First steps
From beginner to Captain
Gathered together by Abi
Translated by Iversen
Part I - General
Part II - The specialists
Part III – The choice of ship
Part IV - The Team
Part V - The Worldtour
Part VI - The End
Part I – General:
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When you at the beginning want to get those navigation points fast, then you should take deliver letter missions, you should deliver those too the city named in the mission within the time also mentioned. For every letter delivered within time you get extra navigations point, so your navigation skill will rise faster. It also has another advantage for every 3. Navigation level u can take an additional mission and then get even more points. After the first couple of jobs u get the feeling of which jobs are doable. There is a good route in the start area of every nation. It’s important the to do the jobs as fast as possible which means fast ship (read sloops) and sail in a straight line without any detours, cannon fights or fencing the faster you get the job done the more navigation points you get. After you have finished the job put the money in the bank.
After a while u will have enough navigation to use more/bigger ships, but until navigation level 16 you should use the sloop, because those are the fastest ships in the game and in the beginning running away from trouble, is the only way too stay ‘alive’. When you get navigation level 16 (with/or without Mate) you can sail a Barque. At the beginning it’s important not just to sail with one ship, because you can easy lose a ship. The reasons for this could be overnav (taking a ship that give you more total navigation that you are able too handle), overload in your fleet with goods, cannons/bullets, Crew etc. and of course from NPC or PC.
Now back to the beginner. After collecting navigation points and maybe have found a better mate, the beginner should get more ships. To do this there is different possibilities: Buy/build at the shipyard, take a ghostship, ask in nation for someone to give you one or fence one yourself. I prefer too fence one on my own, because the fence skill gets better that way. You have to pay attention to which ships you fence. Go for the nation ships and avoid the pirates, because they r to strong at the beginning. Before u go into fence u should target the enemy ship (press t) and only fence when the right most number is -1, -2, or -3, with -3 as the best. Otherwise you have to shoot at them with shatter ammunition (press s) to reduce the crew of the enemy.
With Navigation 12 or more you could easily go on a world tour (use fast ship like sloops or barques), the advantage in this is that you will get new navigations points from exploring unknown waters (the black) and finding new cities and you get to know the world (more info under ‘the world’). You have to remember to set a waypoint at every city u find (quickbar -> lighthouse) so that you later can use those waypoints to sail to the city. If a city is without a fort everybody can enter (press 2) and trade there, fill your cargo, search for info or visit the governor (if the city has one). If a city got a fort your nation and the one of the city is important, if there is war between the nations or you got negative reputation with the nation, you can’t enter the city. In every city you enter, check for better specs and if necessary get some jobs, but not those with time limit or capture jobs. Do this so you can make some money on the world tour. A world map of WoP is on this trip very useful.
After ended world tour you will have 30-40 navigation level than before, depending on what level you started out with, the earlier u start the tour the more levels you gain. At the beginning it’s not worth the effort to skill for a bigger weapon- or fence skill (like 6 or more), because its way easier to get those later when you fight with more crew and cannons.
Part II – The specialist:
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The deal with the specialist is that at the beginning you don’t have a high enough navigation level (every 2 navigation levels you can take another specialist) to take all required specialist (also see character -> Specialists). So you have to decide which specialist you should take. At the start when you often end up on the raft and got no loyal specialist, you get a free +1 mate. When u got a bit of cash in your account, you should get a better mate and a better lookout with a big visible range (highest 1029) so that you explore a lot of black when u sail around. After that you should every time you enter a city search for better specialists. The future choice of specialists depends on your plans. Are you going on world tour, exploring the near surroundings, fence a lot or shoot? What u choose will have a saying of which specs you should take, for the world tour you need a good mate with high speed bonus, while the fencer need a soldier with high moral bonus. At the beginning it’s difficult to get the best specs because you haven’t got the minimum requirement for the specs yet or you just don’t have any luck in finding them. Every city has different kind of specialist that it generates more of, there are cities that have more good cooks or carpenters, and other has often good soldiers or cannoneers. In the noob area most specialists are not strong except the carpenter. If you at the beginning find a good carpenter (92-94 %), u should take him because those are the most difficult to find. You will on your journey through the Caribbean, find out where u can get good specialists.
At the beginning the player are not able to pick up a lot of specialists but this changes fast as the game go along, but soon (ca. at navigations level 30) he would have found a lot of good/very good specialists. As soon as the player has room for new specialists, he should fill those with carpenters with high AP, and cooks with high moral bonus. There should later be room for a couple of fishers. The carpenters with high AP stack, so the ship can in one repair turn get more % repaired. Cooks are needed to keep the moral of your crew up. As the player soon can sail more and/or bigger ships, the crew number also rises, and this affect the moral, which only can be held high with rum, battle or the right numbers of cooks. The fishers are needed to keep food in stock so the players don’t run out on a long journey.
The beginner should always keep an eye on the bank account, because not loyal specialists leave if you can’t pay there salary. He would also loose the specialist if he ends up on raft. When a specialist loyal is depends from the loyalty points (crew->specialists->chose specialist and watch the bar) the specialists got. The player get loyalty points while sailing, 10 sea miles = 1 loyalty point or he is just stay in the water, then pr. 30 sec. he get 1 loyalty point. When the player ends up on raft and the specialists leave him, he can with advantage go, as fast as possible, to the nearest town and get some of the specialists back from the pub.
Part III – The choice of ship:
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Every player asks himself ‘what is the right ship for me’. The ship class, that meets the max requirement for his current navigation level, gives him more navigation points per sailed sea mile, than if he sailed with another class. And he will learn the ability the different classes. I wouldn’t advice the player to sail all ship classes, because some of them are really slow, and the extra points you get for sailing them are equalised by the speed of faster ships. I would advice to leave the pinnace behind at the beginning and sail sloop until I can sail a barque. Later I would skip the merchant, because it really slow. The player should try to get his own felling with the different ship classes. The ship classes (look at: ‘The World -> ship classes), that can be sailed, depends on the players navigation level. Now the question ‘what is the right ship?’ To answer that, the players should consider ‘what am I going to do?’ If I’m going to trade I should use fluyts, merchants or Spanish galleons. Do I want to do capture jobs, and then I need a lot of crew and/or cannons. In both cases the player should calculate navigation costs through so he will get the highest number of cannon/crew/freight room. This is for jobs and not player vs. player, more about that later.
The pirates tavern is an Orbit9 project.
