These sections discuss the best ways to obtain them. Reals and Doubloons are the two primary in-game currencies. I also cover Sailing and Combat (Basics III), with instructions on manual sailing, and best 'points of sail ' tips for levelling and loot (Basics IV) which Perks to use and when (Basics V), Establishing outposts, Teleporting Ships, Upgrade Chest/Money Chest, New Looting Mechanics, etc. In either case, it is important to understand the tools at your disposal (covered in Basics I & II) - such as the information you can obtain from each screen you'll encounter, where you'll find ships being bought and sold, activating your chat boxes, bringing the correct amount of repairs into battle, and using windboosts. Some things may seem obvious to you, some may not. These sections will cover the fundamentals of playing. The game is very forgiving and if you follow this guide you’ll have enough money that you won’t sweat it.Īs steam does not permit intra-guide links, I will do my best to lay out the best way to use this guide beyond cntl+f. You’re going to lose ships and cargo, and its going to hurt. NOTE: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO COMPLETE THE TUTORIAL BEFORE YOU START PLAYING. If you have a specific question just skip to that section of the guide. I will start by laying out the basics of Naval Action ('NA') for new players and then will break down topic specific guides that are more in depth and can help answer questions for players down the road. Please feel free to reach out if you need any additional guidance or have suggestions for the guide. If you have questions for me specifically, you can find me either in-game or on the discord as FearAndLoathing. Because there is so much players need to know, this can often seem overwhelming to new entrants - I'm hoping this guide helps keep people from getting discouraged by this and sticking with one of the most incredible single games I've ever put my hands on, and of course, speeding you on your way to becoming the next loup des mers. It has a steep learning curve, and regular updates have meant that the metas have changed drastically without much corresponding updates to most of the commonly available guides online. Just traveling around in the open world is kind of a nightmare too, though, given how long it can take to get from port to port.Naval Action is a beautiful, complex game. If you make crew a resource that needs to be replenished at port for a financial cost and completely remove rank requirements to progress to larger ships you'll end up encouraging more emergent gameplay in the open world: More people trying to find lucrative trade runs to afford their next ship and crew, more people making deals to guard their trader friends, more people hunting in open waters, and more money in the economy as people go through ships as a result of riskier activity. The way I see it, this could be solved by making ships and crew a function of how much money you have so that there's more of an incentive for trade and crafting. This is essentially a game about ship battles and trade. Fewer players participating in the economy hurts everyone. It sucks that crew size is artificially limited by rank, especially when travel and encounters are so time consuming for such little reward to say 'just ignore rank and enjoy the game' is to ignore the fact that MANY players will end up quitting because of the time investment required to advance.

Remember, that is what gets you XP more than anything, just do damage. You need to grind but since the battles are so dynamic, you will not really feel like you are wasting your time.Īs you rank up and get better ships (I am in a Snow now), you will find that ranking gets easier since you can put out a lot more damage. After doing that for a few hours, I was able to get to Second Lt pretty easily. I found that once I started taking admiralty missions, I was able to bring in around 80 to 90 XP per mission and perhaps another 40 XP or so by hopping in other random battles or so and just delivering as much damage as I could. I even complained online about the grind myself, saying that perhaps the early levels should be easier to get through.Īfter those initial hours however, things changed. I would do small battles and get very little XP for what seemed like a lot of work. I started playing about a week ago and my first few hours had me feeling as frustrated as you are.

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