L2P - Naval Officer Leveling Guide

[Candice Wales]

Update: Updated for PnP.

This guide is designed to help new Naval Officer players that are leveling up. When I level, I generally play through the missions solo and do very little grouping or fleet grinding or other power leveling. Additionally, I prefer to get through the missions as fast as possible. I would rather get through a mission in 4 minutes looking a little worse for wear than breezing through it in 5 minutes. The skills and boats chosen below are a reflection of that.

This guide also only focuses on Naval Officer skills and boats. Av Comm, where to go, and what missions to do or not do are outside the scope of this.

Update: You this site to check out your skills.

http://www.gumworm.com/index.php?id=188

You can put the codes in the skill code section to populate the skills.

Things you will need:

A Shipbuilder or reliable source of boats.
A reliable source of reasonably priced outfitting.
Heavy Round
Star Shot
Canister Shot

At level 1 you are given a default boat, which should be good enough until level 12. Don’t worry if the boat sinks, you get another for free. If you are having trouble stretching the boat until level 12, you can enhance it with speed sails, grappling or wadding guns, and streamlined or armor hulls depending on where you need the most help. New versions of these are available at level 5 and 10.

When leveling, the very first skill you should get, in all cases, is the free career repair skill. For Naval Officers, this means 2 in Defense. After that, start getting the Gunnery line. Your skill tree should look like this at level 13.

Gunworm skill code: 20000050

At level 12, you can upgrade to the Van Hoorn Snow. Some people really like sloops at this level, but this is why I don’t.

• Warships have better guns than sloops. (Kill stuff faster)
• Sloops are best point 90 ships and missions are designed for 135 ships. The missions generally point you in a downwind direction as the way they want you to sail. Sloops are sailing into yellow wind at 180 and it is slow, slow, slow. Doing a Run to the Town mission in a sloop always makes me want to destroy computer equipment.

Once you are using boats you paid for, put outfitting on them if you can afford it. It greatly improves the performance of the boat and will get you through missions faster.

At lvl 12 you can put:

1x Small Speed Rig 3
1x Small Nimble Rig 3
2x Small Grappling Cannon 3
1x Small Streamlined Hulls 3
1x Small Armor Planking 3

There are upgrades to these at lvl 15 and lvl 20. Destroy your old outfitting and get the newer versions when they are available. Why grappling cannons? Because it’s faster. Small boats don’t do a lot of damage and there are a lot of stubborn NPCs that don’t like to abandon ship. Just rageboard them, you get better loot anyway.

You can sail the van Hoorn to the mid 20s. The speed mods should have you zipping around pretty good and we will pick up some skills to help us out there too. In ship combat missions, I usually use crew focus gunnery, damage discipline, and defender resist. Then use spikes with any remaining morale (Precision Fire, vital strike, dominate, rapid shot, etc). You can briefly turn off defender resist if you need a little extra morale for a spike.

For skills, take the escort line. It won’t make you much rougher or tougher, but you should be flying through some missions. Level 24 skill tree:

Gunworm skill code: 20000550

At level 24, you can get the Locust MC. Stat for stat, I think this is the most overpowered ship in the game. Some like the MC versions of the sloop, but I find the firepower lacking. Some like the truer warships like the Lexington or the Posti, but they accel for crap. The Locust MC is the right balance for getting through missions.

You get a new set of outfitting available at 25, so you can throw these on there 1 level after you get the boat.

2x Medium Speed Rig 4
2x Medium Wadding 4 or Raiders Guns 4
2x Medium Armor Planking 4

(Or use 1 speed rig, 1 nimble, 1 armor planking, 1 streamlined hull if you want to give up some armor for more turning. Hopefully you can start figuring out where your boats need the most help based on your playstyle.)

These boats start getting enough firepower that it’s not so bad to mow through the stubborn NPC holdouts. If you can throw an Engineered Structure 1, Cantonese Powder 1, and Overloaded Cannons 1 (or maybe one of the career reward cannons) in the general slots, it will feel like you’re cheating it’s so easy.

You can sail this boat to the mid 30s. Pick up 2 more in Defense and 3 in Dominance for some better speed and damage. Level 33 spec:

Gunworm skill code: 40003550

At 33, get the Straulsand MC. The Raa is the natural progression of the Locust, but you will be sailing this boat to 50, so you might as well get used to warships. It moves like a pig, but it hits like a train and could withstand a barrage from Joel’s Mom.

2x Large Runners Rigs (you can use the green mods for this right out the gate and this is worth it)
2x Large Wadding
2x Large Armor Planking

For skills, continue to get more spikes for your arsenal. The Desperation and Dominance lines are both good for that. 1 point in Prestige wouldn’t hurt either and you get the bonus of being able to taunt the inferior classes from your pedestal known as the Conquest Channel.

Happy sailing and I hope you enjoy my favorite class!

~Candice

[SkttLes]

What? Discipline and the entire Escort line before even getting Fortress?

[Candice Wales]

Yeah. Remember this is just for leveling though.

If you are going to run fortress, you usually also have on crew focus gunnery, damage discipline, and defender resist, which only leaves 25 morale left. You can only spike with vital strike at that point, which leaves you fairly limited. If you need that kind of protection in a mission though you're probably going about it wrong anyway.

The majority of the missions should just be crew focus gunnery, damage discipline, and reload discipline. Turn on auto-fire, collect loot, and repeat.

[Effreem]

Originally Posted by Candice Wales Yeah. Remember this is just for leveling though. If you are going to run fortress, you usually also have on crew focus gunnery, damage discipline, and defender resist, which only leaves 25 morale left. You can only spike with vital strike at that point, which leaves you fairly limited. If you need that kind of protection in a mission though you're probably going about it wrong anyway. The majority of the missions should just be crew focus gunnery, damage discipline, and reload discipline. Turn on auto-fire, collect loot, and repeat.

When I was leveling I ran +moral general to give me enough morale for 30 morale spike skills. It helped alot.

Edit: Also for gun mods on the straul...I recommend Perfected Guns, the accuracy helps at ranges you will be fighting groups of enemies. The straul is a longer range ship compared to the Raa. If you want to get right up next to a bad guy, the Raa is going to win however it is quite a bit weaker (armor) than the straul. Both work, choose which ever you prefer.