Hit 31 sailing

Based on GE prices for levels 1-60 shipbuilding materials, I’m assuming a lot of people are preparing for the new island like me.

I just hit level 31 and I have some feedback/suggestions on early training that I think can help future sailors. I’ll try to keep this as concise as possible but feel free to ask/comment on anything.

Keep in mind this is for early levels because I’ve heard that it all gets much easier down the road.

1. Courier tasks: Overall fun. 7.5/10. Two things I’d recommend here.

If a player forgets a box at the port (when qty > 1), they should get a message when they take the helm letting them know. Not so different from the message players get when they forget to grab cargo from the ship. It happened to me a few times and that alone cost me hours of double work. It felt like work the second trip around (zero enjoyment at an early level is horrible), which was definitely the worst part.

Accepted Task info should be visible from the sailing interface. This is a pretty straightforward UI upgrade. Just a button that says Accepted Tasks that you can click to view origin, destination, and cargo. If I was an actual shipper I’d have a manifest (oh that’s what you can call it!).

2. Shipbuilding: Needs work. 5/10. Very unrewarding at early levels.

After the “aha” moment of discovering sailing wears off, the #1 turn off for early levels is how slow you move. So naturally you look to upgrade your boat. But in the first ~10 hours of training sailing, all the way to level 31, your only real upgrades are the iron helm and oak mast, neither of which improve speed. All the upgrades prior to 31 that give you HP and armor feel pointless, because you don’t really enter combat situations.

The other issue here is that, again at low levels, the process to shipbuild itself is quite tedious. The normal path is GE to purchase raw materials -> craft materials at bench/anvil x2 (bank run)-> tele to Draynor -> craft materials at Sarim shipbuilding bench x2 (bank run) -> enter shipyard -> upgrade boat. The whole process is brutally unrewarding.

After hitting 31 I am looking forward to trials and hoping they are less tedious and/or more rewarding. So far this just feels like training construction. Hitting a level just to meet a quest (in this case island) req.