As an Unterzee captain, you’re not limited to one role. You can be a privateer and a merchant, but also an explorer and a scientist – as much Charles Darwin as Francis Drake. Consequently, the riches of the Neath are more than mushroom-brandy, spider-silk, drowning-pearls. Those riches are also charts, secrets, journal entries, and the world’s hastiest and most terrified sketch of the Bound Shark. And you’re going to need riches – not just to improve your ship, but to cover the cost of supplies and fuel and repairs. That’s part of the ‘survival’ element.

The Drake approach first. We need trade goods in a game about sea travel, unquestionably. You can buy them at docks, you can receive them as story rewards, you can retrieve them from the shattered remnants of your enemies – all that good stuff. Of course, the Neath being the place it is, some of those trade-goods are grim or peculiar – human souls or prisoner’s honey. All these things can be sold, and most bought, at the dockside markets for Echoes, the currency of the Neath. (Or of London. Which as everyone knows is the centre of the Neath. Despite being at the western edge. Don’t be impudent! This is the British Empire you’re scoffing at!)

And Sunless Sea being the story-driven game it is, you don’t know when your hold might be more exciting than you’d expected. If you carry zoological specimens from a Benthic College encampment, they might escape. If you carry sealed shipments from Hell, will you risk cracking them open to unravel their secrets?

Now the Darwin approach. Exploring the Unterzee can fund exploring the Unterzee.  You can gain Charts, Memories of Distant Shores and Zee-Ztories from clearing the darkness, from discovering islands, from encountering beasties or for observing them in the glare of specialised glim-lights. You can gain Hard-Earned Lessons and Tales of Terror!! from fighting enemies. All these can be bought and sold for Secrets at the University. You can sell them for cash, too, to finance your expeditions through your researches, but you can also use them to unlock your crew’s stories and advance their skills.

When you’re uncovering mystery, light is your ally – although it can be a costly and sometimes even dangerous one. More on light and its uses next time. And on what we are trying not to call the ‘bat-signal’.