Maritime Guide

I’m writing this guide to compile everything I’ve learnt about maritime over the years. Not that I’m a pro maritimer or anything, I’m also just practicing these stuff I picked up from other players and the Japanese, Taiwanese and English wikis. As the guide grows and grows I have a feeling that readers need to use Ctrl+F to search what they are looking for – despite my best attempts to structure it in order. There will be constant updates and rewrites in the coming few days. Feel free to leave comments and questions, I’ll try to check here once in a while and I’m sure others would be glad to jump in and help.

BASIC SYSTEM:
For those who have no experience with UWO’s maritime system. You should know that “maritime” is basically the ship battle component of this game. You sail a ship, can team up with 4 other players to make a 5-man-fleet. There will be an admiral, who is the leader, and if he dies you all lose lose. By “dying” we mean either the ship’s durability is reduced to 0 (the red “HP bar” is depleted) or the crew of sailors is wiped out and reduced to 0 (the green “HP bar” is depleted).

TWO FORMS OF “HP”:
A ship’s durability is reduced when it gets shot by cannons, sailed into a mine, hit by a ram, afflicted by Fire or Leak/Flood, and some other rarer conditions that we will not worry about for now. Cannons are the primary source of damage to durability, and you can deal significantly more cannon damage (eg, ~10 times more) when you score a “critical shot” that hits the target’s bow (ie, head of ship) or stern (ie, rear of ship), as opposed to the normal “broadside shot” that hits the two sides of the target. When you fight NPCs your broadside shots deal a lot of damage, but when fighting players who are in non-trolling battle ships, you will notice that broadsides deal petty damage that gets repaired in an instant, while “good” critical shots (explained later) can often 1HKO.

A ships’s crew is reduced when it loses in melee, or have sailors falling overboard (you will see the message “rough seas”), or get shot by a special type of cannons called Grape Shot (but no one really uses this), or if you are afflicted with hunger or plaque or something (rare during battle). Melee happens when the two ships sail close to each other (eg, collide into each other). Once melee begins both ships will be “locked” into melee, where the ships don’t move and you will need to imagine that one crew is boarding the other ship to fight in close quarters – during this period both ships will take reduced damage from cannons, and both ships will be susceptible to friendly fire.

To “heal” your two HP bars in this game, you will need to use the skill Repair for durability, Surgery for crew injured in melee, and Rescue for crew fallen overboard. Note that Repair and Surgery works for the entire fleet (ie, “team heal”) without using more vigor or supplies (former needs Lumber while latter needs Water). Talking about supplies I think it goes without saying that you will need to stock up on cannon ammunition to fire your cannons or lay mines. But you do not really need to bring Food (bread) into battles.

MARITIME-RELATED SKILLS:
Just like traders and adventurers have skills that are crucial to their game play, maritimers have a set of skills that are vital. I will only very briefly explain what the skill does here – more detailed explanations of their use and effects will be spelt out in later relevant sections. Note that “active” means the skill takes up 1 of 3 active skill slots and persist for a period of time; “passive” is self-explanatory and of course do not consume vigor; “use” means it’s a skill that you momentarily use every time you press it.

Gunnery — speed up cannon reload and reduce “fail-to-shoot” occurrences (passive)
Accuracy — extend your firing zone to include close range, increase damage via increasing hit and reducing miss (active)
Ballistics — extend your firing zone to include distant range, increase damage via increasing hit and reducing miss (active)
Penetration — directly increase raw damage, double effectiveness during critical (active)
Reloading — speed up reloading (active)
Evasion — reduce damage taken via reducing hit rate and increasing miss (active)
Leadership — cure disorder and great disorder, which are statuses that basically lead to instant-death in melee (use)
Repair — restore the ship’s durability (use)
Surgery — restore your fallen crew (use)
First Aid — reduce loss of crew from grape shots and melee (passive)
Rescue — restore crew fallen over-board (use)
Steering — maneuver ship to turn quicker, also lessen damage from mines (passive)
Arms — required for using ship skills (passive)
Management — required for using ship skills (passive)
Navigation — required for using ship skills (passive)
Rowing — allows oar-fitted ships to go much faster (active)
Sniping — land/deck battle related skill… irrelevant for this guide (passive)
Sword Mastery — land/deck battle related skill… irrelevant for this guide (passive)
Swordplay — increase melee damage (passive)
Aboardage — able to initiate melee from further range (active)
Assault — melee skill, explained later (use)
Guard — melee skill, explained later (use)
Tactics — melee skill, explained later (use)
Gunfire — melee skill, explained later (use)
Plunder — steal items and cargo from opponents you sink (passive)
Mine Laying — lay mines, explode when enemies sail pass (use)
Mine Detection — able to see mines that are otherwise invisible (active)
Fire Fight — put out fire and great fire (use)
Lookout — able to see names of fleets from further distance… irrelevant to us for now (active)
Request Reinforce: allows non-fleet-player to join your existing fight, generally a troll skill (use)
Request Convoy: calls in NPC to help you against NPC (use)
Survival: increase resilience to hunger/drought/storms/etc. sorta useful cause you won’t be bringing much food (passive)

For how to get the skills, refer to the link below. Remember, you can directly learn the skill from maritime guildmaster when the skill is favored by your job. If you are not in the job that allows you to learn the skill, you must meet the requirements and go to specific places where that skill is being taught by an NPC). http://uwodbmirror.ivyro.net/eg/main.php?id=143&chp=3

ABBREVIATIONS OF SHIP SKILLS:
Below is just a list of the ship skills that I will mention in abbreviated format throughout the guide.
DHP: direct hit prevention (active skill; immunizing bow from critical shot)
RSM: roaring sea mines (passive skill; half damage mines that induce great disorder)
SSM: roaring sea mines (passive skill; half damage mines that induce flood)
SMR: sea mine removal (active skill; detect sea mines and remove them while sailing pass)
SMS: sea mine search (passive skill; detect sea mines)
PEA: pre-emptive attack (passive skill; x1.2 melee attack & guarantee “first strike” in melee)
APN: attack prevention net (passive skill; x1.3 melee defense & facilitate non-item/manual retreat)
WMB: welcome melee battle (passive skill; x2.0 melee defense & immune to plunder)

SOURCES:
Taiwanese Wiki:  http://acg.gamer.com.tw/acgDetail.php?s=61204
Japanese wiki:  http://gvo.gamedb.info/wiki
English Database:  http://uwodbmirror.ivyro.net/eg/main.php
Before you even begin to do maritime there are things you should know, and be prepared with. So let’s talk about these things first.

SKILLS YOU SHOULD HAVE:
The long list of skills in the first post looks scary, but you do not need them all, especially not when you start.
Mandatory Skills — Gunnery, Accuracy, Ballistics, Evasion, Leadership, Repair, Surgery, First Aid, Rescue, Steering, Arms, Management, Navigation, Rowing {if using rowing ship}.
Important Skills — Penetration, Swordplay, 2-4 melee skills (Assault, Guard, Tactics, Gunfire), Mine Laying.
Recommended Skills — Mine Detection, Aboardage, Plunder.

ITEMS YOU SHOULD BRING:
VIGOR — You cannot go anywhere without vigor food. For maritime, you should get fleet food (ie, vigor food that benefits the whole fleet on consumption) if you can afford it. Using fleet food will allow you all to worry less about running dry on vigor, and if an ally is trapped in melee (ie, cannot use vigor food himself, but needs vigor to use skills during, and right after exiting, melee).
STATUS — You absolutely need Pails to fix leaks, because leaks slows you down and lead to more damage taken (described in cannon damage section). Only situation where you won’t need Pails is if you have Watertight Bulkhead (ship skill that makes you immune to leaks/floods) or Drainage Pump (ship skill that replaces Pails). You should also bring along Fire Buckets, unless you have Fire Fight skill. If for whatever reason you do not have the General Check (college skill that auto fix broken sails and rudders) you must bring loads of Spare Sails and Spare Rudder Wheels with you. I am sorry, but I cannot even remember the name of the item that cures disorder (tried to search and failed), because everyone uses Leadership skill instead of the item.

COLLEGE SKILLS YOU SHOULD ACTIVATE:
Oxford college and research theses require a guide of itself, so I’m going to assume the reader knows about how to get the college skills and activate them (if not, leave a comment/question and I’ll try to answer it). Just want to point out that you can activate a maximum of 5 skills at any given time, they are all passive, and the benefits can stack. Below is a list of skills most relevant to PvP for quick reference.

Gunnery Aid 4: gives +1 to Gunnery/Penetration/Ballistics/Accuracy
Gunnery Aid 3: gives +1 to Gunnery/Penetration/Ballistics
Handling Skills 2: gives x1.875 boost to your figurehead’s evasion rate
Handling Skills 1: gives x1.25 boost to your figurehead’s evasion rate
Melee Tactics 2: gives +15% to both melee attack-and-defense
Melee Tactics 1: gives +10% to both melee attack-and-defense
General Check: auto-restore damaged sails and rudder when you use Repair skill
Ship Speed Up 4: boost ship speed by 10%
Ship Speed Up 3: boost ship speed by 5%

SHIPS YOU SHOULD START WITH:
I’ll just go through a few non-cash ships you might want to start your maritime career with.

Trading Large Galleon — Trade is arguably the easiest aspect of the game to level, and most players seem to level up trade first or at least alongside adventure/maritime (because everything requires ducats to sustain). This ship with 20/44/20 level requirements is excellent for those who did minimal maritime after academy/school but did a fair bit of trading. You want it to be built in Iron material and do a cheap Grade 1 fusion where you add a broadside slot. Maybe mod it with Adjunct Cabin to help your aide level up 20% faster. If none of this shipbuilding jargon make sense to you – leave a comment here or even shout in world chat, and there should be no lack of shipbuilders willing to help you out. This is a cheap and reliable grinding ship to use till you reach high maritime level, or until you get yourself a cash ship.

Assault Ottoman Galley or Turkish Galley — These row boats require 32/20/46 levels to sail, and have 225 crew (before modification or fusion). They are both fairly low in armour and dura though, so they are mostly just used for grinding/playing against NPCs while your maritime is still at the mid/intermediate levels. Assault Ottoman Galley is great for having DHP that allows you to easily engage in melee (ie, can sail straight forward into enemy without worrying about being critically shot at the bow) while Turkish Galley has PEA for the extra 20% melee attack.

Vaisseau — In the old days, reaching 16/8/52 levels to sail this ship was one of the end-game goals of maritimers. As the level cap got repeated increased and newer/better ships continue to be released, the Vaisseau is no longer strong enough for PvP, and you don’t “need” to switch to this if you have an iron Trading Large Galleon with 5 broadsides (from fusion). Still, if you feel like changing ships as you progress in levels (originally, one of the most fun and addictive aspect of this game imo), you can switch to the all-rounded Vaisseau. I think it’s worth pointing out that the Custom Vaisseau is a good cash ship to get when you are low in levels (only require 6/0/16) – I believe it is going for roughly ~500m in ducats, or you can directly buy one of the maritime starter packs (ie, Guns and Rums Pack) from the astro shop, and get the Custom Vaisseau without relying on being lucky with bottles.

First Class Vaisseau — It will take a while to hit levels 40/26/69 but once you reach these levels (and adequately ranked your skills) you are ready to start competitive PvP without using cash ships (but I’d recommend starting and enjoying PvP as soon as you can, it doesn’t have to be about winning and being competitive). As much as people talk all day about godly modded top tier cash ships, you only practically need high dura (>1370 is sufficient; >1400 is awesome), roughly 60 armour (to reach 100 armour cap with three >13 plates; rolled or ganador ones), >18~20 turn (anything higher isn’t that noticeable for turning responsiveness, probably more helpful for lessening speed lost via turning), >11 wave (if you want to be storm-proof), a good-sized crew, and useful ship skills to be at the competitive level. Anything beyond that matters very little. Again, maybe none of these numbers mean anything to you right now, that’s ok, just know that you can reach/exceed all these benchmark figures with a budget builds FCV. Below is just a sample build that cost around 1b or less (and half of the cost goes to the Large Storm Sail, which is not that hard to obtain in game if you do Ganador) – note that you get +10 armour from the ship skill Bullet-Proof Armouring (to reach 60 armour benchmark).

RECOMMENDED JOBS:
UWO has a nice variety of maritime jobs but a few of them clearly outclass others, let’s briefly go through the ones commonly chosen by veterans. For information on how to obtain these jobs, please follow the link below, or leave a comment and I will try to answer what I can.
http://uwodbmirror.ivyro.net/eg/main.php?id=142&chp=3
Note that I will be mostly talking about “advanced” jobs rather than “beginner” jobs (that are almost always useless in the long run), because from memory, I was able to easily get some of the advanced jobs with the help of other players (and once you got the job, you can change back and forth from and to that job without getting the job card again – just cost you more ducats). Don’t be shy to ask for help!
Also, just to revisit the basics, the skills listed for each job are “favored” skills, meaning you get to rank them up twice as fast, while also being able to train up to r15. Any skill not listed is capped at r10. You will see one skill for each of the jobs below, where there is a +1 next to it, that is the “expert” skill, which you can train up to r16 and you get an inherit +1 bonus (total r17 with items or college skills or whatever boost).

Senior Officer is hands down the most all-rounded and solid class. Accuracy, Ballistics and Evasion are the best skills to activate in general situations, and you have all of them favored or expert’ed. It also has Gunnery, Sword Play, Repair, and three out of four melee skills favored, so it excels offensively and defensively in both cannon and melee fights. Giving it anything more and it’ll be outright op. As far as I can see this is the most popular job choice for maritimers.

For shooters/snipers who’s primary role is to score kills (while still spamming Repair/Surgery/Leadership when looking for opportunities), Penetration and Steering are vital to the success of this role (discussed in Cannon Fight section). Both Cannoneer and Bounty Hunter are suited to this role, with different pros and cons — for instance, the former has Accuracy favored but lacks the latter’s Evasion and expert Penetration.

Mines are op, period. When you have high rank Mine Laying against targets with not-high-enough Steering, mines can deal 250 damage each. Imagine eating 2 mines clustered together and having only say 900/1400 dura left, that’ll easily put you in the 1HKO range. Mines also just wreck the victim’s gear very quickly, and help wear down the victim’s max dura (if it deals enough damage, say 150). Really, mines are op and Guardian and Scouts are the best jobs with favored Mines — you can compare the two yourself but the main difference is that the former has Accuracy and Repair, while the latter has Evasion and Steering favored. As a sidenote, if you have RSM or SSM (mines inflict great disorder or flood, but half damage) then the benefit of favoring Mine Laying is of course discounted.

For those sailing in MLA/ANG or whatever ship that allows one to be a dedicated rowing-melee player, Filibuster is THE job you want to be in. Besides all the melee-oriented skills it has Accuracy, Gunnery, Evasion, Steering and Repair for cannon fights. Filibuster is paralleled by none, but it is hard to get, and expensive to change into, so I put Pirate up there too.

RECOMMENDED AIDES:
This isn’t an exhaustive list of the viable aides, just listing a few that are great for PvP (ie, didn’t give skills like Cargo Seizure and Ambush the weighting they normally deserve). For the full list you can refer to this:
http://uwodbmirror.ivyro.net/eg/main.php?id=144&chp=3
When comparing/choosing your battle aides bear in mind each aide can only activate some of their skills (ones relevant to their assigned “role”) at any given time. In case you don’t already know, you should have one aide suitable for the Lieutenant role, then another in either Surgeon or Lookout. If you only have one battle aide then you might want to set your trade/adventure aide to Store Keep for the occasional auto-firefight.

Hernan is unequivocally believed to be the best battle aide, especially if you are more of a close-quarters maritimer (eg, use Cannon16 up close and frequently melee), simply because he’s the only one that has both Double Shot Defense and Obstruction (chance to prevent opponent’s use of items). Fire Shot Defense also has its uses against Grand Volkans (and Fire Prevention comes in handy while trading, but that’s irrelevant for us here). <<CASH AIDE>>

Sigfried is as good as Lancelot for the Lieutenant job (actually better, if you’ll be using Smoke Shot Defense against Grand Cheminee), and is non-cash. He just lack the flexibility to effectively switch into the Lookout role.

Chester is one of the best Surgeon aides you will find as he has everything in that role (ie, +Repair, +Surgery, +FirstAid, MineLaying) except for +Rowing and +Plunder, which you don’t need anyway if you aren’t in a row boat during PvP. He also has +Shipbuilding but lacks the +Casting that other less-battle-focused ship build aides have.

Wolfgang is mainly listed for his Restriction skill that prevents opponents from retreating in melee for 1~3 turns (require Corvus equipped). As a melee-oriented aide he has all four melee skills +1 and also +Swordplay (note that +FirstAid is Surgeon based which cannot be used because he needs to be Lieutenant to use Restriction).

Ecbar is just listed because he is the only battle aide with both Double Shot Defense and Cargo Seizure – the former being one of the most important aide skills for PvP and the latter being the most useful aide skills for plundering.
One of the most frustrating things for less experienced maritimers is the control. There are always multiple things that you need to do and to do them all you need to use more than just your mouse clicking finger. Here are some general tips that you may find helpful, at least they work well for me:

TURNING:
Use your mouse cursor to turn your ship! If you turn left/right with your keyboard’s “A” and “D” you might over-steer when let’s say you press a direction, your ship hasn’t responded yet, so you press again and ended turning too much — but if you use your cursor you can pick precisely where you want your ship to end up turning to.

LOCK & SHOOT:
You can use your “Tab” key to pick and switch between targets (but mouse is usually more convenient when there are >3 enemies and when they are not clustered together). Always use the “Spacebar” key to shoot, so you can free up your mouse for turning and other stuff, and more importantly, so you won’t accidentally click the ship adjacent to the one you are locked onto and wanna shoot (especially important when multiple ships are cluttered together). You can fire individual broadside cannons one by one via pressing “F1 to F5” keys, which you might want to do with Heavy Bombing ship skill (to constantly slow opponent’s down), or to trick opponent into thinking that you are reloading so they will make a risky/exposed turn — but if you won’t use them for firing know that you can set “F1 to F10” as hotkey (setting located at top right hand corner’s drop down list) for other functions (eg, opening the full skill page or item page).

CUSTOM SLOTS:
Press the “~” key (the one left to “1” on the singe line of numbers on your keyboard) to open up Custom Slots, again so you can free up your mouse cursor to do other things. My personal preference is to set Repair, Surgery, Leadership, Vigour Food, and Pail (note: leak leads to taking a lot more damage from cannons, explained later) in numbers “1 to 5” of both pages, because I need to be able to spam these life-or-death-deciding skills/items in any situation. Basically, I can spam healing/restoring with my left hand’s fingers (keys 1-5) and shoot with my left thumb (spacebar) so my mouse cursor can be fully dedicated to maneuvering the ship (eg, turning away from criticals, sailing towards safer area or aiding an ally) and activating defensive skills (keys 6-8 or click with mouse cursor) in a near-fatal situation. In short, there are lots of situations where you need to do all these things simultaneously and you cannot just use your mouse cursor… It might sound lame to point out which finger should do what and stuff, but once you have fleeted with someone who can’t/won’t heal you when you are about to die because he/she was too occupied with turning or clicking a target to shoot or something, you will hope they had more efficient control methods.

REFRESHING SKILLS:
It is obviously better to refresh your skills when you are free, instead of praying that they will run out and deactivate themselves when you happen to be free. You will also enjoy a significant advantage if you can switch between skills based on the situation. Yet a lot of people don’t do it, because clicking an activated skill (edge of screen), then moving your cursor to click “Yes” (middle of screen) to confirm deactivation takes so damn long… the quick and easy way to do it is to select the skill you want to deactivate with your cursor and instantaneously press the “Enter” key to replace having to move your cursor back and forth (and it’s just lol when your cursor missed the “Yes” icon in a hectic situation). Note this also reduce the system-delay for the deactivation to take effect.

(JusT for laughs…)
In this section I’ll go through the things I try to always keep in mind during a battle – simple/obvious yet important stuff.

PLAN/THINK > REFLEX:
If you can do what is written in the section above (or do it any other way that is also efficient/convenient for your) then naval battles shouldn’t be a constantly hectic/panicky affair, you should have enough time to plan and think (eg, while your left hand is auto-pressing custom slotted repair/surgery and status/vigour restore). Planning and thinking is way more important than quick-reaction-time in this game because your reaction time will be “capped” by the game’s mechanical delays (eg, even max’d steering and turning cannot allow you to insta-dodge criticals though reflex). You should initiate actions a second or so before you need the actions performed.

Always be observant of your environment, predict/project where your own ship, your allies’ ships and your enemies ships will be in a second or two, guessing what decisions they are likely to make based on their circumstances, and act accordingly, as opposed to always passively responding to what is thrown at you this very second. An elementary example would be something like noticing an enemy approaching the position where he/she can critical shot your admiral, you should start to change your path to aim for grabbing that enemy in melee (eg, with Aboardage) or if you are too far then sail towards the place where you might block that enemy’s shot at admiral’s bow/stern.

DEFENSE > OFFENSE:
Speaking of the admiral – you should always prioritize protecting your admiral. If he/she dies it doesn’t matter how many kills you’ve scored or whether you and your allies managed to survive. This is so obvious but it is a common mistake for someone to blindly go after a kill, while leaving the admiral to fend for himself/herself.

Similarly, you should generally prioritize safeguarding your own survival (eg, always activate Evasion and/or Double Shot Defense, unless you are a pro who can survive without them) and your allies’ survival over trying to score a kill.

Basically, it is never easy to sink a decent enemy, so such attempts often end with little to no real contribution to the team. In contrast, a member’s survival offers the fleet with guaranteed ongoing contribution. By being alive, even a beginner can help the fleet immensely by spamming all the essential Repair/Surgery/Leadership/etc. And by merely being present, that member can serve as a huge threat/annoyance to enemies, because there is now an extra angle of cannon fire (ie, restricts enemies movements if they wish to avoid being critically shot) and an extra point of melee (ie, enemies can be disrupted and set-up in vulnerable positions; explained further in melee section).

CRITICAL SHOT IS ALL THAT MATTERS:
The subheading is a bit of an exaggeration but I really want to highlight how much more important critical shot is over broadside shot (and melee and ramming and everything else). As stated in the opening/first post, broadsides often deal little damage to opponents with high armour (nowadays even non-cash ships often reach the capped 100 armour) and high rank Evasion and/or Shot Defense. Combined with the incredible effectiveness and team-heal nature of Repair, you really can’t hope to sink anyone with just Broadsides.

Generally what you will notice is that ships get critically shot, manages to survive, but have their max dura reduced (eg, from 1400 to 1100 after a few criticals and rams/mines), eventually they fall within the 1HKO range and get sunk by a finishing critical shot. Your offensive strategy should revolve around this.

COOPERATION:
Never get singled out away from allies, as you can do very little by yourself. Sticking close to allies does have one problem though – you will crash into each other from time to time. This is easier to avoid if you have some sort of system in place, like pre-agreeing to both turn left when about to crash head on (unless, say, one of you is in great disorder, then you should both know that the one not disordered should turn “inside” closer to the enemy so the disordered one is blocked off from a dangerous melee).

If you find yourself being surrounded, remember to use sunken and/or melee’ing ships to block off some exposed areas/angles (where you are susceptible to critical shots) for you. If you are close to the edge of the battle zone use the edge too (ie, sail close to the border with a narrow area left, enough for you to maneuver, not quite enough for your enemies to squeeze in their and move freely without risking accidental retreat).

Try to single an opponent out, surround (or “box in”) that opponent and shoot from multiple angles, preferably at roughly the same time, so that one or more critical shots cannot be avoided and you get a chance of combo. Such teamwork is the most important, yet also the hardest-to-master, aspect of maritime, as there are too many variables to consider. Below is just one example:
(A) The idea here is that, while you should stick with your allies, you should not be constantly holding hands. Spread out and sail in a “L-shaped” formation as shown here (“V-shaped” formation works too) so one of you might score a critical.
(B) This is the same scenario as figure A, but your opponent managed to turn his stern to the “intersection” point of your imaginary “L-shape” so both of you cannot score a critical.
(C) Same scenario as figure B, except you and your ally are both smarter and waited for the opponent to sail a little further ahead (or you two slowed down), so now both of you can score a critical – but if you get the timing wrong the opponent will simply sail outside your firing range.
(X) As you can see in this example, there are lots of things you need to take into consideration, and you do need to predict what your enemy and ally will do, so really, you need to have efficient controls so you have the time and spare mental resources to plan and think over your decisions!

How do we decide what combination of skills to activate (eg, cannon skills or defensive skills) and how to manoeuvre our ships in battle (eg, stay up close or snipe from afar)? Why do veterans suggest building ships a certain way? I guess to make/understand such decisions we will need to know how to maximize damage dealt and/or minimize damage taken, based on our role in fleet and the situation we are in. I’m guessing people won’t want/need the convoluting formula but here are things you might want to know about how damage is calculated.

OFFENSIVE:
Penetration skill’s added damage is doubled for critical (compared to for broadside hit), which means in situations like when you are expecting an enemy to retreat from melee to score an easy critical, it is really worth the effort to switch to Penetration if it’s not already activated (eg, deactivate Rowing if you will “park” for that shot or deactivate Evasion if you feel safe to do so).

Raw damage is mitigated by hit/miss rate (eg, 1500 raw damage but only 80% of cannon balls hit target = 1200 actual damage):
The closer your range, the more cannon balls will hit (huge effect, info suggest dividing total range into about 5-6 sections and each section away from your target will -20%). When your gunports are flashing red (ie, wait a few sec after loaded) you get +10% hit rate. When wind is blowing from behind your cannons you get +20% while blowing from the side you get +10% (but most of the time you can’t take wind direction into consideration). Other things like shooting targets in the center-ish region of your firing cone/zone clearly matters a lot (eg, you can press shoot, then do a slight turn in the delayed period before your cannons actually fire, this will allow you follow your target’s movements and capture him/her in your firing cone/zone; however note that firing while turning slightly reduces your hit rate). Bullet speed (check your equipped cannons) is -3% per point below 10 which doesn’t sound like much but it’s basically the same as 2 ranks of Ballistics per point.

Accuracy gives +2% per rank (+40% at r20) and Ballistic gives +1.5% (+30% at r20), which is why Accuracy is the single most important cannon skill to activate if you want to maximize damage. Note that you cannot exceed 100% hit rate, so let’s say when you are parked up close with favorable winds and flashing cannons and high rank Accuracy & Ballistic activated and stuff, and you can’t afford to deactivate a defensive skill, you can consider deactivating Ballistic (eg, if it only brings your hit rate from say 95% to 125%, capped at 100%) and switch to Penetration (remember x2 effect of Penetration when critical) for potential 1HKO — sidenote, high rank Ballistic has two other benefits, first it reduces the damage you deal to the ally in melee that you shoot at, and second it reduces the effect of unfavorable winds and angles on your hit rate).

DEFENSE:
Evasion gives you -2% per rank (-40% at r20) but note that when you are leaking/flooding you can’t really “evade” any cannons with steering (ie, get hit at around 100%) meaning leaks/floods negate Evasion. Another situation when Evasion seems to be negated is when you get shot at point blank range against high rank Accuracy/Ballistics with flashing cannons etc. (eg, hypothetically 150% hit then -40% from Evasion, still end up with capped 100% hit) — sidenote, some say Evasion also reduce the angle to which you are susceptible to being critically shot, but I guess this is impossible to eyeball test/confirm.

Shot Defense (aide skill) is calculated differently, it offers a fixed -30% to critical damage and -50% to broadside damage at max rank (max r10 when aide’s lieutenant trait is >90), irrespective of range/angle/etc. and even if you are leaking, making it the better defensive option in situations when Evasion proves useless, but bear in mind Shot Defense only work for one cannon type (eg, double-shot or normal-shot or flame-shot or smoke-shot and so forth).

Figurehead offers -1% per point of cannon evade, best figurehead gives -8% but the Dragon figurehead that can be bought from shipyard (eg, Antwerp) already gives -7% — note that college skill Handling Skill1 and Handling Skill2 boost figure head’s evasion to x1.25 nd x1.875 respectively (can stack).

Armour is consensually believed/tested to be capped at 100, it is a non-linear factor in the formula, but roughly, at 100 armour you take -50% broadside -10% critical, and at 90 armour you take -45% broadside and -9% critical — if this sounds confusing just know that armour doesn’t help much with mitigating critical damage, which makes high dura way more important for survival: because criticals kill, broadsides don’t, unless you are sailing in a barca or some other troll ship.

TO SHOOT OR NOT TO SHOOT:
One thing I notice is a lot of less experienced players habitually shoot whenever their cannons are loaded, even if it deals no real damage (eg, broadside against high rank Evasion and Shot Defense and impregnable max armour; or when the opponent will sail outside your shooting cone/range by the time the shots land) and serve no purpose. Remember you are not a threat when you are reloading and your opponent can do anything with impunity (eg, turn 90 degrees stern facing you for a few sec to move in a different course to gang your ally).

If your enemy has low armour and your broadsides deal say >150 damage, then you can shoot as much as you want to even if the enemy can repair in time, because such broadsides will reduce the target’s max dura and gradually bring it in range for an eventual 1HKO.
If your broadsides deal laughable damage then you can choose to just hold onto it, let it charge till the charge bar flashes (higher hit rate and damage, as explained), and wait for a critical chance whilst serving as a constant threat that limits your opponent’s options.
If you see an ally speeding in and is likely to land a critical shot when he/she arrive in position, and if you are going to be on the same side as that ally, then you can try to time for a combo. Your broadside might still do petty damage but your ally has a chance to score a critical with extra 20% damage from combo, hopefully 1HKO.

There are other situations/factors (eg, if you are using fire shot with Armour Deteriorating Bullet then you might just shoot like there’s no tomorrow for the effect; if you are up close with 3 defensive skills and 0 cannon skill activated then you might decide just to harass-shoot in the hopes that the enemy will be “taunted” and retaliate – if you aren’t the admiral…) but I think you got the gist of it, if you shoot, shoot for a reason (eg, you might even shoot here and there in the hopes of causing leaks/disorders especially if you notice your opponents are slow to restore status), not just habitually press whenever you are loaded, although this can be hard to get used to after grinding NPCs lol.

IMPORTANCE OF SPEED:
As far as my observations and experience goes, rushing in from afar to quick-shoot, is way more likely to score a critical, than it is to play merry-go-around with an opponent at close range. I speculate this is because people generally fixate their gaze on their merry-go-around dancing partner, and anyone half-decent would not suddenly turn to expose their bow/stern to that dancing partner, but with someone outside the visual-focus area suddenly rushing in, players may not react in time (especially given the delayed mechanics of this game; you press turn it simply does not turn instantly).

Even if my reasoning of why speed is important turns out to be wrong, it cannot be denied that speed is in fact important for primary shooters, because Cannoneers need to stay at a safe distance (without favored Evasion nor melee skills; equipped with cannon boosting rather than melee boosting gear), sail around to look for opportunities (while harassing/threatening the various merry-go-around couples), and rush to vulnerable targets when the opportunity arises.

The factors that are said to affect ship speed are as follows:
Sails & Wave: only affect max speed, not that important in battle as you are unlikely to sail straight for long enough to hit the speed cap — high wave does help with having less sailors fall overboard due to rough seas, so you are not pressured to use Rescue as often.
Row Power: I know how ship’s Rowing Power interacts with character’s Rowing skill to calculate speed in open sea, but I’m not sure if that applies in battle. Just know that it has a noticeable effect…
Turning: clearly important for turning speed, but most agree that beyond 18~20 turn you really cannot notice the ship turning faster, higher turn will still help lessen your speed lost via turning though — note that your character’s Steering skill works in similar ways but high rank Steering also help reduce damage taken from mines.
Total Hold: smaller hold specifically increase your acceleration “burst” frequency (ie, ships accelerate in bursts, or so the Asian wikis say) but has no impact on max speed — this is why people prefer -20% or even -25% hold when modding ships, and why you should not needlessly add gunports when you mod your ship (+40 gunports almost negate the difference between -20% and -25% for some ships).
Armour & Number of Sails: higher armour and less sails (“poles”) supposedly increase acceleration “intensity” (ie, accelerate more with every “burst”), this is still a much debated factor but many believe it is true — I guess it doesn’t really matter, you can’t change your ship’s sail number and your will add armour when you can, regardless of whether it affect speed anyway.

I have come to learn that play-style has A LOT to do with actual speed, as I have fought alongside and against players who were sailing ships that were supposed to be equal or slower than mine, yet turn out to be significantly faster — because they try not to turn (ie, not lose speed) unless they absolutely need to. I suppose this is another reason why snipers stay from afar, where they can build up speed before coming in to make a kill.

CANNON TYPES:
Below is a list of the most commonly used cannons (in their non-great-success form) as well as their Ganador reward variants (as you can see, some cannon’s Ganador forms are really worth getting while others don’t provide much of an improvement). All the stats should be self-explanatory, except for maybe bullet speed (mentioned already as -3% hit rate per point below 10) and burst range (higher burst means higher chance of inducing leaks and breaking enemy’s sails/rudders). Omitted Chain-Shots and Grape-Shot as I don’t think any serious maritimer use them…

Double shot deals significantly more damage than other cannon types and has decent bullet speed, but it is the slowest to reload and has the shortest range, and is the most likely cannon type to be countered by your opponent’s Shot Defense aide skill — Masters Cannon16 max at 1584 piercing power.

Normal shot is “normal” and standard, but Carronades are on the high power short range end of the continuum and has enough power to 1HKO high dura ships. It’s also worth noting that no aide has both Double Shot Defense (DSD) and Normal Shot Defense (NSD) so if your fleet has a mix of these two cannon types at least some of you can shoot down that hardcore defensive admiral, and maybe that enemy will even think it’s not worth wasting an active skill slot on shot defense lol — Masters Carronade16 max at 1104 piercing power.

Normal shot again, but with much better range and loading speed at the expense of power. Can’t say High Perriers are popular and I’ve never had any success using it myself, but I know that at the very least there were top snipers in the past who liked to use this cannon type — Masters HP16 max at 1040 piercing power.

Smoke shot is awesome, at least the Ganador version is. Decent power, amazing range and reload and bullet speed, plus the smoke effect is gold (reduce enemy hit rate, occasionally prevent a set of their cannons from shooting, -20% to their melee attack, and requires a not-so-common item to “cure” thus usually remain uncured). If you have the Special Smoke Bomb passive ship skill you can even cancel all of your target’s activated skills with a critical hit, which is highly disruptive/annoying (and in this case you should get Stern Meteora form London’s 10 star quest Whereabouts of the Fleet) — Masters Cheminee16 max at 1040 piercing power.

Fire shot, Ganador version, is incredibly powerful and has quick reload, and the constant fire effect frequently take your enemy below max dura plus occasionally lead to ammo explosion (never experienced it myself, but stated in the reliable Taiwanese wiki). The passive ship skill of Armor Deterioration Bullet helps reduce enemies armour but those who tested and recorded the actual reductions say it’s not all that impressive. Still, Grand Volkans are known as one of the most op cannons in the game. Just remember that fire, disorder/great-disorder, and leak/flood cannot co-occur so you are usually better off using another cannon type if you have RSM/SSM and you shouldn’t use certain status inducing melee items when your target is already on fire — Masters Volkan16 max at 1040 piercing power.

Generally speaking, melee serves a secondary/supporting role in PvP. Unless you are sailing in MLA doing 1v1 against someone in a troll ship, or unless you can reliably catch your opponent in disorder (eg, have RSM), you will not be able to wipe someone out in melee. Even knowing this, a lot of new-to-intermediate maritimers stay in melee just for the sake of it. Please don’t. If you stay in melee, there should be a good reason for it. For example, when it is 3v2 and you think trapping an enemy in melee can give your allies a better advantage in 2v1 as opposed to letting all 3v2 of you sailing freely. Another example, if an enemy is parked at your bow/stern and you see an ally coming to drive that enemy away you will want to wait till that happens before you actively try to terminate melee.

INITIATING:
While you will rarely stay in melee, you should often initiate melee (remember you can use Aboardage skill and equip Corvus to extend your melee range), for a few reasons.

First, to setup for your ally to critically shot your enemy’s bow/stern once melee terminates. I have littered this guide with such examples because it is supposed to be such a fundamental tactic (yet it is actually hard to consistently pull off). As shown in the image below, the blue melee-ship’s allies are trying to critically shoot the red melee-ship when it exits melee, while the red melee-ship’s allies are trying to threaten the blue ships away – with one of the red ships (the one on the left) also being in position to critically shoot the blue-melee ship. I have been taught by my company boss that due to Cannon16’s slow bullet speed, I cannot wait for the “retreat successful” message to pop up and must time my own shooting. The advise was to count roughly 7sec for the round to pass, then shoot half a sec early if the first-strike player retreat, and half a sec late if the latter-strike player retreat. For things like Carro16 which have faster bullets, I can simply press the firing key as soon as the retreat message is shown. Also, as stated in the cannons section, try to stay close to the target and adjust your angle so that you are perpendicular to the target’s bow/stern to maximize damage.

Second, to use op melee items:
Drill of Destruction leads to flood, which cannot be fixed by enemies without Drainage Pump or Watertight Bulkhead (ship skills) because pails only fix leaks. The flood will greatly slow down the enemy ship, plus making it take a lot more damage from cannons (explained in Cannon Damage section), so that enemy becomes a literal sitting duck.
White Smoke Bomb is more of a defensive item, it reduces your enemy’s hit-rate (ie, make some of their cannons miss) and has a chance to make one or more set of their cannons not shoot that turn (ie, further reduce cannon damage), it also reduces the smoked enemy’s melee attack by 20%.
Firebomb is also really nice for setting your enemy on fire, since people often don’t prioritize putting out fires, there is a good chance your enemy will not be at max dura and fall within the 1HKO range (and scoring 1HKOs are how you sink someone, given how quick repair works and how slow reloading generally is).
Loud Bomb is great if you notice your enemy’s team don’t treat disorder immediately, and so you can try to disorder your enemy -> retreat -> let a close-by ally insta-melee that target who cannot treat disorder in time.

Third, grabbing an enemy in melee is one of the surest ways to disrupt that enemy from sailing to his/her desired location (eg, escaping or ganging your ally) or from shooting a vulnerable ally (resets their cannon loading even after melee), and of course it prevents that enemy (and yourself) from doing any Repair/Surgery/Leadership/etc. which is usually more advantageous if your side is outnumbering your enemies (ie, you still have more than enough allies to do the healing while they don’t).

RETREATING:
Note that once you have terminated melee you cannot melee the same target for around 10 to 15 seconds so you can try to block that enemy’s escape path or turning direction, or even push him/her into RSM (if you accelerate faster than your opponent you can slide past that enemy and lay mines ahead of him/her) or whatever.

Most of the time we only retreat with Bell of Withdrawal to avoid the melee atk/def penalty, but you might use the basic Retreat command for two reasons. The more obvious one is if your enemy has an aide with Obstruction that hinders your item use, and you really need to retreat unhindered/ASAP (eg, retreating before the other enemy arrives in front of your bow/stern) while thinking you can survive the crew lost anyway. The less obvious reason is that, supposedly, Retreat terminates melee at a slightly different timing than Bell of Withdrawal and so mixing the two can screw up your enemy’s timing of critical shot.

To help your own allies get the timing right, you can use code “0” or “1” or “2” etc. to signal how many rounds you intend to stay in melee (type number in party chat).

If your allies are unable to drive the enemy parked at your bow/stern away when you come out of melee, your best bet is to do a small angle turn as quick as you can. A small angle turn supposedly has a smaller delay than a large angle one, so you can hopefully just swing your bow/stern out of the critical angle. Some say that if you do a small angle turn in the same direction just before you enter melee (eg, when you anticipate an enemy will snipe you), you are even more likely to do the turn away in time after melee.

MELEE SKILLS:
Assault: increases attack; the most offensive skill so it’s often used by melee-oriented players who try to wipe the target’s crew out, plus it’s favored by many melee-oriented (or semi-oriented) jobs, so expect to get hit by this a lot (relatively speaking).

Guard: increases defense; given the relative prevalence of Assault, it’s good to have high ranking Guard as a counter measure, if you only need to survive in melee (to be able to initiate melee for its tactical purposes); not favored by “standard” jobs (eg, Senior Officer, Canoneer) but you can easily get a lot of bonus ranks from equippments (eg, basic Plate Armour gives +2; blue Armour of Light gives +3; Pike gives +2) to make up for it.

Gunfire: reduces opponent’s attack and defense; besides the obvious use of countering Guard it has two niches, first you can grind it via land battle (eg, dungeon) if you equip a gun, and second when we catch up with the Japanese server and get the “Skill Retraining” function, retrained Gunfire will have an effect similar to aide’s Obstruction (which is an exceedingly useful effect) — “Skill Retraining”, skills with base r15-16 can be retrained from r1 again, with about 80% of skill proficiency needed for each rank, to get a permanent +2 rank and sometimes an additional “effect”.

Tactics: raises both attack and defense; not much to say about this except it seems to be a popular skill for people to level first, not sure if it’s because intermediate jobs like Naval Officer has it or what.

Tactics > Gunfire > Guard > Assault > Tactics (almost all of you know this but I’ll just throw it here for quick reference). If you can shave off say >20 crew per round you can do that to apply pressure, and if it drags out into a super long battle with repeated melees, you might bring a low crew ship down to below minimum required crew to operate 16×5 cannons (roughly speaking, 1 in 10 sailors who fell cannot be brought back by Surgery, and for example, HSFCV needs 121 crew). But remember, most of the time you wouldn’t be able to wipe out a non-disordered maritimer unless his/her fleet lamely don’t spam Surgery plus that opponent is unlucky enough to chain-fail retreat, so as stated at the beginning of this section, don’t just stay in melee because you feel like it, consider whether staying in melee is more or less beneficial for your team before you make the decision!

MELEE FORMULAS:
Attack = (crew / 2) + (maritime lv / 2) + (Sword Play rank x3) + (equipment / 4) + (sterncastle stat x 5) + ((crew ability – 2) / 10) – (fatigue + 5 – α) / 10) — where α is an unknown variable
Defense = (crew / 4) + (maritime lv / 2) + (First Aid rank x 3) + (equipment / 3) + ((crew loyalty – 1) / 10)

Formula is for reference only, and to satisfy nerdy desires. You really don’t need to recite it or anything. If you are afraid of dying in melee you can get college skill Melee Tactics 1 and 2 for combined +25% to attack-and-defense and/or fuse your ship with +30 crew and then you really shouldn’t die unless caught in disorder.

SHIP SKILLS:
If you are still afraid of dying in melee you can pick a ship with APN or WMB and fuse/inherit the other skill for a combined 260% defense, making you unkillable (eg, 160 crew ship will easily survive against 330 crew’s onslaught). Note that WMB only activates if you are on the receiving end of the melee battle. To be on the receiving end, you need to have lower crew ability than your opponent, and to do this you should dismiss your seasoned crew and hire noob sailors. Because WMB’s doubled defense is so damn game changing, those who wish to be a melee powerhouse (eg, MLA users) might still hire noob sailors (as shown in formula, will lower your melee attack) in an attempt to occupy the “receiving end of melee” position to deny their WMB-using opponent the double defense boost. Also note that if you are in a galley type ship with PEA your “benefot” of guaranteed first strike will inadvertently help WMB-using opponents get guaranteed skill activation, so PEA has been less popular for PvP builds (although it’s still an excellent choice on pirate builds). Another thing you should know is that if you or your enemy is in disorder then none of the melee ship skills will activate (same goes for melee college skills), which means you cannot justify getting PEA+RSM as a combination on your ship by saying “yeah I’ll disorder the opponent so they can’t activate WMB then I’ll use PEA to kill him fast” because your PEA also won’t work — during disorder I believe the non-disordered side gets doubled attack and defense while the disordered side gets halved attack and defense (and if it’s not double/half it’s still some substantial buff and debuff) without the usual ship/college skills’ stat mitigation.

BANE OF MELEE:
I think everyone knows this already but there exist something called Turtle Ships in this game that simply cannot be melee’d (100%l bounce off). There are also ships, such as the Augmented Research Frigate, that has the Evade Melee ship skill (roughly 70% chance of bouncing off). These ships existence is another reason why melee can only occupy a secondary role. The good thing though, is that these anti-melee ships are generally low in dura and thus somewhat balanced.
Grinding ain’t fun but you need to do lots of it in UWO. Sorry but that’s the hard truth. Hopefully this section can help make your grinding experience less tragic… 

GRINDING EVASION
Evasion is one of those skills that all maritimers must have, and is usually activated alongside cannon skills. Here’s how to rank it fast!
Imperial Quest: Wipe out the Caribbean pirates
Location: Santiago (take quest) -> East of Portobelo (fleets)
Method: Once the fight starts head towards the edge of the boarder (if you want to rank up some Mine Laying you can lay some mines on your way) while turning on Evasion. Once you approach the boarder you should slow your ship down (partially fold sails) for finer control and then turn (or “swing”) your ship so that you can stop/park at the very edge. Personally I think it’s worth the trouble of parking at a corner where at least your bow or stern is safe from critical shots (as shown in image below, enemy need to sail outside the border to shoot your stern). Once you are parked at the border (corner or not) you should pray that no (or perhaps just one) enemy is in position to critical shoot you, or else you will just need to sail forward along the edge and the enemies will follow and “shuffle” their positions. You will repeat this “shuffling” until you think you have enough enemies shooting at your broadside. Once in a while you might need to reset the quest if too many enemies lamely sail outside the border. Generally speaking it shouldn’t require too much luck for you to get a whole heap of enemies in the position you want them to be — then all that’s left to do is spam Repair (and maybe even Fire Fight and Rescue) while refreshing Evasion (and maybe Flame Shot Defense), and most important of all, find something to watch and have your right hand grab some popcorn while your left hand spam those skills. You should see your Evasion and Repair etc. rank extremely fast!
Image below: your ship is blue, enemies who can critical shoot you are red, enemies who will help you grind are green, enemies who are prevented from helping you grind are yellow.

GRINDING CANNON SKILLS
There isn’t a huge need to grind cannon skills as they should rank up while you grind maritime levels, but some people have acquired high levels via dungeons or deck battle and those players will have to equip Rapid Fire 16 (x5) and turn on Accuracy & Ballistics & Reload to shoot at fleets that repair quickly and are unlikely to die. The rationale behind this is that these skills get skill proficiency every time you shoot so you want to shoot frequently while not killing the enemy so you don’t have to sail around to find another shooting target. With Penetration you get skill proficiency by dealing lots of damage (minimum of skill rank -1 then x2 so at r10 you need to deal at least 18 damage), so you should rank the other three skills first, then once Accuracy and Ballistics are at a high enough level to help you deal lots of damage grind Penetration.

GRINDING LEADERSHIP
In the old days there was no reason to rank up Leadership as single use will always fix your disorder, but with RSM being so popular you do need higher rank Leadership to quickly cure yourself and allies from great disorder. You can either do this while grinding Survival, sitting idly outside port without food/water and wait for crew to go into mutiny then each use of Leadership will give you lots of skill proficiency. Or you can spam Wine and Dining to make your crew drunk and cure them using Leadership.

GRINDING STEERING
You get skill proficiency when the days spent at sea equals to your rank (eg, for r8, every 8 days spent at sea) and the amount of skill proficiency you get depends on the wave/current of the area you are sailing in. A recommended place to grind is at the southernmost area of South America, outside Ushuaia harbour, where wave/current is about 31.

GRINDING ROWING
You get skill proficiency every day spent rowing (not following others in fleet). At higher ranks (I believe >r6) you get only 1 skill proficiency per day, rounded down, meaning you shouldn’t pop boosters without event bonuses since x1.3/x1.5 will still end up as x1 skill proficiency. It’s a nightmarish long grind so you can consider doing it semi-afk by having only 1 sailor, sails mostly-folded, and equip heavy iron plates to have your ship row very slowly in safe waters, make sure you have loads of supplies and turn Caution on, then once in a while Rescue your single sailor who fainted due to fatigue.

GRINDING LEVELS
You need higher levels to sail good non-cash ships and even some cash ships (eg, HSFCV). Higher levels also give you more vigor and a little bit of bonus in melee. Here are some hot spots for grinding. Images are taken from the Taiwanese wiki and all the icons (stars, dots) stand for different fleets in each of the images.

Northern and Western Europe are excellent grinding spot for newbies, close to home (ie, no shortage of supplies, can go to Archives for Research Quest for extra exp).

India is ideal for players around lv35-52 but know that these NPCs often use rams (ie, destroys your equipments and lowers your max dura quickly) so try to stay away and perhaps grind cannon skills while you are at it.

These sections work well for lv52-58 (exp penalty at higher levels) but beware of pirates hunting traders in SEA.

Best place to grind for >lv55 since you have plenty of NPCs (ie, don’t need to waste time sailing around searching for them) almost everywhere, even in areas not marked on the map (eg, both left/right of Taiwan, area between Taiwan and Japan, southern shores of Korea). Also, these NPCs aren’t that strong yet give lots of exp. Only problem is you will face a lot of competition during events.

Also great for higher lv due to the massive amounts of exp given but NPCs here are strong and they rarely respawn unless you have 5 or more players in the area, when they do respawn a group of fleets spawn at the blue dots, rotating from one dot to the next.