Best advice for new players

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Play the game at your own pace while doing everything.
Don't focus too much on one activity or you will quickly get bored.
The best way to level is by doing quests. If you are doing quests you should also dredge everytime there is a spot near.
If you dredge you should also get the barrels and fish from rocks.
If you have the resources you should upgrade the base and do the research quests.
If you do all of this you will get a lot of crafting options to make your boat much stronger.
If your boat is much stronger, go farm some medallions, either in the t1/t2 armada area or just killing some of the weaker ships in any armada.
If you have medallions get boarding packs and the ocasional resource pack.
The game needs about 50 hours to get into it, board and occupy new boat hulls as soon as you have the level required.
After 100 hours you finished most of the content, you can stop if you have a t5 boat
At 150 hours you have upgraded your crew, ship and base almost to the max and your ships is at peak performance.
At 200 hours+ you are either have a case of existential dread or are a streamer/youtuber

[Ryuu]

1) 1st thing i'd recommend doing before spreading too thin and fooling around is prioritizing quests to get a full crew — 8 crewmembers. Not only it makes the game easier — even in T2 boat where you can't place a weapon for each of them you benefit from extra hands for repairs and sorting trash — but also because this way XP from other quests won't get wasted. It really annoys me how this game grants XP — every crewmember gets the same amount, which means you're missing on XP if you don't have full crew roster yet. And i hate that there's no way to give Shaya, Batir, Aymara and especially Lin more XP so they can catch up in levels with others.
The problem is that there's no good guide at the moment on which specific quests lead to all those crewmembers. The best piece we have on this is this Steam guide in Spanish More specific bits of info have to be dug in the forum.

---

2) After that or in parallel to that you want to get 5 specialists for your base, especially the shipwright who comes last — only he can add new hull blueprints of the ships you've obtained. Note that the port has a limit of 3 berthed ships + rubber boat. If you need to store more ships — you'll need to build more shipyards and keep extra ships there.

---

3) After that feel free to prioritize what you like doing :) Maybe it's collecting ship hulls, doing quests, collecting achievements, collecting decor elements and cabins, etc

---

0) Learn how boarding works: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3233464780 It's not a perfect guide but good enough for a start. And the game does not explain this at all at the moment.
And ping others if you need some help: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2695490/discussions/0/4336482945458939290/

[Ryuu]

Originally posted by Neyreyan_Youtube:

After 100 hours you finished most of the content, you can stop if you have a t5 boat

Don't you see a contradiction here? Getting T5 boat requires Ship Captain V skill which requires 27th level of helmsman, which is not possible to reach with finishing most of the content (quests) — it requires grinding, which is pretty boring and time consuming as well — so it won't be 100 hours.
Maybe you've meant to say Tier 4 ship? That's level 20 of helmsman which anyone should be able to reach with focusing on quests alone.

I'd recommend newbies to wait for new quests to be released to reach 27th level and T5 ships naturally instead of grinding.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Originally posted by Ryuu:

Originally posted by Neyreyan_Youtube:

After 100 hours you finished most of the content, you can stop if you have a t5 boat

Don't you see a contradiction here? Getting T5 boat requires Ship Captain V skill which requires 27th level of helmsman, which is not possible to reach with finishing most of the content (quests) — it requires grinding, which is pretty boring and time consuming as well — so it won't be 100 hours.
Maybe you've meant to say Tier 4 ship? That's level 20 of helmsman which anyone should be able to reach with focusing on quests alone.

I'd recommend newbies to wait for new quests to be released to reach 27th level and T5 ships naturally instead of grinding.

Well, i did say IF:) otherwise go to 150:) people should be at least level 23-24 after 100 hours. You seem to forget that some players only farm armadas since their second day because thats what the influencer told them:)

[Kick_McCan]

I've got over 100 hours in this stupid game and I'm only in a vigilant lol. My advice for new players would be: don't rush. Don't blaze through all the content, take your time and make it last. Sail around picking up everything. Explore. Save some medallions to buy a horn, then honk it at people when you sail by them to say hi. I did that to some rando I passed the other day, he didn't have a horn so he threw 🙂 at me I just farmed some medallions for the military paint pack which I think is totally useless but cool lol. I also have a problem with cabins, I keep building them and swapping them out just for lols. Don't sweat boarding. I have my problems with the boarding mechanic, but the way I've approached it is to just sail what I have and not worry about it. It will happen eventually, probably when you're not looking for it something will fall right into your lap. A lot of my hulls have been 'what are you doing here?' situations. Then when you do get into the next hull, be looking around for people you can help who are also trying to board up. Go to discord and do some research on the various hulls, there's lots of information there. Some of it's inaccurate but it's a lot of fun to just dig around and see what you can find out.

[Ryuu]

Originally posted by Neyreyan_Youtube:

Well, i did say IF:) otherwise go to 150:) people should be at least level 23-24 after 100 hours. You seem to forget that some players only farm armadas since their second day because thats what the influencer told them:)

You think such players can be redeemed by reading your guide? :) I wouldn't hold my hopes high, but maybe.

It's hard to measure in hours, i think after completing all current quests regular players should be at level 22-24.

BTW the same about XP for killing enemies — it's effectively lost if you don't have full crew yet. I wish Three Whales studio made so crewmembers with less total XP got a bit more or that it was possible to set in the game.
Yeah, i know it doesn't matter as much and is actually kind of an OCD, but really grinds my gears that i didn't manage to get Lin earlier, and she didn't even get extra XP on joining, so now she hopelessly fell behind.

[Ryuu]

Originally posted by Kick_McCan:

My advice for new players would be: don't rush. Don't blaze through all the content, take your time and make it last. Sail around picking up everything. Explore.

True, true. And be friendly to others :)

So you went with Vigilant in the end :)

[Kick_McCan]

The snappy's fun but unstable as crap lol