Hello!
Can any carrack enjoyers advice me is it really worth it to start this upgrade, and how exactly its worth it?

At this moment I'm sailing at caramel with +10 green gear, my CP are 0/426 and I dont think I can redistribute for Epheria part workshop so I need to get those 12 or so CP first, and it will be a lot of cooking.

I also have all my storages full and cant sell lodging to buy storage, I also dont want to buy storage at Pearl Shop.

Then them materials for upgrade gear and ship itself...

I watched some and read some and still cant keep the entire picture in my head, there are so many of everything.

So the questions are probably like this:

- I dont like going into open ocean where there's no map because I dont like being lost and I dont like grind dailies for compass, can I still get yellow-grade mats somehow?

- I cant hoard L3-L5 barter goods because I have no storage, this means Ship Mat Refresh is not a good option;

- I dont like the idea of 6+ months bartering into Crow Coins, because I spend time and silver and earn nothing in return;

I'm not sure if this investment will pay off because looking at how sea autopath works I may not like this activity at all so I would rather not even start.

I also noticed quite frequently passing by carracks try to shoot at my caramel, should I be aware of sea PK'ers? if they kill me at sea - could I revive my ship just like we do with killed horses?
Thanks in advance!

If you haven't bartered a bit yet and you don't know if that's something you'd enjoy, I would hold off on trying to make a carrack.  It's a lot of work for something you are not sure you will enjoy.

I remember when I was working for mine, the minute I got it, I stopped bartering for almost a year.  Then I went back to bartering sailing and now I have a second carrack and am working on blue parts.

One thing you could do is put an alt at Oquilla's Eye and hop on sailies groups when you can. They recently changed the sailies, so it's easier to get those mats.

But it's really only worth going through the trouble if you enjoy the content.

As for other ships, if they are flagged, they can sink you, and that can cause your sailors to get sick and I think you can lose some of the barter items you are carrying. But the whole ship will be flashing red if they are flagged.

Sometimes people just shoot volleys at you for fun and it doesn't do anything.  You can also hear the cannons when they are shooting sea monsters near you. That used to startle me quite a bit.

Thanks for input.

Speaking about "enjoying the content", I can see several aspects in bartering/sailing I can enjoy:

- almost no competition for "spots";

- CM tax avoidance;

- not crowded areas = my CPU/GPU not overheating;

- semi-afk = can work at the same time;

- almost no gear needed, almost no enhancing, and I hate enhancing;

- guides promise ~500M/day, I think its achievable and acceptable;

With that being said, I think can turn blind eye on disadvantages like "sub optimal" autopathing that looks like this : / \ / \ / \ / \ while there is straight line between two points.

One other thing to note is that they are planning on making carracks available on the CM.  I don't know if that's a one way only thing (build-sell), or whether someone can sell their 'used' carrack.  

The way that you've described your situation, I would not recommend the ocean life for you.  To get to some sort of decent income level you are going to have to have storage space available, specifically on Iliya.  

It also depends on what else you want to do in game.  To do the level of bartering that you describe can take up most of your game time, afk or not.

GPU/CPU load: ocean content has moderately higher requriements than land.  It's all that dynamic water and sailing movement.

You can do some ocean along with everything else, but you won't be getting the level of silver you are thinking of.

As for CP, that will slowly come anyway.  And you don't immediately need blue gear anyway.  Just another thing that you'd work toward.

Disclosure: I'm fairly new at this myself (got carrack a few months ago, not quite +10 blue gear), so the rookie experience is still more or less fresh.  And I know several players at different points in their bartering careers (still working on it, to guru), so I have some sense of their play style too.  For a few months while going for the carrack itself I was doing 3-4 refreshes per day.  As that was all I was doing at that point, it was difficult to shift back into other game activities.  If I hadn't, I probably would have been wealthier, but also would no longer be doing other things that I like.  So now I have been doing 1 refresh a day, and that still takes up the majority of my active play time.  Mostly just keeping up on sailies, and working towards +10 blue gear.  I have been mostly focused on coin barters, probably will keep that up for a while.

I saved up all the mats, pulled a bunch of workers off nodes and just stopped their gathering for a day.  After I crafted all the boat gear, I sold the shops and rebought the nodes things were on.  Not ideal, but it is an option.

At this moment my problems with sea "content" is mainly with inconveniences I still havent learned to overcome or use properly:

- cant move camera away far enough, always see my ship close-up while I need to see what surrounds me - this affects combat drastically, because >>

- cant figure out how far cannonballs will fly when I shoot, I just aim at sea monster "approximately" because I cant see it on my screen because I cant move camera far away;

- autopath is terrible, algorythm calculates path "around" while there is straight line between two points;

- hidden rocks underwater ship can "stuck" in while autopathing;

- aim and ship are displaced - aim is to the right while ship leaning to the left, so where exactly I will move - where ship's figurehead is aiming or where the aim is pointing?

TBH, the "sea content" needs much, much more love and work. Wonder what it been before "rework", probably just empty ocean, just like desert, no players, dead zone...

There's a lot to unpack here.

Are you using Q or E to switch to cannon sides? The camera angle is set when firing from this mode as well as keeps the cannon fire angle animation up before firing. Otherwise, you need to hold your mouse down to see it the fire angle which will then cause you to aim further away the longer you hold the button down. Or get really close to a sea monster and tap the attack button.

You can make your own paths by bringing up the world map, use RMB to set a plot point and hold L.ALT to set multiples without removing a previous point.

Actually never run into that personally and they've removed places that did cause that. You might want to open a ticket if you'd like to see more problematic spots removed.

You fire your cannons according to their sides. I don't understand this statement at all. Either way, Q and E solves this issue, where WSAD controls your ship and mouse movement controls your cannon aim (if you are running realistic sailors and have a large angle).

Rework? Uhh, you mean before carracks? No, it was pretty alive and had a lot more naval PvP. There was no sea karma and payout from doing SMH was on par with combat grinding. That's why it got nerfed into the ground and still hasn't recovered (and probably never will).

If you actually want to get into sailing or bartering, pausing cooking is worth it as cooking will never allow you to break once you start doing it as your main thing. The workshop's purpose is filfilled once you have the ship completed, so you recoup the contribution as soon as you are done with it.

If you're unwilling to sacrifice the CP for the term it takes to build a ship, then don't get into sailing or start fitting contribution quests into your daily routine.

You only need storage for bartering items if you plan on bartering. While it's not required to make a carrack, it's the easiest and laziest solution and it is required for gear upgrades.

You can get yellow grade materials in the shallow seas.

Yes, a ship is an investment, not an immediate pay-off.

Yes, you can use tears of the wind on carracks. There aren't as many pirates as there used to be, but they exist. If you enter someone's grinding zone, there's a good chance they will flag up (mainly crocs, pirates and lek areas).

Honestly, looking at what you've said in the previous post that I answered and combine it with this one, sailing and bartering are not for you. You are unwilling to make storage space for bartering and sea monster hunting requires you going into Margoria, losing your map and getting a compass if you don't want to lose map access. You would still need to actually gear your ship before you can sea monster hunt, so bartering is still required to a point.