This guide covers the basics of the game and is aimed at beginners. It contains contents from power leveling from 1-20.

This Pirates of the Burning Sea leveling guide 1-20 aims to provide you with the necessary informations to level quickly and, most importantly, to shorten your learning curve. It is not designed for pirates, as they have a different playing style and will be covered in another guide. As a pirate you will still find some useful information. This guide is broad enough to include England, France and Spain characters.

After creating a character and logging on, you will appear on a ship that's being attacked. Speedily talk to the NPC, head out through the door, and talk again with the NPC. Your first task is to kill the 3 ennemies on the deck. Use your skills to dispatch them. Keep following the tutorial until you take control of the ship.

You will switch to sea combat. You have to defeat 2 ennemy ships that are very easy to destroy. Try to aim for the back of the ship but if you can't, they sink in 2-3 shots on the sides. After destroying them talk to the boat and finally you're set to actually start the game.

Newbie town and basics
When you warp onto the newbie town's port's dock, there will be NPCs with an exclamation point above their head. Those are quest givers and there are many in each town. The fastest way to level in Pirates of the Burning Sea is to grab all the available quests in a port, do them all one after the other and then go turn them in. You can also fight in open sea but it takes longer since you have to track ships of your level and chase after them. Visit the city and gather all the quests. You should have about 5-6.

Before entertaining you with quest strategies, I have to tell you about your skills. There are 3 fighting-styles, each having its strengths and weaknesses. Navy Officers start with fencing, Privateers start with dirty fighting and freetraders start with florentine. As of writing this guide, I believe that florentine is by far superior to the others. While they each have their uses, florentine is the one providing the most offensive. The best defense is offense because when the enemy captain is dead, the battle is over. When choosing your swashbuckling skills, try to always pick the ones improving your attack. In beta, at level four you get an item that lets you respec. I would respec to florentine if I were you. For your captain skills, choose skills that will help you board other ships : Navy Officers get decimate (-25 to grapple defense), Freetraders get many speed improvement skills (lets you board more easily by blocking the enemy ship), etc. Once you've picked up all the quests and you talked with the trainers, it's time to level.

I've levelled solo and grouped and they are both fast from 1-10. You get the same quest reward no matter how many players do the quest with you so obviously, you can complete many more quests per hour in a group than solo. You also split the loot from the NPCs that you kill, but you kill more of them in a group so it evens out. In many MMORPGs grouping slows you down but it's clearly not the case in this game. Also, the rewards become better as you progress through the quest lines, so always try to do every quest possible until the last quest in its line, even if the reward doesn't seem too great at first. Time to quest.

You start out in a pretty mediocre ship. After beta, they changed it so Navy Officers start with a 'La Belle' Corvette, Privateers start with a 'Halifax' Schooner and Freetraders start with a 'Otter' Scuda. The good thing is that they've all very quick. It's quick but it doesn't have many guns so it takes a long time sinking enemies. The bottom line is that for efficient leveling, you want to board enemy ships. Either way, if you sink an enemy you get less loot and no pennants / commendations, which I'll explain shortly. These ships are perfect for boarding at low level because of their speed and manoeuverability. The best way to board a ship is to block him at a 90 degrees angle. You can sail along the enemy's side to board but you will fail very often. They've also improved the AI so that enemies don't let you block them as easily. You should still aim to try boarding them. When a battle start, head straight to one of the enemy ships and try to catch him at a 90 degrees angle to block him. Wait until you have at least 55-60% grapple chance, otherwise you'll waste a lot of time.

When you board an enemy's ship, you switch to swashbuckling combat. In low level ships, both you and your enemy captain will have 6 NPC allies. No matter what level it is, if you reduce the enemy's crew to a single digit or low two-digits (preferably 15 or less), he will only have 0 or 1 wave of reinforcement. Since this is very desireable, your best ammunition when starting out is the one that lowers enemy crew. At low levels, always focus on the captain. Ignore his cronies. After defeating him you'll win the battle. Board one, win, rinse, repeat until you win the missions. If you chain the missions, you'll accumulate good money.

Commendations, pennants and ships
After doing a couple missions, you will hit level 5 and earn skills by default. One of them will be called "Claim ship" or something similar. You've probably noticed that when you board a ship and win, it floats there empty and it's named "derelict". Claim ship allows you to turn these derelict ships into tokens called commendations, for Navy Officers or pennants for Privateers and Freetraders. The tokens can be turned in at your nation's capital for ship deeds, hence their importance. This is why boarding is definitively superior to sinking: when destroying a ship, you can't claim it.

Commendations and pennants have different levels and offer different rewards. As a Navy Officer, the first 3 ranks are "Diligence", "Courage" and then "Temperance". You can turn in 25 Commendations of Diligence for a Bermuda Sloop (level 8), 50 Commendations of Courage for Mediator Cutter (level 12) and 50 Commendations of Temperance for a Curieuse Heavy Snow (level 15 warship). Other classes can turn their pennants for rewards but it takes more of them. Commendations and pennants are an important part of leveling, but you can't rely on them past the Bermuda Sloop. The reason is that you get too many different types, so getting 50 is very difficult. For example, while levelling a Navy Officer to level 25, I received over a hundred Commendations of Diligence, about 75 Commendations of Courage, but only 24 Commendations of Temperance. In other words, by the time you reach 50, you will have massively outgrown the ship.

This leads us to the ships themselves. Which one should you use? In short, in this POTBS 1-20 leveling guide, I advocate keeping your starting ship as long as possible. I suggest doing all the quests in the newbie town, which leads you to level 10, and then go to the capital and get the Bermuda Sloop if you have enough commendations/pennants. I highly suggest saving your money because the lower level ships are only a slight upgrade and you will outgrow them very fast either way. You don't need more guns or more crew since our strategy is to board ship when they have low crew, meaning your ship in itself doesn't really matter.

In any case, if you do wish to upgrade because you're richer than god, here is the "natural" step-ups from 1-20.
Level 6 => 'Jamaica' Sloop.
Level 8 => 'Bermuda' Sloop.
Level 12 => 'Mediator' Cutter.
Level 15 (optional) => 'Algiers' Xebec.
Level 17 => 'Lexington' Brig.
All those ships are fast and manoeuverable so they're great for boarding. Only the Lexington is slow, since it's a warship. You don't necessarily need it but it helps in many missions where the thicker armor can save your life. Now that you know about commendations, pennants and ships, continue doing missions until you hit level 10.

Moving out, and the economy quest
Once you're level 10, a new line of quests open up in newbie town, and that's why I suggest staying there. In my nation, I got this quest line from an NPC close to the docks and it's a series of quest that makes you defeat the local town boss. As a reward you get the 'Signet Ring of Crime Lord', which has a right-clickable buff. At this point its use is a little sketchy, some people say you can use it in Tortuga to get cheap ammunition but we haven't tested it. Depending on whether you've grouped or not, if you've boarded all ships or not, you may not be level 10. In that case, simply go out into the open sea and kill some pirates.

You will want to do the economy quest now. You can read our guide Economy 101 to learn about Pirates of the Burning Sea's economy. While doing the economy quest, an NPC will ask you to go to the capital to see European trade routes, or something like that. Make sure to either have enough commendations / pennants for a 'Bermuda' Sloop, or enough to buy a cheap civilian ship. When you have either of those, head to the capital. The reason for this is that you will leave your throwaway ship in the capital and use your best one. When you have a ship in a port, you can go to the dockmaster and ask him to transport you to your ship. Leaving your lousiest ship in the capital means you will be able to teleport back and forth, saving you an insane amount of time.

After doing the economy quest, you can take a pause from levelling and start producing. Again I refer you to our Economy 101 guide. When you're done with that, head back towards the newbie port but stop at the closest one, which is obviously where they want you to go. Again, you should pick up all quests and do them one after the other, turn them in, rinse and repeat. Every couple levels, you will get a class specific mission. They're more difficult and provide much better rewards : usually a faction rank and a skill. Those should be your priority.

This mostly covers leveling from 1-20 for England, France and Spain. You have to grind missions. Luckily, it's much faster than in other games. Levelling from 1-10 should take a few hours, and then 10-20 takes a day or two depending on your speed. Once you get to level 20, you will know the game well enough not to need a guide.