Uncharted Waters Origin – Useful Tips and Tricks

Tips and Tricks

1. Five admirals are available for selection. The admiral you select determines origin country – notice the flag above the portrait – Joao (explore) for Purtugal, Catalina (pirate) for Spain, Ali (trade) for Ottoman, Otto (pirate) for England, Ernst (explore) for Netherlands. So if you choose trading admiral, you will be Ottoman, but if you have to be England, you must choose Otto, etc. Note: you can focus on exploring, trading, or pirating with any admiral, so there is not a bad choice. Typically peace (PvE) servers have high Ottoman population where normal (PvP) servers have high Spain or England (or other) populations. Later in the game you can hire other admirals – even more than the original five.
2. Some admirals might offer blue gems at character selection as an incentive to distribute players to different choices. You don’t have to take the blue gems, you will get a slow trickle of them as you complete accomplishments.
3. After following the tutorial, go to the harbor > supply > manage hold > set load ratio, then make water, food 10%, material and ammo 0%, trade goods 80%. Maximize your cargo hold! Trading from port to port is extremely important regardless of your focus.
4. Learn how to melee fight with all ships, challenge 1-3 will teach you how. That way you don’t have to carry ammo, increasing cargo hold. Also there is a chance to win ships if you don’t sink them – odds are super slim but possible. Feels like you get better loot? I dunno.
5. Follow the main quest line, lots of xp, money, and fun.
6. When you run out of quests, run union quests. You can also do sudden missions gained by using letters found in message bottles, but don’t do ones that are too far away. Especially important on PvP servers.
7. Do your daily, weekly and monthly quests. Daily tasks can be done in minutes but aren’t worth much. Weekly tasks are worth 330k ducats each, pay attention to reset to get as many done before reset as possible. Monthly tasks are worth 1.3M ducats each which is huge for starting admirals, get ’em done before reset – consider prioritizing them early?
8. Spend your ducats on mates – fill the cabins on all ships with mates of your focus. Get the D mates and work your way up as you gain money.
9. Also check the item store black market for B, A, and S items. Many times it’s the only way to get those items. Especially important on PvE servers.
10. Everything sold on the auction house costs red gems (real $).
11. Spend blue gems on an additional shipyard build space or two and union quest space if you end up doing those activities often – they are good for 5 or 7 days.
12. You get more ducats from longer hauls. Here’s my advice, stick around in a small area for a while to get a feel for trading. Purchasing goods in certain ports might cost 100k ducats, but in another port might cost 250k ducats. When you get an expensive load, that’s the load you take on a nice long voyage. For instance, Alexandria seems to have higher than normal loads – instead of taking it to Athens, take it to Constantiople, Odessa or Taganrog for a larger gain, then port-to-port trading on the way back. Consider increasing food and water when undergoing longer voyages.
13. Deal in specialities as much as possible – you get fame when trading them, and fame is the ultimate goal in UWO.
14. Do the challenges as they open up for you. Lots of learning and rewards.