Ship Buying Guide

Be this your first ship or your latest in your armada, when you consider purchasing a ship there are a number of factors you should take into account other than just what type of ship you are hoping to purchase. Once you know what type of ship you want, you need to decide how much you are willing to pay for it, and how soon you want to have this ship. If money is tight you might just go for the cheapest ship of the class you want that’s out there, but you might find yourself waiting half of forever for it to be finished and ready to head out to great big blue sea. On the other hand money might be no object for you, so finding the shop that can finish it the fastest might be the path you decide to follow, however you might not actually be saving all that much time for the money you spend. If you had been willing to wait even just one more day, you might have paid significantly less.

It is the intentions of this guide to help you find the shipyard that will not only provide your ship at a low cost, but also in a timely manner because as we all know time is money.

Price shopping
When you start your price-shopping venture you should decide how many islands you are willing to visit. For bigger ships you might be forced to explore the whole ocean just to find a shop willing to produce the ship you desire, but for a smaller ship such as a sloop it is likely going to be ineffective to visit more islands than the ones in your desired archipelago. At the very least you should visit every island in your archipelago, as it costs nothing more than the time it takes to ride the ferry.

First head to the Shipyard bazaar on your island and get a price quote for the ship you are hoping to purchase, being sure to record these lines into your favorite spreadsheet program. Again, at the very least you should repeat this for every island in your archipelago, but you may want to reach farther out for a chance at better deals. Mind you though if you want to do this quickly then you’ll need to use a whisking potion, and that could cut into any savings you might get from all the hopping around you will need to do.

In this guide we’ll use the example of someone looking to purchase a sloop on a fictitious ocean so that you can more easily follow the advice. Prices and times will be based off of current times and prices on the Midnight Ocean in the Jet Archipelago. These are the prices that our pirate found on this ocean:

Base price and time
Now that you have a list of prices and times it’s good to set a base price and time, so we can start eliminating anything outside of this area of desired efficiency. To do this, you first find the one on your list that costs the least and use the time it would take to make that one as your base time, eliminating anything that takes longer than this. You then find the one that will take you the least amount of time and use the cost of that ship as your base cost, eliminating any that cost more.

For our example this we find that Stall D has the best price at 10,788 PoE, giving us a base time of 8 days, and that Stall C has the fastest time of 3 days, giving us a base price of 11,114 PoE.

Our new chart looks like this after eliminating any shops outside of that range:

Comparison
For this part you will need to do some fairly simple math, but it is fairly easy so most spreadsheet programs will be able to handle it if it seems to intimidating. You need to subtract the lowest costing ship from each of the prices for the other ships, and then divide this number by the difference between the durations for the lowest cost ship and the other ships. This will provide you with the cost per day the duration is shortened, and the lower this number the better the overall deal.

For our example we see that Stall B has a Cost/Day of about 70 PoE, while Stall C has a Cost/Day of about 65 PoE, indicating that Stall C has the best overall deal.

Final pick
Finally we reach the point where you choose the ship that is most suited for you, however do not just assume that the deal you should go with is the best overall deal that you found previously. You still need to use your best judgment on this, and what you should go with depends on your own situation. In our example Stall D may actually be an outrageously low price compared with the other shops on our list, and be well worth the wait if the cost/day values on all the other shops are high. Likewise even though Stall C has the best overall deal in this market, it might unfortunately be outside of your price range, and you may need to go with a lesser deal and wait longer. There is still thinking at this point to do, but at least from here you have eliminated those deals that are from shops unable to provide you with the service you can find elsewhere.

Extra notes
Some ways to further shorten the list if need be:


 * Shops that offer identical durations (Eliminate the higher prices)
 * Shops that offer identical prices (Eliminate the longer durations)