Sailing Guide (Basic)

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Sailing Guide (Basic)

Post by ZeroPointEnergy » Fri Aug 27, 2021 7:03 pm

Sailing is an effective way to acquire gold, experience, and get unique items found nowhere else in the game. The only reason why only a small group of people are currently acquiring this right now is that it's not a game you play alone but with a small group of people you can acquire the riches of the sea yourself.

While the sailing system may seem daunting at first, it is very quick to pick up in-game if you have someone to show you the ropes. Some characters are focused on including inexperienced sailors in their voyages to teach them how the system works. It is usually a process of 15-20 minutes until these are familiar and well versed with all they need to sail alone.

But in lieu of that, you first need to know what you're doing when you're on the boat. Teamwork is the difference between an easy time or one person doing all the work because nobody knows what they're doing. Understanding one role is easier than understanding all the roles at once and trying to become a super sailor.

Some basic leveling strategies are at the very bottom. If you want the number crunching bits be sure to type -ship and pull up the stats for your specific ship.

Introduction:

Before anything else, give everyone you're sailing with a key if you're on a rental (a temporary ship) to make this as simple as possible for you.

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This enables:

1. Access to your boat.
2. Access to navigation.

If you're on a permanent ship this also can give them access to your storage so most ship captains take on the inconvenience to make sure their storage's safe. You can replace the "locks" on your boat later by clicking on "manage lock' if you're feeling a bit brave.



The Ship:


Now you're on the ship. In this example, we'll use the pirate warship currently stationed in Sencliff.

There are a couple of roles that need to be divided up amongst the crew you have assembled. If the crew is new to sailing, it is typically best to just give each person one role until they understand what they're doing.

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The Rigging (red)


Some ships have one or two rigging spots. If there are two, have one person with high skill stand by one point and have another initiate the dialogue.

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While the initiator will see,

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Think rigging as stances for the ships to take.

Full sails: Travel and additional AC for your ship. (Combat will be explained later.)

Half-sails: Middling, less travel speed but no penalty against attack or AC for the ship.

Lowered sails: The defaulted stance of the ship, +AB and -AC. You're also moving extremely slow.

Navigation (Blue)

The navigator role is an advanced role and usually the captain will take this role if no one else is available. Doing so effectively requires you to know Arelith's seas on the map.

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Click on this to bring up the map:

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The map is a series of squares that you navigate along the way which goes faster depending on a plethora of factors but the two primary ones are: ship and total sail skill. (Explained later in "crew")

The islands in red are permanent spots you can visit and will always be there as reliable spots.

Every square contains an RNG-based encounter that anyone can encounter. These encounters are all basically mini-dungeons with a few really massive dungeons interspersed in the edge of the map.

A general rule of thumb is: the further away from Arelith it is the more deadly the encounter and higher the sail requirements to navigate successfully.

Encounters are typically unique to certain regions of the map so an especially savvy navigator knows where to sail if they want a certain outcome.

Next up is the ship's wheel:

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Clicking on it will reveal:

-Return to Arelith
-Change Heading
-Vicinity
-Abilities

Navigation is done via cardinal directions.

You want to go up the map, you go north. Go down is south. Left is west. Right is east.

When you find an encounter you want to fight with, you click on "vicinity" and then anchor close/sail close to [x] to engage with it.

Guns (Green):

Every crew must craft their own forms of defense which can range from a smokepowder mortar to the humble light ballista. Each weapon have it's own pros and cons but the role remains the same:

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A good captain will directly ask one (or more depending on the amount of weapons) of the crew to take on the role of the gunner. The gunner's role is to carry the correct ammunition for the weapon and employ it when needed.

Shooting a weapon is as simple as clicking reload, picking the right ammo, finding the right target, and firing.

In the case of ballistae their primary advantage is volley fire when three sailors are coordinated together. Some weapons like the smokepowder mortar only needs one person on the job.

This is a simple role but an extremely important role when your ship is in danger from nasty pirates.

The Crew/Combat

The type of crew determines your experience at sea. A good crew could board with the a less than average ship and still be a terror on the sea while a mediocre crew will not be able to do much on the Dreadnought. In combat, this is no different as well.

Ships themselves will be talked in the final section.

Everything you do from sailing. to shooting, to boarding, and to find things in the map is determined by your total sail score. The sail score is the top [minimal number of sailors needed total score] divided by [minimal occupancy needed]

E.G. A cog that needs two people is manned by two 90 sail skill sailors. (90 + 90)/2 = 90

A galleon that needs five people is manned by a disparate number of sailors and pulls up the best sailors from the lot (20 + 50 + 33 + 9 + 10) / 5 = 24

Someone is sailing by themselves on a galleon: (33 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0)/5 = 6

Being undermanned does not mean you can't sail. It just means you will not do as well at sail.

Furthermore, there are a few bit of strategies that will not be mentioned for the sake of brevity but the system in place encourages team work. An experienced, tight-knit group of sailors will absolutely thrive and profit in Arelith's sea content.

The bare minimal sailor looks like this:

- Sail equipment from dweomer enchantment

The good sailor looks like this:

- 33 points invested in sail
- May/may not have equipment.

The dedicated sailor:
-33 points
- Equipment
- May have feats/may not.

All three sailors are useful and is better than the alternative of being undermanned. To participate, a group of 1 - 6 bare minimal sailors could still experience all the sea content Arelith has to offer. None of the previously mentioned roles beyond rigging needs a good sail score.

Ship types

Ship types are the following in a very basic way:


1 crew - Trawler (Penny Rose)

2 crew - Cog (Troubadour/Timberfleet)

3 crew - Galley (Iron Throne Courier First, Second, Longships, Constant Companion/Longboats)

4 crew - Brigantine (Pirate Ships, Sea Leopard)

5 crew - Galleon (Permanent Pirate Ship, First and Second Sisters)

6 crew - Settlement Galleons (Leviathian, Dreadnought, etc.)

Dreadnought specifically is the strongest ship in the game but is a biddable, settlement property. Advanced levels of teamwork and multi-district cooperation are needed for maximum effect/profitability. Good luck.

You can find the true stats by typing -ship while on board.

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Repair permits repairs at sea. This goes off of your carpentry and sail skill.
Ship stats let you see the ship's stats if you're into number crunching.
Abandon ship is how you jump overboard.
Settings --> flag settings is how you deal with the flags on a ship and communicate with other ships.

To see other ship's flags you need a spyglass that can be bought from a player merchant shop or a trade ship at sea.

Flags are the following:

White - Surrender/Distress
Red (No Quarter will be given)
Black (Surrender and quarter may be given)
Blue (Surrender and be detained.)
Green (ceasing hostilities)
Purple (Do not approach)
Merchant (Parley/Trade)
Nation (Pirates can raise a false flag!)
Custom: Want to show off your house colors and be a target for all the pirates? Go for it.

Bonus: Leveling strategies

Odds are in this current iteration you'll be sailing in Sencliff and have a mixture of high levels that can handle all waters but if you're a small band of lowbies trying something new here is the bare basic jist of how leveling at sea goes:

Bring a shovel.

If you are by yourself: Take the penny rose.

If you are with two other people: Take the Iron Throne Couriers in Guldorand.

The risk is layered out like a jawbreaker on the map.

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Arelith itself is the safe zone. Nobody's boarding you there and DCs for sail is minimal.

Depending on your character's alignment - MERCHANT VESSELS, CORDORIAN VESSELS are real good and you can blossom/adventure from there to see what you can and can't handle.

The very ends of the map is 30 content without a question. If you aren't ready for it you will die.

The seas are relatively dangerous compared to the safe and beaten paths that is our leveling circuit today so don't expect anything optimized 1 - 30 sailing guiide. Truth be told, the author is also a filthy pirate that just got the Sencliff treatment but to reiterate the following encounters are fairly safe pre-30:

Naval Fortress
Sand Banks
Mercantile Vessel
Cordorian Vessel
Islets
Trade Ship

And finally, if you are new simply rely on a rental until you get your feet wet because those are basically meant to be sunk. Permanent boats, while high octaine and powerful, can get sunk like anything else if everyone sailing with you is inexperienced.

The seas are a bit more uncertain than our leveling circuits of today but this is the kind of content that pulled me in 100k+ after a whole day of sailing. There are treasure chests with unique items and there is underwater content that isn't even able to be fully mapped out.

If you want boarding enabled for your ship you can enable it to get the monsters on board although avoiding monsters give you a fair bit of exp it doesn't give you any gold obviously. You can pull up specific encounters with a spyglass and a decent sailing skill. A spyglass can be found in player stores and at sea as well.

If you want to enable boarding for your ship turn it on via the navigator/ship wheel and vicinity.

I'd like to keep that foig but let me give you a little taste of what we've found sailing,

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BRING A SHOVEL.
Last edited by ZeroPointEnergy on Tue Aug 31, 2021 6:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Sailing Guide (Basic)

Post by Good Character » Fri Aug 27, 2021 8:16 pm

What have you found to be a reasonable amount of points in Sail up to this point? I find myself struggling to fit it in, and wondering if a massive investment is needed.

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Re: Sailing Guide (Basic)

Post by ZeroPointEnergy » Fri Aug 27, 2021 8:32 pm

Good Character wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 8:16 pm
What have you found to be a reasonable amount of points in Sail up to this point? I find myself struggling to fit it in, and wondering if a massive investment is needed.
The ideal is 33.

The minimum can be made up with gear.

Anything's better than 'no' sailor.

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Re: Sailing Guide (Basic)

Post by LovelyLightningWitch » Fri Aug 27, 2021 11:16 pm

ZeroPointEnergy wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 8:32 pm
Good Character wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 8:16 pm
What have you found to be a reasonable amount of points in Sail up to this point? I find myself struggling to fit it in, and wondering if a massive investment is needed.
The ideal is 33.

The minimum can be made up with gear.

Anything's better than 'no' sailor.
Would you call Secret of Exploration mndatory alongside full ranks for a rigger, or does the +12 make no difference for gear?

Can just +33 work? Does the gear idea include a wis mod other than 0?

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Re: Sailing Guide (Basic)

Post by ZeroPointEnergy » Fri Aug 27, 2021 11:21 pm

LovelyLightningWitch wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 11:16 pm
ZeroPointEnergy wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 8:32 pm
Good Character wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 8:16 pm
What have you found to be a reasonable amount of points in Sail up to this point? I find myself struggling to fit it in, and wondering if a massive investment is needed.
The ideal is 33.

The minimum can be made up with gear.

Anything's better than 'no' sailor.
Would you call Secret of Exploration mndatory alongside full ranks for a rigger, or does the +12 make no difference for gear?

Can just +33 work? Does the gear idea include a wis mod other than 0?
The +12 is nice but it's not mandatory. The more sail you're willing to fit in, the better, but any sailor's better than no sailor if it makes sense. My sailing gear does have +wis but it's really not needed to have top-tier sail to enjoy the content.

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Re: Sailing Guide (Basic)

Post by Skibbles » Thu Sep 02, 2021 3:42 am

This is excellent, A+, gold star, etc. It's exactly the sort of thing I was hoping you'd put together and I'd use this if and when I went sailing for the first time.

I had some questions, or maybe just some things to highlight that I think might need clarity because I truly have no idea how any of this works. Maybe my ignorance might help with fleshing it out, as even the wiki doesn't quite expand on some of this.

If you have a full crew of members of varying skill - such as a bunch of experienced dread pirates and one new guy - is there a particular job the new guy should be doing because of his lower skill or is every check made with the entire crew's skill and it doesn't technically matter what he's doing?

AKA can the importance of jobs, specifically in regards to who has the highest skill, be ranked in any way?
ZeroPointEnergy wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 7:03 pm
A general rule of thumb is: the further away from Arelith it is the more deadly the encounter and higher the sail requirements to navigate successfully.
My understanding is that failing sail checks makes sailing take longer, but this sounds a little different. Can you repeatedly fail checks until you crash into an iceberg or Italian peninsula or anything? What does it mean when navigation requirements are harder?
ZeroPointEnergy wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 8:32 pm
Abandon ship is how you jump overboard.
What's the circumstance in which anyone would want to do this? The wiki says it's a CON save vs death (do we know if waterbreathing magic prevents this?) - so I can only assume that 'going down with the ship' is a guaranteed death?
ZeroPointEnergy wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 7:03 pm
To see other ship's flags you need a spyglass that can be bought from a player merchant shop or a trade ship at sea.
I poked at the wiki to get a little more about this but can't quite grasp it. Does the spyglass use only the character's sail skill or the crew's? I see on the wiki there are modifiers depending on environmental conditions but do we know if the DC can also be relative to the sailing skill of another vessel - like is it harder to spot a small and fast moving boat with an experienced crew?

Are the flags explained that way in the game or is this what the player base has seemed to come to a consensus on? (When toggling one's flag does it say the Black Flag is about surrender and quarter given for example?)

As far as boarding goes: what is it exactly? Is it PvE or PvP or both? What happens if the crew fails a boarding check?
ZeroPointEnergy wrote:
Fri Aug 27, 2021 7:03 pm
Arelith itself is the safe zone. Nobody's boarding you there and DCs for sail is minimal.
Just to clarify on the safe zone. Is nobody boarding because most players don't bother or because they physically cannot? This might be an important distinction for any new slow-paced sailors (me lol) trying to figure out their little dinghy while the dreadnought is looming in the near distance.

Again - well done.
Irongron wrote: [...] the super-secret Arelith development roadmap is a post apocalyptic wasteland populated with competing tribes of hand-bombard wielding techno-giants, and strewn with the bones of long dead elves.

So we're very much on track.

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Re: Sailing Guide (Basic)

Post by ZeroPointEnergy » Thu Sep 02, 2021 4:58 am

Skibbles wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 3:42 am
This is excellent, A+, gold star, etc. It's exactly the sort of thing I was hoping you'd put together and I'd use this if and when I went sailing for the first time.

I had some questions, or maybe just some things to highlight that I think might need clarity because I truly have no idea how any of this works. Maybe my ignorance might help with fleshing it out, as even the wiki doesn't quite expand on some of this.

If you have a full crew of members of varying skill - such as a bunch of experienced dread pirates and one new guy - is there a particular job the new guy should be doing because of his lower skill or is every check made with the entire crew's skill and it doesn't technically matter what he's doing?
Should be doing? Not really, but in my experience he's been shunted with gunning or navigation with the captain telling them which direction to take. Only the rigging and pumping oxygen in a diving bell seem to take the individual's sailing skill in account.
AKA can the importance of jobs, specifically in regards to who has the highest skill, be ranked in any way?
A responsive crew is probably more important than anything else but if we're min-maxing this then two of your highest skilled sailors on rigging is probably the proper tryhard approach. 90% of the rolls seem to be a team effort for that specific reason so people can just do what's needed as it comes up.

My understanding is that failing sail checks makes sailing take longer, but this sounds a little different. Can you repeatedly fail checks until you crash into an iceberg or Italian peninsula or anything? What does it mean when navigation requirements are harder
There are occasional skill checks that can dictate the speed of the boat but outside of being chased by pirates the difference between a mismanaged ship and a well-skilled crew is like driving a regular car to a sport car. You'll still get there in decent time either way.

But on occassion there's also sail checks that check for boarding and if you succeed those you get EXP or a bunch of monsters if you fail them. If you're on the edge of the map we're talking magic-slinging dragon-people that can certainly ruin a bunch of level 30s. Especially when it's constantly popping up too because you miss every single roll.

It's kind of the reason why one of the ships I see in particular is just parked at Gnit most of the time. It's a galleon (5 people) with a 1-2 person crew at most and it'd certainly be a bad time if they actually took that sailing to the sea itself at the very edge of sea content.
What's the circumstance in which anyone would want to do this? The wiki says it's a CON save vs death (do we know if waterbreathing magic prevents this?) - so I can only assume that 'going down with the ship' is a guaranteed death?
If you're a lowbie without a lense and you're getting pelted by ballistas I guess. I honestly don't know what since it isn't another way to get to the sea floor at the moment. No clue about waterbreathing just because I interact with it so rarely.
I poked at the wiki to get a little more about this but can't quite grasp it. Does the spyglass use only the character's sail skill or the crew's? I see on the wiki there are modifiers depending on environmental conditions but do we know if the DC can also be relative to the sailing skill of another vessel - like is it harder to spot a small and fast moving boat with an experienced crew?
I think it's one of the few rolls that take the individual's skill but I'm not 100% on that. The spyglass is basically a way to force certain encounters (typically islands) or spot other vessels but if you have roughly 30 sail you're pretty much going to knock it out of the ball park. It's usually 20ish in my experience.

Certain boats do have an advantage against getting spotted. I know the Iron Throne courier has a +hide vs getting spotted but I think it's a roll in the background to show up in somebody's radar in the first place if you're near them on a tile. I think the spot (I assume it's spot) DC is super low so the odds are you're probably going to at least see the wooden ship in the water.

But to see how much guns, people, or see past a darkness orb if it's a UD vessel? It takes a higher DC.
Are the flags explained that way in the game or is this what the player base has seemed to come to a consensus on? (When toggling one's flag does it say the Black Flag is about surrender and quarter given for example?)
Yeah, the flag's meanings are tagged to the flag itself and shows up on spyglass info grabs. Everyone's going to probably understand what it means when you raise the black, red, purple, etc.
As far as boarding goes: what is it exactly? Is it PvE or PvP or both? What happens if the crew fails a boarding check?
PVP: You get boarded, you got this placable that dangles in the middle of the ship that you can beat down to lose the other ship and most likely strand the people that are already boarded. I don't know if there's a cooldown to getting boarded but I do know that it's typically hard to even get a grappling hook on a ship that's fully trying to sail away.

Once you get boarded I believe the two ships are just stuck in the same quadrant or sail together until one thing or another gives. I haven't seen any problems so far or got stranded by accident. Either way, it's basically just one part of the module linking up to another part of the module and enabling you to go between.

PVE: Monsters just spawn on you in the middle of the deck and a little notice ticks up in the combat log that says "Beware! Enemies are about to board!" This can happen fairly fast if you aren't killing the mobs fast enough and you aren't making the 'avoid encounter' rolls.
ust to clarify on the safe zone. Is nobody boarding because most players don't bother or because they physically cannot? This might be an important distinction for any new slow-paced sailors (me lol) trying to figure out their little dinghy while the dreadnought is looming in the near distance.
It's literally a safe zone and even if someone's pursuing you you literally do not show up on anyone's radar if you're in the Arelith quadrant. I lost someone that way, they were going north-east into Arelith and I was going to intercept them there. Turns out, they just disappeared and we were in Arelith.

(text is small to avoid the fun police: delivery quests suddenly got really easy with ships now.)

Your ship is unable to be boarded while docked near an island and I think you're safe if you're also boarding a "dungeon" like a mercantile vessel. The only way you're getting visited by players is if you're traveling from one place to another. That said, there's nothing stopping someone from getting on the same island as you and docking if they're particularly bold.

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