No matter what method you choose to follow, making Echoes in Sunless Sea is a soul destroying grind, and this guide is absolutely no exception to this rule.

Make no mistake, this is not quick, not easy, not pleasant, and not for the impatient.

What it is, eventually, is game breaking, and once done properly, will allow you to pass down massive (and potentially endless) amounts of cash to subsequent Captains, purchase massive amounts of Secrets to maximise statistics, brute force your way through some of the longer item obtaining chains with cold hard cash, and, of course, treat yourself to whatever boat floats your... boat.

All that being said, there are a few things you will need, and need to know, in order to effectively utilise this guide.

In order to utilise this guide, you will need several things, which I will cover here.

• First and foremost, some experience and understanding of the game. As much as possible, I am going to try to keep explanations of basic game mechanics, that you should be familiar with, out of the guide.

• Ideally, a Merchant ship. It isn't an absolute requirement, but the large amount of Supplies and Fuel you can hold will make the whole endeavour less painful. Smaller, faster ships can probably still be used (I haven't tried) but it may make staying in one particular place - which you will need to do, for a long time - much harder / more expensive.

• A sum of Echoes that you have made one of the other long, miserable, hard, grindy ways. As a practical minimum, I recommend 10,500 (which I'll explain later) on top of a remaining float of Echoes that you need to keep yourself afloat.

• An understanding of how to use and abuse The Mangrove College to clear all your Terror, and generate infinite Supplies.

• An understanding of how to use and abuse Frostfound to clear Terror, resupply a small amount of Fuel, and maintain Supplies.

• Ideally, your Another Day: Iron Republic Days quality at 4 or under... the lower the better. Basically, stay away from The Iron Republic until it's time to implement this guide.

• An understanding of how The Iron Republic shops work, and the knowledge that yes, you can reopen The Parliaments of Flies / House of Pleasures.

• Patience. Like that of a Saint. Maybe also a book, a smartphone, a favourite YouTube channel you can Alt - Tab to, to stave off boredom, something like that.

On to the method.

Step 1 : Getting Searing Enigma's.

Take your ship, your 10,500 Echoes (plus change), and enough Fuel and Supplies for a reasonable journey (Fuel is more important than Supplies here), to Mount Palmerston.

Buy 300 Ambiguous Eolith's. At 35 Echoes a piece, that's your 10,500 Echoes spent. The advantage with Ambigous Eolith's is that they do not require Hold space. If you want to buy Fuel at this point, it's a good time, as it's only 9 Echoes.

Head off toThe Mangrove College, and use the Something Awaits You exploit here to clear your Terror (Eat, Drink, be Merry), fill your Hold with as many Supplies as you can (Gather Supplies), and clear your Terror again.

*Note: it is this process of using Something Awaits You over, and over, and over, while staying in one place, which adds so much length to this method, and makes it a test of your patience. I strongly recommend that you have something you can do for 1 minute at a time in between SAY's*

Head to The Chapel of Lights with your Hold full of Supplies, low Terror, and all those Ambigous Eolith's, and Dock.

Do Provide Salt for their Feasts. You now have an Extraordinary Implication. These don't take up Hold space.

Exit the Dock, stop your boat, switch off your lights, and wait for your next SAY. Dock.

Do Provide Salt for their Feasts, again. You now have another Extraordinary Implication. You can probably see where this is going.

Keep exiting the Dock, waiting for SAY, and trading three Ambiguous Eolith's for an Extraordinary Implication, until you have no Ambiguous Eolith's, and 100 Extraordinary Implications. That's one hundred repetitions, one hundred minutes of your time, plus change.

*Note: it is guaranteed that during this process at The Chapel of Lights that you will need to leave for a while to clear your Terror, and possibly resupply. Typically, Frostfound is closer, and can be used to clear Terror, and gain a small amount of Fuel as you do so. It is, however, not very useful for gaining Supplies, as you will likely eat them as fast as you can gain them (1 per SAY). If you need to restock Supplies, it's off to The Mangrove College.

Head to Irem. Dock, and enter the shop Wind Come Calling. Exchange your 100 Extraordinary Implications for 20 Searing Enigma's. These don't take up Hold space either. Handy.

Step 2 : Getting the Dread Surmise.

Head to The Iron Republic, via London, Frostfound, The Mangrove College, or wherever else is convenient for you in your questing, and based on your Terror, Fuel, Supplies and Crew.

Dock, and choose whichever Market of Hungers option is available to you, and pray to all the Gods that it is the Parliament of Flies.

Here's where things get both exceedingly simple, and yet massively frustrating, at the same time.

Assuming you have opened The House of Pleasures, which is the shop that results from the Parliament of Flies, you can now use your Searing Enigma's to purchase the very rare Dread Surmise. Each one costs 9 Searing Enigma's. Buy as many as you can - a minimum of two, if you have followed the instructions to this point, and maybe more if you have received Searing Enigma's as gameplay rewards elsewhere.

If you are very lucky, at this point, the process of opening the shop will not advance your Another Day: Iron Republic Days Quality, which gives you a free pass on your next visit straight to The House of Pleasures.

If you are unlucky, Another Day: Iron Republic Days will advance by several points, meaning that on your next visit, The House of Pleasures will not open, and you'll get one of the other frankly awful shops. We'll talk more about that later.

Step 3 : Turning your Dread Surmise's into MORE.

Sail back off to Irem. It's entirely up to you how direct you be about this. You can add in other quest requirements, or just go there full steam. You will need to manage your own Terror, Fuel, Supplies and Crew in the manner you consider to be most effective / efficient.

Once at Irem, open the shop Wind Come Calling, and sell your Dread Surmise for 10 Searing Enigma each. For every one you sell, which cost you 9 Searing Enigma to obtain in The Iron Republic, you now have 10 Searing Enigma, a profit of one. Keep them all.

Return to The Iron Republic.

Open The House of Pleasures.

Buy as many Dread Surmise as you can.

Return to Irem.

Sell all your Dread Surmise, for a profit of 1 Searing Enigma on each.

As you repeat this pattern, you will eventually be able to buy more and more Dread Surmise on each cycle, and therefore generate more Searing Enigma on each return to Irem.

For example, if you can get up to 90 Searing Engima, you can buy 10 Dread Surmise. They then sell for 100 Searing Enigma. That's 11 Dread Surmise, which then sell for 110, which buys 12, and so on.

Step 4 : Turning all of this work into MONEY.

You really should know where this is going by now, but in case you don't...

Imagine you get to 900 Searing Enigma. That buys you 100 Dread Surmise, which then sells for 1000 Searing Enigma, a profit of 100.

Imagine you keep 50 of those 100 Searing Enigma in your "bank", that you're using to buy Dread Surmise. Take the other 50 to London, and sell them to The Alarming Scholar for 1000 Echoes each (plus Fragments).

That's 50,000 Echoes. There's your Mansion, and Dreadnought, fully fuelled and supplied, in one.

Step 5 : Turning all of this work and money into other STUFF.

You'll have noticed that you can buy Secrets in Wind Come Calling for 999 Echo.

With the amount of profit you can be making, and enough patience, it's not that hard to make enough money to flat out buy as many Secrets as you want to boost your Captain to all your Officer stat caps.

Not good enough yet? Buy as many Secrets and other gubbins as you need to manufacture the unique stat boosting items in Your Study, and get your stats as high as you can.

Once you have done everything you feel you need to do with your current Captain, retire him, and pass 50% or 100% of his remaining hoard to his successor.

If it's a considerable enough sum, you can even pick up more or less where your previous Captain left off, by heading straight for Irem, buying a tonne of Extraordinary Implications for cash, turning them into Searing Enigma's right there, and starting to farm Dread Surmise's again, thereby skipping the whole Chapel of Lights stage.

Having come this far, you'll have realised that this guide requires immense patience, between all the sailing to and fro, the waiting in ports to clear Terror and resupply, and the long wait for a pay off.

The absolute worst of it all though is the lottery of gaining access to The House of Pleasures, the vital shop in The Iron Republic necessary to obtain the Dread Surmise.

Every time you open a shop in The Iron Republic, there is a chance that the Another Day: Iron Republic Days Quality will advance, and The House of Pleasures is only available while this is at 4 or under.

Obviously, if it doesn't advance, and you have opened The House of Pleasures, that's great - next time you come back on a cycle, you'll at least get access to it then, with the chance of locking yourself out next time or not.

If it does advance, then you are in a death spiral of waiting in port until SAY activates, opening a shop, and hoping that Another Day: Iron Republic Days DOES advance each time, until it reaches The Expulsus.

When it does reach The Expulsus, on your next attempt to open a shop, there is a chance it will open The House of Pleasures, or skip right by it, meaning you need to repeat the whole process of waiting for SAY, waiting until you reach The Expulsus stage, and hoping the next shop will be The House of Pleasures.

This is soul destroying. I find that it can take multiple attempts to get the right RNG for The House of Pleasures to open after The Expulsus.

Meanwhile, you are generating Terror, or burning Fuel, depending on if you wait with lights on or lights off, and eating Supplies.

How you deal with this is up to you. By the time I was implementing all this, I had enough spare cash to just replace Fuel and Supplies in The Iron Republic, so I simply waited with lights on to keep Terror static, and absorbed the cost into my (eventual) profit.

If this isn't an option for you, well... It's a trip to London, The Mangrove College, or your other favourite chill and supply spot, and all the attendant travel and waiting time that goes with it.

As an afterthought, but an important one, I should point out that as far as I am aware, you can ONLY get the shops to reset to House of Pleasures after The Expulsus by using the Market of Hungers action, NOT Port Reports or Shore Leave.

If you attempt to cycle from The Expulsus to The House of Pleasures with a Port Report or Shore Leave, you are almost certainly wasting your time, and setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration.

There is an argument to be made for using one of the smaller, faster ships to accomplish this, which seems to depend predominantly on how much spare money you have to keep it resupplied.

A Cutter fitted with a high powered engine will be able to do the shuttle runs from The Iron Republic to Irem and back much, much faster than anything else. However, you will, along the way, need to make stops for Fuel. The extremely low Crew numbers (even lower if you fit WE ARE CLAY to your Auxilliary slot) mean Supplies aren't too much of an issue, but will still come into it somewhere.

The other downside is that since you really can't store much of anything, if you're sitting around in port for a while trying to cycle shops, you will probably need to just buy Supplies, rather than eating all the free ones from The Mangrove College.

Personally, since I tend to just Alt - Tab out of the game while sailing long distances, I've only ever used the Merchant ship for the fact it can at least take a bit of a battering from enemy ships, Zee monsters, or ramming islands.

Ultimately, it's up to what works for you.

If you feel like there is something I haven't adequately explained that isn't a basic gameplay principle, please feel free to politely point it out, and I'll try to rectify the issue.

If you feel that there is something which could be improved, from your experience or knowledge, feel free to let me know, and I'll take it into consideration.

There really is little I can say at this point other than good luck.