-beasts along the way.

A tip for keeping damage to a minimum: the Terror is what really threatens to cut short a well-equipped Captain's hunting expedition, so stay close enough that the Lorn-Flukes will try to ram your ship instead of using their scream. Just not so close that they actually manage to make contact as you're backing down and firing. They'll still use the Terror attack sometimes but not enough to ruin your hunting trip.

[aardvarkpepper]

Originally posted by \tg/ World Peace ADAB:

What would be a reasonable conversion rate in a middle game scenario where you need both and just want the best deal?

All right, I see where I made a hash of my original response.

I didn't think there *was* a middle game scenario. Though now that you mention it - but anyways, here's what I was thinking.

At first, you stay with starting engine and starting ship to keep operating costs low. You take on WE ARE CLAY, but that's about it, the Serpentine is optional. Last I played, you could make a load of echoes with Red Honey smuggling which I think doesn't require Hold space. Sure it's tedious waiting for Something Awaits You but it's mostly AFK with sound effects turned on, when you hear the chime, you switch back to the game.

The kicker is, to get to that point, you don't need extra valuables or Secrets if you know what you're doing. I didn't explain, I know, but it's pretty easy to get to the point where resource management isn't really a big deal.

Anyways, then you switch over to a big ship to do all the nice things you want. Fulgent Impeller and Lorn-Fluke farming or whatever, maybe do coffee or sphinxstone or something, then switch back to a small ship or whatever. At that point resource management is even less of a big deal if you know what you're about.

So it's not really about spending mid-game resources optimally, because at first you just don't need valuables or Secrets or much of anything, then maybe you buy some gun upgrades (if you even bother), then you're in a Dreadnought with all the trimmings. It's less a matter of "how did I optimally spend my midgame resources" than "did I spend fragments and Secrets at a point I didn't really need to, to save me three minutes of time that it now takes me seven minutes to recover".

Like yeah, if you went nuts on spending Secrets that's going to take a while to make back. So you don't do that. But if you spend a Secret or five worth, it's not something that should be a serious issue.

But for you, it IS an issue? Because you don't know where to go? That's sort of the point I was trying to make (though poorly).

All right, so let's say that you're trying to decide whether to butcher or dissect -

Megalops: If your Hunger is at 48 and you don't have a lot of money, then maybe eat it. Your Hunger resets at 50+ to 0 and you lose a Supply, so if you eat it then it's as good as a Supply, which costs basically 20 Echoes.

But if you don't need to worry about small-change Echoes (which you shouldn't, even in the early game, once you really know what you're doing), then you go for the 25 Fragments was it? You just don't need that small change stuff. You CAN always use those fragments though, one way or another.

But then, if you know you want Fragments, specifically, then maybe you *don't* get Fragments if you figure that's going to push you into Fragments resetting and you getting a Secret. Like, you can't trade Fragments at Isle of Cats or Avid Horizon if you just reset.

Bat Swarm: Nom nom. 1 Supply and 1 Terror, versus -1 Terror. But if you're really desperate for Terror reduction, then do what you have to do.

Jillyfleur: Probably you shouldn't fight these things casually as they do a chunk of damage and are too fast to avoid. But then, there isn't really a "right" answer so much as it's situational. Do you need Mutersalt? You can get it from Whither with Zee-story, and if you "Watch it disperse" then you'll get a Zee-story. But if you cut it up for supplies, you can randomly get 1 Supply or 1 Strange Catch, and you need specifically Strange Catch for some story actions. So what to do? And sure, you can buy Strange Catch at Irem for 25 Echoes, but do you really want to go all the way across the map for that?

Which was the point I was trying to make with the Isle of Cats example. If Isle of Cats spawns right outside the Iron Republic, your cost will be about 600 Echoes to do what you need. But if it spawns in a worse position, your cost runs about 2000 Echoes, plus literally in the time it takes you to do the runs you could have visited very tile on the map. Literally. It's not so much that there's a standardized cost, because you have to figure in variable transit costs, and further know what you really need and how you're going to get it.

If you want to keep things simple I'd say - the game's about discovery, right? So maybe you should try doing some of each multiple times, see how you like the results. But maybe also, if you're worried about expenses and opportunity costs, you should try to find a reliable way of making Echoes and/or Secrets rather than relying on random hunts.

(edit - not that you're "relying" on them. But pretty much it comes down to first you establish the runs and routes to secure your income, and if you blow something up on the way then so be it, that's just incidental bonuses. If you're really looking at it like deciding between dissection and supplies is a big deal, I'm saying I think it shouldn't be, until you're at the point that you really decide to farm some enemies, at which point you shouldn't have to worry about dissection versus supplies as you ought to have enough Echoes that it shouldn't be an issue. That's what I mean.)

[RJJameson]

Originally posted by KG:

A tip for keeping damage to a minimum: the Terror is what really threatens to cut short a well-equipped Captain's hunting expedition, so stay close enough that the Lorn-Flukes will try to ram your ship instead of using their scream. Just not so close that they actually manage to make contact as you're backing down and firing. They'll still use the Terror attack sometimes but not enough to ruin your hunting trip.

Lorn Fluke's ranged attack doesn't add terror anymore. In the last few years of its updates, Sunless Sea got gradually easier and easier.

[aardvarkpepper]

Originally posted by RJJameson:

In the last few years of its updates, Sunless Sea got gradually easier and easier.

Easier in some ways, harder in others. I would know. I rewrote my guide three times years back, and now I'm doing two new writeups.

Remember when you could farm lifebergs at Censor's Arch because they got stuck?
How about ultra sunlight farming? Woo, so much money! Those were the days.
A lot of ports used to work differently too. If you look at my guide now, see how big the size of that first loop is. That's HUGE. I don't even know, got to be like 20 tiles or something, and I remember at the time I didn't think the loop was of unusual size at all.

But nowadays? My new guide (haven't released it yet, still writing it up) recommends buying fuel, then doing an 8-tile loop. Nowhere near 20+ tiles or whatever it was.

[Silver]

Originally posted by RJJameson:

Lorn Fluke's ranged attack doesn't add terror anymore. In the last few years of its updates, Sunless Sea got gradually easier and easier.

It still does. Just tried killing one yesterday, but the +10 terror screams every 5 seconds were too much that I abandoned the attempts after gaining 40 terror within a minute or so of fighting it.

[RJJameson]

Originally posted by Silver:

Originally posted by RJJameson:

Lorn Fluke's ranged attack doesn't add terror anymore. In the last few years of its updates, Sunless Sea got gradually easier and easier.

It still does. Just tried killing one yesterday, but the +10 terror screams every 5 seconds were too much that I abandoned the attempts after gaining 40 terror within a minute or so of fighting it.

Well... they certainly don't when I kill them. Killed 3 or 4 yesterday.

EDIT: Using version 2.2.7.3165. Don't know if there's a more recent version. Wiki's "current version" is only at 2.2.7.3107

https://sunlesssea.gamepedia.com/Official_Sunless_Sea_Wiki

[Silver]

I am on 2.2.10.3198 on epic games

[aardvarkpepper]

Originally posted by Silver:

I am on 2.2.10.3198 on epic games

I'm on V2.2.7.3165 too on Steam. Apparently there's a different version on EPIC.

[\tg/ World Peace]

I poked around on the wiki and it seems like echoes and fragments are given out roughly 1:1, with a few monsters that are heavily skewed toward one or the other. This does of course rely on cash conversion values for common loot items such as Hunting Trophy at 70, Supply at 20, and Zee-Story at 15. I did not do the same for SAY events or repeatable challenges like digging at Mt. Palmerston, but I think it's reasonable to treat them as equal value and consider anything that gets more than one fragment per echo (which is most SAY events) a good deal.