http://uwo.netmarble.com/So some may remember the old UW game for... SNES? I sure don't! Either way apparently this is based off that, but now it's an MMO!
I never played the original, so I can't claim what's similar and what's not, but I can give my fair impression of it. First of all, it's a tad slow. Time is measured in days, and each day at sea is one minute in real life. Time does not pass while you're in port, which is a little strange. It's an MMO, so time of course always passes, but merchants won't restock their items and bank money won't gain interest until you go out to sea. This can have varying effects though. For instance, you might dock at port and try to sell some Whiskey, only to find that you'd lose money because the market is flooded (Mmm, whiskey flood~). You ragequit, and come back 3 days later. Technically no time has passed for your character, but the market has changed, so you might suddenly make double profit on whiskey.
But I'm getting distracted. The way time works is kinda fun, but the game is still slow. Right from the start, you go to school. School is actually school, and is probably one of the worst tutorial systems I've ever seen put in place. For the most part, you're standing listening to someone talk, and you have to pay -just enough attention- to answer the random question correctly. Furthermore, most of this is quite frankly bullshit. In the Maritime School (combat) there's not a single word mentioned about what button fires the cannons. But you have to deal with it, really. Completing school gives you a hefty boost of money, some special items, and allows you to dock at more ports. The whole world isn't open to you immediately, you have to unlock port permits.
So you'll spend your first day or three in school, there's a basic, intermediate, and advanced school for each of Maritime, Merchant, and Explorer job types. You don't
have to do any of them, but it's highly encouraged to do one job through to advanced. Once you're done with that, it's time for real sailing! A bit slowly. As I said, time is in days, and a day is a minute. Travel from London (Northern Europe) to Venice (Western Europe) is one of the furthest of early-game routes, and might take you 40-60 days depending on your ship and crew. Later vessels of immense speed might make the trip in 10 or something. But this is only in Europe, where you're lucky to make a 50,000 profit on a run (honestly quests are more profitable). Heading out to South-East Asia is where the money is - spice trading can net you 2,000,000 with a noob ship, assuming you can make it back with your cargo intact.
I'm playing a trader right now, though need has me fitting some guns and boarding crews. Trade is rather interesting. First of all, there's limited stock of items. You might find 4 Brandy for sale, but 20 Wheat. To compensate, you get trade skills. If you're r5 in Alcohol Trading, then there might be 30 Brandy instead. This is the core of the trader's game. Not to push things to other places, but to gather enough items to make a trade run profitable. And "profitable" can widely vary. Some goods are valuable on their own - for the most part, "fish" never goes out of style. Some are valuable for being a specialty good - Whiskey is only sold in London and Dublin, and if you sell it at a far-away port you get extra cash and experience because it's a specialty good. Other goods are valuable to players. Logs on their own are mediocre, but a player with the right skills can craft logs into planks, and planks into rudders to sell at a profit. Or, more likely, iron ore is low-value, but a player can refine it into iron ingot, and then into cannons, and sell those cannons to other players for massive profit.
Maritime, the combat focus, is rather different. There's not much "free roam" play for them, but there are plenty of guild quests which are almost always "Go to X, kill pirates, return for reward." More than likely, a maritime player has several trade skills and is working the market between missions, or transporting small amounts of goods while facing pirates that show up along the way. Or, more importantly, a maritime focused player can escort a spice trader, or pirate a spice trader. Outside of Europe, many waterways are "hostile waters" where open pvp is allowed. Merchants must fear for their cargo and pirates can make their fortune. But pirating another player will incur a bounty, and a player with a bounty may be attacked by anyone, even in "safe waters" AND it will lower your reputation with the assailed country. If a Frenchman attacks many English traders, then he may not be allowed to dock in English ports anymore, and free-roaming NPC fleets may engage him in safe waters.
Adventure is... not really a job. Mostly the quests are, "Go to X, use Y skill, collect Z artifact, and return to talk about it." Or they're more complicated involving several wild goose chases. Truth be told it's hard to make a good fortune on pure adventuring. BUT, adventure-themed ships are designed for speed. Any given ship will have 3 varieties, for maritime, merchant, and adventure, and the adventure will be the fastest. It's not uncommon to use your adventure ship to zip down to Asia, then hop in your trade ship and bring back spices. Apparently all your ships exist in every port.
So what's important? The big lucrative trade is Mace, Nutmeg, and Clove, MNC, from Asia to Europe, which can net a profit of ~12k per item. My noobly merchant ship could easily fit 200 of them, netting me over 2mil per pull. In a larger ship I could pull more, and probably crash the market for massive personal profit. With all that money, I could afford to buy lots of ore and timber, and practice my Casting skill, which would enable me to produce cannons and special weapons (forecastle to help boarding parties, rams to, well, ram ships, etc). Toss those cannons to a dwarf on a boat, and watch Bay12 tear up the seas!
You can even make your own ships. Stock ships can be reproduced with different stats, like more/less cargo, more/less gun ports, more speed, more durability, etc. Shipbuilding is an expensive but rewarding endeavor, as you can take a normally powerful ship, but build one of your own using Iron as the base material and give it 50 gun ports and nearly-zero cargo. A ship like that would tear apart just about any enemy. You can also make custom ships, though I'm not sure on the method or what you're allowed to do, but you see raw ship components for sale, so it makes sense that there may be the option to produce ships which don't relate to any stock ships at all, but rather are built to your exact specifications.
So, I'm in-game as Genira, from London. Your starting nation doesn't matter a whole lot, but it would be a shame if some players were unable to dock at the same port or something. Plus Northern Europe has plenty of crafting supplies nearby, with metals and woods sold in nearby ports, as opposed to the Mediterranean, where you have to travel to Northern Europe to buy these goods.
A long post, but the in-game schools will provide plenty of reading to outdo me :s
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Topic: Uncharted Waters Online - Like that old game you remember, except MMO (Read 14097 times)