Ahoy! Welcome to CC&C, a guide to everything you need to know about equipment in Windward:Horizon.

While I love this game, the system for gear, stats, and how it all interacts is not at all obvious and can be very confusing. I hope this guide enables you to understand what are right pieces of gear for your build and to learn how to obtain and improve equipment. May the wind be at your back as you sail the seas blowing pirates out of the water!



~Rejuvyn

Before diving into the details, there are several important mechanics to understand.

Every ship has a different layout of ideal gear slots. Some types of gear can only go in one slot type, others can go into a variety of slots. But these slots represent the "ideal" locations for different types of gear.



<Icon> = <Ideal Gear Type>

Main Ship:
Shield = Armor Plating
Crossed Cannons = Cannon
Sword = Crate
Box = Crate
Person = Crew
Sail = Sail

Top Deck:
Mortar = Mortar
Person = First Mate
Wheel = Captain

Some important information about these slots:

• If a piece of gear goes into the "ideal" slot (ie. a cannon going into a cannon slot), then its stats get a 10% boost (both positive and negative). Crates, Mortars, First Mates, and Captains do not get this bonus.
  
  
  
• Each ship has a different amount of each slot type. For example, a Bilander will have 4 cannon slots, while a Ship of the Line will have 8. This represents the expected number of that type of gear you should have on that ship, which I'll refer to as #slot_<gear>. So the #slot_cannon for the SotL is 8, and the #slot_armor for the SotL is 10.
  
  
• For balancing purposes, the #slots_<gear> determines what fraction of the gear's stats are actually applied and active. It's simply 100% divided by the #slots for that gear. So each cannon placed on the SotL will only have:
  
  100 / #slots_cannon = 100 / 8 = 12.5% of their stats active.
  
  This number shows up as 13% in the "active stats" section (more on this later) since the game tends to show rounded whole numbers. This means that each cannon added to the SotL will only have 12.5% of its stats active, regardless of how many cannons are equipped! You could have 2 cannons or 12 cannons equipped and each of them would only activate 12.5% of their stats.
  

Another confusing point about stats is that most pieces of gear (excluding Crates, First Mates, and Captains) also confer a hidden amount of "Core" stats, which varies depending on the ship. Gear will only confer these core stats if the amount of gear on the ship has not yet reached the #slots limit.

Example: Armor Plating will confer Hull and Armor even if the gear has no bonus stats on it, but only while there are less than #slots_armor (10) pieces of armor plating equipped on an SotL. Adding an 11th piece of armor plating to the SotL will only see impact from the stat bonuses listed on that piece of gear, it will not confer any additional "core" Hull or Armor.

This means that deviating from the recommended #slots needs to be considered carefully as you might be losing out on a large amount of core stats.

Here are the "core stats" that each type of gear provides:

• Armor Plating: Hull, Armor
  
• Cannons: Damage, Accuracy
  
• Crew: Repair, Haste, Diplomacy
  
• Sails: Luck, Mobility, Speed, Turning

Note that Diplomacy's core stats work a little differently from the others. It's affected by Crew, but not in the usual manner.
Finally, the Core Stats for Hull and Armor also scale to your Average Item Tier (more on this later).

Most gear will have some sort of "adjacency bonus" (or penalty) that helps guide you on what to place where. Some types of gear will always have static penalties for placing the same type of gear adjacent, listed in a later section.

There are two types of adjacency:

• Adjacent:
  Only affects gear directly above/below and left/right.
  
  
• Nearby:
  Affects any gear in the surrounding 8 slots.

There are a couple of important details about these adjacency bonuses:

• If the bonus/penalty says "per" adjacent gear, then the source gear is where the stat changes are applied. If it says "to" adjacent gear, then that adjacent gear is where the stat changes are applied.
  
  
• The bonus/penalty is subject to the affected gear's #slots active ratio. In our earlier example about how a cannon on a SotL only has 12.5% of its stats active, the same 12.5% applies to bonuses and penalties conferred from adjacent gear.
  
  
• The active bonus/penalty is only listed in the Active Stats section of the affected gear. It will be colored differently from the stats inherent to that piece of gear itself. Positive adjacency bonuses are in dark green, and negative adjacency penalties are in a dark red.
  
  
  
• Adjacency bonuses are additive with each other. So if one piece of gear has three neighboring pieces each granting a bonus to Hull, then those adjacency bonuses are first added together and then multiplied by the affected gear's #slots active ratio.

As mentioned earlier, when you mouse over equipped gear, you will see an "Active Stats" section. Similar to seeing the breakdown on the usual stats, the breakdown of the Active Stats can be shown by holding the Shift key as you mouse over that gear.


They are the end result of taking the gear's base stats, factoring in adjacency bonuses, and applying the #slots active ratio. There is a bug that if the gear doesn't have a certain stat as part of its stat bonuses, then the adjacency bonus also doesn't show up in the Active Stats section even if a neighboring piece of gear confers that stat. For example, an armor plating piece that only has +Armor and doesn't have any +Hull will only show Armor in the Active Stats, even if a neighboring Crate confers a +Hull adjacency bonus. The Hull bonus still applies, it just isn't shown.

When you drag a piece of gear over the slot you want to equip it in, you'll see the stat differences calculated out for you to the right. These stat differences are the changes in Active Stats and already factor in the impact from adjacency bonuses.



At the bottom of your loadout window (while not in port), you'll see two numbers listed.

The one on the left is your Average Item Tier, and the one on the right is your Combat Power.

Average Item Tier is simply the average of all the gear tier on your ship. It's primary importance is that you cannot join 4-skull co-op missions until your Average Item Tier is 6.0+.

The item tier list:

The tier is the number in parenthesis. The color shown is the color associated with that item tier.
An average tier of 7.0 means all the gear on your ship is Artifact tier.

Combat Power is a number that somehow factors in your ship, talents, stats, and item tiers and puts forth one number that is supposed to represent your ship's overall effectiveness. This number also impacts the likelyhood that you see 3-skull and 4-skull missions appear on the notice board. You also cannot join an ongoing co-op mission unless your Combat Power is at least half the host player's Combat Power.

Combat Power is heavily influenced by how high your "primary" stat is. If it's over 500% then your CP should be high enough to see 3s/4s missions. Odd builds that might not feature a high primary stat will end up with a much lower CP and consequently will see fewer 3s missions and no 4s missions on the notice board.

In this section, I'll go over each type of gear and list everything you need to know about it. For listed stats, if a value is not present then that means the stat is variable and can increase/decrease by item tier (explained in a later section).

Cannons will make auto-attacks (normal cannon shots) against any enemy in range, and are required to use the Volley skill.

Placement: Cannons can only be placed on the leftmost or rightmost columns (the sides of the ship) in any slot. They should NOT be placed adjacent to any other cannons due to heavy accuracy penalties. If a side of a ship has no cannons, it will not make auto-attacks and cannot use the Volley skill on that side. A cannon must have at least one adjacent (perpendicular) crew in order to operate.

Stats: Cannons bring Core Stats (see explanation in earlier section) of Damage and Accuracy. Cannons can have these stats:

• +Damage
  
• +Accuracy
  
  
• +5% Damage per adjacent Crew
  
• +5% Accuracy per adjacent Armor Plating
  
• +5% Crit Multiplier per adjacent Armor Plating
  
  
• -5% Damage per adjacent Crew
  
• -5% Damage per adjacent Armor Plating
  
  
• +Haste to adjacent Crew
  
• +Hull to adjacent Armor Plating
  
• +5% Armor to adjacent Armor Plating
  
• +5% Diplomacy to adjacent Crew
  
  
• -5% Hull to adjacent Armor Plating
  
• -5% Armor to adjacent Armor Plating
  
• -5% Diplomacy to adjacent Crew

EVERY Cannon has this:
-25% Accuracy per adjacent Cannon

Auto-Attacks: Equipped cannons will show a DPS, per-shot damage, and firing interval in the Active Stats section.

• The per-shot damage is affected by the amount of +Damage that goes to that specific cannon. +Damage from First Mates and Captains contribute to the per-shot damage of all cannons on the ship. The #slots_cannon active ratio is also applied to the per-shot damage, so cannons on a SotL will do less damage than the same cannons on a Bilander. There is also a per-shot damage penalty if the cannon has an adjacent crew who has to service more than one cannon (crew has more than one adjacent cannon).
  
  
• The firing interval is lowered primarily by having adjacent crew. If that crew has more than one adjacent cannon, the reduction in firing interval is not as good. Any +Haste going to a crew member servicing an adjacent cannon will also lower that specific cannon's firing interval. +Haste from First Mates, Captains, and skills (Half-Sail) contribute to the reduction of firing interval across all cannons.

Mousing over the total Damage stat will show the cumulative auto-attack DPS on each side of the ship.


Armor Plating adds Armor to that side of the ship. Armor not only takes the hits before attacks can damage the Hull, but it will also mitigate some of that damage. Armor will slowly repair itself mid-combat, unlike Hull, which only repairs itself out of combat without skill use.

Placement: Similar to Cannons, Armor Plating can only be placed on the leftmost or rightmost columns (the sides of the ship) in any slot. Armor Plating must have adjacent (any) Crew in order to be repaired. Any compartment on the side of a ship that isn't adjacent to Armor Plating will have all damage taken go directly to Hull. A side of the ship without any Armor Plating will have 0 Armor and ALL damage on that side of the ship will go directly to Hull.

Stats: Armor Plating bring Core Stats of Hull and Armor, both which scale with average item tier. Armor Plating can have these stats:

• +Hull
  
• +Armor
  
  
• -Hull
  
  
• +10% Hull per adjacent Armor Plating
  
  
• -10% Armor per adjacent Armor Plating
  
  
• +Accuracy to adjacent Cannon
  
• +Repair to adjacent Crew
  
• +Mobility to adjacent Sail
  
  
• -Accuracy to adjacent Cannon
  
• -Repair to adjacent Crew
  
• -Diplomacy to adjacent Crew

Armor Amount: Each equipped Armor Plating has an amount of Armor listed in Active Stats, which is affected by +Armor adjacency bonuses for that specific Armor Plating. +Armor from First Mates and Captains also affect this value.

The sum of all Armor values is scaled up based on average item tier.

Crew is necessary to operate adjacent Cannons and repair adjacent Armor Plating.

Placement: Crew can go in any slot except Sail slots. Crew adjacent to other Crew will suffer heavy penalties to Repair and Haste, but this is sometimes acceptable for certain builds.

Stats: Crew bring Core Stats of Repair, Haste, and Diplomacy. Crew can have these stats:

• +Repair
  
• +Diplomacy
  
• +Haste
  
  
• -Diplomacy
  
  
• +Damage to adjacent Cannon
  
• +Hull to adjacent Armor Plating
  
• +Armor to adjacent Armor Plating
  
• +Luck to adjacent Sail
  
• +Mobility to adjacent Sail
  
  
• -Accuracy to adjacent Cannon

EVERY Crew has this:
-25% Repair per adjacent Crew
-25% Haste per adjacent Crew

Crew Skills: Each Crew comes with 3 of 4 skills (3rd skill only available at artifact tier):

• Fishing
  
• Walk The Plank (salvage diving)
  
• Treasure Hunting (find hidden chests on some part of the map)
  
• Field Repairs (out of combat repairs)

These skills level up with use, and their level and progress are tied to the player, not the Crew item itself. Leveling up the skill makes them more effective and easier to perform.

Crates generally come in two visual flavors: Chests and Ammunition.

Placement: Crates can go in any slot except Sail slots. They never have any adjacency penalties, and other types of gear never penalize being next to Crates. Thus they make very flexible gear.

Stats: Crates bring no Core Stats, and don't get Ideal Slot bonuses. Crates have no inherent stat bonuses, are never the recipients of adjacency bonuses, and can only confer adjacency bonuses to other gear. Crates can have these stats:

• +Damage to adjacent Cannon
  
• +Accuracy to adjacent Cannon
  
• +Hull to adjacent Armor Plating
  
• +Armor to adjacent Armor Plating
  
• +Repair to adjacent Crew
  
• +Diplomacy to adjacent Crew
  
• +Haste to adjacent Crew

Sails are required for your ship to be able to move.

Placement: Sails can only go in Sail slots, and nothing else can go in Sail slots.

Stats: Sails bring Core Stats of Luck, Mobility, Speed, and Turning. Sails can have these stats:

• +Mobility
  
• +Luck
  
• +Speed
  
  
• -Speed
  
• -Turning
  
  
• +Hull to adjacent Armor Plating
  
• +Armor to adjacent Armor Plating
  
• +Diplomacy to adjacent Crew
  
  
• -Diplomacy to adjacent Crew

The Top Deck allows for only Mortars, First Mates, and Captains. There are no Ideal Slot bonuses for these and no adjacency bonuses or penalties.

Mortars are required for the Rampage, Explosive Barrel, Grogolov Cocktail, Water Barrel, and Fog Barrel skills.

Placement: Mortars can only go in Mortar slots, and nothing else can go in Mortar slots.

Stats: Mortars only have stats that directly affect Mortars, and the only Core Stat that Mortars give is Mortar Damage. For builds that don't have any Mortar-based skills, there is a specific Mortar that comes with a built-in Skill called "Chain Shot", which slows down targets.


Mortars can have these stats:

• +Mortar Damage
  
• +Mortar Reload
  
• +Mortar Range
  
• +Hull Repair (Water Barrel)
  
• +Repair (Water Barrel)
  
• +Extra Mortar Projectiles
  
• +Extra Water Projectiles
  
• +Sticky Grog Chance
  
  
• -Mortar Reload
  
• -Extra Mortar Projectiles
  
• -Extra Water Projectiles
  
• -Sticky Grog Chance
  
  
• +25% Crit Chance (Mortar)
  
• +15% Hull Repair (Water Barrel)
  
• +15% Repair over Time (Water Barrel)
  
• +200% Extra Mortar Projectiles
  
• +200% Extra Water Projectiles
  
• +100% Sticky Grog Chance
  
  
• -25% Repair (Water Barrel)
  
• -50% Repair (Water Barrel)

First Mates grant the ability to stack buffs or inflict debuffs on enemies. Their stats can impact gear all over the ship, such as any equipped Cannons and Armor Plating.

Placement: First Mates can go in both First Mate and Captain slots.

Stats: First Mates don't add Core Stats. They have no adjacency bonus interactions.
First Mates can increase or decrease all the major stats: Damage, Accuracy, Luck, Hull, Armor, Repair, Diplomacy, Haste, Mobility. Aren clarified that the top deck is multiplicative with the bottom deck, the math is not additive.

Buffs & Debuffs: Each First Mate can bring 3 buff/debuff abilities. You can extract an ability from a First Mate and give it to a different First Mate so long as they are within 2 item tier levels of each other. Doing so requires that you choose an ability to overwrite on the receiving First Mate, and the First Mate that the ability was extracted from is destroyed.

Abilities can trigger in 7 ways. Note that the same buff/debuff will stack with each other even if it's from different triggers, but the duration will only refresh to the last proc's duration. If you have two of the same ability on different First Mates, then the proc chance is doubled.

• Shooting Cannons: Can trigger upon your cannons doing an auto-attack. All these abilities trigger off a 5% chance. Note that cannons firing at the same time are combined into a single attack with a 5% chance, the proc chance is not cumulative.
  
  
  
• Cannon Hits: Similar to Shooting Cannons, these apply debuffs to the target hit by auto-attacks. Proc chance is also 5%.
  
  
  
• Mortar Hits: Mortar hits have a 100% proc rate, and the debuffs have slightly longer duration in general.
  
  
  
• Water Barrel Hits: Similar to Mortars, Water Barrel Hits have a 100% proc rate.
  
  
  
• Receiving Cannon Damage: Proc chance is usually 5%. Only procs off enemy auto-attack damage.
  
  
  
• Enemies Dealing Cannon Damage: Very similar to Receiving Cannon Damage, except it's a debuff on the enemy who shot you. Only one ability triggers off this.
  
  
  
• Entering Combat: These buffs usually have longer durations at 20 seconds. They can stack with the same buff triggered from shooting cannons, but these stacks don't refresh the 20s duration. Instead they will only refresh up to 8 seconds. Having the same ability on two different First Mates means you start combat with 2 stacks of that buff.
  
  
  
• Leaving Combat: Only one ability triggers off this condition.
  

Captains come with skills that the player can activate. Like First Mates, their stats can impact gear all over the ship.

Placement: Captains can only go in the Captain slot. There is only ever a single Captain slot.

Stats: Similar to First Mates, the Captain overall stats are multiplicative with the bottom deck, the math is not additive.
Captains can also increase or decrease all the major stats: Damage, Accuracy, Luck, Hull, Armor, Repair, Diplomacy, Haste, Mobility.

Skills: The Captain can bring 3 skills, but the 3rd skill is only unlocked upon reaching artifact tier (you can see the 3rd skill when holding Shift and mousing over the Captain). The same way that First Mates can transfer abilities, you can extract a skill from a Captain and give it to a different Captain so long as they are within 2 item tier levels of each other. Doing so requires that you choose a skill to overwrite on the receiving Captain, and the Captain that the skill was extracted from is destroyed.
Captains gain exp every time their skills are used, so they level up item tiers very rapidly.

Captain Skills:

Almost all gear has a little icon in the upper left corner that helps guide you on which pieces of gear might be suitable for your build. The icons are there for an at-a-glance determination of what the stats are, so that you don't have to mouse over every single piece of gear when browsing shops, your personal vault, or your inventory.

• The icon color will match the gear's tier color.
  
  
• Not every icon is present for every type of gear.
  
  
• Some gear have the same icon and same stats, but have a different name.
  Examples: Brutish Crew / Stubborn Crew, Braided Sail / Extended Sail
  
  
• Some gear have the same icon, but different stats.
  Examples: Famous Captain / Furious Captain, Innovative Cannon / Lucky Cannon
  
  
• If there is no icon, then it's a "Balanced" or "Standard" type, which has positive stats that work for a variety of different builds and no penalties.
  
  
• The "material" that the gear is made of is just for flavor and has no bearing on its icon or stats.
  
  
• You can change the icon on equipped gear by right-clicking it and selecting a different icon from a drop-down menu.
  
  
• The stats that each icon seem to represent are not totally consistent, but there are some general trends mentioned below.

Icons and the Builds they support:

• Shield - Tank build focusing on Armor, Repair, Damage
  
• Shield w/Cross - Support/Water Barrel build focusing on Hull, Armor, Diplomacy
  
• Explosion - Cannon/Volley build focusing on Damage, Accuracy, Haste
  
• Flame - Mortar/Grogolov build focusing on Diplomacy, Haste
  
• Ram - Ramming build focusing on Hull, Mobility, Repair
  
• Buzzsaw - Rampage build focusing on Damage, Accuracy
  
• Healing Symbols - Water Barrel build, only appears on Mortars and First Mates

Holding Shift while mousing over gear will reveal the breakdown of the numbers. These numbers are very confusing, so I'll explain what they are in this section.

There are only two numbers in the item's header.


The number next to the cog is the total amount of stats conferred by this piece of gear, including adjacency bonuses/penalties. It does NOT include the same-type-adjacency penalties that are standard to every piece of gear of that type. As it goes up in tier level, that number will go up with the increase in stats.

The number in parenthesis to the right of the quality label is the item tier level. The example shown is a tier 5 Crew.

This is a snapshot of a Crew item's Base Stats at tier 5:


As mentioned before, the -25% Repair/Haste to adjacent Crew is a static number on every Crew. Let's take a look at the first and third stats, which are +Repair and -Diplomacy.

^ 4.5% + 38% ( +7.5%) Repair
v 2% - 50% ( -10%) Diplomacy

The preceding green up arrow or red down arrow indicates if this stat increases or decreases with tier levels 1-5. The rest of the numbers can be labelled as such:

^ <base> + <tier sum> ( <per tier>) Repair
v <base> + <tier sum> ( <per tier>) Diplomacy

--------------------------------------------------
<base>
This value represents the random amount the item starts with from tier 0 to tier 5. It can be positive or negative, and the maximum value it can generate is +/- (2.5 * <per tier>). In our specific Repair example, the <per tier> value is 7.5%. Therefore, the highest value this can roll is (2.5 * 7.5) = +18.75%, and the lowest value it can roll is -18.75%. Note that the game tends to display whole numbers, so this might show up as +/- 19%. Diplomacy's <per tier> value is 10%, so its <base> can roll as high as +25% and as low as -25%. The probability of rolling the extremes is quite low, as numbers closer to 0 have a higher probability of rolling.

What about tier 6 and 7? I noted that the above applies to tier 5 and below, because at tier 6, the <base> gets the absolute value of <per tier> added to it! The stat always increases by the absolute value of the <per tier> amount, even if the <per tier> value is negative. The same thing happens at tier 7, the <base> value goes up by the absolute value of <per tier>. Therefore, going from tier 5 to tier 7, the <base> value will increase by 2 * abs(<per tier>).

In our Repair example, if this tier 5 item were to level up to tier 7, then <base> should go from 4.5% to (4.5 + 2*7.5) = 19.5%. However, <base> is capped at 2.5x the amount of <per tier>, so in our example the Repair stat will only go to +18.75% and no higher. Diplomacy's <base> will increase by 20%, so its value will end up at 22%, which is below the (2.5 * <per tier>) cap of 25%.

Once an item is artifact tier, you can still grow each <base> value for all stats to its maximum cap of (2.5 * <per tier>) amount. More information on this is in the Leveling Up Gear section.

Finally, for gear that is already at artifact tier when found (drop from PK, reward from mission), their <base> for all stats is automatically set to (0% + 2 * <per tier>). Artifacts purchased from a town shop tend to have slightly lower <base> stats than found artifacts.

<tier sum>
This value is always the tier level multiplied by <per tier>, but only up to a tier level of 5. That means at tier 6 and tier 7, the <tier sum> remains at (5 * <per tier>). If <per tier> is a negative number, then <tier sum> will also be negative (subracted from <base>).

In our Repair example, <per tier> is 7.5% and the tier level is 5, so our <tier sum> is (5 * 7.5) = 37.5%. Because the game likes to show whole numbers, this is displayed as 38%. For Diplomacy, the <tier sum> is (5 * -10) = -50%. Both these values would remain unchanged if the item were to level to tier 6 and 7.

Let's say this item wasn't at tier 5, and was at tier 3 instead. Then Repair's <tier sum> would be at (3 * <per tier>) = (3 * 7.5) = 22.5%, and Diplomacy would be (3 * -10) = -30%.

<per tier>
It should be obvious by now that the <per tier> is simply the amount that <tier sum> goes up or down by for every tier level up to tier 5, and the absolute value of <per tier> is added to <base> for tier 6 and 7. Remember that the highest amount that <base> can grow to is the absolute value of (2.5 * <per tier>).
--------------------------------------------------

Here is the same Crew item at tier 7 with all stats fully maxed out:


The most common <per tier> values are 5% and 10%. Here is a list of all maximum <base> values that can be achieved.

<per tier absolute value>: <maximum base cap>

• 2.5%: 6.25%
  
• 5%: 12.5% (shown as 13%)
  
• 7.5%: 18.75% (shown as 19%)
  
• 10%: 25%

As mentioned before, Active Stats are the real stats that get applied after ideal slot bonus, adjacency bonuses/penalties, and #slot ratio are factored in. Let's use the same tier 5 Crew item from before and check the math on Repair and Diplomacy.



Note that only this item's active stats are shown. All the adjacency bonuses that it conferred to other pieces of gear can be seen on the affected gear. I'm also using the precise decimal values where possible because those are what are used in calculations, even if the displayed number is a whole number.

--------------------------------------------------
Adjacency Bonus:
The sum of all Repair bonuses granted to this Crew from adjacent gear:
(37.5 + 37.5) [2x crates] + (37.5 + 35 + 37.5) [3x armor plating] = 185%

The sum of all Diplomacy bonuses granted to this Crew from adjacent gear:
-12.5% [sail]

Repair: 185% * 0.125 [#slot ratio] * 1.1 [ideal slot boost] = 25.4% (shown as 25%)
Diplomacy: -12.5% * 0.125 [#slot ratio] * 1.1 [ideal slot boost] = -1.72%

So the adjacency bonus/penalty numbers check out.

<per tier>:
The displayed <per tier> number doesn't account for the ideal slot boost.

Repair: 7.5% * 0.125 [#slot ratio] = 0.94%
Diplomacy: -10% * 0.125 [#slot ratio] = -1.25%

tier sum
Similarly, <tier sum> does not seem to account for ideal slot boost. This is factored in later. Note that the ideal slot boost for Diplomacy is negative, meaning the "boosted by 10%" increases the penalty of negative <tier sum> values.

Repair: 37.5% * 0.125 [#slot ratio] = 4.69%
Repair <tier sum ideal slot boost>: 0.46875%

Diplomacy: -50% * 0.125 [#slot ratio] = -6.25%
Diplomacy <tier sum ideal slot boost>: -0.625%

<base>:
Here, we see the ideal slot boost from the <tier sum> is factored into <base>.

Repair: 4.5% * 0.125 [#slot ratio] * 1.1 [ideal slot boost] = 0.61875%
Repair: 0.61875% + 0.46875% [tier sum ideal slot boost] = 1.09%

Diplomacy: 2% * 0.125 [#slot ratio] * 1.1 [ideal slot boost] = 0.275%
Diplomacy: 0.275% - 0.625% [tier sum ideal slot boost] = -0.35%
--------------------------------------------------

All the numbers check out.

Here are the Active Stats of the full maxed tier 7 Crew:


The only anomaly is that the Repair adjacency bonus shows as 26% instead of 25%. I took the snapshot of the fully maxed Crew with the same adjacent gear, so it should have been the same value. But note that the actual bonus was 25.4%, so some rounding in the numbers used in calculating the full adjacency bonus might have caused this to shift up by 0.1%, making it display 26% (rounded up from 25.5%).

This section will talk about the numbers and methods involved in leveling up gear. When possible, I will mention differences between the default settings and what the official public server settings are.

The first thing to note is that your gear doesn't start accruing experience until your ship is at level 30. Once it hits level 30, any time you get an amount of exp over 50, that exp goes into your gear. If ANY of your gear is below tier 7, then the exp goes to a random piece of gear that is not tier 7.

The exp you receive must be over 50 to go to your gear. If the exp amount exceeds 5,000 (such as during 4s PK kills), then only 5,000 exp goes to your gear.

Once all your gear on the ship is artifact tier (tier 7), then exp gained goes into increasing <base> stats with the same rules (minimum 50 exp, cap of 5,000 exp). The stat increase is immediate, and happens on a random non-maxed stat on a random piece of gear.

Here are the amounts of exp needed per item tier.

Default settings
Tier 1: 5,000
Tier 2: 12,500
Tier 3: 25,000
Tier 4: 50,000
Tier 5: 100,000
Tier 6: 150,000
Tier 7: 200,000

Official Public Server settings (as of Sept 2025)
Tier 1: 2,500
Tier 2: 6,250
Tier 3: 12,500
Tier 4: 25,000
Tier 5: 50,000
Tier 6: 75,000
Tier 7: 100,000

Even on the official server settings, it's a lot of exp to grind. A ship like the SotL has many more pieces of gear than smaller ships, and leveling every item to artifact is much slower than obtaining artifact gear from 4s PKs. Note that Captains gain exp when their skills are used, so they tend to level up far faster in order to unlock their 3rd skill.

Increasing the stats on artifact gear is much faster than leveling up item tier. Each 1% increase of a stat requires 2,000 exp, but most items don't have more than 3-5 stats that can increase.

Remember that a "natural" artifact (one obtained from PK drops or mission rewards) always has <base> of (2 * <per tier>). Since the cap on <base> is (2.5 * <per tier>), natural artifacts only need each of their stats increased by (0.5 * <per tier>).

Let's take the same Crew that we looked at before and do the math. This Crew has a lot of different stats, so compared to other gear it will take longer to max out. Here are the <per tier> absolute values for all of its stats:

• Repair: 7.5%
  
• Haste: 7.5%
  
• Diplomacy: 10%
  
• Accuracy to adjacent Cannon: 5%
  
• Hull to adjacent Armor Plating: 5%
  
• Armor to adjacent Armor Plating: 5%
  
• Mobility to Sail: 5%

Assuming we start from a natural artifact, we would need 0.5 times the sum of all the <per tier> to see the total amount of stats we need to increase.
0.5 * (7.5+7.5+10+5+5+5+5) = 0.5 * 45 = 22.5%

Since each 1% requires 2,000 exp, 22.5% would need (22.5 * 2000) = 45,000 exp.

So maxing out stats on a natural artifact version of this Crew is far faster than leveling it up from tier 6 to tier 7.

The fastest way to quickly accumulate experience for your gear is to first focus on increasing reputation with all factions to 10k. This is the threshold needed in order to start at a port when you zone in to a Province, and also to exit directly to the World Map (after 20 seconds have elapsed).

Once you're able to effectively teleport in and out of all Provinces without need to spend time sailing into port, then Courier missions become your bread and butter in fast exp grind. Each Province destination in a Courier mission confers around 600-700 exp. As you go from Province to Province, you keep picking up more Courier missions so that you start having multiple Courier missions going to the same Provinces. Try to keep the Courier missions confined to a high concentration of Provinces in an open area so you're not sailing around huge land masses and wasting time in transit.


To make this even faster, you can bind the "Leave" button to "1", which is also the World Map menu selection when leaving. Bind "Enter Port" to spacebar, and all the leaving, entering, and mission turn-ins can be done by pressing two buttons without moving your mouse.

Time spent on the World Map generally takes around 15 seconds, and you have a 20 second window when you first zone in to turn in missions, sell rewards, and pick up any new Courier missions. Add in 5 seconds for loading, and you're looking at around 40-45 seconds for each Province hop. If you can stack Courier missions so that each Province is the destination for an average of 1.5 Courier missions, then you're looking at around 1,250 exp/minute.

This method allowed me to rapidly boost my non-artifact SotL gear to tier 7 and then max out all the stats on every piece. I would still recommend running 4s to find artifact gear, but running Courier missions also drastically increases your funds and allows purchasing of certain choice artifact gear when you find it in the shops.

While unlocking the various end-game ships, keep an eye out for regular missions on the Notice Board at each Province you visit. Sometimes they offer decent gear as a reward. You should aim to collect mostly tier 4 and tier 5 gear with the right stats for your eventual build/ship for a strong start.

Purchasing gear is an option, but anything above tier 4 is likely too expensive for your limited funds. Tier 5 tends to run around 300k, tier 6 costs around 800k, and tier 7 goes for 3.3M a pop.

Eventually you'll start running 3-skull co-op missions for the guaranteed tier 6 drops and mission rewards. Any decent tier 4 gear can be easily leveled to tier 5. If you have especially strong rolls on any tier 5 gear, it could be worth taking the time to level it to tier 6, but it's a long and tedious grind. Start collecting tier 5 First Mates and Captains that have the right abilities/skills that you want so you can transfer them to your "final" Top Deck selections.

You can tell who is what at a glance because captains usually have fancy hats, while first mates do not.

As soon as you feel strong enough (very build-dependent), start joining 4s missions so you can begin accumulating artifact gear.

4s runs are your bread and butter to obtaining artifact tier gear, because even in the endgame, 3.3M to buy one from the shop is a very hefty chunk of gold. For less common gear I would consider putting down the money, but for the standard stuff just be patient and kill every 4s PK while rubbing a rabbit's foot. I would not level gear from tier 6 to 7 unless you just absolutely cannot find an artifact piece for it and it's got decent base rolls.


With enough money to make purchases, a lvl 20 Province that has numerous high level towns can effectively serve as a shopping mall. You can select a town as your "spawn point", then simply swap to a different ship and teleport to the selected town instantly. You could check the available inventory of quite a few towns in a very short amount of time using this trick.


Certain types of gear will appear more frequently than others, both in terms of drops from NPCs/PKs, and what shows up in the shops. Aren has stated that the item frequency weightings scale to your ship - the more slots you have of a certain type, the more you'll find of that type of item. Here are the rough overall weightings (info courtesy of Seph):

• Armor Plating: 1.0
  
• Cannons: 1.0
  
• Crew: 0.5
  
• Crates: 0.25
  
• Sails: 0.25
  
• Mortars: 0.2
  
• First Mates: 0.2
  
• Captains: 0.1

I hope you've found this guide to be both thorough and helpful! Please let me know if there are any mistakes or information that might be useful to add in, or if anything wasn't explained clearly enough.

May your cannonballs fly true and the wind be ever at your back!

~Rejuvyn