How can I get started making money?
Note: This question deals with just the base game. If you're playing with the Zubmariner expansion, see the following question instead:
What's the fastest way to gain Echoes in Sunless Sea with Zubmariner?
My first Sunless Sea character spent most of his time scraping money together from port reports to buy supplies, so that he could go visit the same ports again to replenish his supplies, and he pretty much never got traction on getting enough money to buy weapons or other ship upgrades.
I tried Googling for some advice on how to make money, but it seems like all the hits I'm getting go back to earlier versions of the game and are no longer applicable. For instance:
A popular recommendation is to run Tomb-Colonists to Venderbight (other than the first one), but I think this is old advice because there is no option to buy them in London.
Another popular recommendation is to hunt pirate ships north of London. However, I usually only run into about one of them, two if I'm lucky, and the hull damage I incur, plus fuel and supplies to get out there in the first place, doesn't make it worth what I typically get as a reward.
Another recommendation involves buying Mushroom Wine and selling it in Venderbight. That nets +2 echoes per unit for me. That doesn't cover the fuel and supplies for the journey, plus there's nothing to pick up in Venderbight that seems worth bringing back to London.
Maybe part of these have to do with not having enough money to fill my hold to make trade routes worth it. When I can only afford 5 units of something, the profit margin doesn't seem high enough to cover fuel and supplies. Maybe it's more profitable later when I can take a lot of cargo in one trip. But how do I get to that point?
Solution 1:
Spoilers, obviously.
You can make ~2500 in your first couple of hours pretty easily. This'll be uploaded in a couple of hours if you'd prefer video format:
If not, then: Sell your learning book, grab the tomb columnist, take to venderbight, return to london, buy the 200E cannon "reproach", sell everything except this cannon, leave port, die.
Use the iron legacy to pass the weapon on. Start a new character. Pick campaign veteran for 50 iron. Assign the new weapon (it now does min 20 damage, meaning crabs/bats are one-shot), sell the old one and the book. Grab the news. Speak to the admiralty. buy mushroom wine. as much as you can. Do the tomb-colonist to venderbight. Swing past hunter's keep. Grab port report. Head north to venderbight (these locations never change). Keep west, kill pirate (and bats/crabs for supplies). Drop him off. Sell the mushroom wine. Grab port report. You didn't get 100 echoes in hard cash this time, so keep at least one secret (you should be fine from exploring). Head to London.
Once there, turn in port reports, and sell whatever you need to. Use the secret to unlock the Scholar. Buy fuel so you have 20, and 8-10 supplies. Keep ~100 echoes for random things you're going to find at Zee. Pick up news, pick up an officer to two (keep crew at 8, it's fine). Carouse at wolfstack docks and try to have a fling with a lovely lass/dapper gent.
Head out to Zee. Pick a direction, doesn't matter, although mutton island is probably just a bit south and a good start. After that, use the guidance from Admiral's strategic information request - if you can find the place he wants this time out, it's a good run. Contrary to other answers, it's not always the Funging station. It could be almost anywhere. Use the Zee-bat to ping for locations and just sail around, killing any pirates you see (avoid the bigger zee-creatures for now). Don't be afraid to refuel a little, but try not to pay more than 20. Keep going until you have 4-5 fuel left, and head back to London. If fuel becomes a problem, turn off lights. Terror is entirely manageable. On this trip, you want to try and find the salt lions, and tick off 10-15 new ports. Don't worry too much about interaction at these ports beyond just grabbing the port reports, and doing the "something awaits" stuff.
I use full power a LOT to escape terrifying creatures - it doesn't backfire very often, but remember, lights off helps avoid the encounter in the first place. If you get the lass/gent random event, think of them - we're aiming for a scion here.
Head back to London. Sell all the pirate booty. Hand in all the port reports (you get one fuel and some echoes for each, as well as admiralty favour - DO NOT EXCHANGE THESE FOR FUEL - it's a massive waste, save for repairs, or other events). Speak to the blind bruiser. Pick up news. Carouse (pick the lass/gent again - you're aiming for a kid). check university/admiralty for anything extra you can sell.
You should be sitting on 1000+ echoes at this point, and the blind bruiser wants you to go to Mt Palmerston. So, head north to venderbight, then whither, then head east pinging with the zeebat until you find Mt Palmerston. In all my games, it's been in the top row. Fuel is very cheap here, so stock up and keep pootling about. Watch out for lifebergs. Don't forget port reports all the way. Swing back via the Salt Lions and pick up stones for London (you'll need 200 echoes and 20 cargo space - shouldn't be a problem).
In London, you should be swimming in cash. Buy a townhouse and a will. Speak to your kid. Start telling him stories. Get a tattoo if your terror is bad, but it should still be fine. Probably your ship needs repairs by now. Admiralty tokens make this cost only 25 echoes (vs 100).
Now, keep poking around until you've developed a scion (you need to tell your kid 5 stories) over 5 visits to London. Then, if you like, you can restart, with 2 legacies, taking a few of your skill points (and the weapon!), keeping your townhouse for an even stronger start. Or just push on from the position you're in now.
Explore! Read everything! Speak to your officers and complete their stories. Don't be afraid to try things out - just remember the outcomes for your next child if it all goes terribly wrong. ; )
Solution 2:
Making money in the beginning is easy, and there are people here who have given good answers, so I won't further contribute to that. However, making money later in the game can seem difficult at times. Port reports stop being as profitable. Numbers for different occurrences hit their max number. And you blow the money you made from early quest on different things and possibly widdle away the rest. So now you're stuck with a decent ship, the best equipment you can get, and a couple grand in cash. Sounds reasonable, but you don't know what to do next and you don't want to grind out the last 10,000 gold to buy the next upgrade. Sure, you can explore more, but you really don't know where to go. Some of the more obvious things that stick out as possibilities (monster hunting) seems out of the question, or maybe you just want more money. Well, here's how to make money in the later stages of the game.
- You need the trade ship with 120 hold space.
- Buy enough supplies and fuel to be able to take the Cumean Canal trip up all the way to Vienna, (for me that's 26 fuel: 22 for the canal + 4 to get there from London. and 5 supplies: 2 for canal + 3 to get there from London)
- Before you leave London, buy as much coffee as you can (you might not be able to buy a whole ship's worth right away, as that would be 89 coffee or 4,450 gold)
- Make the journey and pay the ten Echoes to travel to Vienna with your coffee contact and sell all 89 coffee at once for 80 Echoes each, or 7,120 Echoes total.
- Before you leave Naples (the area you travel to on the surface before going to Vienna), buy enough fuel to travel to Abbey Rock and back to London (for me that's about 7 fuel), giving me a total of 18 fuel at the time.
- Now this is the most time consuming, but it's part of the trade route and does give a good bit of extra money. Buy enough supplies from Naples to fill the rest of your ship up, which in my case would be 102 supplies for 5 Echoes each or 510 Echoes total.
- Make the journey back below the surface to Abbey Rock where you sell all of your supplies, aside from the amount needed to get back to London (for me that's 3) which means you will generally use 5 from the trip from the canal to Abbey Rock and to London + 1 when descending the canal. So you will have about 96 to sell at 20 gold each or 1,920 total gold.
- Travel back to London and rinse; repeat.
Money earned = 9,040, Expenses = 5,435, Total profit = 3,605
You can also add in the 7 supplies + 2 wine to the Shepherd's Isles for some extra profit but it's not any more than this unless you get lucky with a revelatory chart. There are other routes that are more profitable if you're playing the game on easy mode so you can reload saves (Aestival, Isles of Cats, Khan's Shadow = ouch the sun hurts and you stole my box for anybody who's not using the save/reload technique for getting around tricky rolls), but from what I can tell this trade route is the most profitable and easiest to accomplish for anybody playing on the normal difficulty. Also if you're siding against London, then the first 6 trips are actually more profitable, but I'm not going to figure out by how much (roughly 4,000 gold profit instead of 3,605)
Solution 3:
At the beginning of the game to build up a bit of cash you can run back and forth between London and Hunter's Keep. Read the news in your lodging in London to get a Recent News and head to Hunter's Keep. Use the news to have lunch with the sisters and choose to eat with the middle sister. She will reduce your hunger to 0 and give you a Supply as well as a Tale of a Distant Shore. Get a port report while you are there and head back to London. Sell the Tale to the guy/girl at the University for 10 echoes and turn in the report for an additional 5 and a Fuel.
Read the news again and head back out. Each time you return and have lunch with the middle sister she will give you one additional Tale of a Distant Shore (up to a maximum of 5 I believe) and so on and so forth. Make sure to grab the port report to avoid having to spend much money on fuel (if you do this correctly you'll only need to buy a couple of Fuel here and there to keep going). Eventually you'll trigger the event that causes the Hunter's Keep to be... a little bit different. I won't ruin it for you if you haven't seen it but if you start the game off like this you should have a few hundred echoes plus a bit more if you decide to risk some fuel and head a bit north to take out a pirate ship every couple of runs.
Taking a trip up to Venderbight should also get you enough fragments for a secret if you still need one to interact with the University. Make sure to take your time in each port and not to miss out on either the news or the port report since it'll just end up costing extra in fuel and supplies. If you're still having trouble with making money do this until the Hunter's Keep is no longer lucrative. Sell the Captain's Advice book and trade in your ship for the cheapest one for an extra 500 echoes. Sell any additional items you have on you including cannons and head out to zee and die. Choose to pass down the cash to the next captain and you'll start with a more generous amount of echoes that can be used to start trading.
Also if you're feeling lucky try heading to Mutton Island when there's an event available and you can occasionally get an item that's worth quite a bit... I won't spoil it for you. There's also a chance that if you head down to the Iron Republic there will be a store available where you can sell Supplies for 25 each and buy Fuel for 8 each. Selling almost all your supplies and then using the yellow crabs and swarms of bats to recover your supplies and hunger can get a solid amount to start out with. Just make sure to grab port reports from everywhere you've visited and don't be afraid to venture further out to zee. There are some crazy valuable items to be had and with a little bit of strategy you can avoid conflict with most enemies.
Have fun and happy sailing!
Solution 4:
I have been running into the same problem, and being able to profit(!!!) seems to be mostly luck based.
If you start as a veteran and run the tomb colonist, they will attack you when you arrive. You will squelch them (100% chance - Londoner strong!) and get two supplies and an outlandish artifact out of it. The outlandish artifact sells for 100 to the Alarming Scholar at the University in Fallen London. The Alarming Scholar also buys most story variants for 10 echoes each, like the ones you get at light ships with your recent news, or the ones you get from the sisters at the Hunter's Keep.
You should also be able to get the Admiralty to ask you to go fetch strategic information from various places around the Zee. I think you need favor level 3, but it might also be higher. As far as I've seen from a few different characters, they always ask you to fetch it from the Iron & Misery Funging Station first, which is always in the second band from the left... somewhere. Each strategic info is worth 150 smackers a pop, and you can ask for another one directly afterwards. Just hope they don't ask you to go to the Chelonate on your third run.
The funging station is also nice because you can recruit crew dirt cheap, and lunch with the factor reduces your terror by five, gives you a crew member quest, AND a supply crate. You can get as many supplies as you want for varying amounts of terror depending on how much the RNG gods like you.
Speaking of the Admiralty, every fresh (first time) port report you bring in nets you favor, and as long as you have more than three you can exchange the favor for fuel at a rate of 2-3 per point of favor. You can also use the favor (Minimum 4, consumes 3 I think) to get dirt cheap ship repair. The port report for Station III is worth 100 echos; more accurately, they burn it and then pay you 100 echos to forget you ever visited. Don't know if subsequent reports are worth that many as I've never been back to check.
If you can find the Salt Lions, who should also be in the second band somewhere, you can run Sphinxstone back to London. It requires 20 hold space and 200 Echoes up front, but ultimately you get a 300 echo profit and if you can mix in retrieval of strategic information into the trip, you'll be sitting very pretty. I got lucky in my latest run because the Admiralty kept asking me to retrieve information from the frozen north, so I could go in a circle: Venderbight, strategic info, sphinxes, London. I got 1500 echos and a bunch of good stuff before the Admiralty sent me after the Chelonate and things actually got interesting.