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Need Help [HELP] new on the game need help

jaguarious

Landlubber
hello mates.i am vary new at the game and i have finished the peter bllod quest line.now i am trying to lvl up my character and earn some money.i didnt start any of the main quests yet since i ubderstand they need big lvl and i am only lvl 4 and lots of money.i only have 12000 piasters... officers are way too expensive and with the small governor quests or the tranfer merchants through the islands can not lvl up easy or earn money.not to mention spain and holland are at war with me and i cant enter most of the islands.any help will be most welcome since i am getting a bit tired.thanks a lot
 
oh my freaking god please i need help.i cant win any sea fight for any reason.especially when i am boaeding.i am always outnumbered and i can win not a single enemy soldier... not even a pirate.please help i am fighting for 2 hours with no result...
 
Did you read any game tips? (they are scattered through walkthroughts and forum topics)
First you have to low navigation for your new shiney frigate (you get stat penalty and officers/crew salaries are crazyly high etc) so do one of the following:
- leave it to port controller and just focus on "land" missions for a while + forgotten logbook (ship controler) quest for nice navigation skill boost
- hire minimum crew, sell all canons and just have minimum of food, medicine and room onboard and do merchant missions (much higher income, your frigate should have nice max cargo which influence quest reward) while ignoring your crew pleas for money (quest officers always have maximum loyality and you can just ged rid and hire new crew or even sail without any crew i think (player controled ship only, rest won't be able to enter world map mode without minimum crew)), also you can save/load into some pirate capitans quest (for low lvl i doubt you can finish anything different than the one when you fight some shipwrecked people for gold/silver etc) that also give some nice amount of gold

In both cases you have to unfortunetly forget about good old pillaging :< Just focus on becaming stronger and getting some nice items and improving your navigation skill (quest mentioned earlier and sailing in storms or attacking a fort (with frigate from quest and just run away when things get ugly (not sure if repair cost is affacted by to low navigation skill but it will cost quite a lot for low lvl character but both skill and exp/lvl gains are simply crazy... before you notice you have 100 navigation/artilery/accuracy and like ~40lvl :p))).

When you lvlup you can start pillaging or do same harder quests... i did COAS quest at like lvl 10 or so which was really hard at times (few really hard fights for that low lvl) and when i finished it at like lvl 14 i think with few of the best items in game from quest rewards game suddenly became horribly easy and i even captured two man-o-wars in one battle (though i had to load save before this sine i had bassicly no crew left and five hostile ships on my tail with badly damaged sails).

Also do some of the easier quest - Austin and maybe killing the beggars (just don't hurry into COAS since it take a lot of time and is rather hard though fully cleared give many great items and like 2kk+ gold and great third class ship) and just hang out there. Sadly there is big jump in game difficulty and after very grindy and long start quickly everything becames so easy it's boring since you can even pillage smaller cities with just one class 3 Corvet :(

Also few more tips:
- upgrade your ship cargo capacity in pirate settlement shipyard when you can afford it, you'll get more gold from merchant quests (sine you can ship more cargo) and it's generally usefull, same with max cannon caliber unless you have 32 or more already (culverines 32lbs are best cannons you can get unless you get your hands on class one ship. 48lbs cannons are a little more powerfull and have better range but reload slower) and if you cannot get 32lbs even with upgrade... just change your ships since it's crappy.
- don't let your quest officers die and preferably get experience exchange skill rather early
- to get into enemy cities even with flag change you need A LOT of stealth (even with 100 i get discovered sometimes and it's probably one of the worst aspects of the game... dunno even how they recognize you when you are only hostile and don't have bounty on your head) so just get to it by land during night and get to tavern (often it takes a lot of work and save/load if it's governor mission) and do what you want during day but still stay away from guards
- well... grind :p

For more just brows the forum a little i'm not a specialist since i got bored when there was no more challenge after COAS and when i finished almost all the non repetive quests.
 
about the ship skills.they said that the skills are active only when an officer is that position for example for the defense i need a carpenter if i am not mistaken.does that mean if i get the skill without the officer is uselles?
 
All your ship skills are always active but if you get an officer and give him for example navigator position then you get bonus to navigation (unless you have higher navigation then your officer) and all of your officer navigation skills (but from my experience sea dog don't work like it's supposed to unless YOU have it then you can skip all fights aside from special encounters like Gentlemans of Luck and Bounty hunters).
In other words eventually you can sail your ship by yourselve with everything maxed. And it's even more important for your officers since if you give them ships there is no way (or i don't know how :p) for them to hire other officers so they have only their own skills and without carpenter and gunner skills they will be pretty useless in battle (carpenter drastically lower received ship dmg and gunner increase dmg dealt by your ship).

Also another tip, in game options change mod options and choose "no close encounters". Now just engage enemies when right icon appear on world map or when you get the hail message and you should be able to immediatly return to world map but enemy ship will disappear. It's very usefull before you get sea dog skill since in the beggining you can't beat anyone in sea fight anyway but a lot of them will chase you to the end of the earth xD

edit:
btw i'm not sure what the forum mods have to say about it but generally you shouldn't post multiply times in a row in the same topic (your post should be always preceded by other user post and not your own) and use edit option instead
 
All your ship skills are always active but if you get an officer and give him for example navigator position then you get bonus to navigation (unless you have higher navigation then your officer) and all of your officer navigation skills (but from my experience sea dog don't work like it's supposed to unless YOU have it then you can skip all fights aside from special encounters like Gentlemans of Luck and Bounty hunters).
In other words eventually you can sail your ship by yourselve with everything maxed. And it's even more important for your officers since if you give them ships there is no way (or i don't know how :p) for them to hire other officers so they have only their own skills and without carpenter and gunner skills they will be pretty useless in battle (carpenter drastically lower received ship dmg and gunner increase dmg dealt by your ship).

Also another tip, in game options change mod options and choose "no close encounters". Now just engage enemies when right icon appear on world map or when you get the hail message and you should be able to immediatly return to world map but enemy ship will disappear. It's very usefull before you get sea dog skill since in the beggining you can't beat anyone in sea fight anyway but a lot of them will chase you to the end of the earth xD

edit:
btw i'm not sure what the forum mods have to say about it but generally you shouldn't post multiply times in a row in the same topic (your post should be always preceded by other user post and not your own) and use edit option instead

thnx mate for the help.and i have one more question.i am still with the frigate and i have penalties but also i cant hire any more officers except for the 2 i have when i got free(peter blodd quest) this happens because i have penalties or not?
 
You should be able to hire new officers anyway. Just keep visiting taverns and look for people with swords at theirs belts they will be either smuggler (one per every tavern), pirate captain (they can give you quest or sometimes even join your fleet), treasure map seller (to defeat treasure guards you need to be strong or have 3 fighting officers with healing pots/antidotes and some luck so they won't get killed) or finally officers with random stats based on your current rank. Also though it may be only my impression i think pirate cities have officers more often then others.

Also non quest officers can betray you if don't pay them etc (never happened to me but i hired normal officers only after getting rid of stat penalty and when i could afford their salary) and without experience gain personal skill for hero they gain rank and skills very slowly so you will change them soon anyway (another weak point of the game since in my opinion officers that you have for a long time should be better then just some random generated (random part also is frustrating when you are looking for a specialist) officer).

edit:
actually i forgot i played with maxed authority so i never reached max cap for officers... i've never seen formula for amount of officers depending on authority but if you have this stat to low (maybe because stat penalty i had i it very high even with penalty) you can't hire anyone more
 
If you have reached your max of officers, you can still get more but it is kind of hard and you need to be a good level like 8-10 at least.

1. Have a ship with max crew and lots of grape shot.

2. find a small pirate ship.

3. blow the crew to shreds with grape shot (without getting all of your crew killed)

4. board the ship, the pirates will say "yahar! there be only 6 of us and 126 of them! let's surrender and have some rum!"

5. when the ship surrenders, remove the captain and and keep him as a prisoner. do whatever you want with the crew and steal all of their rum.

6. go to your ship's hold and talk to the pirate captain, you need to say " I could use a new officer" or something to that affect.

7. if he says he'd rather feed the sharks, smash a bottle of rum over his head and start the conversation again. repeat until he agrees to join you as an officer.

8. Now you have another officer! his stats probably aren't that good, but you can use him as a fighter or keep him in reserve to captain ships that you capture.

This only works for pirate captains. If you choose the option in conversation with him to let him go at the nearest port, your reputation increases. If you choose to make him a slave, you now have a slave in your hold, along with all of the rum you stole from his ship.
 
what i did at first is borrow money from money lender to hire sufficient crew then engage in enemy battle, what i do is use buck shots to lessen the enemy crew before i board them, then i got their ship.... sell it hire officers hunt another ship.... and there i got rich first 3 hours playing the game lol
 
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