Luminous Pearl

The Luminous Pearl is one of only two items in the whole catalogue that manufacture the other currency: you buy it with Khron and it pays back Essence. Open a flask and for ten outings your chance of finding Essence rises by half a point — a +10 % relative bump on the ~5 % you walk the Archipelago with. It sounds like little, and that is the point: Essence opens portals, feeds the Workshop and pays for all three medicines, so any tap that leaks too much of it breaks the entire game. The Pearl is that tap, opened exactly as far as it should be.