Tips (High Sea Saga)

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K1AN's Guide, For optimizing loot gain! [High Sea Saga]

• http://www.reddit.com/r/Kairosoft/comments/30dlqb/k1ans_guide_for_optimizing_loot_gain_high_sea_saga/

Nightmare mode

This section is a stub. Please help expand it.

Much thanks! Disclaimer to all: I just started this page and have a lot of content, so this will take a few days to make it look nice.

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This page discusses replaying the game again on nightmare mode, and contains many tips along with some relevant content from other pages. There are a *lot* of ways of playing this game, so please contribute your suggestions as well. Part of the allure of playing a Kairosoft game is figuring it out - the help and rules are sparse, so consider these hints spoilers if you don't want to know. High Sea Saga is a bit extreme, it suggests all sorts of ways to optimize teams and battles and organization, however it can take a week to test out some ideas. Coupled with the fact we only have 1 save spot, it makes sense to collaborate with others to see if our ideas have merit or if they will end in frustration and regret. Please make ample use of the comments section below to share progress!

First off, don't bother trying to replay this game in hard or nightmare mode until you've finished the game on normal difficulty and have gotten bored. There are many reasons to try nightmare mode:

• You can replay the first 2 countries over 2-3 days and re-live the bulk of the game and then quit.
• You can upgrade your equipment to obscene levels and finally be triumphant on most of your online battles. (except against the cheaters)
• And finally ... you may have a high tolerance for pain and want an extreme challenge! As others have noted, there is no new content to unlock, except that some quests have "extreme monsters" added to them.

While I was able to complete the game in normal mode in about 6 weeks without buying a gold pass or medals, this is not reasonable with Nightmare difficulty. I bought the gold pass for 1 month, and made it to the pirate seas. I'll probably need to buy another month to complete. If you buy the gold pass, I recommend cancelling it soon thereafter so you don't get charged again. For Android, you'll still pay for and be able to play it for the full month, it simply won't auto renew. Why? Medals! Keep in mind you'll probably want to upgrade 2-3 weapons over level 1000. If you use Smith Ticket2 from the special store, it will cost 32 medals to upgrade a weapon (and other items) 9 levels. This works out to be ~3500 medals to upgrade past level 1000, or ~10,000 medals to do it for 3 sets of weapons, armor, etc. Free play gives 10 medals a day, while gold pass boosts that to 30 medals a day. You can use various tips to boost this 15x/day, so gold pass can be enhanced to allow you up to 450 medals or ~100 levels of upgrades a day. At this rate, it will take 10 days to bring one set of equipment up to level 1000 or >30 days to do it for 3 sets of equipment. You're likely to have other things going on in your life and not want to play the game 24x7 so this can stretch out from 1 month to 2 to 3 months. Also, you will have to re-hire your crew if you want to keep them, and this costs medals. The cost is much cheaper if you have a gold pass!

Phase 0: how to wrap up your normal mode game

OK, let's start with your game in normal mode, assuming you've finished all quests and are getting a bit bored. Here are some tips before you replay in nightmare mode:

• After level 50, the special store will have "Create Replay Data" for 25 medals. This is a static snapshot of your team when you purchase the replay data. It will add a Replay button to the main screen, and you can use it multiple times to replay the game from this save point. Don't purchase replay until you're ready to move on, as any additional play after this point won't be saved in the replay data. Also, you only have 1 save spot, so once you select replay and start again, it will replace your old save files. If you don't prepare before you replay, you can't go back and try it again!
• Food is saved, equipment/items (and their upgrade levels) are saved. Great! The last & hardest dungeon gives lots of food. Increase your inventory as much as you can and stock up! I maxed out at 990 slots per item, and had ~400 Kairo Cakes when I restarted. This helps quite a bit in Phase 2, half way through nightmare mode when you need to upgrade/feed your people tons.
• Money is NOT saved, so spend it on upgrading ship cannons or upgrading equipment. Don't spend it on relics as they are not saved and will need to be repurchased later. Don't worry too much about $$, it is easier to get in the first part of nightmare mode when you upgrade your equipment lots and win most of the online battles.
• Ship structures are NOT saved, but it does remember your upgrade levels. I don't know if Kairo points are retained. If I could do this over, I'd suggest selling all your ship structures to get Kairo points before you restart.
• Your ship is not saved (of course), so you'll need to redo quests, build it back up to level 4 and place down all your ship structures again. I recommend taking it easy and just placing down cabins, holds, labs, and brigs only and playing through the first 2 countries first. If you choose to continue at that point, you can put down a nice ship layout and optimize it a bit.
• Important: visit the Special shop and purchase items with medals that you think you'll need. The Rank resets to 1 when you replay, so it will take a long time to get them again. You may wish to level up a bit just to get the best Special shop items.
• I strongly recommend renaming your characters! For myself, I assigned the first position of each combat team a 1, and the first combat team got the suffix a, the second b, and so forth. I followed it up with a single name. So my first person in my first combat team is "1A Abby", the first person in my second combat team is "1B Bert", etc. This makes it easy to know who's important to rehire first, who should placed in the first row if you get the combat placement upgrade, and who is who when scrolling through the 60 person crew list looking for the right person. I also have 6 people with cook ability (reduce stamina regen time by 10 secs) named Cookie1-6, and 6 people focused on research named Research1-6.

Good luck going forward, there is no going back!

Phase 1: relive the glory days

For the first 3-7 days, just have fun. Collect as many medals as you can, rehire most of your crew, start upgrading your best equipment, fight and win online battles, and re live the bulk of the game by completing the first 2 countries. I found this part to be the most fun.

Phase 2: ramp up equipment upgrades!

After you finish the 2nd country, you'll notice that things are hard! Time to start upgrading your key equipment as much as you can. It makes a tremendous difference to your player stats. You can save some medals by upgrading base items to their new max and then using them at the blacksmith to boost key equipment to level 100-150. You'll need to drastically update your front line "tanks". If these are people (they are for me), then it pays to wait a bit until equipment boosts your int to the 8,000-10,000 range. More below, but the high int and other things make them learn Melee and other knowledge types *much* faster.

{| class="wikitable sortable centertext oddrow"

! class="unsortable" | Icon!!Name !!HP !!SP !!Attk !!Def !!Spd !!Int !!Weight !!MaxLv

|-

| <span id="Fruit Knife">[[File:Knives (High Sea Saga).png]]</span>|| Fruit Knife ||  ||  || 7 ||  || 3 || 2 ||L ||10

|-

| <span id="Cleaver">[[File:Knives (High Sea Saga).png]]</span>|| Cleaver ||  ||  || 9 ||  || 6 || 4  ||L ||20

|-

| <span id="Dagger">[[File:Knives (High Sea Saga).png]]</span>|| Dagger ||  ||  || 11 ||  || 10|| 5 ||L ||25

|-

| <span id="Bronze Knife">[[File:Knives (High Sea Saga).png]]</span>|| Bronze Knife ||  ||  || 16 ||  || 12 || 5 ||L || 45

|-

| <span id="Silver Knife">[[File:Knives (High Sea Saga).png]]</span>|| Silver Knife ||  ||  || 27 ||  || 15 || 5 ||L || 65

|-

| <span id="Dragon Knife">[[File:Knives (High Sea Saga).png]]</span>|| Dragon Knife ||  ||  || 44 ||  || 20 || 8 ||L || 85

|-

| <span id="Falcon Knife">[[File:Knives (High Sea Saga).png]]</span>|| Falcon Knife ||  ||  || 52 ||  || 25 || 8 ||L ||100

|-

| <span id="Legend Knife">[[File:Knives (High Sea Saga).png]]</span>|| Legend Knife ||  ||  || 90 ||  || 30 || 10 ||L ||180

|}

This approach of upgrading equipment mostly works until you get to Pirate Seas. At that point you'll see the classic signs that you're overwhelmed. The monsters hit first, hit hard, and do too much damage before your healers can help out.

Phase 3: improve your front line "Tank" characters

At this point I found I had to upgrade my Front Line characters. If level 1 means that you've successfully completed all jobs, the level 10 means you've done all jobs for a character a full 10 times, level 20 means 20 times, etc. Once I had my entire front row upgraded to level 10, I started making progress, but still could not complete the more difficult dungeons. I'm working on upgrading them to level 20 now.

Here's a routine that worked well for me:

• First do some prep. On the crew list screen go to your front line crew and mark them as "Ship Duties" only. Make sure you have a crew of 6 or so people dedicated to Research, all with the Seer "+2 items research" ability, related skills, and maxed out as Ninja on their final jobs for speed. Make sure all other crew members do not have Research selected to keep this elite crew processing loot quickly. Make sure you have few or no ship structures that use cash in case you leave your system idle for too long. It's also helpful to have a small group of people that try to max out the ship structures.
• Find a dungeon that gives lots of food, make sure some of your team have the Fisher ability. Aim to max out your holds after each run. Don't battle with cheer on, that way your research team can empty out the hold completely while you do a 2nd run in the dungeon. Do 3-6 dungeon runs.
• Go back to your Base. Change your front row crew to have only the Hermes skill so they move fast! Let the system idle there for about an hour. When "activity is down", go back to the island with your preferred dungeon.
• While your ship is in transit, open up the combat teams menu and job change for each front line person. Max out as many jobs as you can, and finish up in a job that allows heavy equipment. This can take 30 minutes, so it's important to do in transit or activity will be lost on your base or your dungeon island. You may need to change the skills away from Hermes and back to "Spear Master, Defender, Hearty" and equip shields if the dungeon is too hard without them in place.
• Do this base to dungeon routine ~4 times in a day. While it will take all day long, your system will be idle for much of it. After a solid day, you will likely upgrade all your front row characters a level (a full set of jobs).
• Keep in mind it may take you 5-10 days of this routine to make your front row strong enough to proceed through Pirate Seas.
• I recommend trying to upgrade 2-4 levels at a time before trying dungeons as it gets discouraging to try it after each level upgrade.
• So far my rows 2-5 are all Fiends, and while row 1 are ~level 10 and climbing, row 2 is just level 2, and rows 3-5 are all level 1. My row 1 are tanks with shields and taking almost all the damage, and the frequent healing is taking care of the other rows. I do not plan to upgrade rows 2-5 until I must, as it takes so much time focusing on my first row.

If you ever want to stop playing the game, this is a good place to do it! It takes a tremendous amount of grind and repetition to upgrade 4 characters * 48 jobs * 10 levels = ~2000 job upgrades. Kario really needs to add a button that says "use my food and upgrade jobs as much as possible", perhaps available after you've done a full level upgrade. I think the game should focus on the fun parts and make the micromanagement easy ...

Phase 4: complete the game on nightmare mode

I haven't completed yet. If you have, please share your tips and tricks in this article or in the comments below. Thanks!

Helpful Tips

• The number of combat team members is determined by how many stars the character has in the first position of the team. Five stars allows for more crewmates on a combat team.
• Hire as much crew as possible at the beginning to be part of your combat and non-combat teams. This can help to increase your rank easier at the beginning state.
• Don't be afraid to use items to power-up your strong character and have him/her change job continuously. This can help you to beat difficult battles.
• Avoid relying too much on attack solely and neglect defense and speed. Character with low defense can be beaten very easy while character with low speed can barely hit the opponents.
• Put Shops close to each other together with the buildings/environments that boost the houses to get max profit and fast G's
• To ease the games battery consumption, try setting the games quality to low. Which may increase the battery life by about 20 percent while playing the game.
• Capturing enemies in combat (the skill Territorial helps) and then turning them in at your base or a prison is a good source of gold, as well as turning in prisoners after winning online battles.
• You can get crew in the Dice Game. At higher levels of the dice game you can get ones with high stats, better jobs and more stars. A good idea is to play the dice game at the 1st, 11th, 21th and the 31th every month since the Dice Game costs are halved.
• A good way to get money fast is PVP but spend as much money you can on cannons before you go to the hard walkthrough.
• A good way to get medals fast is by installing kairo club and download many paid kairosoft games.
• Fill your non-combat crew as soon as possible, the 1-2 medal cost people are great. Place them in an area where they can max out on skills. Leave them alone for a while as you play the game. They'll help with ship functions. When you don't need them anymore, dismiss them. It will save all their unused knowledge as books. I had ~20 people that got dismissed this way, all maxed out at 20 knowledge for each type, and ended up with 400 melee, ranged, sailing, curiosity, etc. books. This method is great for shifting the knowledge to front row tank characters for quick leveling.

Maximizing Non Combatants

Monsters can only do limited type of actions compared to Crews. But their presence can be maximized with the right monsters. Best monsters for this role is UFO and Titan Jr.. Both monster types have a very very high movement speed allowing them to do their duties a lot faster than any other type of monsters.

Recommended final job for all non combatant crews are Ninja. For the same reason as with non combatant monsters, Ninja's skill allowing them to move at a very fast speed. Ninja however require at least 8 mastered jobs to change into one. Choose jobs that needs low lvl to master to quickly create a ninja. However, there are some jobs that are recommended due to their mastered skill that can be very useful to set later.

• Thief.
  Economical skill is a must have for all non-combatants. It gives some chance for the crew not to pay for facility cost when using them.
• Doctor.
  Islander is a very good skill when one aims to level the island facilites. It has a chance to trigger a major boost to any island facilities' xp.
• Seer.
  Shipmate skill is very useful for those aiming to max ship facilities level. It gives major boost to ship facilities' xp when a crew is using them.
• Trader.
  Thrifty allows crews that pick up gold bag (mainly from deck battle drops) to get extra gold from it. It's not a major boost but Trader is one of the jobs that has the lowest lvl to master so there's no reason not to master this job.

Original Jobs that are recommended to be non-combatants :

• Tycoon.
  Try to get as many as possible. Their ability gives them a 100% chance to get money when using ship facilities. However, the ability's effectiveness depends on the current crew level. So to fully maximize this, any crew that has tycoon ability should be max leveled.
• Farmer.
  This job is a must to have to keep the ship's activities going even when the location's activity are exhausted. Their ability allows them to resupply food at an extra 100% gain than any other job. Combine this job with some tycoons and crews can keep using ship facilities without needing to rely to resupply at ports and still can gain money.
• Bookie.
  An optional job to consider using especially for those that play the dice game alot. Only need 2 to get the maximum benefit.
• Sailor.
  Same with bookie, this is optional. Having some sailors on board can give some extra boost to ship's speed. Only need 5 of them for maximum benefit.
• Cook.
  This is a good option to have. Their presence allows faster stamina regeneration which is always a good thing. Only need 6 to get the maximum benefit.
• Seer.
  Again a good option for non combatant. Their effectiveness will drop if there are not researching making them just like ordinary crew.
• Joiner.
  Very useful to have some of these job if planning to build a lot of island facilities. Otherwise, they are not really recommmended to have.
• Smith,Trader,Genius,Dealer.
  Try to get at least 1 of each. Shops on board is a always a good thing although it's not exactly a steady source of income on all situations. However, they are still useful due to the Onboard Shop system.
• Pilot.
  Not exactly a good option to have as a non combatant. But they do reduce stamina needed to travel using ship.

Onboard Shops

Crews with Jobs (Original or Current) of Smith,Trader,Genius and Dealer will change their Cabin to also functions such as shops. When visiting an active (activity is not exhausted) island that has buildings built, citizens from the islands will visit the ship's shops to spend money. If the shops have merchandises in stock, the respective store satisfaction for the island will also increase. When respective satisfaction bar for each store is full, citizens of the island will gift an item and the satisfaction bar is reset back to 0 again.

Restocking shops' merchandises is done by doing research in lab. Whenever there's an empty merchandise slot , research will always generate merchandises that will be distributed to shops that has empty merchandise slots.

Shop Satisfaction Gifts List

Shop Types (Job)	Common	Uncommon	Rare
Tool (Trader)	Egg Color Up (G) Egg Color Down (G)	Melee Book Ranged Book	Smith Ticket (Wpn)
Weapon (Smith)	Egg Color Up (R) Egg Color Down (R)	Ranged Book Sailing Book	Smith Ticket (Head)
Armor (Genius)	Egg Color Up (B) Egg Color Down (B)	Sailing Book Curiosity Book	Smith Ticket (Arm)
Accessory (Dealer)	Egg Color Up (P) Egg Color Down (P)	Curiosity Book Work Book	Smith Ticket (Acc)