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How fast can I level up to a PvP capabable ship?


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Pretty fast.

What would I've done from Dutch perspective in current meta:

1. first cap a few NPC traders. Can be easily done with basic cutter. Can capp anything up to traders snow. Each capped trader currently nets you around 100k

2. build 5 fir forest in WS or mahogany in allied british Chirique. Each fine log you can sell minimum for 1k which is a lot.

3. Now you should level with missions till brig level - you can easily buy a basic brig for this. No one will bother to gank such low missions

4. ait till you can crew a frigate. Buy or craft surprise. Voila! Surprise is a basic ship for deep waters PVP. Capable of outrunning anyone and of catching almost anyone. 5 dura is a lot. 5 forests will net you steady income.

5. Profit!

I estimate it will take around 3-4 weeks for completely new player and a week for an experienced player after wipe (cause he will have xp and crafting xp saved).

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Rattlesnake, rank 3 for the crew requirement, to be able to hunt down traders on your own and be a vital part of PvP groups as a scout, tagger (tackler) and cutting enemy sails.

Do missions with a basic cutter equipped with carronades for experience points and ranking up.

Hunting AI traders to sell their goods, selling your crafting labour hours to other players and resource production of valuable materials is a good way to make money for the ship. Try to obtain and refine raw resources into the materials required to craft a basic fir rattlesnake (link to materials) and ask a player to make it for you (might have to reimburse him/her for the labour hour requirement).

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Join a clan. Find one that does a lot of missions for new players. I've seen new players level up a few ranks in 1 weekend. Some clans will even provide nice ships to their new people. You'll get lots of experience. Don't ignore crafting. You'll need that for some of the ships you'll want to sail.

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Its not a mater of lvl, its far more about skill. Not even yours but your teammates. IF they r a bunch of carebears you only can learn how to avoid pvp and how pvp kill this game. In my opinion carebears are the majority of the whole population.

If we talk about game barriers. For me its.

1. crew loss, I won't go back to port each time after the fight. So the max lvl help a lot in this matter. It's good to have a nice crew buffer.

2. Difficult access to the modules. They are expensive some of them unable to get or craft what is ridiculous.

3. Extremely high inflation, before the patch good ship cost around 300k. now you can spend even 2-3m for the average ship. IF you need to put a lot of effort to get something, you afraid to lose it.

 

Edited by Rychu Karas
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PvP capable ships start from the Surprise and Renomee up, that will require you to have reached the rank where you can field 250 crew. That will be the Master & Commander rank or equivalent. Below that rank I would recommend using cheap ships, preferably oak, teak, mahogany or live oak (from good to best), as these are stronger wood types that will keep you alive longer. Fir and Cedar are mainly based on speed, and you'll have plenty of speed in your smaller ships, so these are not bad but should be your last choice.

Tips to rank up (get XP) fast as a new player.

- Use Carronades, these cannons pack a bigger punch but have less range/accuracy. The AI uses less powerfull cannon's so you have an edge over the AI.

-XP is granted for Kills, Assists on kills, crew kills and hull damage. Sails damage is not effective XP wise. This is important to know where to concentrate on.

-Penetration is important and depends on the angle and distance towards your oponent and the penetration value of your cannons. For maximum effect get as close as possible and fire away.

-Each ship handles differently, you'll be more effective getting to know your ship and know what it can and can't and what it strenghts and weaknesses are as to jumping to different ships with different characteristics. You'll need to adjust for a while before you can use it to full effect. A skilled person in a small ship is more dangerous than a less skilled person in a big ship.

-Don't waste money on golden ships if you are not confident enough to keep it afloat in combat situations.

-If you ask anyone to help you do missions in your national chat, i'm sure some will be interested to help you.

 

How long it will take you to get to Master and commander, depends on how often you play, and how much of the time you dedicate to ranking up. It will take you a couple of days, probably a couple of weeks to do so. Now do note that you can perfectly PvP against other ships when you are in a smaller ship, a couple of small ships can take on bigger ships easily as long as you know what you are doing.

 

 

 

Edited by The Spud
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Welcome to the Naval Action Admin.

Regarding your specific question I must say that it contains a uninformed pre-conception, which is - PvP capable ship.

1. Types of PvP

There are several types of PvP regardless of ship types you want to choose.

- arenas, which you can access through the Port interface in Missions. Team ship types will be balanced by the system so fights will be even and NPC ships added if needed.

- Open World PvP, it is free for all and where all ships have their place.

- the specific Conquest Port Battles, directly tied to Open World, where massive age of sail battles happen.

 

Looking to those above you can immediately see that for the arenas you can use any type of ship. The system will automatically balance it out.

For Open World is requires planning and understanding of each type of ship characteristics.

For the Port Battles the usual choice is the massive ships-of-the-line which requires maximum crew attainable by maximum Rank.

 

Right from the start you can use 7th rate ships, like schooners, cutters and sloops - Lynx, Privateer, Pickle, Cutter -  can be used in PvP but require more practice overtime to achieve results. They are low cost but require more proficiency to use.

After a day or two of playing you may reach rank to fully crew 6th rate ships. A good stepping stone and the first square rigs. Easily handled and good support ships in any PvP encounter alongside bigger models.

After a week, say of a mission or two per day, or even one good PvP battle per day, you will be able to enter the 5th rates which present the widest selection of ships, from lightest frigates to the heavy ones - Trincomalee and famous Indefatigable.

 

So in a nutshell after a half dozen hours of arena combat or mission making you can effectively crew a frigate, with average 300 crew and 38 guns.

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I disagree that this is a question of ship or crew size, or a question of level. Even a basic cutter can go trader hunting, or make itself useful in a team battle. I think it's a question of player confidence and skill, which will be different from player to player. My advice is to tag lone enemy AI traders (but not Le Gros Ventres)/take lowest rank missions, learn how and when to use the various ammunition types, learn to demast by shooting those predictable and barely maneuvering AI traders, learn how your ship handles on different points of sail, and most importantly, learn how your most likely targets handle on various points of sail. Learn how boarding mechanics work, and learn to watch your speed and control your sails to decelerate and board an enemy, and to keep your speed up to prevent a larger ship from boarding you. Don't let failure get you down, as at this point your ship and crew are free.

Once you've leveled up once, you'll have the crew for a Pickle, which is about the most flexible small ship as far as sailing capabilities go and also offers the most crew protection out of all the 7th rates thanks to the high bulwarks. You can use it to hunt player trade ships, or take on similarly sized player warships, or fight against AI. Just remember that losing crew over those starting 40 will cost gold to replace, but an officer with doctor perk (costs 1 point) can reduce that expense hugely. If you joined a clan and happen to find yourself fighting players or AI in larger ships (3 masted vessels), do your best to keep yourself on the back end of the ship and away from their broadside's arc of fire. A single broadside from them can devastate you, but you can do a lot of damage putting round shot through the vulnerable back side of the ship. Firing at a larger ships sides is in most cases going to be a waste of shot, powder, and your ship and crew.

Leveling up a couple more times will give you access to the Brigs, Snow, Rattlesnake, Mercury, and Niagara, which are all more powerful in terms of broadsides but less flexible in some degrees in their sailing than the smaller ships. Well played, most of these ships can handle a single larger 5th rate in a 2v1, dependent on player skill. Niagara, thanks to it's 9pd guns, can do even better. Just beware of larger ships firing grape at your open decks if you come close alongside, as this will maul your crew and likely lose you the battle. Rattlesnake is also beloved by group PVP thanks to its chase armament and exceptional speed.

As a comparison, it took me about a week and a half to get to my first 5th rate, a Cerberus. I doubt it would take that long now (heavily dependent on daily playtime of course) to get to the same level, as leveling is easier now than it was then. Making money is also easier now, as you can sell your labor hours to other players and also sell all the loot from captured AI traders. The trader interface on the map (press M in OW) will show you a list of ports that produce and consume every commodity, and are ordered by distance from you. 

Hope this helps. Good luck and good hunting Captain.

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I see a lot of answers here, and they all basically say it takes a few weeks to a month to get PvP capable.

It doesn't. You should start PvP-ing in your basic cutter as soon as you create your account. Go to the rookie-zone in the Bahamas and start attacking stuff right away. You don't need a Surprise or Renomee. There there is a limit on how much you can be outmatched by your enemies, with only shallow draft ships capable of sailing around, and the distances are shorter, so you don't get reset so far away when you get killed. Using the basic cutter lets you learn to not fear loosing your ship. Just invest some of the money you get from PvP and or attacking AI traders to replace the free base medium 6 pdrs with some 6 pd longs. Within a short time you will be able to ugrade ship to a snow or mercury and you are now very PvP capable. At this point you have to start learning not only to maneuver, but to use manual sails to do so more effectively and to improve aim. 

Some clans will be able to help you skip through all the first ranks easily in the first day or few hours in the game, if you want to sail slightly bigger ships like the surprise and explore more of the world. But there is no shortcut to learning how to manual sail. You need to practice a lot, on top of watching youtube tutorials or getting someone to instruct you and demonstrate to you.

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I would answer by saying immediately although you may be limited to hunting traders and small prey.

My alt is a pvp only toon and I did my first three levels in a cutter. I also leveled relatively quickly considering how hard it was to find fights late at night when I would play the toon. Once in a rattler you are a valuable member of any pvp group.

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You will need to get to 250 crew rank at least to be able to hold your ow.

Best to learnt he ropes in the rookie territory and use missions and smaller trader to practice your shooting and  boarding. Once you master the territoriy and have ranked up a bit time to go out there but try to do it with support of others from the same nation.

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In my opinion the first pvp capabale ship is the rattle snake. But for pvp a captured one isnt that good because as newbie you are probably lose your first matches. And in pvp its all about modules. So it dosent make sense to upgrade your ship to a maximum and spend all your not existing money. Furthermore a crafted one is to expensive at this stage. And like other people wrote. When you have the rank to crew a rattle you have to go to port after each battle and hire new crew.

There have to be some changes. Reduce regular modules to perks (like already done with pump inventor). Perma modules should have only one tier and be purchasable in port for cash  and depending on region to make captured ships even in pvp a good choice.

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Rattlesnake doesn't take long.

 

However, the Rattlesnake is only truly PvP-capable in the hands of a skilled captain who can take on bigger fish.

For a relatively new player, they will spend a lot of time in their PvP-capable ship just watching unassailable enemy frigates and fleeted traders float past.

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4 hours ago, Anolytic said:

I see a lot of answers here, and they all basically say it takes a few weeks to a month to get PvP capable.

It doesn't. You should start PvP-ing in your basic cutter as soon as you create your account. Go to the rookie-zone in the Bahamas and start attacking stuff right away. You don't need a Surprise or Renomee. There there is a limit on how much you can be outmatched by your enemies, with only shallow draft ships capable of sailing around, and the distances are shorter, so you don't get reset so far away when you get killed. Using the basic cutter lets you learn to not fear loosing your ship. Just invest some of the money you get from PvP and or attacking AI traders to replace the free base medium 6 pdrs with some 6 pd longs. Within a short time you will be able to ugrade ship to a snow or mercury and you are now very PvP capable. At this point you have to start learning not only to maneuver, but to use manual sails to do so more effectively and to improve aim. 

Some clans will be able to help you skip through all the first ranks easily in the first day or few hours in the game, if you want to sail slightly bigger ships like the surprise and explore more of the world. But there is no shortcut to learning how to manual sail. You need to practice a lot, on top of watching youtube tutorials or getting someone to instruct you and demonstrate to you.

Unfortunetaly the XP and money gain was cut by another 30%. So it takes now 30% longer to level up. In addition the money from NPC fleets is not enough to cover your crew losses anymore.

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13 hours ago, Anolytic said:

I see a lot of answers here, and they all basically say it takes a few weeks to a month to get PvP capable.

It doesn't. You should start PvP-ing in your basic cutter as soon as you create your account. Go to the rookie-zone in the Bahamas and start attacking stuff right away. You don't need a Surprise or Renomee. There there is a limit on how much you can be outmatched by your enemies, with only shallow draft ships capable of sailing around, and the distances are shorter, so you don't get reset so far away when you get killed. Using the basic cutter lets you learn to not fear loosing your ship. Just invest some of the money you get from PvP and or attacking AI traders to replace the free base medium 6 pdrs with some 6 pd longs. Within a short time you will be able to ugrade ship to a snow or mercury and you are now very PvP capable. At this point you have to start learning not only to maneuver, but to use manual sails to do so more effectively and to improve aim. 

Some clans will be able to help you skip through all the first ranks easily in the first day or few hours in the game, if you want to sail slightly bigger ships like the surprise and explore more of the world. But there is no shortcut to learning how to manual sail. You need to practice a lot, on top of watching youtube tutorials or getting someone to instruct you and demonstrate to you.

Well the question specified a PvP capable ship, but I know what you are trying to say.

The bahamas are indeed a good start, but I hear reports of players just seal clubbing these lower levelled players, and players just "harvesting" all the resources from the ports. These are not the kind of players you want to meet on your first days in Naval Action, the first days where you still think everybody is friendly and all gets along and we're all here to have a nice time and GG eachother at the end of a battle. Caus that dream will be shattered prety much from day one, by probably the saltiest and most toxic of players this server has to offer.

I actualy initialy only did small battles, which I found very interesting and very spectacular in the early days. When the battles were always full, and most would sail cutters. It was a ton of fun, and I think i did this till I could sail a snow. Was great fun especialy when someone was "mad enough" to take his "big" cerberus out in a small battle. And your broadside would only scratch its paint. I would actualy recommend that instead of missions, but sadly nobody does small battles anymore so thats out of the question.

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