Frigate price & location?

[Krelian]

Greetings!
New player here, and enjoying the game very much!
I am currently captaining the starter ship (Xebec?) and have about 30.000 gold to spend on a new ship.
I have been able to find a Bark named ''Fire Dawn'' for 20k in one of the capitals on the first map (the Axe on a Green Flag bunch).
I have also seen some galleons for sale on the same map, but they vary between 80-90k if memory serves, and that is way out of my budget.

So, I was wondering.. how much does the Frigate cost? Is it available for purchase on the first/starter map? If so, could you please tell me which town/island?

Thank you for your time :)

[Bob Dole]

iirc base price on the emerald rider is 35k, and the bloody pearl is 60k (could have the names backwards and/or remember the numbers wrong).

When you buy an emerald rider (frigate 1), be ready to add upgrades for sails, guns, and hull (it has 2/2/2 sail/gun/hull slots...also the fire dawn is the other ship with the 2/2/2 config). You'll find it will be fairly easy to crew her for 120% sails and guns without sacrificing much on the boarding deck.

When you buy a bloody pearl, be ready to add 2 upgrades each on guns and sails, and 1 on hull (it has 3/3/2 sail/gun/hull slots). Shes a little tough to crew 120% sails and guns without sacrificing on the boarding deck (if you maintain 120/120, expect no more than 6ish boarding crew).

Also, be ready to get more artifacts (iirc brig, bark, frig 1, frig 2, bs1 each have 3 artifacts).

Both frigates are available at several ports around the Eastern Seas. Try to buy them at a port with a green %, because that will cut down on the base price.

[[BELTA] Bandit]

or u could do what i've done go to the ghostly lands, and look around for a battleship II then try to board it and trophy the ship, bang u have a monster ship for free although stats lower then the ships on sale but this battleship II does the job very good till u have farmed enough gold to buy the Queen for 100k (wich i have now) easy way to make money fast board every darn ship ur attacking and sell it been doing so for couple hours and had my 100 k in no time, huge advantage u got on a boarded battleship II u can take ur time to get ur updates needed cause it is so strong u won't hardly get damaged...or in your case if u prefer a frigate then go hunt in ghostly lands for fregate II lots of them around there to board just make sure u have enough cannon balls to damage their sails and lots of shrapnell balls to kill the crew if needed...

[zenstrata]

The bark is quite good. It's fast, has good armor, and a nice number of cannon.
A bit of advice, don't try to get into the huge ships too soon. You really need to work on your equipment and captain skills first so you can handle the larger ships.

In particular, invest points into your sailing speed. Don't worry about the 'maneuverability' skill. Ships turn plenty fast enough already. But some ships, especially the large ones, are Painfully Slow, you will definitely want that speed buff later on to make the heavy ships more manageable.

Also, Accuracy is better than Range, why? Because if you hit with more cannon balls, the battle ends much sooner. Yes you can out-range ships if you concentrate on range, but battles will take many resources in the form of cannon balls due to having to fire much much more to do the same damage.

If you destroy your enemy with a very short exchange due to your higher accuracy, battle time will be much shorter, and you are doing less sailing to get wins, this means you will have a much higher income because you can do many battles in a shorter space of time. AND if you are facing more than 1 ship, you can quickly destroy ships and minimize the incoming damage from fighting multiple enemies.

[zenstrata]

Also, if you have the DLC, you can just go capture a Battle Junk from the new map. Those are very nice ships, and capturing them and using them does not give you the same negatives that you get from a trophy ship normally. (Because there is nowhere to buy them in the dlc, the captured ship is just as good as if you have bought one, but it was free!).

The increased power bar the Battle Junk has for special attacks is amazing, you can burn down all sorts of things with it, all around it's a very good ship.

I use the Battle Junk instead of the Battleship 2's i've captured. Though I may switch eventually when I get enough to buy the best ship in the game, but may still opt for the battle junk because of the massivly increased artifact power. (who needs cannons when I can drop a nearly endless stream of flaming meteor strikes on the enemies from orbit?)

I basically killed the dragon not by shooting it with cannons, but crushing it with artifact abilities, and still had enough left over to demolish the small fleet of enemy pirates that tried to jump me during the fight. The Battle Junk is pretty good.

[Krelian]

Thank you all for the replies :)
And yes, you are all right! There are indeed many different and enticing ways to get a better ship. Getting a trophy ship, playing the Jade Sea DLC, and buying a new one the old fashioned way.

I have recently taken over a Bark as a trophy ship, and even though it's just a ''trophy'', it's still proving much better in battle then my starting ship, since it's a few tiers ahead of it.
I was thinking of just boarding and taking over a Battleship too (if I can). In-fact, that makes quite a lot of sense. But I have recently done similar things in other ''pirate'' and even ''space ship' games, so this time - for a change of pace - instead of directly upgrading from the starting ship to a battleship, I am thinking of upgrading through the ranks more gradually-like :D

As I mentioned above, the Battle Junk is yet another excellent recommendation, but I just want to play and explore the base-game some more with a ''regular ship'' before I delve into the DLC. NOT BECAUSE there is anything wrong with doing the DLC right now (as I said, it's a very good suggestion), BUT BECAUSE not doing the DLC right now and giving it just a little time will give me something to look forward to, kind of like the anticipation of exploring some strange and exotic lands ;) I intend to play the DLC sooner rather then later, but just wanna get acquinted a little more with the base game before I do that.

-
That leads back to my original question:
And so far, I still haven't been able to find the elusive ''Frigate I (1)''.
I have found the Bark (20k), and been using it's TROPHY (degraded) version as my flagship.
I have also been able to find the Emerald Rider ''Frigate II (2)''. This ship cost about 50k credits.
.. Which makes me wonder, is there no ship tier between the Bark (20k gold) and the Frigate II (50k gold)?
If Emerald Rider is classified as a Frigate *2*, then where is the Frigate *1*?
Maybe the Bloody Pearl is actually the Frigate *1* class, then? And the Bloody Pearl is the ship-class that costs 35k gold? In that case; I haven't been able to find that ship for sale, yet.

I googled the issue; and I even found out that in some PREVIOUS/EARLIER versions of the game; the current Bark-class of ship was referred to as a ''Bark Frigate'', implying that it used to be the old ''Frigate 1'' class ship. But those threads are rather old, and since then it seems a few new ship classess were added to the game (Despite my best efforts, I couldn't find an *updated* official source of information about ships in Tempest, providing their stats, prices and sales-locations).

So, I'm still kind of confused, heheh.
Is there actually a Frigate (1) class in this game for sale? And if that's the case; does it actually cost 35k gold? And finally; where the heck do I buy it? :D

[Krelian]

Found the ship shortly after making the post. Then saved a little more and bought frigate II anyways. Now it's all fun except that I run out of free rusty cannonballs very quickly :D

[zenstrata]

Doing things gradually is a good way to do it, experiencing what the ships have to offer is quite fun, and once you have a knowledge of how each ship performs in combat, it makes it easier to determine which ships to attack first in various enemy groups you may encounter.

Also by increasing your ships gradually, you get time to increase your skills, gather equipment, develop faction with various groups, and have the fun of just experiencing the ships as you go. I was ok with jumping right into the battle junk and dlc first this time around, because i had played before it was added and already done everything the game previously had to offer.

For me the dlc was a reason to play through the game again, but this time i'm focusing on the new content first, then i'll use the new ships to tackle the original game and see how it goes.

So far I can say the 'junk' (new faction) version of ships is enjoyable, they feel different enough from the original ships in the game to make them fun to play. Although there are only two new ships that I have found so far, the Junk and Battle Junk.

The regular Junk is basically a slightly improved version of the lower tier regular ships. So equivilent to the schooners and xebec, but with more of a focus on artifact power. I also enjoy the alternative ship looks which are available in the dlc, the main game has great ships too, but for me, because I had already seen all that, the new ships helped get me back into things.

I could see the Battle Junk as being 'end game' type power. It isn't quite as good statistically as the battleships, but the increased artifact power has given them an edge that the regular games ships lack. I am not sure if it will match the top tier ship yet, but for me, it beats out the Battleship 2 Trophy version. Will have to test more when I get the purchased battleship 2 to properly compare, and that may be a bit, i'm not speed running this, just playing when I have time maybe an hour or two every few nights.

[Bob Dole]

My latest playthrough, I deliberately bought every ship all the way up the line (with a brief segway to test the junk and battlejunk). I had quite a lot of fun doing it that way.

Originally posted by BELTA Ron:

or u could do what i've done go to the ghostly lands, and look around for a battleship II then try to board it and trophy the ship, bang u have a monster ship for free although stats lower then the ships on sale but this battleship II does the job very good till u have farmed enough gold to buy the Queen for 100k (wich i have now) easy way to make money fast board every darn ship ur attacking and sell it been doing so for couple hours and had my 100 k in no time, huge advantage u got on a boarded battleship II u can take ur time to get ur updates needed cause it is so strong u won't hardly get damaged...or in your case if u prefer a frigate then go hunt in ghostly lands for fregate II lots of them around there to board just make sure u have enough cannon balls to damage their sails and lots of shrapnell balls to kill the crew if needed...

I don't necesarilly recommend this approach. Trophy ships are pretty gimped on speed, shots, aim time, etc. Most importantly, they are really hard to crew nicely. A trophy Queen performs like a badly bogged down Frigate 2 with barely enough crew to have a couple boarding crew with 100% sails and guns. Only reason tbh to take a trophy queen is to force out big ships in encounters to jump start your collection, if your willing to spend the extra time a) sailing an ungodly slow boat and b) sailing that slow boat in and out of combat to rotate in a proper boarding crew.