The LP's still alive, it's just that writing the next update is taking forever (FYI the next update contains 340 images). Also I've discovered this thing called Nobunaga's Ambition VI which isn't helping matters.
Is this translated to English? I've only played Lord of Darkness and Nobunaga's Ambition (I?)
Don't think it is, no.
Around The World
Time to start the adventure proper.
Certain regions appear on the world map as deserts. It's another nice touch of the game, though the desert texture is used less than you'd think.
Sailing down the Nile, we eventually discovered another village.
Now, villages. Exploration is pretty simplistic in UW2 - every village has one, exactly one, discovery associated with it. You land on the village, search a bit, discover something, then move on. There's a total of about 100 villages in the entire game, but
only 50 of them, chosen randomly, are actually generated in each game. Yes, this means that in every game, half of the discoveries are actually impossible to find. This is completely arbitrary and retarded and I'm so glad that the later games did away with this shit.
Sometimes the discovery associated with a village is a monster, and you'll lose a portion of your crew. The more crew you have, the
more crew you'll lose. If the commodore has high swordplay and high battle level, you may take less casualties.
Our discovery is the Crocodile, a C-rank discovery.
After being attacked by a monster, don't forgot to check if there's still enough crew assigned to navigation, or the fleet may not sail at the maximum speed.
Sailing further south, we discovered another village. Now seems like a good time to explain what the various commands related to villages do. Search lets you search for discoveries. Entertain costs two units of food and increases the villagers' friendship level by 5. Plunder gives you some food, but you'll lose some crew AND take a big luck hit, so plundering a pretty bad idea.
While low-value discoveries like the Rosetta Stone and Crocodile can be discovered by simply searching, finding high-value discoveries is a bit more troublesome. What shall we do now?
If your attempt to find discoveries is unsuccessful, you should entertain the villagers a bit.
They are? Good. Let's try searching again.
Success!
Most discoveries in UW2 can only be discovered if your friendship level with the local villagers is high enough. The more valuable the discovery is, the higher the friendship requirement.
As for our discovery, it's the
Nubia Pyramid.
Another village, another discovery.
It's a
Baobab tree.
NPC fleets may occasionally (
very occasionally) appear in the Nile.
This time, it's... Khayr the pirate. I'm not sure what he is doing here.
Our final discovery in the Nile is the Tessisat Falls. Oddly, I can't seem to find any infomation about this thing. Wikipedia doesn't have an article about it, and googling Tessisat Falls only returns some pages about UW2.
Anyway, our expedition to the Nile netted us a total of 4 discoveries. This isn't terrible, but isn't very good either. Normally I would expect to get at least one B-rank discovery in the Nile, but this time we just got a bunch of C-rank discoveries. Oh well.
We discovered the port of
Cairo on our way back. Sadly, the Suez Canal doesn't exist yet, so we can't actually get to Cairo without going throught the Red Sea. Also, the fleet's lookout range is severely reduced during the night, which is why we didn't discover Cairo earlier.
We returned to the port of Alexandria after 27 days of sailing.
As we entered the port, nearly everybody in our fleet gained a navagation level. The amount of navagation experience gained is determined by how many consecutive days you have spent sailing. The experience gain increases exponentially as you sail for a longer time, so you would get much more experience from a 30-day expedition than a 15-day one.
We resupplied at Alexandria, then set sail again for Pisa.
Time to find our sponsor to convert our discoveries to money!
The sponsor's response to your discovery depends on the level of the discovery. The Duke was very unimpressed bu our discovery of the Rosetta Stone, so the reward is pretty poor as well.
The C-rank discoveries proved much more valuable.
In the end, our expedition to the Nile earned us a grand total of about 20,000 gold coins. Not that great, but it's a good start.
Our Galleon is really too slow to be used for adventuring, though, so I began searching for a La Reale. Unfortunately, those tend to be rather difficult to find.
Oh, come think about it, I don't think we've checked the item shop in Seville.
Here, we found a Basterd (?) Sword, which is an A-rank weapon. It's quite powerful and reasonably cheap. Still, we don't need it right now.
Our search for a La Reale led us to the port of
Nantes. Unfortunately, we still couldn't find what we're looking for. We'll have to go further north.
Perhaps the shipyard at
London will have a La Reale?
Sigh.
Hmph, as if we care about processing industry... Patrician III this is not.
In the guild of
Antwerp, I saw a Buy Goods quest. These quests are notable for being the most profitable quests other than the Collect Debt ones, so we took the quest. London is close enough after all.
The head trader at London wanted us to buy 3 units of silver for him.
The reward for completing this quest is 11,000 gold coins, which is quite a bit more than pretty much any other quest. However,
this is only half of the actual reward.
If you accept to undertake the quest, the head trader will give you an advance of 10,000 gold coins. That means you actually get a total of 21,000 gold coins from the quest! Of course, you'll spend some of these coins on buying the desired goods, but that's a very minor expense.
We went to Genoa to buy the silver. Maybe silver could also be purchased at other ports, but I don't remember where.
I was pleasantly surprised when I saw there's a La Reale at the shipyard of Genoa.
If you have a bookkeeper with the Accounting skill, he'll tell you for how low a price can you buy the ship.
He's not always right, though, so it's prudent to offer a bit more than what your bookkeeper suggests.
I ended up naming our new ship after some Codexian celebrity because I couldn't come up with a better name.
Here, have a look at Qwinn.
We can also change a ship's load capacity at a shipyard.
Doing so costs a few thousand coins, but it's usually worth it.
You see, Qwinn has a total load capacity of 450. We can assign these 450 capacity to bunks for our crew, guns, or cargo. Qwinn could originally house a total of 160 crew. However, since we won't be using Qwinn for battles, there's little reason to leave so much space for our crew. I ordered the number of bunks be reduced to 40.
Guns will also take space on the ship. As I've said, we won't be using Qwinn for battles, and guns are fucking useless anyway. I ordered all guns on Qwinn be removed.
That leaves Qwinn with 410 space for cargo. Good.
Qwinn requires at least 30 crew assigned to navigation to sail at top speed. Our fleet didn't quite have enough crew, so I had to draft a few more working hands at the pub.
Let's not forget what we came here for.
The head trader at London only wanted 3 units of silver. However, I believe we could make a profit by buying silver in Genoa and selling them in London, so I spent
all of our money to buy as much silver as we could.
12 days, eh? That should be just enough for us to get to London.
Unfortunately, I forgot that we need money to pay wages for our mates, and at the beginning of October we didn't even have enough money to pay the wages.
We almost made it to London before we ran out of water. That should be easy to fix, though:
When landed on any land square that isn't a village, we can "search" for water. The chance of success depends on your luck. With maxed out luck, you're pretty much guarenteed to find water. You can then load as much water onto your fleet as you wish.
Thanks to this, a commodore with high luck can load his fleet with very little water and rely entirely on wilderness springs to survive. It's possible to exploit this system to make the fleet remain on the seas for 90+ days before needing to resupply at a port. Doing so is only useful for grinding navigation level though.
We turned in the quest at London and received the promised 11,000 gold.
We also sold the remaining silver on our fleet. We managed to make a profit, but it's probably not worth the trouble. Meh.
Also, it seems that our mates are pretty mad at us for failing to pay their wages.
I believe this problem will (probably) fix itself in time, though.
We headed back to Ceuta to prepare for our first adventure.
A fleet is as fast as the slowest ship in the fleet, so we don't want to have Kaiserin in our fleet while we're adventuring. This doesn't mean we have to sell her; we can just moor her at a harbor.
First off, though, we need to dismiss the crew on Kaiserin after assigning some of them to Qwinn. The La Reale requires 30 crew to sail at the maximum speed, but I decided to put 35 crew on board for lookout.
We've also gotta change our flagship to Qwinn.
But then, it turned out that the moor command is actually unavailable in Ceuta, presumbly because the dock here isn't big enough.
In the end, I was forced to recruit some crew for Kaiserin, then sail for Seville.
(You may have noticed that the sprite of our fleet has changed. This is because we have a galley rather than a sailship as our flagship now.)
Seville is a large port, so the moor command is available here.
That's right. We've just moored the ship we stole from the Spanish Navy at the
capital of Spain. I'm sure nobody will notice.
Alright, now we're finally prepared to go adventuring. Make sail!
When starting adventure from the Mediterranean, you basically have two choices: go to Africa or go to the New World. This time, we're going to Africa.
Somewhere to the south of the Mediterranean, we discovered the port of
Santa Cruz. I think it's possible to buy gold in this port if its economy capacity is high enough, which is useful for a trader.
I'll be omitting most of the "discovered port X" screenshots from now on, because I don't think you would want to see 200 screenshots of our fleet discovering some town that you never heard about.
The northwestern coast of Africa, particularly the area south of Argin, is one of the areas in UW2 where you can encounter storms. If you'd come to Africa right after starting the game, a storm will most likely kill off your fleet. The chance of encountering a storm is lower if the commodore has high luck.
Seems like we got lucky this time. If you manage to get to
Abidjan, you can consider yourself to be outside of the storm zone now.
Going further east, we found the estuary of the
Niger River. Rivers are always worth investigating, since almost all rivers have villages on the riverbanks.
See?
We discovered an
Anthill, another C-rank discovery.
Later, we discovered the Clay Mosque. This is almost certainly the
Great Mosque of Djenne, which is located in
Timbuktu.
Speaking of Timbuktu, it's indeed found near the Clay Mosque.
Perhaps we should resuppliy at Timbuktu before continuing our expedition.
Roberto gained a level, but nobody else did.
Welcome to Timbuktu. This is a noteworthy port, for reasons that will become apparent much later.
The economy capacity of Timbuktu is remarkably high for an African port.
In some of the ports, there's a huge building at the northern part of the town. Some of them are plot-critical, but some of them are just there for decoration.
The one in Timbuktu falls into the second category. I believe there's intended to be a storyline related to these buildings, but the staff didn't have the time to actually implement that.
The market of Timbuktu has quite a few interesting goods for sale, the most noteworthy and profitable of which being gold.
Having resupplied our fleet, we left Timbuktu.
We found another river to the south of Niger River. This is probably the
Congo River.
Unfortunately, it seems like no village has spawned in Congo River this time.
We also ran into a NPC fleet as we sailed south. NPC fleets are all over the place in Europe, but outside Europe it's kinda rare to see one of them.
Sailing further south, we eventually discovered the port of
Cape Town. Unlike most ports, Cape Town's sprite is coloured blue rather than brown. This is because it's a supply port. I'll explain these later.
We're past the Cape of Good Hope now!
Hmmm. My metagame knowledge tells me that if we sail east from here, we should find the isle of
Madagascar.
On Madagascar, we discovered the port of
Tamatave. Normally we would also find a village here, but alas, that village has decided not to spawn in this game.
Incidentally, this is how our chart looks like now.
We returned to the coastlines of Africa and sailed north.
Curses! Some rats have managed to find their way onto our ship. Rats will consume some of our precious foods every day, which is kind of bad.
I could've used Rat Poison to kill off the rats, but I figured that our fleet needs resupplying anyway, so we stopped in
Malindi.
After spending 41 days on the seas, everybody in our fleet gained a level.
Somehow, sailing on the seas has made Catalina a little bit smarter. A few more levels and she'll be able to learn Cartography!
...I don't even care anymore.
There's nothing constructive to be done in Malindi, so we left immediately after resupplying.
We found another village shortly after leaving Malindi.
Hmmm. 30 friendship, and we still haven't discovered anything. High friendship requirement usually means high-rank discovery, though, so the secret here is likely something big.
Aha! It's the
Mandrill! We have made our first B-rank discovery.
We're in the Red Sea now.
At a village in the Red Sea, we found some
Papyrus. Sadly, it's the only discovery we made in the Red Sea.
Incidentally, we can finally actually enter Cairo now, though we've got little reason to.
On the last day of 1522, our fleet reached the
Persian Gulf.
Is... is that
petroleum? Maybe we should take some of these. This stuff is going to be valuable in about 400 years.
Going east from the Persian Gulf, to the west of
Diu, we discovered another B-rank discovery: the
Mohenjo-Daro.
We stopped at Diu to resupply. Catalina gained another level.
This is how Indian ports look like.
There's not much of interest in Diu, so we left shortly after resupplying.
We discovered the
King Cobra in a village to the south of Diu. It's a crappy D-rank discovery, but at least it didn't kill any of our men.
There's a lot of ports in India.
Oh, we're near
Sri Lanka now. This is another storm zone; better watch out.
Fortunately, we once again got through the storm zone safely.
Here's how our chart looks like now.
Somewhere to the south, we found Ayutthaya's Buddha. There're like a trillion buddha statues in Thailand and I'm not sure which one this is.
Oh, it's
Malacca! We're officially in Southeast Asia now.
Hmm, 50 friendship and we still haven't found anything... Seems like there's something big!
Aha! We have made our first A-rank discovery: the
Borobudur!
There's a lot of villages in Indonesia.
A
Python has just killed 6 of our guys! Our fleet doesn't quite have enough crew now.
I decided to go back to
Sunda to draft a few more crew.
Have a look at the cityscape of Sunda.
By the way, it seems like Catalina's fame as an adventurer has surpassed her fame as a pirate.
We only got 8 men, but it was kind of enough.
Shit!
Catalina tried to pursue Dante to stay.
Fine, fine. 10 gold each month hardly even matters anyway.
Ooh, seems like we're about to make another big discovery.
We discovered the
Komodo Dragon, another A-rank discovery. Unfortunately some of our men got themselves killed again.
We stopped at
Dili to get some reinforcements.
I think the pub at Dili is one of the only pubs in the game that doesn't sell alcohol.
Right. Looking pretty good once again.
Also, here you can see that Catalina's adventure fame has indeed surpassed her piracy fame.
By the way, we can review our discoveries so far in Info - Discovery.
Going south from Indonesia, we arrived at
Leveque in Australia.
There're many things to be discovered in Australia. We found the
Frilled Lizard, the
Ayer's Rock, and the
Kiwi.
Have a look at our current chart.
We ran out of food on our way back to Malacca,
But we managed to get back to Malacca just as the crew's health were beginning to drop.
Catalina gained a level, and so did many of our mates.
Oh for fuck's sake
Okay, okay. Hopefully that'll be enough to make him shut up.
For some reasons, I decided to dick around in Malacca a bit longer and picked up some useless rumors.
Off we go.
Hmm. Maybe we should explore New Zealand; I remember some high-level discoveries being there.
Wikipedia doesn't have an article about this port. It's probably unimportant.
We should reach New Zealand if we sail southwest from here.
We found this little village on New Zealand.
HELL YES.
We have discovered the
Moa, a ☆-rank discovery. ☆-rank discoveries are the most valuable ones, and they're extremely rare. If you got particularly unlucky with village spawning, you might not be able to find any of those at all.
We didn't discovery anything else on New Zealand, though. Eventually we ran out of supplies and had to return to Amboa.
The fleet members levelled up again.
Some nice flavor dialog.
Time to continue our journey east.
We discovered the
Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
The supply port to our east in this image is
Lushun. We're in northeast China right now.
We sailed west from Lushun, entering the
Yellow River.
We discovered the port of
Chang'an down the Yellow River. I remember Chinese ports having a special tileset for them, but alas, I didn't actually enter any Chinese ports during our circumnavigation. Maybe next time.
You would normally make at least one discovery from exploring the Yellow River, but it seems like none of the Chinese villages decided to spawn in this playthrough. Oh well.
We did find a village on the Korean Peninsula though!
We discovered the Plant Worm. I think this thing is actually
Ophiocordyceps sinensis (aka Dongchong Xiacao), but these are found in Tibet, not Korea. I'm confused.
We can get to Japan if we sail southwest from here.
There -- that's the port of
Nagasaki.
Immediately after discovering Nagasaki, our fleet was caught in a storm! We've been lucky with those storm zones so far, but I knew we couldn't outrun them forever.
During a storm, unless the fleet is landed, all ships in the fleet would lose durability very, very quickly. Worse yet, we can't control the fleet during a storm. Fortunately, I brought a few bottles of Balm with us to deal with storms.
We used a bottle of Balm, and the weather promptly calmed down. No, it still doesn't make sense.
Our ship has been damaged by the storm, and we're running out of supplies anyway, so we stopped at Nagasaki.
Japanese ports also have a special tileset, one that looks siginificantly different from all other tilesets.
Eh, most of the western adventurers inspired by Marco Polo came for China rather than Japan, but I suppose it's the result that matters.
Like Timbuktu, Nagasaki has a huge building in the northern part of the town.
Also like Timbuktu, the huge building serves no particular purpose whatsoever. At least it looks pretty nice.
More Japanese cityscape.
It's worth noting that Japanese shipyards have special ships for sale.
The Kansen is a small ship. I've actually never used any Japanese ships so I don't know if it's good or not, but with 100 in tacking and power, you should have no problem making it home in this ship as long as you have a way to deal with storms.
We didn't buy any ships, but we did get Qwinn repaired while we're in the shipyard.
The item shop in Nagasaki has some nice stuff for sale.
The Cat is a very useful item. As long as you have a cat, your fleet will never suffer from rat problems. Cats don't die of old age or anything, so once you get a cat you can just sell off all your rat poison. I bought a cat here.
(Fun fact about UW2 economy: a cat is worth about as much as two barrels of gold. Twenty cats will buy a galleon.)
It's a katana. As you would expect from a Japanese company, Koei made the katana pretty powerful. It's too expensive though, so I didn't buy it.
The Aqua Tiara is another useless accessory item.
Time to check out the secret merchandise of Nagasaki! Maybe they'll have a magical katana for sale!
No such luck, apparently. They don't even have any secret merchandise at all.
We found the port of
Sakai shortly after leaving Nagasaki. I believe Sakai and Nagasaki are the only Japanese ports in this game.
Horsies!
There's a building here with a cross sign, but it's not actually a church. You could try to enter the building, but it's locked.
Since we arrived at Sakai late in the night, we might as well check out the item shop.
Useless.
Tha... That's an actual magical katana. With "Magical" in its name.
By the way, according to the
Japanese Wikipedia, the Muramasa got its fame as a legendary weapon because
Wizardry. Apparently, back in the days there's a tale in Japan about how a level 1 samurai equipped with a Muramasa could defeat a poison giant, thus leaving the Japanese gamers with the impression that the Muramasa is the best katana evar.
The
Atakabune is another Japanese ship. Contrary to what the shipyard owner would have you believe, the Atakabune is a pretty terrible battleship because it's just too small. I suppose it's a nice ship for adventuring though.
I was not kidding when I said that the Marco Polo bank has branches in literally every corner of the world.
Not a city for us, then.
As one would expect, there're a lot of things to be discovered in Japan.
We found some ruins, but some of our crew went full weaboo and wanted to stay in the village!
As for the discovery, it's the
Toro Ruins, a C-rank discovery.
Our fleet don't quite have enough crew now. We still have enough man for sailing, but with only 1 man assigned to lookout, finding villages is going to be a big pain in the ass.
Ezo is the third Japanese port. It's a supply port though.
We went back to Nagasaki to recruit some crew.
Another village in Japan.
Oh FFS. Not this shit again.
...So, basically: Catalina recruited some children at Nagasaki, who got eaten by
Namahages two days after boarding our ship. This is a bit depressing.
We were forced to head back to Nagasaki again to recruit some more ogre-fodders.
Well, we're done with East Asia. Now let's sail east to the Americas.
It's the supply port of
Korf. Maybe we should resupply there; I recall ports being scarce on the western coasts of North America.
Korf is a supply port. Unlike normal ports, supply ports only have one interesting building in them: the harbor. All other buildings can't be found in a supply port. Supply ports are really just there to provide you with, well, supplies.
And no, I don't know what those palm trees are doing in a backwater town in Siberia.
One fun thing about supply ports is that you can rename it to whatever the fuck you want and nobody would give a shit.
After resupplying our fleet, we set sail for the Americas once again.
We're past the
Bering Strait now.
We discovered
Juneau, another supply port, on the western coasts of North America.
We stopped at Juneau to resupply, then left.
There're TONS of discoveries to be made in the Americas, particularly on the western coasts.
This is the
Prairie Dog, a cute little rodent.
Well, according to the
Wikipedia, these guys did almost become extinct in the 19th century. Almost.
That's a
Mexican Beaded Lizard! Good thing that it didn't kill any of our men.
Ooh, shiny!
I'm pretty sure this is the
Aztec Calendar Stone. Apparently, the local villagers doesn't mind us taking their culture artifact. Probably has something to do with the fact that Catalina is a hottie. Or that all of our mates are very good at murduring people.
We also found the Stone Face. I
think this is one of the
Olmec heads.
Guatemala! We're in Central America now.
We have discovered a Stone Ball. I'm not sure why is a Stone Ball considered a great discovery but I'm not complaining.
We stopped at
Panama. The port to the north of Panama is called
Porto Velho, but there's obviously something wrong with this, since Porto Velho is in Brazil, not Mexico.
Indeed, indeed. Playing UW2 really made me appreciate the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal.
Further proof that I was not kidding when I said the Marco Polo bank has branches all over the world.
There's an item shop in Panama that sells Lime Juice. Might be useful, but we already have plenty of them.
Ah, it's a NPC fleet! It's rare to see one of them so far away from Europe.
Going south down the coastline, we discovered some
Vampire Bats. RL vampire bats don't drain levels or anything, so they're fairly harmless.
We're almost in Antarctica now. Contrary to what you might think, there's very little discoveries to be made in Antarctica. I decided not to bother and just explore the Americas more.
Our fleet crossing the Magellan Strait.
Here's how our chart looks like now.
The port is
Montevideo, and the river is the
Parana River. I'm sure we'll discover many wonders in Parana River.
First, we found some
Anteaters.
Oh shit. It's monsters again!
Turned out that our crew were eaten by a
Giant Ground Sloth (aka Megatherium). Those things are supposed to be extinct! Then again, I suppose it wouldn't have been a ☆-rank discovery if it actually exists.
We only made two discoveries in Parana River, but one of them is ☆-rank so I won't complain. Anyway, we're running out of supplies again, so we stopped at Montevideo to resupply.
I think this is the
Sao Francisco River? Anyway, we found no interesting things down the river. What a letdown.
Maybe our expedition into the
Amazon River will be more successful.
We have discovered the
Amazon Water Lily! It's only C-rank, but it's a good start.
Later, we discovered the
Balsa, a Cultural Artifact. The confusing thing is that the Balsa is also a kind of ship made in all ports in the world of UW2. In fact, we've seen Balsas (how do you pluralize that word) in pretty much every shipyard we've visited.
We also encountered some
Tarantulas and
Piranhas. Fortunately, none of our crew were injured by these creatures.
Perhaps I should not have tempted fate like that.
The assailant turned out to be an
Anaconda. Truly, the Amazon rainforest is full of peril.
Once again, our ship doesn't have enough manpower. Fortunately, we're only 3 men short from the required crew number, so our fleet shouldn't slow down too much.
Sailing north from the Amazon River, we eventually made it to
Cayenne.
Catalina gained another level from all the adventuring.
We recruited a few more crew to boost our headcount.
HAVE WE?!
We left Cayenne after resupplying. Now, let's take a look at our chart.
Much of North America still remains unexplored.
However, we have already discovered a
lot of stuff.
More importantly though, we're almost out of cash! The cost of buying supplies is pretty cheap, but they do add up. We can't keep going much longer with so few money.
I decided it's time to return home.
We sailed northeast from Cayenne. It only took us eight days to get back to Europe.
Our circumnavigation is complete.
By the way, Catalina is now knowledgable enough to learn Cartography! Unfortunately, cartographer's guild only pays you for sea areas that you uncover
after you've signed a contract with them. Since I've no intention to do much more adventuring, we won't gain much money or fame from signing a contract with the cartographers now.
Time to report to our sponsor.
The sponsor's response to your discoveries differ depending on the level of the discovery. This is the Duke's response to B-rank discoveries.
And this for A-rank ones.
Note how ☆-rank discoveries are worth much,
much more than A-rank ones.
Reporting all our discoveries to the Duke earned us a grand total of 340,000 gold coins.
Furthermore, Catalina's adventure fame is now over 20k! Too bad that she has absolutely no use for these!
Here, have a final look at our chart.
Next time: Catalina goes back to piracy.