Forgotten Quarter Expeditions

Expeditions take the form of three stages: Preparation, Excavation and Loot!

Preparation
Begin an Expedition in the Forgotten Quarter will appear when you're in the Quarter and your Watchful quality is at least 60.

The goal of preparing is to get as many Supplies as possible. The cap is 100, and you can re-use supplies left over from other Expeditions, so there’s no need to worry too much about overpreparing. If anything, it's advisable to cap out at 100 before beginning your expedition; there's nothing more embarrasing than failing because you were missing the single unit of supplies needed to arrive at your objective.

The options to gather Supplies are as follows:
 * Rumours of treasure: Costs 200 Whispered Hints. Provides either 1 Supply and 1 Map Scrap or 2 Supplies. Assuming both successes happen equally often, this lets us gain 1.5 S/A (1 or 2) at 1.3 E/S (trying twice we pay 2x 2 Echoes and get 2+1 Supplis and 0.1 Echo back, resulting in 4 - 0.1 Echoes for 3 supplies).


 * Blood-red tales: Costs 10 Appalling Secrets. Provides 1 Supply and 1 CP to Nightmares. Simple stuff, 1 S/A at 1.5 E/S, making this slower, costlier and more menacing than using the previous method.


 * Your own expertise: Costs 10 Prelapsarian Archaeological Notes, obtained from Scientific Expeditions overZees. Provides 1 Supply. This is not the most viable option unless you already have excess since you'll be spending a long time both converting or gaining them.
 * Show us the money: Costs 4 actions and 1000 pence. Provides 4 Supplies. 1 S/A at 2.5 E/S, slow and very expensive.
 * Hire a porter from the docks: Requires 50 Piece of Rostygold and Connected: The Docks 10. Burns through 60 CP Docks connection and the Rostygold, provides 3 supplies. This is where the money is at. All you need to do is invest in is the Engraved Pewter Tankard (invest because you can sell it for at a loss of only 2.5 Echoes). This item's action converts 150 Shard of Glim into 75 CP The Docks connection for three actions. Four times three actions here cost 6 Echoes and gain 300 CP. We spend these 300 CP here in five actions costing 250 Piece of Rostygold (2.5 Echoes) for a total of 17 actions, 8.5 Echoes getting us 15 supplies. This is by far the cheapest option, netting 0.88 S/A at 0.56 E/S. A very reliable Shard of Glim source is to Take on a Clay Pupil.
 * Alternatively, raising the needed favors with the Docks can be done with Carnival Tickets. To raise the 60 CP, the option to raise connection with Docks at the Carnival (Meet some zailors) has to be taken 6 times, thus consuming 12 actions and 6 tickets. Assuming each ticket has to be bought with Moon-Pearls, the costs are 5 pennies for each ticket, so the total cost in Echoes is 0.30 Echoes, and 1.2 Actions to purchase the 12 tickets. Stacking these with the cost of hiring the porter, the total costs are 0.8 Echoes and 14.2 Actions for 3 Supplies. Therefore, it's 0.267 E/S and 0.211 S/A. It's obviously slower than all of the other options here, but cheaper.
 * If you already have doles of tickets, e.g. from doing the opportunity card A misfortune at the Carnival, total costs in actions reduce to 13 and in Echoes to 0.50, leading to 0.167 E/S and 0.231 S/A.
 * Burly guards and porters: Costs 1 Strong-Backed Labour, provides 5 supplies. These cost 13.5 Echoes at the Bazaar Sidestreets, resulting in 2.5 S/A but costing 2.7 E/S. Alternatively you can Recruit Clay Man labour from The Clay Quarters via Life on Ladybones Road - this option costs 10 Echoes of supplies and lowers the expedition supply cost to 2 E/S. Fast, but still expensive.
 * There may be another alternative of obtaining Strong-Backed Labour which requires some juggling of connections with the Gracious Widow and the Docks. If the player can maintain the 30 levels of connections needed for both factions, the The Acacia and the Butterfly opportunity card may be drawn. Picking and succeeding in the option to negotiate (Work long into the night forging a compromise solution) grants the player one unit of Strong-Backed Labour as part of the rewards. It takes some patience (and a number of faction-conflict opportunity cards) to build the connections back up, but in the long-term, this is perhaps the most economical means of getting supplies.
 * If you are a A Person of Some Importance, you can obtain these from Searching out a Missing Woman - it gives you 4 labour and takes 44 actions assuming no failures. It would take 48 actions to get 20 supplies, giving you 0.416 S/A at no money expenses.

If you have plenty of time, and lots of Jade Fragment, Nodule of Deep Amber or Piece of Rostygold sitting around, you can trade Jade Fragments for Whispered Secrets with the Tiger Keeper in the Labyrinth of Tigers. This will net you 1100 Secrets for every 1000 resources you hand over.

Expeditions
Once you’ve finished up your preparations, you can head out on an Expedition! Once you’ve chosen your Expedition, you can’t go back to get more supplies. So be sure to come prepared. If you run out of Supplies, you’ll have to abandon your Expedition, which is a terrible waste. Each of these areas provide different rewards and lore.

Note: If you can cope with the Nightmares that Seeking Curios and Secrets in the Forgotten Quarter brings you can change The Airs of the Forgotten Quarter there until they are 96-100 (you can check their value using the Scrapbook Value trick). Since starting an expedition will not change them again you will be able to hit your journey off with A sign?

Learn the Traditions of the Forgotten Quarter to gain your first point of Archaeologist unlocking the first expedition; this will cost 1 Tale of Terror, 250 Cryptic Clues and 1000 Whispered Hints.

The available Expedition areas are:
 * Seek a thieves' cache (requires Archaeologist 1 and 10 Supplies to begin, upon completion you gain 1 CP to Archaeologist up to a level of 5): Also requires Connected: Criminals 3 to unlock and costs a 5 CP connection upon entry.
 * Seek a shrine of the Deep Blue Heaven (2/20, +2 up to lvl5): You now have rivals and Orthos is in on the action (more on this later).
 * The Tomb of Seven (3/30, no CP): This expedition can only be completed once. It won't give a random reward, but only a Correspondence Stone which lets you start being A Scholar of the Correspondence. Again, there are rivals, namely Orthos and Virginia.
 * A Temple of Uttermost Wind (2/30): Also requires 7 Fate.
 * A Gallery of Serpents (3/40): Also requires 7 Fate.
 * The Cave of the Nadir (5/60): Also spend 1 Eyeless Skull to access this expedition. Your rival here is February. See Cave of the Nadir (Guide) for more information.

Your Archaeologist quality cannot be increased beyond 5 since completing the Nadir expedition is the ultimate goal here.

Archaeologist's and Rivals' Progress
To complete an Expedition, you'll need to increase your Archaeologist's Progress to the required amount which is equal to the minimum number of supplies needed to start the expedition. There is no point to aquiring more than neccessary. It is also important to know that you can leave the The Forgotten Quarter to do other things. Although this seems a bit inconsistent with the concept of rivals it is very useful if you are missing an item needed to hinder your rivals (more on this later).

There are three options for progression that are always available. These are all broad Watchful challenges: Failing the challenge will consume your Supplies at no Progress gain. Each option, success or failure, changes the Airs of the Forgotten Quarter quality. This might unlock rare Airs-dependent cards. Each action, success or failure alike, might increase your Rivals' Progress by one (50% chance).
 * A cautious approach (50) uses 1 Supply and 1 action to get 1 Progress.
 * A bold approach (100) uses 2 Supplies and 1 action to get 2 Progress.
 * A buccaneering approach (160) uses 3 Supplies and 1 action to get 3 Progress.

Progress (per Action) = Supplies invested (1,2 or 3) x Chance of success (/ Actions spent; always 1) = S x C

Supplies per Progress = S / P = S / (S x C) = 1 / C (how many supplies you need to spend for each progress only depends on your Watchful stat)

Rivals' progress per own Progress = [0.5 Rivals' progress  per 1 action] / [own Progress / 1 action] = [0.5/A] / [P/A] =  0.5 R / (S x C)

own Progress until 10 Rivals' progress = 10 Rivals' Progress / (Rivals' Progress / own Progress) = 10 R / (R/P) = 10 R / (0.5 R / (S x C)) = 20 x S x C

We can determine how much progrees we can make before our rivals get ten on their own. Note that you start with Rivals' Progress 1 into the expedition and that these are numbers that are average results. You might get unlucky and gain rivals' progress on more than half of your actions. Nevertheless, you can approximate how a certain expedition will go rival-wise. You can also tell how many extra supplies you need to bring if you don't want to invest in 100 of them. Other options unlock under certain conditions, mostly if The Airs of the Forgotten Quarter are right. The only really interesting one is A sign? which gives you 4 progress without cost or risk of advancing your rivals. If you run out of supplies you will have to Resupply ending your current attempt and resetting your progress.
 * A supply cache! (20 FATE) (0-9 Expedition Supplies)
 * A light caught by snow (11 Airs)
 * The tent-city (22 Airs)
 * White walls in the sun (33 Airs)
 * An afternoon off (1 FATE) (85–90 Airs)
 * A sign? (96+ Airs and 1+ Expedition Supplies)
 * A cautious day (96+ Airs and An Expedition: Seeking the Cave of the Nadir)

The same happens if your Rivals' Progress reaches 10 and you have to Concede. This however might be averted.

Hindering your Rivals


Either through the length of your expedition or sheer bad luck, your Rivals' Progress will grow. There are two ways to avoid conceding, though. Both require you to pass a skill challenge. One is the Airs-dependent cards that show up every now and then if your rivals' progress is between 3-9. They will reduce your rivals' progress by 2 at the cost of 1 unit of supplies and various items. Note that these are specific to certain characters which needs to be mentioned when you start the expedition. Should your Rivals' Progress reach 10, you can spend 10 supplies to Confront a Rival. Confronting a named rival will cost 4 actions and end their involvement in the expedition so you can only do this once per character. If there are no named rivals left, the generic Other Rivals option appears and can be played until you lack the resources to do so.
 * A chance to hinder Orthos (91–99 Airs,Watchful 80 ): costs Intriguing Snippet
 * A chance to hinder Virginia (82-84 Airs, Persuasive 50 ): costs 10 Stolen Correspondence and 1 Touching Love Story
 * A chance to hinder your rival, February (54-60 Airs, Watchful 120 ): costs 1 Presbyterate Passphrase, 1 Bottle of Broken Giant 1844, 1 An Identity Uncovered! and 55 CP of Connected: The Great Game
 * Assault Orthos' camp (Dangerous 79): -5 R, +5 P, costs 200 Bottle of Greyfields 1879
 * Bribe Virginia (Watchful 50): -5 R, +3 P, costs 10 Brilliant Souls
 * Challenge February to a competition (Watchful 120): -9 R, +3 P, costs 10 CP of Connected: Revolutionaries
 * Other Rivals (Watchful+Supplies): -10 R, costs 20 Cryptic Clues

Loot!
At the end of certain expeditions you will uncover valuable treasure. Check the expedition conclusions:
 * A thieves' cache!: Unpredictable Treasures
 * A Shrine of the Deep Blue Heaven: Unpredictable Treasures
 * The Tomb of the Seven!: grants one of the Set of Correspondence Stones, enabling the A Scholar of the Correspondence quality
 * The Gate of the Nadir: opens the route to the Cave of the Nadir