Silent but Deadly Steamboat Build

Stealth is important early to mid game, because your starter boat is practically made of tissue. Deadly is important mid and late game, because by then you have to hunt zee beasts to gain secrets. Here is my guide to help you do both efficiently.

1. Introduction

There are plenty of guides to trading, because you never get enough money to upgrade. But if you avoid most combat, and when you engage you absolutely will win, then you don't need expensive upgrades. Here is my guide to the sequence of upgrades to get you to be the captain of the stealthy (like the monkey foundling) but deadly (unlike the monkey foundling) steamboat on the zee.

2. Gameplay Basics

There are plenty of guides on the basics, and maybe it is better when you discover them yourself. Here are some pointers that I think are not obvious.

Smuggling is profitable up to a point

When you are starting out, you get an offer you pretty much can't refuse: money, fuel and food for some simple delivery. As the game goes on, the smuggling will become tedious and confusing.

Because you are asked to carry 1k echo to some random island to buy a crate of brilliant souls. You forget about that 1k being other people's money and buy some emergency fuels and supplies, then BOOM you are short of money to buy that crate. Without that crate, when you get back to London you get stabbed in the face. THE END.

To avoid that, once you have enough money to stand on your own feet, just stop the smuggling. The extra hassle is not worth it.

Some notes on fuel efficiency

In principle, ship weight determines speed, while engine power determines speed AND fuel consumption: the more powerful the engine, the faster it consumes fuel. The thing to remember is that power does NOT increase linearly with fuel consumption. Doubling the speed will MORE THAN DOUBLE the fuel consumption. So if you buy a 3000 engine for the starter boat or corvette, without a big enough cargo hold to cater for the increase in fuel consumption, you end up dead in the water or just have to buy expensive fuel in every port.

In a sense the starter boat and engine combo is one of the most fuel efficient of all boats. It takes a long time to get anywhere, but it won't cost a lot of fuel. Technically THE most fuel efficient boat is the Cutter at 300 weight, the lightest of all ships, and the starter engine.



As your ship gets heavier, you need a bigger engine to compensate, and so you have to pay the price of increasing fuel consumption. Cargo hold size doesn't get an upgrade till the merchant ship or up, which given its weight (as much as a dreadnought), a lot of space have to be reserved for fuel and supplies.

Plot your course carefully to save fuel

As with real life sea captains, you want to plot the shortest course between you and your destination in order to save fuel. Straight line is usually the shortest distance between two ports, but sometimes there are islands and/or monsters blocking your way, or just bad weather. Avoid these accordingly, just like what real life sea captains do.

Don't wobble or change your mind midway. When you are at port, take your sweet time and read the map to plot where to go next and how to get there by the shortest distance. Just like real life sea captains.

Some notes on Supplies and Crews

When your crew is LESS than half the maximum crew, your ship runs at half speed. However the higher the crew, the faster supplies are consumed. The hunger meter goes up by the number of crew divided by 2, rounded up/down to nearest integer. (From what I can see, there is no clear pattern as to when it is rounded up, when it is rounded down.) Each time the hunger meter reaches 50 or more, a supply is consumed.

Give the way supply consumption is calculated in the game, you consume supply at the same rate when the crew number is 20, just as you are when there are 24 crews. The reason is that when you have 20 crews, the hunger meter goes up 4 times (10, 20, 30, 40, 50) before a supply is consumed. But when you have 24 crews, the hunger meter ALSO goes up 4 times before a supply is consumed (12, 24, 36, 48, 50). Use this to your advantage, and pack supplies accordingly.

Terror Management

Terror management is important when you are out at sea for a long time. In general you can pay to have it reduced in various ports, or visiting some specific ports to get it reduced for free (e.g. Frostfound, Mangrove College).

Terror actively reduces when you are near light (either from the boat itself or buoy) AND coast, but it cannot drop down to negative. That means if your terror is, say at 43, you cannot reduce it down to 42 or lower. Terror increases slower if you just have light on or just near the coast. Terror increases the fastest when you are out in sea with no light.

One expensive way to keep terror low is to have light on all the time. This costs fuel and make yourself less stealthy. But there are cheaper ways to keep your terror low. For example, sail along the coast line. It will use more fuel, but less than if you turn on light all the time.

You may think it is cheaper to reduce terror by going back in London, because if your terror is above 50, you always get terror reduced to 50 when you are back in London. But every time you arrive at London with terror > 50, you have a chance to add to your nightmare menace. In the long run this is a very costly way to reduce terror because your nightmare will add addition terror to later sea trips. So really, you are not having your terror reduced for free in London, you are just deferring the terror to later days.

The cheapest way is to have a family and a sweetheart in London and spend time with your family. Spending time with the family will reduce terror absolutely free by 20 and give you 2 rested nights (used to combat nightmares). But you need to have at least a townhouse, a sweetheart AND a child.

Another way is to kill monsters and ships. At most, killing monsters/ships will reduce terror by 10. Notice that right outside the London, there are quite a few crabs hanging around Quaker's Haven. In the beginning they are PITA, but from mid game onwards, when you can basically one-shot them, they are very cheap way to reduce terror just before entering London.

3. Ports to Visit Early Game

Do the First Curator Quest in Venderbight

When you are starting out, you are very short of money. The First Curator Quest is a very easy way to get money quick. If you make a beeline to Avid Horizon immediately, you automatically get two quest items that you can turn in and give you two captivating treasures. That's 2k you can spend on fuel, supplies and equipments right off the bat.

As the game goes on, you get lots of items that have no apparent use. Turn those in to the First Curator and you get a lot more money.

The final note for this quest is that taking the quest reward steamboat IMO is a bad idea. By that time you need firepower AND stealth to survive the zee. That quest reward steamboat isn't strong enough, it only has deck weapon but no forward weapon. Other attribute boosts are nice but by that time you need firepower just as much as stealth.

Do the Principles of Coral Quest in Port Cecil

That quest is also very profitable, and the quest items required are a lot more straightforward to find. Every time you turn in quest items, you get a bunch of scintillacks that each sells for 70 echo in London. When you finally finish the quest AND play your cards right, you get a whopping 21 secrets and some other nifty items.

However you may want to put off finishing the quest until you are not dirt poor. That's because before finishing the quest, scintillack is very very easy to find there. Even if you fail the mirrors challenge you get scintillack. And scintillack is basically free money there. You only need free cargo space to carry it back to London to sell and when you are dead broke, you get plenty of cargo space. After you finished the quest, you have to pass the mirrors challenge in order to find scintillack, which requires 100 mirrors for 100% chance of success.

Find Polythreme Fast

That's because Polythreme gives you another source of getting money early game. Shipping Clay Men back to London nets you 120 echo. You can also buy the WE ARE CLAY auxiliary item for your ship for 300 echo, which is a very cheap way to upgrade your ship early game.

Explore Gaider's Mourn and Mount Palmerston

On both these islands there is a random event where you reminisce your past occupation. Each time you do that, the attribute related to your past goes up by a whopping 5 points (e.g. for a poet you increase Pages, for street urchin you increase Veils), up to 100. There are other choice to increase other attitbutes for a very small price. This is one of the easiest ways to increase your attributes for free.

4. Which Ship/Engine to Buy, and When

With fuel consumption, supplies and cargo hold size in mind, the ship upgrade sequence I will suggest is this:

Starter boat and engine
-> WE ARE CLAY in Auxillary
-> Corvette
-> Engine Upgrade to 2000 (WE ARE CLAY optional)
-> Frigate
-> Aft upgrade with Avid Suppressor





Frigate is the end boat because for a silent but deadly build, dreadnought with -25 veil is a non-option. But the real end is a frigate with the Avid Suppressor. By then you will have developed a money stream (more on that later), and with Avid Suppressor you can push the frigate to full power all the time without worrying about explosion. You can zoom around the map quickly and afford to buy more expensive fuel in Khan's Shadow to compensate for the greater fuel consumption.

Technically upgrading engine to the Fulgent Impeller is the real endgame. But it took me a long long time, and a few close shaves with death and insanity, to get Fulgent Impeller (but the va-va-voom of the engine is absolutely worth it). So I am giving you the realistic upgrade path. Similarly, the Serpentine can replace a 2000 engine, but there is no guarantee you will get Satisfied Magician that can unlock Serpentine. So a 2000 engine is a more realistic goal to aim for.

The reason you don't want to upgrade the engine above 2000 is because the bigger engine, the greater the fuel consumption, and the cargo hold in corvette or frigate isn't big enough to carry the necessary fuel. Technically the frigate can, but then you may as well use full power in lieu of upgrading the engine. In addition, with a faster engine, when you arrive at the next port, Something Awaits You (light bulb on the top right of log book) will not trigger because your boat moves too fast. Without SAY, port interaction is very limited.

You also don't want to upgrade step-by-step, from 800 to 1000 to 1500 to 2000, because the resale value of engine is 50% of the original value. Better to save up on one hit to get to the endgame engine than to go step by step and lose 50% of money every step.

WE ARE CLAY in auxiliary is the cheapest way to upgrade the engine early in the game, and at that point in the game, there is absolutely nothing to put into the auxiliary slot anyway. By the time you get engine upgraded to 2000, you can remove that with little to no performance hit.

5. Which Attribute to Upgrade, and When

For a silent but deadly build, when you first start out you want to pump veils and nothing else. While at the same time you need to get the money to buy the elegant townhouse. That is because upgrading attributes using study is sometimes more cost effective way to improve than via officers. The items used to upgrade via the study usually are cheap, or the cost can be recovered by selling the crafted item. In particular you can ONLY increase Pages by using the study (unless you have the plausible surgeon).

However you need a block of 7 secrets to use the study to improve attributes, AND you need to be physically back in London to use the study. Sometimes these two conditions are pretty tall orders, so improvise.



Before you get the study, you absolute have to pump veils. Because you are too weak to fight anything. A bad encounter with a 20 hp crab can kill you because it will keep hitting you at the back where your deck gun can't fire. You absolutely need to avoid encounters in the beginning.

By the time your Veils get to around 50 (before choosing officers that add to Veils), then it is time to pump Pages as well. The reason is that Pages reduces the amount of fragments required to gain a secret. In other words, Pages increases the rate your character gain secrets. And the best way to pump Pages is via the Study in your Elegant Townhouse or Mansion. You can easily buy the ingredients for crafting in Khan's Shadow, and the crafted item can be sold in Venderbight to cover the cost of buying the ingredients in the first place.

Pages has diminishing return, because excess fragments don't count towards next level. Say you still need 50 fragments to gain a secret. If you gain 100 fragments, the excess 50 fragments will NOT count towards the next level. You are unlikely to have excess fragments when Pages is low (you can't get them enough!), but when Pages gets to say 175, and fragments comes in blocks of 30-50, you get a much higher chance of needing just a very small fragment to gain a secret but you get a big block instead, so the excess is wasted.

There is also diminishing return for Veils in combat. So after your get to above 125 Veils, you can sneak by most enemies; and during combat as long as you don't turn on your lights most enemies have a hard time finding you. So you can just take your sweet time to snipe them. So pump Pages and/or other stats.

Mirrors and Iron are important, because they improve the ship DPS, but for a silent but deadly build, the silent part is more important. Hearts is pretty useless for this build, because you are not going to tank many hits.

6. Which Weapon to Buy, and When

In early game, combat is to be avoided so weapon upgrade is a very low priority. When you upgraded to a corvette you may want to invest in the very best deck weapon to start with, which is Helltrasher. Then you want to buy the Majesty as your Forward weapon while trying to build Momento Mori. Because if you play your cards right, the main threat to your silent but deadly boat isn't from another boat: while the enemy has trouble finding you, you keep tailing enemy boat thus neutralising the enemy deck and forward weapons. The main threat comes from zee monsters and Moment Mori is very good at killing zee monsters.

By the time you have a corvette, you are able to take on all but the toughest zee monsters. Mt. Nomad should still be avoided, but Lorn-Fluke is definitely killable with a corvette, Momento Mori and careful sniping. Assuming of course you have pumped veils enough to keep out of harm's way. If it goes wrong, just run, there is no such thing as a glorious death in Sunless Sea, only infuriating deaths.

7. Silent But Deadly Combat Tips

• Two Words: Kite and Snipe. Most monsters and ships fall to kite and snipe with Veils around 100. Remember red "!!!" means it is about to attack. "!" means it is on alert. "?" means it is searching. Back away or just run when it is on red "!!!" alert, stop firing when it is on "?" looking for you, and only fire when it is back on patrol. Rinse and repeat. Same with ships, but because most ships can only fire from the front, you can try getting close and tail them without getting shot.
  
  If you just have a weak deck gun, kite and snipe is very tedious. However once you have corvette, a decent deck gun and forward gun, then monsters/ships go down much faster.
  
  
• Don't turn on your lights during combat. It attracts attention. Even if you buy the most expensive light that supposedly suppress your trail, it really doesn't. Enemies can still home in to you with your lights. It may take longer to get a firing solution, but you are still silent and stealthy, that's a good trade-off.
  
  But when the enemy is about to die, or if you are detected already, you may as well turn the light on, increase your DPS and finish the job. As long as you are not on the starting boat, you can tank a few hits without needing repair in London.
  
  
• Run if an encounter is too tough for you. That means any time your hull is less than 50% and you can start losing sailors with every hit. As long as your Veils is reasonable high, the enemy will give up the chase and goes back to patrolling. If it is about to die, then come back to snipe it and finish the job. Otherwise don't look back and return straight to London for repairs.
  
  
• By the time you have the most powerful deck gun, Momento Mori and a fully upgraded frigate, you are strong enough to fight the toughest monster in the zee: Mt. Nomad near the waters of Avid Horizon. But you still have to be careful.
  
  The most dangerous thing about Mt. Nomad isn't the damage output. This silent but deadly build is designed to kite and snipe, so there is a small window where Mt. Nomad is aware of you and starts its attack. The most dangerous thing is that its range attack rapidly increases terror. After a few hits of its range attack doing relatively little damage, your terror level may have increase to 80-90. If terror reaches 100 it is game over, and there is very little option to reduce terror while you are out in the sea in the middle of nowhere.
  
  Same with Lorn-fluke, but because Lorn-fluke is a lot weaker than Mt. Nomad, usually it is nearly dead by the time it is aware of you and starts its range attack.
  
  So run away when terror reaches 80. Better luck next time. Pump more into Veils so Mt. Nomad is even slower to detect you, and/or pump Iron and Mirrors to increase your DPS.
  
  One option to reduce terror when you are in the middle of nowhere is to begin an affair with an officer. It reduces terror by 5. When your terror is at 99, that 5 points reduction is absolutely necessary. It is emergency sex! Another option is if you have the Lady in Lilac, then you can ask her to stay with you. You get -10 terror but also +2 wounds, so that is not an option if you are already wounded (3 wounds and you are dead), but a necessary option sometimes.
  
  
  Killing Mt. Nomad isn't very profitable, and is only good for bragging right or for the Laying Bones to Rest Ambition, but killing Lorn-fluke is very profitable. You can buy Judgement's Egg with the Colossal Fluke-Core, and some quests need the core. Even turning in to the university in London nets you 500 echo. And if you succeed with the Pages challenge, you get 3 secrets. That's 3 secrets for very little work done for a silent-but-deadly steamboat build. Alas Lorn-fluke is a random spawn near Fathomking's Hold, Empire of Hands, Chelonate or Aestival, so you can't really farm it.

8. Other Tips

• Try not to spend any day in the Iron Republic. First there is random chance to gain or lose heart or Pages when you are on shore leave or creating port report. Especially for Pages it is relatively expensive to get it back.
  
  Second is that when the days in Republic are young (days in Republic < 5), you have access to a shop that sell Dread Surmise. Dread Surmise is an endgame item that is required to complete many ambitions (e.g Kingdom, Zong of the Zee). It costs a whopping 9 Searing Enigma. But Searing Enigma in turn costs 5 Extraordinary Implications, which is 333 echo each. All sold in Irem. (You may get Searing Enigma via quests though.) That means, in terms of echo, Dread Surmise costs 14985 echo, that's half a dreadnought!
  
  That one shop in Iron Republic, when the day in the Republic is < 5, is the only place you can repeatedly buy Dread Surmise using Searing Enigma. You can advance the days to 15 by accessing the full shop (not just the shop that sell fuel), then it will go back to 1, but that's a lot of waiting around. So in general try not to make that shop disappear by advancing the day.
  
  You can also get Dread Surmise from the university in London for a cheaper 7 Searing Enigma, but the scholar will be permanently disabled after giving you the Dread Surmise, so the cost is not worth it.
  
  
• DO NOT have a full crew. In order to save supplies, I roll with 8 crews in the starter boat (max crew 10), 6 with WE ARE CLAY (max crew 7); 10 with corvette (max crew 15, 12 with WE ARE CLAY); 16 with frigate (max crew 25), 14 with frigate and WE ARE CLAY (max crew 22). But I still have more than the minimum crew required to run the boat at full speed, and leave some margin for error when sometimes crews just die due to random events.
  
  
• There is no magic formula on the fuel to supplies ratio, you just have to figure it out by trial and error, depending on the crew number and route. Starting out you probably want 1:1, but as your boat gets faster, it can be as low as 3:2 or 5:3 (frigate with engine upgrade). On my final final frigate with the Fulgent Impeller, the ratio is closer to 4:1. Usually 24 fuel + 6 supplies for a trade run; 36 fuel + 9 supplies for a return trip to the furthest ends of the map. It is only possible to be so frugal by taking on free supplies on the way (e.g. Demeaux Island, Mangrove College, Frostfound, kill a few monsters and ships). And just take the hit and buy expensive fuel and supplies when accident or detour happens.

9. Earning Money for Upgrades

• Inevitably by finishing quests, you get echo and items that have no obvious use. The temptation is to selling them all. I suggest you don't. Items that don't take up cargo space should be kept as many as possible, unless you got just too many of them. A lot of those "useless" items are needed in other quests and ended up being very hard to find or expensive. Try trading instead to gain money.
  
  However sometimes you get items that take up valuable cargo hold space. Know where to acquire them in shops before selling them. For example, mutersalt. It is needed for quite a few quests, but it is available for purchase ONLY in Whither for 5 zee-stories. So if you can afford the cargo space early game, then keep it. Otherwise just sell it and prepare to pay through the nose when you need it. Captivating treasures and scintillacks are the only ones you can safely sell, because they can be easily replaced.
  
  
• It is well known that one of the most profitable trade routes is the monkey island wine trade + Irem parabola-linen trade. You buy wine in London for 21 echo, then trade wine for coffee in the Empire of Hands (you need to gain access to the court first), then trade coffee for parabola-linen in Irem. Return to London by picking up fuel and supplies in Mt Palmerston. Parabola-linen sells for 60 echo in London. So that is 39 echo in net profit per crate of wine, before overhead. The overhead is the fuel and supplies you need to spend to get there and back.
  
  
  
  
  
  It is profitable even when you have the starting boat or corvette and can only buy 11 crates of wine for trade, while reserving the rest of the space on fuel and supplies for the trade route. If you remember to file port reports along the way, the reward from the Admiralty will cover most of the cost. You may also reserve 1 crate of coffee for shore leave in Irem to reduce terror. So in the end, you will get net profit about 390 echo per run.
  
  To begin this trade route, you need about 15-20 fuel and 9-14 supplies, 11 wine, plus some rainy day fund. I'd say the initial capital investment is about 700 echo.
  
  
• You may have reason to advance the day in Iron Republic for trading purpose. THE most profitable trade route is actually the coffee run up to surface, using the second shop in Iron Republic.
  
  The second shop in Iron Republic, The House of Milks, when days in Repbulic is > 5 but < 9, will sell coffee for the cheapest at 38 echo, and buy supplies for 25 echo. But on the surface, they buy coffee at whopping 80 echo, and sell supplies for a very cheap 5 echo. So you CAN make a lot of profit buy first buying coffee in Iron Republic, offload on the surface, then use the empty cargo space to carry supplies back down and sell in Iron Republic again.
  
  
  
  To start you need to have 1 starter fuel and 3 supplies when you get to Iron Republic, about 600-650 echo in initial capital and some rainy day fund, which adds up to initial capital investment of about 700 echo (about the same as monkey island run). The sequence of purchases and sales for this trade run in the starter boat or corvette is this:
  
  
  1. Buy 26 Fuel (-208 echo) and 10 Coffee (-380 echo) from Iron Republic: 27 fuel, 3 supplies, 10 coffee in the cargo hold.
     
  2. Sail to the canal to get to surface: 25 fuel, 2 supplies, 10 coffee in the hold. (Top up on supplies here if necessary to meet the surface trip requirement)
     
  3. Go up to Surface, then to Naples (-11 fuel, -1 supplies): 14 fuel, 1 supplies, 10 coffee in hold. (Note that there is a random chance your crew will die up on the surface.)
     
  4. Go to Vienna (-10 echo), offload the coffee (+800 echo), return to Naples: 14 fuel, 1 supplies in the hold
     
  5. Fill up cargo hold with supplies in Naples (-125 echo): 14 fuel, 26 supplies in the hold (in principle you have 25 free cargo space, but sometimes you may have more fuel, and it is not easy to know how many fuel you have left, so remember the number of fuel left when it is mentioned in a text message.)
     
  6. Back to canal (-11 fuel, -1 supplies): 3 fuel, 25 supplies in the hold
     
  7. Back to Iron Republic: 1 fuel, 24 supplies in the hold (that 1 fuel is margin for error, and burn supplies for fuel if necessary to get back to Iron Republic)
     
  8. Offoad 21 supplies in Iron Republic (+525 echo): 1 fuel, 3 supplies in the hold.
     
  9. Rinse and repeat.
  
  Net profit: (-208 -10) + (800 -380) +(525 -125) = 602 echo per run in the starter boat or corvette. If you are in frigate with a better cargo hold, the net profit will be even greater (just buy 40 coffee in Iron Republic and buy 55 supplies in Naples instead), so net profit is (80-38)*40 + (51*25 -55*5) -218 = 2462 echo per run.
  
  The problem with this trade route is that the buyer in Vienna will eventually stop buying coffee, once you have sold more than 300 units of coffee (i.e. 30 trade runs in the starter boat or corvette). But by then you would have made about 30*602 = 18060 echo in net profit. That's a lot money (for a lot of grinding).
  
  Another problem is that this store in Iron Republic won't last. Eventually it will turn over to a new store which doesn't buy supplies nor sell coffee. So milk The House of Milks while it lasts (or rotate the store). Or you can offload supplies in Abbey Rock or Gaider's Mourn for a less profitable 20 echo (remember to buy fuel in Iron Republic first, then off load supplies elsewhere). You can buy coffee in Port Carnelian for the same 38 echo.
  
  
• One basic rule that serves me well is that, when your cargo hold has empty space, you are not using it to carry goods for trade, and therefore are not earning as much as you can. Sometimes it can be just carrying low margin items which nets you very low profit, but this is better than not carrying items at all and earn nothing. So whenever you are at port, plan where you are going, and consider where you can buy or sell for a profit.
  
  To know which port carry which item at what price, check the official wiki of Sunless Sea.[sunlesssea.gamepedia.com] Here are some examples:
  
  • Cheapest Supplies Sold: Port Carnelian 18 echo
    
  • Cheapest Fuel Sold: Iron Republic 8 echo (runner up Mt Palmerston 9 echo)
    
  • Cheapest Candle Sold: Adam's Way/Khan's Heart 30 echo (it is 40 echo in London, so remember to stock up there for use in Mangrove College and Godfall.)
    
  • Paying highest for Parabola-linen: Adam's Way 63 echo (as opposed to London paying only 60 echo)

[Lexiboy0880]

So that is 2000 from Mt Nomad, 3 secrets from and Fluke Core 500 (or when traded for Judgement Egg the same but without terror gain), and that submarine with 400 hp gives blue Scintiliak for 800 echoes per piece, and around Mt Nomad you have lifeberg's to replenish supplies easily. I go out tot hunt, spend around 5000-6000 credits on supplies and come back to sell around 20000 echoes and hell of a lot on secrets and more so yea, no trade route can top that.

[Lexiboy0880]

i disagree with the fact you say Lorn-Flukes aren't profittable. They are profittable as hell. The locations you mentioned, when a bit lucky, besides Fathomking's Hold, the other 3 can be close to each other wich make it a very good run to do up and down between the 3 ports and go for them, that's 3 secrets close to eacht other per Lorn Fluke, combined with underwater hunting for the submarine that gives blue scintilak, it's is crazy what you get, also Mt Nomad is very profittable, 2000 echoes upon defeat is nicely earned. 1000 for the captivating treasure if you wish to sell it instead of using it to push your stats further and secondly, the heart can be traded for a Searing Enigma that sells for 1000 aswell.

[Boaboa]

I suspect I'll be using this guide but wouldn't the name 'Silent then deadly' be better?

[Sae La Vie]

:)

[MrCybran]

I prefer top harpoon as a front wearpon because it has stun. With its stun and corvette you can easily kite monsters with reverse gear and they will not touch you with their ramming attacks. And here's what to do.
When you return to London with SAY active, you earn some amount (6-10) of "Time, the healer" or like that. When it reaches 50, some SAY events appear in ports.Then you must must wait for it, kill something that drops a hunting trophy (for example, an eel or shark) and in Khan's Shadow trade the trophy for 4 watchful curios. Then in Polytheme turn them into wakeful idols and sell to Shcolar for 100 echo each.

[Hiriu]

To revive the dead comment, @Dann0, it likely depends how far in you're at. If you're still on Corvette or even the smaller steamboat, it may be better to take the fuel effeciency as it'll matter more in the early game to make each fuel barrel count for expenses. The Maybe's Daughter is likely better for the end ships if you're looking to maximize your speed for the merchant ship, with Fulgent Impeller, the best engine about.

This guide was quite interesting to give a read, and even if it's possible some things are dated, I will likely try to use the information on learning things like the more in depth usage of mirrors and veils, to make my ship much more glass cannon-stealth hitter worthy. Thank you.

[50%]

What do you guys think for Chief Engineer between the Tireless Mechanic (5% Fuel Effeciency) and Maybe's Daughter (100 Engine Power) in general and/or for thus build? Thanks!

[Soma]

Yeah I'll probably update it once I get around to playing Zubmariner DLC, in depth!

[Cardshark92]

Why didn't you bring up the Salt Lions as a good early way to make money? Dividing out the cost, you get Sphinxstone for 10 each, and sell them for 25 each!

Extra tip: If you have 9 or more extra spaces after buying the first block of stone, buy another. You will still make money on the extra stone, even if you have to dump all the rest. And since you only get so many deliveries, you'll want to make them count. Plus it opens up the easiest way to get the Legacy book for bonus Veils.

[无聊]

I think this guide is not accurate now, there is some update that make every enemy, include human pirate boat or sea monsters have some "flare" measure, they'll constantly launch flare around them to locate your position, even they can not see you at beginning, there is no way to "silent and deadly" build now.