So, you’re probably planning on making a new file and looking for a very fast way of levelling up, right? Well, then you’re in the right place.
In this guide I will show you how to get max level on a completely new file in roughly 4 hours, and get that file set up with a brig as well (The time it takes can vary a bit based on luck and how well you know the strategy).
Setup
While this strategy is perfectly possible to do without any outside items, there are a few items that can help you go just a little bit faster.
These items include:
- 1 Ensnaring bronze rod
- 1 Camp marker
- 1 Warship scroll and 1 brisk scroll
You simply put these items in the bank, and take them out when you need them.
The amount time you save by having these items is not too much, but every little bit helps.
Part 1: Business as usual
Just start off by doing the story normally. Reach Redwake, do the usual quests, defeat Shura and just reset when you defeat him. Continue the quest until you have to go to Frostmill. If you don’t have an ensnaring bronze rod in your bank, also remember to grab the fishing quest in the southern part of Redwake.
Before going to Frostmill, make sure you get the Redwake warriors crew, as that is very important.
Then just buy a sailboat and head to Frostmill.[1]
At Frostmill, continue the story and do most of the side quests that don’t have you leave the island. At this point you should be around level 25.
Now either grab your ensnaring bronze rod out of your bank or enchant your regular fishing rod with luring, go to Elm island and complete Edward Kenton’s quest to get him as your quartermaster. Equip him to your ship and rejoin to get back to Frostmill quickly.[2]
Part 2: Legal thievery
Now you’re back at Frostmill and you should be around level 25, with at least a sailboat, Edward Kenton and the Redwake warriors crew.
Now, grab the camp marker from your bank (if you have one) and head over to Palo town. Place your camp marker in a decently safe spot and save it as your spawn, in case you want to do the strategy across multiple sessions. [3]
Now, collect the 4 easy to access gunpowder barrels at Palo town (2 on the wooden dock part, 2 under the arch behind mayor Tilly’s house) and put them on your ship.
Sail over to Silverhold and order your crew to unload the ship when you’re near the shipwright (At the southern stone docks). Then collect the 11 gunpowder barrels at Silverhold and put them on your ship (4 at the southern stone docks, 5 inside the storage room[4], 1 on the roof next to Kai, and 1 to the west and down from the roof one).
Sail back to Palo town and have your crew unload the ship while you repeat the first step.
You mostly want to look out for imbued or arcane gunpowder barrels, since they give much more exp than the regular ones. Imbued barrels usually give 1-2 levels, while arcane ones give 4-5. You can easily recognise these barrels because they have a different colour (Imbued is a darker red, while arcane is a dark, almost black, purple).
You will repeat these steps until you reach max level, but there are some upgrades you can make along the way.
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Once you reach level 30, you can buy a flax sailcloth and a wooden trim at a shipwright. Put warship on the sailcloth and brisk[5] on the trim (you can buy these enchants on the marketplace if you have enough money). Equipping these ship parts greatly increases your speed, but they also make your ship very weak. Be sure to pay attention when sailing.
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Once you get enough money, upgrade your ship to a caravel.
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Once you reach level 75, you should have enough money to upgrade to a ketch. (The shipwright in Palo town sells ketches)
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And around level 130-140 you should have enough to buy a brig. (As long as you didn’t spend a lot of money on unimportant stuff)
Additional tips
Try to join servers that are as new as possible, since there is a bug where gunpowder barrels don’t respawn if they’re destroyed on their spawn location. New servers often still have all the gunpowder barrel spawns.
You can look for deckhands with speed, turning or resilience, as those do help a bit. You shouldn’t spend too much time searching for them though.
If you don’t spend any stat points, all tools will do their full damage.[6] This is useful for Frostmill in part 1.
You can use 4 different rites at level 0 on your eagle patrimony[7], so it might be worth destroying the bookshelves in Enizor’s tower.
You can (almost) instantly stop your ship by holding S and pressing your sail toggle. This helps against crashing your ship and thus losing time.
And there you go. Now you’re max level, you have a fast brig and you can continue doing the story extremely overlevelled.
Also here are a few pictures >:3
(This run was pretty lucky and I got a good amount of arcane barrels. My other run was about 4.5 hours in total, but my strategy wasn’t as refined) (and someone blew up about 40 levels worth of barrels on my ship)
Disclaimer
Sometimes people will be assholes and shoot the gunpowder barrels on your ship. If this happens more than once, just join a different server.
Sometimes Palo town might be “compromised” by a tornado. In this case it’s often saver to go to Sailor’s lodge, although it does take a little longer.
You might get banned for levelling up too fast (unless that was removed, idk)(it hasn’t happened to me yet in my 2 test runs)(if it does happen you can probably get it appealed in the discord fairly easily)
Don’t spend 5k on food like I did.
You might have to sell some stuff or open a few more chests to get enough money, or you can get money from the bank if you deposited some ↩︎
Rejoining is faster than resetting, since you don’t have to wait for your ship to despawn ↩︎
It can get boring after a bit ↩︎
use a heavy weapon m1 or blast on the wall behind the storage rack behind the shipwright for easy access ↩︎
You can also use swift if you don’t have access to a brisk scroll ↩︎
Weapons and skills that aren’t part of your stat build do reduced damage after level ~10. Not spending stat points counts as being a savant. ↩︎
Spirit blast, -hound, -barrage and burst ↩︎
