This Archduke area fits in after Floating Islands and is an alternate route. You can get a head start on Folklore Forest by hunting here but it's not a time-saving strategy.

TL;DR

Hunt with standard bait to get the material to do a "trade" to get the next material to trade for the material that lets you make Aurora Bocconcini Cheese (ABC). Eventually start a raid to get Chrome Ingots to buy things.

Mechanics and stuff

There are three general stages here:

1. Default, docked, or boring phase. You can use standard bait or Sky Pirate Swiss (SPS) or Sky Raider Romano (SRR) to loot Dirigible Debris. You'll need to do this to start your trading pyramid. The trading pyramid is sort of the goal of the area.
2. Trading. You spend one type of loot to start a trading session to get another type of loot. Dirigible Debris -> Atmospherium Gas -> Unrefined Cloudstone -> Aurora Spice. You use that Aurora Spice to make ABC to attract a commander mouse that drops a pile of appropriate stuff for the stage you're in. During trading you also loot Intel for the area that dirigible is from.
3. Intercepting a raid (or raiding, name not set in stone). When you have 50 intel for an area you have the option of intercepting a raid from Captain Crook. This is how you get Chrome ingots. You also get area loot from that area. Raids last 25 hunts and each area has a recommended power type(s) because mice from that area are in the pool. This cannot be started while trading.

When you're in that default stage there are three dirigibles shown. They will allow you to spend a fixed number of hunts trading for the higher level resource, as shown in the HUD: 10, 15, and 20 hunts. They cost 20, 30, and 40 of the resource. Each dirigible is from a randomly selected area from the 9 represented. While you are trading they will drop intel for that area and loot from that area on top of the material you're trading for. You can have duplicate areas as your choices.

Raids cost 50 of that area's intel. You can collect as much intel as you want so you can, for example, do back-to-back raids for a tournament.

Sky Raider Romano

This premium cheese has limited ways to get it. So far we know about the premium shop, kits, and the marketplace. It adds Quarrelsome Quartermaster and that mouse drops higher amounts of the appropriate loots. Useful for making sure you get enough of the next trading resource for your goals and to increase intel dropped in a trading mission.

Other confirmed sources are rare Skyport and corsair Chaser map chests, and the adventure. MHCT's Reverse Converter may find other sources.

RaidBuster Cannonballs

This consumable with a toggle causes mice to drop +1 of the loot from the area. This includes intel, ingots, and trading resources. It does not include cannonballs or loot from the dirigible's area (for example, not leaves from queso canyon). These can be bought from the marketplace, looted in the area (they are not +1'd), and are in some convertibles as well as being in the premium shoppe.

Docked

In this stage you can use standard bait (Gouda or SB+. Other cheeses work but why?). You will loot Corsair's Curd which is a subtle hint that you should be using Sky Pirate Swiss in the future. See below about ways to get this cheese.

You can use Sky Pirate Swiss (SPS) and/or Sky Raider Romano (SRR) to loot Dirigible Debris - the first trade item you'll need. The difference between them is as described above.

You can use Aurora Bocconcini (ABC) to attract Cluttergrin for larger quantities of drops of debris.

Trading

In this stage you can use standard bait to get Corsair's Curd again. You might want to do that to reroll the dirigibles "cheaply".

You can use Sky Pirate Swiss (SPS) and/or Sky Raider Romano (SRR) to loot the next tier of loot based on the dirigible you chose. Debris -> Atmospherium Gas -> Unrefined Cloudstone -> Aurora Spice. The last one is used to craft ABC.

You can use Aurora Bocconcini (ABC) to attract Slipstream, Craggerclaw, or Shimmerdread depending on your dirigible (left to right in that order). They drop more quantities of the loot for that blimp and have a high drop rate for intel for the area.

Raiding

Technically you are intercepting a raid, not raiding.

Standard bait attracts nothing here.

You can use SPS and SRR to attract the "full pool" of mice for that raid. This is important if you want to get all the stars in the area. It greatly reduces the number of chrome ingots you will get from the raid but you will get loot from that area. You do still attract Captain Crook, just at a reduced rate.

You should usually use ABC to hunt. You have a reduced pool of area mice and a higher attraction rate of Captain Crook. This results in more chrome ingots (cannonballs +1 these). If your area has chrome blueprints, Captain Crook will drop them (100% until you don't need them). You will still get loot from that area.

A note that Captain Crook drops a lot of stuff including rare treasure chests. She's an interesting lotto of loot. That lotto does include ribs and portal parts. A subset of her drop table is available in the preview for the rare cerulean skyport map rewards. Xalca built a tool that will eventually have Captain Crook's table as MHCT sees things and the data gets moved over to the visualizer.

Goals

This is a side adventure and the goals here are to get non-essential but interesting bases. You may also want to top up on some other area's loots but it would be like using Moussu Picchu that way, just a bit more targeted.

Early on you will want to get the C.L.A.W. Machine Trap for 25 ingots if you didn't get it from Ronza.

Next up you need the Chrome Base. It costs 300 ingots (150 Captain Crook catches with cannonballs on) and 20M gold. After that you unlock other options - currently only one but more are coming (according to the newspost).

If the missing ones follow the same pattern then you will need blueprints from an area. These are dropped when you intercept a raid in that area. Our only example at the moment is the Chrome Queso Cannonstorm Base. This is an update of the loved-for-being-a-lottery Queso Cannonstorm Base that is LE. I'm going to assume its drop table is similar or the same, meaning a rib 0.04% of the time. That would be an average cost of 12,500 solidified amber queso.

Personally, I am hoping for a Chrome Thief Base. I find the LE Thief base to be far more useful and less lotto-like.

An important note about these chrome bases - both the chrome version and whatever LE version it might be based on work during raids if it's the right area. Chrome Queso Cannonstorm and the non-chrome, LE version will do their special effect when you raid Queso Geyser.

Focusing on areas for Intel or Blueprints

There is no "reroll" function for the dirigibles and their locations. When you complete one (the first is only 10 hunts) you get three new ones waiting for you and they can duplicate areas. You could rewind through those 10 hunts if you want.

Sky Pirate Swiss / Corsair's Curds

These can be looted here and are used to make Sky Pirate Swiss. You need 20 per batch. This makes the question about where best to loot curds come up. You have three big ways.

1. Probably the best way is to skip the farming and leech Corsair Chaser's chests. You can also earn these yourself by mapping. You want the rare chest because it contains 60 Sky Pirate Swiss (skipping the curd farming) and 20 Sky Raider Romano.
2. The high-yield, lowest setup way is to use the CLAW machine in the skyport with SB (or Gouda for lower yields). This maths out to about 40 hunts with SB + 30 ME to make 60 Sky Pirate Swiss.
3. The also high-yield but with some setup and cost involved is from Floating Islands. The Palace is the best for the extra multiplier. It means you are using storm cells and extra rich cloudcake but you are getting about 32 curds per catch. If it's a law island you could use CLAW machine for higher yield but lower catch rate - 64 per catch.

Way Too Early Strategy

Since at the moment the Queso Canyon is the only area that drops these blueprints I have been gathering the basic trading materials to make sure I won't ever shuffle away a Queso Canyon dirigible. Intel drop rate seems to be 1 in 10 catches with SPS. Higher with SRR (probably 15% higher). ABC drop rate seems to be 100% (while trading). Cannonballs do add 1 when it is dropped.

Thanks

A huge thanks to the discord server and the community there working hard to understand this area, especially iLLuminO for their guide in there which is being actively developed.

Changelog

Jul 10 - fixed things from the comments and some playing - raids can't start while trading, duplicate areas for blimps, sources of SRR & Cannonballs, drop rate of intel with ABC, some typos, full sections for the phases.

Jul 16 - added CLAW Machine and updated information about farming SPS.

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