Anyone play this (rogue-like exploration/RPG)? I’ve been having a blast. It’s hard, and I die a lot, but once you get a few things (chiefly a house, a will, and a scion) then dying isn’t so bad since you get an heir that can inherit some or all of your resources.
It has caught my interest a time or two, but I haven’t pulled the trigger and picked it up. I may have to do so!
I hope you bought it with the Zubmariner expansion. It makes many resources much easier to obtain. I think I’m on my 14th captain but I have not yet been able to plan my death/retirement once.
I played it a bit a few days ago.
I like the atmosphere, but I’m having trouble understanding how you can earn any money. I’m surviving (barely) by doing port reports, and that doesn’t seem sustainable.
I loved the atmosphere, the setting, and the simple gameplay. Most of all the writing is fantastic, but my issue was that the UI and fonts are TINY on my high resolution monitor. I just couldn’t play it anymore, my eyes were getting tired just a few minutes in.
I should check to see if they’ve addressed this issue.
I played a lot once in a while, but it’s annoying in that when you die (and you die a lot, especially past the midgame) you get to start over from scratch with the same stories in the same places.
Blue infinity : earning money is dead easy. First, buy as much coffee as you can in London. Also at least 25 fuel. Go south until you hit the locks to the surface. Go to the surface. Go to Vienna. Sell all your coffee for a huge amount of money. Work on the surface until you start losing crew/your “touched by sunlight” stat goes too far up. Buy a lot of cheap supplies. Go back to the Zee. Go further south until you hit the Iron Republic. Buy fuel on the cheap. There : you have a lot of money and a hold full of food and coal. Happy zeefaring !
(that’s literally the first thing I do on every voyage, no matter where I’m planning on going next).
Early in the game you can also make a quick buck ferrying bone from Salt Lions to London, but that only works a few times.
There’s also good money to be made ferrying sapphire from Carnelian (south-east of London, middle of the continent) to Polythreme (somewhere), then in Polythreme picking up some Clay Men bound to London ; but that requires an initial investment 'cause those sapphires ain’t cheap.
Thanks for these tips!
I played the heck out of it a while ago. However, to get very far you have to die a lot, slooooowly travel across the Zee, and repeat lots of early game errands and quests. After the first several hours, it couldn’t keep my full attention, so I played most of it on a laptop while watching TV on the couch. Steam says I played 131 hours (!), and I never finished all of the Ambitions, major questlines, or earned all the Legacies.
You can’t play it safe and get very far. You have to find various quests that are more lucrative, but you’ll have to take risks to even find them. Explore, find something new, die, and start over again. Repeat this enough and you’ll be able to recognize relatively safe early-game quests that will set you up nicely. Then you’ll be able to afford a well-equipped ship for venturing further into the Zee (I recommend the Corvette for most uses, and the Frigate only if you have a ton of money to spare and plan on getting in serious fights.)
Eventually, you can start passing on more and more resources and starting bonuses to an heir. By the way, each Captain you play should cat around in port at the earliest possible opportunity…
Simple commodity trading, btw, isn’t a very good use of your time. It takes tons of money to start off with a good ship and a hold full of cargo, and the only profitable trade routes are extremely long.
Port reports do add up, and exploring is fun. The further the port the more you make, and returning to London resets the reports, so wehen you go back out you can visit all the same places. Do a big tour and you can earn hundreds that way.
Once you get enough reports and money, deliver salt from the Salt Lions back to London. You need 200 echoes and 20 cargo spots, but you’re paid 500 Echoes for delivery, so it’s a tidy profit. You can only do it three or four times but mid game it’s a big chunk of dough.
Avoid combat. It’s not worth it. Never, ever fight if you can avoid it. Bomb up in case you have no choice, but trust me, the average reward is not worth the cost of hull repair.
Zubmariner adds eleven ports, that helps increase your port reports per journey.
Haven’t played for a while but IIRC there is a file you can edit to increase the speed of our ship so that it’s not quite the slow, grinding slog to get places.
ETA: Sunless Skies a ‘sequel’ of sorts set in space is on the way.
Picked it up about a week ago and it’s been consuming my free time since. Ironman mode isn’t my style, though, so I’ve been saving manually and keeping my initial captain alive.
The money from port reports is minimal, but what makes it worthwhile is the barrel of fuel you get for turning in each one. Every time you sail out, plan your run to hit as many ports as you can on your route, and by the time you return you should probably earn enough fuel to supply most of your next run. Iron Republic and Mt. Palmerston both sell fuel for half the price most ports do, so don’t miss those ones if you’re in the neighborhood.
Another good way to make money, once you’ve figured out where most of the major locations are, is running Tomb-Colonist tours from Venderbight. The game picks three stops for you to take them to - usually something like Gaider’s Mourn, the Khanate, and Irem, and then back to Venderbight. If you return with all twelve of them, you pick up a tidy 1500 echoes plus an artifact that sells for another 500 back in London.
Running Clay Men from Polythreme to London will get you 120 echoes per run, which may or may not be profitable depending on how far Polythreme is from London on your map.
Red honey can be a little tricky running it past customs, but once you get in touch with the Brass Embassy in London, you can pick up a barrel on the Isle of Cats and sell it in London for a 400-echo profit.
Ship-to-ship combat can also be profitable once you’ve upgraded your starting weapon and figured out the basic strategy of it; if you run your ship right up next to theirs so that you’re physically touching, match their speed, and turn slightly so your prow is running into them, you can keep them from getting a firing solution on you while you wear them down. Most pirate ships will have at least a minor artifact and some supplies or fuel. Once you can take on the Pirate-Poet (she’s the one pirate ship with 180 hit points), you’ll get from 100 to 500 echoes every time you sink her ship and rescue her.
One helpful thing to remember is that the map isn’t 100% randomized - the west and southern edges are always the same, Irem is always in the far northeast, and the other ports have a specific section of the map they have to spawn in. This sample map shows how it breaks down.
Does anyone know if there is a possibility to increase text size? I cant read much of the story and probably quests, but i still enjoy the travelling around until i die in a smokey tragedy.
It seems like i miss something important by not being able to read the text.
Any tips and hints? Tells where to go - can i shoot any cannons against other ships?
Yeah the Settings let you increase the font size and UI so it’s readable. I had the same problem on my 4k monitor.
The game looks interesting, but honestly I haven’t had a chance to sit down for more than a few minutes to play it.