Cave of the Nadir (Guide)

Late MYN Content and Onwards

Obtaining the Route

First things first, you need to get the Route to the Cave itself. The Secular Missionary and her husband know where it is, roughly. So! You need to raise Intimate with a Secular Missionary and Intimate with a Revolutionary Firebrand both to 10.

Once you reach Intimate with a Secular Missionary 10, you need to wait on another opportunity card, or use a Favourable Circumstance to accelerate matters somewhat by using the Send a Message to a Contact option in your social engagements. Be aware before summoning the card that using it requires Intimate with the Firebrand 10 or 8 Fate and between 1-9 Intimate with a Revolutionary Firebrand.

This sets a short meeting in motion at your lodgings, the conclusion of which will give you Route: The Cave of the Nadir 1. You'll also decide whether you want to trust the Missionary or the Firebrand more. Now you can go caving!

Or can you?

Getting into the Cave

You won't just need Route: Cave of the Nadir, of course. You will also require Archaeologist 5, at least 60 Expedition Supplies and an Eyeless Skull. Let's break this into parts:

• Archaeologist: This is increased by the simple task of doing Forgotten Quarter Expeditions. More difficult Expeditions increase Archaeologist by a larger amount; but if you haven't been keeping up with your archaeology you may need to do a fair few to get to the magic number of 5.
• Crate of Expedition Supplies: The game says to bring at least 60, but unless you're planning on doing a flawless runthrough of the Expedition I wouldn't recommend trying with that few: you probably want 80-90.
• Eyeless Skull: Now this is a tricky one, and a bone (heh) of contention with many unlucky players. There are currently six methods available to obtain an Eyeless Skull.
  • The end of the Shrine of the Deep Blue Heaven occasionally gives an Eyeless Skull instead of the usual Unpredictable Treasure.
  • High-value (fate-locked) Unpredictable Treasures occasionally give two Eyeless Skulls and some Jade.
  • A rare success from See the sights under Seeking Curios, the last storylet on the page.
  • A rare success from Wander the Quarter, likewise under Seeking Curios.
  • Begging! If you have everything you need but a Skull, you can Ask a friend to send you an Eyeless Skull. Skull charity!
  • Another source has been added! The Eyeless Skull is now available for purchase from the Rat Market, but only when the Rat-Moon and Rat-Wind are favourable for it.

The Expedition Itself

The Expedition is lengthy but does not otherwise have anything more difficult than other Expeditions lurking within. Your Rival is February, and you can occasionally stall her depending on the Airs of the Quarter. It'll cost you a bottle of Broken Giant, a Presbyterate Passphrase, a Great Game favour, and an Uncovered Identity. It'll slow her down by 2 points of progress, and it's rather expensive, so don't do it, confronting her is easier anyway.

Should her progress reach 10 (and it likely will even if you succeed at every progress attempt due to the way Rival's Progress is gained), you will be forced to face her. She will challenge you to a game of chess; a reasonably difficult challenge, which needs 200 Watchful to be completely straightforward. The match costs four actions. Success will cost you 10 Supplies and a Revolutionary favour if you had any (so spend them before dealing with her), but you'll gain three Progress, lose all Rival's Progress, and February will sod off and leave you alone with mere second-rate archaeologists to deal with.

Other Airs values may allow you to have a chat with your charming associates, the Missionary and the Firebrand. During this time, you can decide to switch sides if you've decided you don't really want to trust one of them. Or you can spend some quality time with your ally of choice... This costs you an action and basically gives you nothing, so don't bother wasting a precious action on this and instead put it to use on actually progressing the expedition.

Once your Archaeologist's Progress quality hits 60, you'll be able to enter the Cave itself! Or will you? Erm, no, as it happens.

Actually getting into the Cave

Once you reach the Cave, the Firebrand drops a bombshell: you're going to need a Ray-Drenched Cinder to get inside.

Fortunately, at this point you are offered a number of ways to get a Ray Drenched Cinder of your very own, so you don't need to frantically rummage throughout the entire game looking for one. Here are the options presented:

• Spend lots of cold, hard cash!
  400 Echoes and 5 actions will get you a Ray Drenched Cinder. Certainly the easiest way to go, especially if you don't already have a lot of Revolutionary renown.
• Call in favours with Revolutionaries!
  If you have your own reputation as a Firebrand ( Renown: Revolutionaries 25) you can spend 5 actions and 7 Revolutionaries Favours for a single RDC. You can only do this once.
• Buy one with Fate!
  It'll cost 50 FATE. In addition to your Cinder you will receive an Incarnadine Fur Robe which can be traded for various unique items, mostly Home Comforts. The robe is normally available only at Christmas for 30 FATE, but combined with the Cinder this action technically offers the best EPA in the game, albeit at a substantial FATE cost.
  • If it's late December, you can instead get one for only 8 FATE by investigating Mr Sacks on behalf of Revolutionaries. See: 12 Days of Mr Sacks (Guide).
• Trade skulls with the Radical Factotum!
  Should you have a surfeit of Eyeless Skulls banked up for some reason, you can use them from your inventory, spending five skulls and one Revolutionaries Favour for a Ray Drenched Cinder. No more skull cards, huzzah! Plus, you can do this at any time, even after advancing into the Cave proper!

In case none of those appeal, you still don't need to frantically rummage throughout the entire game looking for one, because we've done that for you already. Here are all your other options:

• Fight in the Parabolan War!
  Fighting on the side of The Cats will give you the option to Encourage the Prince to accept the King's offer after the Stage 4 of the war. You will get the Cinder at the end of the campaign.
• Buy from the Rat Market!
  When the Rat-Wind blows in the East, The Rat Market (Area) offers items related to the Nadir. Under a Soft Rat-Moon, you can buy a Ray Drenched Cinder for 3125 Rat-Shilling; Under Hard Rat-moon, the aforementioned skulls run 625 shillings each (3125 for the five needed), though you will need an extra action and a Revolutionary Favour to cash them in for the RDC.
• Do random endgame stuff!
  An expensive vanity in the Hurlers pays out in Cinders, at a significant loss. Putting off the Nadir until then is highly inadvisable, but not impossible.

You can purchase more than one RDC with Echoes or Fate until you progress, and may wish to do so if you are pursuing Ambition: Heart's Desire!. Other methods of acquiring RDCs remain available afterwards.

Note that you only have to pay the cost of a Ray-Drenched Cinder once. After you've learned the route to the Nadir, you can freely return without having to pay any cost (other than handling the effects of Irrigo).

Once you have an RDC, by whatever means possible, the Firebrand will brew you up some mysterious ashy tea. It'll give you a point of Wounds and Nightmares, but more importantly, it'll let you enter the Cave of the Nadir...

The Cave of the Nadir!

The Cave is the zenith of our little quest. On subsequent trips you'll get a point of Irrigo upon entering, but this is waived for your first visit. Almost everything here is conducted via the means of opportunity cards: There's a little informative pinned storylet with a Watchful challenge, and an option that'll let you leave. But don't do that just yet! The party's only starting.

The Cave of the Nadir's gimmick is that you only have a limited amount of time in it: The previously mentioned Irrigo quality will increment as you do things, and getting it to 10 will get you booted out. More on that in a second, though.

The other gimmick of the Cave of the Nadir is that it can be used to upgrade items. A fair few arbitrary things can be enriched with irrigo: there's almost no way to know about these things if you aren't told. Hence, I am now going to tell you what to bring, and what the thing turns into. Just a fair warning, however, that while these items are pretty good, none of them are currently strictly best-in-slot for anything, and there's a very profitable action in the Cave that will allow you to buy the most expensive gear possible anyway. Still, enriched gear is shiny and purple. Who doesn't like purple?

Anyway! Gear list! Here's what you should pack for your hike into the Nadir, and what they'll turn into:

original	→ upgraded	Card	→ Choice
Pair of Luminous Neathglass Goggles	Pair of Irrigo Goggles	A Weakness in the Air	Dreams can wait
Parabola-Linen Frock	Strange-Shore Parabola Frock	A Familiar Face?	Sleep's fortress (Parabola-Linen Frock)
Parabola-Linen Suit	Strange-Shore Parabola Suit	A Familiar Face?	Sleep's fortress (Parabola-Linen Suit)
Pair of Hushed Spidersilk Slippers	Pair of Forgotten Spidersilk Slippers	An Altarful of Strangers	Speak to the masked man
Nodule of Warm Amber	Nodule of Violet Amber	An Altarful of Strangers	Speak to the Rubbery Man
Devious Henchman	Ravenous Henchman	Old Sins	Thirst?
Mirrorcatch Box	Irrigo-filled Mirrorcatch Box	A pause for refreshment	A lunchbox?

It is also worth noting that most of these (except Nodule of Violet Amber and Ravenous Henchman) are also occasionally available at the Rat Market, and the price the rats demand for them is usually less than what it'd cost you to buy the unupgraded versions.

There are a number of other cards and things inside the Nadir for you to look at and enjoy. Keep an eye out for a card with a coffin icon called The Catafalquerie. One option will give you a Complaisant Frost-Moth, a neat little pet (though unremarkable in terms of stats, Nemesis players may find a use for it). Another will give you Vial of Tears of the Bazaar, at the cost of PtPT:Lacre, worth a whole 312.50 Echoes! Another card (An Unlikely Garden) can give a Searing Enigma, but it has a very high difficulty (a Persuasive stat of 1000 is required to get 60% odds on it. Yep.) An easier way to earn these and other expensive items are on the card, The End of Battles, but this will cost some second chances. If you have A Daughter in the Shadows, Old Bones is a good card. If you have a tattoo, Woods in winter is a good card. If you have dreams and nightmares, you'll draw cards that gain you interesting items worth 12.5 E.

Warning! No cards drawn in the Nadir can be discarded, so you can't just shuffle through them to get a desired one, however having a 5-card lodgings can improve your selection big time.

For detailed overview of available cards and rewards see Cave of the Nadir (Guide)/Cards.

lose	→ earn
1 x Cryptic Clue	Extraordinary Implication (and lose Watchful)
1 x Journal of Infamy	Uncanny Incunabulum
3 x Sudden Insight	Bottle of Fourth City Airag: Year of the Tortoise
3 x Hard-Earned Lesson	Nodule of Pulsating Amber
3 x Hastily Scrawled Warning Note	Collection of Curiosities
3 x Confident Smile	Searing Enigma
5 x An Identity Uncovered!	Nodule of Trembling Amber
5 x Diary of the Dead	Nodule of Fecund Amber
5 x Nodule of Fecund Amber	Fluke-Core
10 CP x A Game of Chess (with Nightmares 4)	Blackmail Material
10 CP x Is Someone There? (with Nightmares 2)	Direful Reflection
10 CP x Death by Water (with Nightmares 6)	Favour in High Places
7 levels x Putting the Pieces Together: the Taste of Lacre	Vial of Tears of the Bazaar

You'll be able to meet your chosen ally in the Nadir, just once. Then they'll float off into the irrigo void again, and you won't see them until you leave.

Leaving the Cave of the Nadir

You can choose to leave at any point. However, if you hit Irrigo 10/11, you'll be forced out with a double penalty. What sort of penalty? Well, that depends on how much Irrigo you have when you leave.

• If you have 5 or less Irrigo
  • You lose -1 CP in each stat, for each point of Irrigo, and also -1 CP of Nightmares

• If you have 6 to 9 Irrigo
  • You lose -5 CP in each stat, for each point of Irrigo, and also your Nightmares will be quartered.

• If you reach 10 Irrigo
  • You lose -50 CP in all stats, and -1 CP Nightmares, followed by another -50 CP in all stats and quartering your Nightmares.

• If you reach 11 Irrigo
  • You lose -50 CP in all stats, and -1 CP Nightmares, followed by another -55 CP in all stats and quartering your Nightmares.

As you can see here, the Nadir is a great way to reduce your Nightmares, just aim for the sweet spot of 6 to 9 Irrigo and even at 28 Nightmares (only possible by playing A casket marked with a familiar name on The Catafalquerie twice when entering with 7 Nightmares) you won't be sent to a Menace Location. In fact, it's not possible to be driven mad no matter what you do since the aforementioned card locks at 21 Nightmares and you don't have enough time in the Nadir to increment your Nightmares. Ergo the most efficient reduction is to enter with 7 and 7 CP of Nightmares and to not play the first option on The Catafalquerie, but even playing it twice and going to 28 Nightmares from 7 gives a randomized but usually large chunk of Extraordinary Implications so entering with as many Nightmares as you can get will either turn out to be profitable or efficient for you.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
Loss (CP)	-1 CP	-2 CP	-3 CP	-4 CP	-5 CP	-30 CP	-35 CP	-40 CP	-45 CP	-100 CP	-105 CP
Loss	-1 CP	-1 CP	-1 CP	-1 CP	-1 CP	-3/4 LVL	-3/4 LVL	-3/4 LVL	-3/4 LVL	-1 CP &-3/4 LVL	-1 CP &-3/4 LVL

Once you leave for the first time, you'll meet the Missionary and the Firebrand having a little... disagreement outside. You can choose to side with one or the other: this’ll give you your chosen ally as a Companion, which may later be upgradeable, possibly even transforming into a Constant Companion. Alternatively, you can choose to abandon them and nick some of their Mourning Candles, which prevents you from getting either as a (admittedly mediocre) Companion. But you'll have some candles! And you can be really rude about it too, if you want. They probably deserve it.

If you did not play or failed to draw either Speak to the Firebrand or Speak to the Missionary then you will not get this scene until you do so and play one of the options on them.

Returning to the Cave

You can't re-enter if you have any Irrigo. Fortunately, that will be cleaned up when Time, the Healer comes calling. If you're impatient, you can pay 50 Fate to purge Irrigo. Going back to the Cave has no major cost, only taking 3 actions and giving you a point of Irrigo. You do not need another Eyeless Skull or Ray-Drenched Cinder.

Analysis

It takes effectively four actions to visit the cave: three to enter and one to clear the Irrigo. Assuming you have a hand size of 5, you will draw five distinct out of 17-21 possible cards after entering. You have about 25% to encounter any specific card upon entering. The below cards provide greater than 2.5 EPA.

• The End of Battles: 62.5e, costs 3 Second Chances. The Give a Gift! card may give 4 Second Chances per action to players with at least Hedonist 8. (2 x Irrigo)
• Woods in winter: One Favour for Society, Great Game, and Revolutionary each, plus 1 CP of Dramatic Tension (requires a visit to Millicent's Parlour during the Feast of the Rose in February). (2 x Irrigo). DT should be valued at roughly 20E per 1 CP and each favour can be valued at roughly 5.5E when exchanged for Tribute at The Labyrinth of Tigers or for materials at Call in Favours at Jericho Locks. In total some 36.5E.
• Losing: 25e, requires Memorious Goldfish (1 x Irrigo). Alternatively, 12e for 2 x Irrigo or 2.48e for 1 x Irrigo.
• Old Bones: ~12.5e, requires Fate-locked A Daughter in the Shadows. (1 x Irrigo)
• An Unlikely Garden: 62.5e, ~18% success rate with Persuasive 230 and max non-Mood gear bonuses (i.e. ~11.5e on average), or 32.7% with a Confident Smile for (i.e. ~20.44e on average). (2 x Irrigo)
• The Catafalquerie
  • A casket marked with a black ribbon: 312.65e, costs 7 Taste of Lacre. (2 x Irrigo)
  • An empty casket: Gives half your current Irrigo in Extraordinary Implications. (2 x Irrigo)
  • Rebels who will not rise: 5e, Requires The Great Game: A Fine Piece in the Game -. (1 x Irrigo)
  • A casket marked with a familiar name: On average, gives 1.25e + 1.25e x Nightmares level; also doubles the player's current Nightmares level, maximum 20. (2 x Irrigo).
    • Note that players are not sent to The Mirror-Marches or A state of some confusion until leaving the Nadir, so this option is repeatable with Nightmares values substantially higher than 8.
    • If players increase their irrigo to 6+, nightmares will be quartered upon leaving, so even 20 nightmares will be 5 upon leaving, saving the player from a trip to The Mirror-Marches or A state of some confusion
• The Hole in Your Head can be profitable with maxed Steward of the Discordance, and can help grind it up otherwise. See Discordant Studies - Costs and Rewards (Guide)#Supplemental Content for more information about this. ~10 EPA when cashing out.
• Old Sins: 6.25e, requires Immaculate Eel (1 x Irrigo)
• "Waking Dream" cards allow to trade 10 CP of Having Recurring Dreams: Is Someone There?, A Game of Chess or Death by Water for 12.5e. Drawing those cards requires Nightmares 2, 4, and 6 respectively. A Weakness in the Air can increase all Dreams qualities by 1 CP (1 x Irrigo for each option mentioned). This card is only worthwhile if you increase your dream qualities only through red cards.

Low value cards

Card	Value	Irrigo	Notes
Something Moves	0E	1
A Weakness in the Air	0E	1	Increases dream qualities
A Waking Dream of Reflections	12.5E	1	-10cp Having Recurring Dreams: Is Someone There?
An Altarful of Strangers	2.5E	1
The Web	2.5E	1	Requires Brachiating Spindlewolf
A pause for refreshment	1E	1
Lost at Sea	2.5E	2	Only 1x Irrigo with Ambition: Light Fingers!
Unjustly imprisoned!	.02E	1	Stat loss

For detailed overview of available cards and rewards see Cave of the Nadir (Guide)/Cards

Strategy

This guide is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.

What needs work: EPA needs re-evaluation to account for the new 25E option on Losing.

The most profitable cards of the ones above are:

• The End of Battles 62.5E
• Woods in winter 36.5E
• Losing 25E or 12E
• An Unlikely Garden 22.44 w/
• The Catafalquerie 11.25E
• The Hole in Your Head 10.44E
• Old Sins 6.25E

Play any of these cards immediately, except for:

• The Catafalquerie, which you want to play before you leave, preferable at Irrigo 8-9. On average, this will net you some 24.8E for about one action.
• The Memorious Goldfish option on Losing, which you want to play at Irrigo 3+ for reduced difficulty.

Redraw and play any good cards. Optimal play involves extending your time here to continue to gamble on drawing one of the good cards, so long as you do not care about attribute loss, otherwise, always play til at least 5 Irrigo. This yields an EPA of 6.87 with Nightmares 6 and 8.13 with Nightmares 1 or less.

The Hole in Your Head is not included in these calculations due to actions required to obtain the law, and that items received may be difficult to convert into money. Note, however, that it is a good card to play after you have played the most profitable cards. (The Discordant Soul is theoretically worth 62.5 echoes, and can be cashed out for ~10.5 EPA, when done in bulk.

Math at Nightmares <2:

Afterwards, redraw. Assuming you played one card (the mean case), you should have 1/17 to draw any of the good ones, which comes at around an expected value of ${\frac {148.94E}{5}}\times {\frac {5}{17}}\approx 8.76E$ for ${\frac {5}{17}}\approx 0.353$ actions. Of course, if you drew a good card, you redraw again!

As even the best luck is limited by Irrigo, this effectively works out to ${\frac {148.94E}{5}}\times \sum _{i=1}^{4}(0.353)^{i}\approx 13.39E$ for 0.537 actions.

For the total EPA, let's assume that you do not play substandard cards. You pay 4 actions for the trip in total, plus 1.54 actions playing good cards, for a total of 5.54 actions. This gives you 38.15E worth of loot on average for some 6.89 EPA. There is an 0.8% chance of having no good cards in your starting had, which brings the total EPA down to 6.84 EPA.  

Calculating the gain if you play suboptimal cards is nontrivial, and so has been done via a script that ran 1,000,000 samples and assumed that if a high value card was not available, the best 1 Irrigo card would be chosen. Leaving anytime between 5 and 9 Irrigo if there are no good cards available yields a relatively stable EPA, so if you're comfortable exchanging EPA for stat loss, feel free to continue pushing. Cave of the Nadir (Guide)/Script

This yields an epa of 9.03.

Math at Nightmares >5:

Afterwards, redraw. Assuming you played one card (the mean case), you should have 1/20 to draw any of the good ones, which comes at around an expected value of ${\frac {148.94E}{5}}\times {\frac {5}{20}}\approx 7.45E$ for ${\frac {5}{20}}\approx 0.30$ actions. Of course, if you drew a good card, you redraw again!

As even the best luck is limited by Irrigo, this effectively works out to ${\frac {148.94E}{5}}\times \sum _{i=1}^{4}(0.3)^{i}\approx 10.55E$ for 0.425 actions.

For the total EPA, let's assume that you do not play substandard cards. You pay five actions for the trip in total, plus 1.425 actions playing good cards, for a total of 5.425 actions. This gives you 35.4E worth of loot on average for some 6.54 EPA. There is an 13% chance of having no good cards in your starting had, which brings the total EPA down to 4.89 EPA.  

Calculating the gain if you play suboptimal cards is nontrivial, and so has been done via a script that ran 1,000,000 samples and assumed that if a high value card was not available, the best 1 Irrigo card would be chosen. Leaving anytime between 5 and 9 Irrigo if there are no good cards available yields a relatively stable EPA, so if you're comfortable exchanging EPA for stat loss, feel free to continue pushing. Cave of the Nadir (Guide)/Script

This yields an epa of 7.65.

After the Cave

So, you've found this Cave. You can go back to it once a week. But what else can you do with it? Sell its location, obviously! Four parties are interested in the Cave's location, and they'll buy it off you for a rather hefty sum. You can only sell the location once, though! Because, um. Economics. You can still enter the Cave again after you sell it, though!

Selling the location is done via a storylet that appears in your Forgotten Quarter Base-Camp. Selling the location will get you a rare item, all seven Favours for the faction you sold it to, and also change your Closest To -! So if you want to switch allegiances to this very specific set of people, you can do that.

Anyway, the parties interested in the Cave are:

• The Great Game: Will purchase for a Reported Location of a One-Time Prince of Hell (worth 1560)
• Revolutionaries: Will purchase for Vial of Masters' Blood (worth 1562.60)
• Hell: Will purchase for a Scrap of Ivory Organza (worth 312.50, or 400 with The Rat Market)
• Urchins: Will purchase for a Starstone Demark (worth 312.50)

Alternatively, you can opt not to sell the location to anyone at all! It is a rather dangerous (and profitable) secret, after all.

And... I think that's all I have to say on the matter of the Nadir! Have a nice trip! It's not exactly the best holiday destination, you forget all of the fun parts and misplace your luggage. But it's a nice place to go, and properly eerie as well.