Airship Guide

[BonzaiFerroni]

Introduction

The purpose of this guide is to promote the fine activity of Airshipping and to spur discussion on all the details that still remain a mystery. Consider the state of this guide to be "incomplete", although there will be plenty of updates as others add their observations and we learn more! If you are making your own guide, feel free to use any or all of the information from my posts. Just credit the Swiftsong FC from Phoenix, the finest team of airship enthusiasts I know -_-7

A few relevant things from the 3.1 patch notes!



New discoveries so far:

• The Diadem (hard): We have reports that it can be unlocked from sectors 18, 20, 21, and 22. It may be the case that it can be discovered at any rank 50 sector. There is some RNG involved, so it may take several attempts. If you are trying to unlock, try including more than one sector in your trip! \o/
• Dravanian mote discovered at sector 13 and sector 6!
• Wind Silk discoverd at sector 17, sector 13, sector 21, and sector 16 \o/
• Oriental Grass discovered at sector 14, sector 8 and sector 7!
• Potters Stone (rare) discovered at sector 10 and sector 1!
• Dinosaur Leather discovered at sector 19! \o/

This guide has a new co-author!
Nyalia, who manages our voyage reporting spreadsheet, happened to have the next post after mine in the thread! \o/ She has re-purposed it to post some of her own information and insights. There has been a lot of interest in what airship parts configurations make sense for level 50 ships, and she has a section all about that. Check it out!



Table of Contents
Tip: Use CTRL+F and type the name of a section to skip to it

• Unsolved Mysteries
• Quick Tips
• Airship Stats and Upgrade Recommendations
• Sector Information
• Walkthrough
• Interpreting the Voyage Log
• Community Resources

Nyalia's Section (jump directly there)
My co-author is Nyalia, the author of the famous Desynthesis Endgame Guide and the administrator of our airship log spreadsheet. Her section gives a more detailed look at some of the things we are learning from our data analysis, putting some of our speculation about things like airship stats to the test! \o/

• Ship Builder Tool
• Ship Stats
• Trip Time Calculations
• Endgame Range Values
• Endgame Ship Designs (check this out!)
• Understanding the Voyage Log

Unsolved Mysteries

I'm putting this section first because I'm just as greedy for more information as you are. If you have information on any of these details, please reply! I will update the guide as we learn more. You can help out a great deal by entering the data from your flight logs into this spreadsheet.

• What does each stat influence? Speed and range seem simple enough, but what about retrieval, surveillance, and favor?
• What conditions are necessary to unlock sectors? [Partly Solved]

  What we know: Each sector is unlocked by a visiting another specific sector (see graphic below for details).
  What we don't know: Does surveillance help? Does rank improve your chances? Does shaming your mammet motivate it? We just don't know, but we are looking into it. If you are having trouble unlocking a sector, my best advice at present is to just keep trying!

• Where did all my coke go?

Fleet Infomation




Quick Tips

• If you just got your workshop and you are brand-new to airships in general, there is an super-handy guide by Z’an Tia of Midgardsormr! You'll find a helpful FAQ and a complete list of parts for each component.
• When building airship parts, don't worry too much about using HQ mats. It has no influence on the "quality" rating for each phase. The only benefit to using HQ mats is the exp bonus for making them and turning them in.
• Even though it is fairly easy to get plans for enterprise-type parts early on, I don't recommend skipping the invincible parts entirely. It is a long road to rank 15 on just bronco parts! Even after you get to 15, you won't be able to upgrade all four parts at once, there won't be enough capacity.
• Hang on to those bronco parts, and don't be shy about building upgrades, because you will get more than one use out of them. Upon visiting sector 8 you will unlock your 2nd airship! And there will be more on the way, you will eventually be able to have up to four airships.

You might be interested to know that materials such as balsa or bambo can be traded. Even if they arent listed on the mb you can still obtain some from another player; if you know someone that has spare/is willing to sell them.

Final information about airship and workshop after moving to a new house: You lose all progress

That is... Your sector discoveries and company crafting logs are tied to the estate hall's workshop, and not the Free Company itself. These are not carried over when you destroy the workshop and move. This is a little counter intuitive because you'd think knowledge is immaterial, like known sectors and recipes, you think you would keep that with you as you move, but nope.

Read more

The most efficient travel routes we've found look something like the Green Route here:

As your Airship moves away from the direct travel 'centerline' shown in black, your overall travel efficiency drops and you end up taking more time / Range to complete the trip! This can be really important if you're trying to make a lot of stops, but usually isn't a big worry if you're just visiting 1-2

Airship Stats and Upgrade Recommendations

• Surveillance: May influence the probability of gathering a 2nd item per sector. May also influence the probability of finding new sectors.
• Retrieval: Increases item extraction rating (higher quantities of a specific item, better EXP bonus).
• Speed: Influences voyage duration. (more info)
• Range: Allows you to visit more sectors per voyage.
• Favor: ??? (Speculation: Probability of HQ, Influences weather conditions encountered)

The above descriptions represent the current best guess for what each of the stats contribute. If you have your own speculation that you can support with observations, please share! Speed and Range seem pretty straightforward, and I will share my rationale for Surveillance and Retrieval in a reply. The following are your upgrade options and guidelines for how to prioritize:



Here is a table that shows how much airframe capacity you will have for new parts at certain levels, as well as EXP to level up (I'll need some help filling that in!). It is important to know that you get 1 additional airframe capacity per level, not just at the ones I've shown here.


Rank 50 Configurations
Nyalia's post below has a very detailed write-up on how to configure your rank 50 airships, along with some example configurations \o/



Sector Information

We need more reports to build this section, so share your discoveries! Some items are a higher tier, indicated by whether it says it is High-quality in the flight log. When you give your report, if you can include that information, that would help a lot! Items that are a high-quality tier are bolded. Items that are new to patch 3.1 are in blue!




Sector Map
The following is intended to serve as a visual guide for planning sector unlocks. There is some randomness involved with unlocking sectors, there appears to be roughly a 1 in 3 chance of for each visit. It is unclear if any stats contribute to your chance of success. Sometimes you might find yourself lucky and unlock a sector after 1-2 visits, and sometimes it might take a lot longer.




Unlocking sectors
When you report sector unlocks, please check out in the flight log which sector you visited. The discovery message will come after you visit the unlocking sector, as you begin to make your way to the next sector. The lines will look like this:

Survey of Sea of Clouds - Sector 05 complete. Elite performance rated as substandard. <-Sector that unlocked
Elite gains 79633 (+50%) experience points.
[]30h 53m elapsed -------------------
Changing course to Sea of Clouds - sector 4.
Sea of Clouds - Sector 7 discovered! <-Sector discovered

You may not always see this message in your flight log when you unlock a sector. In fact, there is currently a bug that sometimes reports the wrong sector as being unlocked! If you can, also report what rating you got for the sector that unlocked the new one and what type of forecastle you are using.