Sunless Sea Trader Tips

Zo you think you're a zailor?

The unterzee is a wide and dangerous place, filled with exotic locations, and valuable trade opportunities. Here are some suggestions from someone who's been zailing these waters for a while now.

Getting Started

There are a great number of profitable opportunities in Sunless Sea, although they are not always obvious. In order to get the most out of your journeys across the unterzee, I recommend taking a look at this map by z99-_. It will give you an idea of where to find any location I mention in this guide.

I will be updating this guide with more information and new trade opportunities as I discover them.

Before you leave London for the first time, pick up the colonist to head to Venderbight, and stock up on as much Mushroom Wine as possible. Sell the wine at Venderbight, pick up the Curator's quest, and head northeast.

Once you know what location is to the east of Codex, turn south, and open up the sections of the map south to the tile east of London. Head back to port. The Blind Bruiser will give you a gift of fuel and supplies, and you should get more fuel for handing in any and all port reports you've collected along the way.

Head out and do some exploring. You want to try to find the Salt Lions, Mount Palmerston, and Avid Horizon in this trip. Avoid docking at the Iron Republic if you find yourself heading south for any reason. Avoiding the place now means later it becomes very handy.

When you find Godfall, you can trade in five Casks of Mushroom Wine for 150 echos. This only works for the first part of the game though. Once you've been at zee long enough, they price drops a little.

At Avid Horizon, use your Beginner's Luck to search along the beach, and you will hopefully receive the Eyeless Skull mascot. Also, don't forget to pick up the Hunter's Eye for 77 fragments. Both of these items can be handed in to the Curator in Venderbight for a few rewards including a Captivating Treasure each. Captivating Treasures can be either transformed into heirlooms in your study in London (if you have a study yet), or sold to the Alarming Scholar for 1000 echoes. I recommend selling these first two, to raise a bit of capital.

You should have enough to restock on fuel from time to time until you find the Salt Lions. This is your first major import opportunity. For a deposit of 200 echoes, which you should have by now, you can pick up 20 units of Sphinxstone. Back in London, you can sell this for 500 echoes.

Repeat this until instead of selling the Sphinxstone, you are met by a lady who asks you to take it to Grand Geode (far south east corner of the map, near the Dawn Machine). This is closely followed by a man who offers you an alternative destination. However you choose, the Sphinxstone trade is no more.

The Coffee Run

Before moving onto this part, you really want to buy the merchant's vessel (and make sure you have a few thousand echoes saved in reserve - you need money to buy your cargo too). 120 cargo spaces means you can make a lot of money here. The merchant vessel sails with a crew of 30, and I suggest having a full complement when you leave London for this one.

Addition: I was asked how to raise enough capital to buy the merchant ship. See the next section for one possible method.

The coffee run is why I recommended staying away from the Iron Republic. The first few times you land in the Iron Republic, the Shops tab will give you access to the House of Milks. This is the only place outside of the Carnelian Coast where you can buy Sacks of Darkdrop Coffee for 38 echoes a bag. After a few visits to the Iron Republic, this store will move on, and you will be given another which will not sell coffee for 38 echoes each.

Now, since the Iron Republic is also the cheapest place on the map to buy fuel, this makes it a great home base for the coffee run. When you leave the Iron Republic, you want to be carrying 5 food, 25 fuel, and 90 Darkdrop Coffee. Head to the Cumaean Canal, and from there to the surface, to Naples, and buy a ticket to Vienna.

In Vienna, there is a coffee shop which will buy your Darkdrop Coffee for 80 echoes each, more than doubling what you paid for it. Head back to Naples.

Here, you have a few choices. You can spend some time carrying cargo around the Mediterranean, or you can just restock on food and fuel and head back to the unterzee. Carrying cargo on the surface is profitable, but you will lose crew. If you want to try this, then when you start dropping to the half crew mark (so, 15 for the merchant's vessel), it's time to call it a day and go home.

Before you return to the unterzee though, buy food. Lots of food. Note, you cannot see how much free space you have in your hold while on the surface, but you should be able to work it out. You can go over your hold cargo space too, but if you are not careful, this will mean selling cargo as soon as you reach the unterzee, before leaving the Canal even.

Either way, once you have enough fuel to reach the Iron Republic (15 should do it - 10 of which is taken when you move through the Canal), fill your cargo bay with food for 5 echoes a piece. It will take a while, as you can only buy food one unit at a time on the surface, but when you have about 105 units, head back to the Canal, and from there, back to the Iron Republic.

In the House of Milks, sell the food for 25 echoes each. Make sure you keep 5 units in reserve. Buy 25 fuel. Buy 90 Darkdrop Coffee. Repeat the run until your Vienna contact's shop burns down. Note, this happens while you are in Vienna, so you don't need to worry about lugging a large cargo of coffee only to find there is no-one to sell it to.

There seems to be a limit on how much you can earn from this, so it is better to get it done sooner, rather than later. Your Venice contact's shop burns down, and it looks, although I'm by no means certain, that it will burn once you reach a certain amount. I did this for two different characters. The first made six or seven runs, each time making 3000-3500 profit each run. This character had very few echos once the first run was outfitted. The second character had the coffee shop burn down on the first run. This one had over 13,000 echos after buying the load of coffee.

Snakes on a Boat

Once you have the Tireless Mechanic working for you, follow his storyline through until you need to visit Hunter's Keep's basement. There he sets an elaborate trap to catch dream snakes in an Empty Mirrorcatch Box. You can repeat this process for as many times as you have components for the trap. This works out to be six. You'll see why soon. When you attempt to catch the dream snakes, there is a chance you will lose one member of your crew.

There is a shopping list for this, which I've priced up at 2,340 echos. There are cheaper ways of doing this, but this was the easiest. This breaks down into:

• 6x Empty Mirrorcatch Boxes - 250 eachos each from Khan's Shadow (also available from Khan's Heart once you've got the Nephrite Ring).
  
• 6x Clay Men - Available for free at Polythreme. This is the deciding factor in the number of Snakes you can catch, as you can only carry a maximum of 6 Clay Men.
  
• 6x Foxfire Candles - I bought these in London, for 40 echos each.
  
• 30x Supplies - I bought these for 20 echos each from London for ease, although there are much cheaper ways of acquiring Supplies.

Once you have six Mirrorcatch Boxes filled with Angry Dream Snakes, go and sell the at Khan's Shadow for 500 echos each. Using the prices above, this will get you a profit of 660 echos per run, and seems to be repeatable forever. This persists past completion of the Tireless Mechanic's quest line resulting in the Fulgent Impeller engine and seems to be permanently repeatable.

Obtaining the Nephrite Ring will open up the trae quarter in Khan's Heart. Here you can buy Empty Mirrorcatch Boxes at the same price as Khan's Shadow, and Foxfire Candles for 30 echos, saving 10 echos per candle compared to London.

Since your cargo will only be taking up six slots on your ship, it will be wworthwhile to work this into another trade run. All of these places involved are in the north east corner of the map, so it will probably be worth running this alongside the London > Empire of Hands > Irem trade route covered below.

The Secret of Monkey Island

By now, you should have uncovered quite a bit of the map. The north half, at least. During your journeys, I expect you'll have discovered the Empire of Hands (aka Monkey Island). The first time you visit the Empire of Hands, you will need to do a tour of all of their islands, and put together a comprehensive port report.

Back in London, you have the choice of reading the report yourself (and gaining a Secret), or handing it in to the Admirality. Either way, when you return to your lodgings, there will be an invitation waiting for you. This is how you move on to the next stage of the Empire of Hands storyline.

Eventually, a woman will arrange with you for passage to the Empire. Accept her commission. Buy enough food and fuel to last the trip there (or to last to somewhere on the way where you can restock), and fill your hold with Mushroom Wine.

When you arrive at the Empire of Hands, the lady will pay you and leave. You can find her on Fountainhead Island. In her camp, you can also collect a Gift for the Emperor, which will give you access to the Wildweald Court on Sovereign Island.

Go and hand in the gift, chat to the Emperor about his zeppelin, then select Trade with the Wildweald Court. Give them all of your Mushroom Wine, and in exchange, they will give you Darkdrop Coffee.

Take this coffee north, to Irem (north east corner of the map). There, you can trade it all in for Bales of Parabola Linen. These can then be taken back to London and sold for 60 echoes each. Not quite as good as the 42 echoes per Darkdrop Coffee from the coffee run, but this will still make you 39 echoes per unit profit.

The best part of this is that it is unlike both the coffee run and the Sphinxstone run. They are limited. This trade route is not, and can go on as many times as you like. You will eventually reach maximum reputation with the Empire of Hands, but you can still continue this trade there.

Other Places

In Polythreme, you can pick up six Clay Men, Marked For London. Delivering them to London will reward you with 20 echos per Clay Man. This doesn't seem like much, and in truth it isn't, but on some of the longer trade routes, there is a chance that you will be passing Polythreme, and will have enough cargo space, so you may as well take them on, fill the hold, and make that little bit extra cash when you get home. Or, instead of taking them to London, this is a perfect kidnap opportunity. See the Snakes on a Boat section for more details.

In Khan's Heart, if you 'Wander Khan's Heart' there is a chance you will end up in A Candle-Lit Shop with a few options. Buy the Violant Ink. This is another of the treasures for Venderbight's Curator, and will again be rewarded with a Captivating Treasure.

In Irem, you can buy a Watchful Curio for a single Secret. In Polythreme, you can have this converted by the Clay King into a Wakeful Idol. This can then be sold to the Alarming Scholar in London for 100 echos. Note, as long as you have the Secrets, this can be repeated as many times as you want. 10 Secrets = 1000 echos. This is not the best way to make money as Secrets are very useful, but it will do in a pinch, or if you pick up a Watchful Curio elsewhere.

[Amanda]

I am pretty certain that Adam's Way also sells Sacks of Darkdrop Coffee for 38 echoes.

[无聊]

for the "Snakes on a Boat", there are some problems:
1. you need "Hunter's Keep in ruins" this contion to active "Excavate the cellar " interaction to fulfill the contions of this guide, or you will spend 1 Memory of Distant Shores, 1 Tale of Terror!!, 1 Zee-ztory to proceed the quest.
2. I'm not sure if this "persists past completion of the Tireless Mechanic's quest", as wikia said, after you "Speak to the Mechanic on board", there will be no "Excavate the cellar" in story tab.

Has someone tested these problem?

[COMBATWA4LES]

i went here to find out how to get echos not spend them.

[SnArCAsTiC]

Just a note on your "Other places" section, about Watchful Curios: in Khan's Shadow you can turn a hunting trophy into 4 Watchful Curios, and then bring those to Polythreme; that's a much better deal because killing many zee monsters will get you at least one hunting trophy, and secrets by comparison are pretty hard to come by, especially later in the game, once you've explored all the locations. You've got a useful little guide here though; please keep up the good work!

[SideShot]

This is likely dependant on Map layout but i have been having some sucess in what i call the Southern Run. The core of this run is stocking up on Mushroom Wine in Lodon, sailing to Port Carnellian to sell them for profit and load up on Sapphires and some additional supplies for a longer trek as you set sail for the Chellonate, with a possible stop at the Mangrove College for some free supplies. Sell the sapphiers in the Chellonate and load up Ivory, sell that in Polythreme and you are basically done. the only part of this trade route that requires some story completion is the Khanate which you can travel to with the required 25 coffee next to the sapphires from Carnellian.
After that you can load up in Khan's Heart on romantic literature and head back to Port Carnellian or load up on cofee and head for Irem.

[Bort]

I think it becomes freely available later on. Certainly the sisters do not get in the way.

I will double check this though, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[Ramble Calidaho]

On returning to hunters keep, I need to supply a zee story, terrifying tale and recent news (I believe) to access the basement again. Unless it becomes freely available later in the quest.

[Bort]

I've been and looked at the angry dream snake run, and I cannot see where it requires rumours. Could you elaborate please Rambo?

I will take a look at it again next time I play Sunless Sea, to ensure that it is still repeatable, and update the guide accordingly.

[Ramble Calidaho]

The angry dream serpents run appears to require a bunch of rumours and such and isn't freely repeatable anymore.

[the-truthseeker]

Thanks Bort!