Naval

Alpha-1 naval concept art.^[1]

Snapchat Sneakpeak, 9 November 2017.^[2]

Naval content refers to content above and below the sea.^[3]^[4]

Naval content was unlocked as part of the $1,500,000 Kickstarter stretch goal.^[9]

Navios for "island hopping" may be included in Alpha-1.^[10]^[11]

Temporary teleportation points will be present in early tests until ships are introduced later in the alpha testing.^[10]

Naval NPCs

Naval NPCs exist in and around the oceans.^[3]

Sailing NPCs.^[3]
Fortresses.^[3]
Frigates or galleon ships.^[3]
Raid bosses.^[3]
Quest givers.^[3]
General sea-based NPCs.^[3]

There's an NPC structure that exists out in the oceans. These take the form of sailing NPCs, fortresses, whether that be large frigate or galleon based ships, and they take the form of raid bosses. They take the form of general sea-based NPCs. There's treasures that you can find on land and explore out at sea, as obviously one of the missions is why you would be going out to sea. There's escort missions that you can participate in... Some of those are straightforward and interact but with an NPC to receive a quest for; and some of those have to be discovered at sea. So these are all things that are make that type of area in an MMO exciting. You don't just want to have water for water's sake. You want to have water because it's a different experience from a content perspective than what's on land; and in order to be a different experience you have to have that content.^[3] – Steven Sharif

Mariner classes

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap for Alpha-1.

Alpha-1 naval concept art.^[12]

Mariner classes (also referred to as boatsmanship classes, boatsman skills or seamanship) contain different skill trees arranged in a similar manner to Classes Artesãs. As a player gains experience in these different skills they become more adept at using them.^[13]

Gunnery.^[13]
Piloting.^[13]
Navigation.^[13]
Boat repair.^[13]
Ship components.^[13]
Defensive skills.^[13]
Utility based skills.^[13]

You can spec into and kind of create your own class based on what things you're doing on the boat... It's gonna be very similar to in structure to like the artisanship trees, so you'll you'll have your mariner class: You'll have different trees in that class.^[13] – Jeffrey Bard

Navios

Tea transport PAX East 2018 exclusive cosmetic ship skin.^[14]

Sailing will be pretty in-depth and it's going to be based on the size of the ship that you're using. So there will be components for seamanship that other players you will need to have on board if you want to operate a vessel to the best of it's abilities: Let's say in combat or traversing just the world.^[15] – Steven Sharif

Navios are owned by the player who has the ship item in their inventory. Only that player can summon the ship.^[16]

Ship creation is generally delegated to players. There won't be many non-player-owned ships.^[17]
- Quest lines may have NPC driven ships.^[17]
- NPC ships will be present on the ocean that are adversaries or monsters that will be targets for players to try to raid or hunt for treasure.^[17]

For the most part all ship creation will be delegated to the player. You have to build up a ship or find somebody who has one if you want to get across the seas.^[17] – Steven Sharif

Permissions will be present to allow other players to access ship functions who are in the same party or raid, such as weapons, anchors, utility items, and the ship's helm to navigate the ship.^[16]
Players will have quests that navigate them toward creating a personal vessel at around level 10-15.^[18]

^[17]

Ship classes

Alpha-1 naval concept art.^[19]

Navios are divided into classes of vessel, which relate to their size and capabilities in battle and in transportation.^[20]^[21]

Size	Type	Usage.^[21]	Crew.^[22]
Small	Personal vessels.^[18]	"Solo" content	1-3
Medium	Frigates (potentially).^[3]	Group content	Group size (8)
Large	Galleons.^[23]^[24]	Raid content	Raid size (40)

Certain ship classes will have the ability to render Crowd control (CC) effects on other ships, such as a harpoon effects.^[25]

Ships have their own class of vessel and the class that is related to the vessel has a certain purpose both in battle in PvE raids, in transportation.^[20] – Steven Sharif

Summoning ships

Navios (excluding Naval caravans) can only be summoned from a port or harbor.^[26]^[27]

Ships may be able to be summoned in rivers (or other bodies of water) depending on the depth of the water.^[28]
Naval caravans are initiated when a land-based caravan intersects with an ocean.^[26]

You can summon your ships up but you'll need to summon them from land, which means that if something happens to your armada out at sea you won't have backups to just summon immediately in the middle of the fight... They'll have to do so from shore somewhere from some port or harbor.^[27] – Steven Sharif

Ship building

Naval concept art.^[29]

Ship building is a crafting profession that is able to construct ship components based on blueprints that unlock capabilities that scale with their progression within the ship building profession.^[6]^[23]^[30]

Movement, Durability, Speed, Turn rate, Hit points, Defensive and Damage abilities.^[31]^[6]^[23]^[30]
Weapon slots.^[31]
Aesthetic customization.^[30]
Ship components can be sold to other players.^[6]

You can have the base value of a hull. That hull might have certain placements that are available when it comes to utility slots and/or weapon slots for the ship. Essentially you are going to have that hull itself be augmented by constructibles via the ship building profession.^[31] – Steven Sharif

A player does not need to be a ship builder to construct ships. Players utilize the ship components that are crafted by ship builders to upgrade their ships.^[6]^[7]

Anyone with the right schematics, materials and an advanced enough node may construct a ship.^[32]

Ships may only be crafted or upgraded in harbor crafting stations that are unlocked by the advancement of coastal nodes.^[6]^[7]^[33]^[6]^[7]

You will not need to be a ship builder profession to construct ships. The shipbuilder profession particularly they have the ability to craft components of the ships which increases the ship's capabilities, defenses, speeds, turn rate, offense and defense, you know all those types of things and then they can sell those to other players.^[6] – Steven Sharif

Players can choose which "joints" get populated with either utility or weaponry spots on a ship.^[34]

Naming ships

Navios and Edificações will be able to be named. The custom name will appear as floating text when it is targeted.^[35]

Trade routes

Mayoral caravan launched by a mayor to establish a trade route with another node.^[36]

Trade routes in Ashes of Creation refer to.

Economic relationships between nodes established by Mayors through the caravan system.^[36]
An aspect of naval content.^[4]^[9]

Naval caravans (Naval caravans)

Alpha-1 Niküa naval caravan 3D render.^[37]

Caravans are capable of transitioning from land to naval caravans. So if you start out as a land-based Caravan and you move to the coast and you want to move into the water there's gonna be a little transition period there; it's gonna be a little construction kind of site: You're not gonna have to do anything it's just gonna be a timer right so that you can't quickly move between land and water. It's gonna be probably in the matter of you know a minute to two minutes. There's a little bit of vulnerability in that regard.^[38] – Steven Sharif

Naval caravans (Trade ships) are part of Ashes of Creation naval content.^[8] Naval caravans allow the transportation of trading goods.^[39]

Naval caravans are capable of transitioning to and from land caravans at the point of intersection of land and ocean.^[26]^[38]^[39]
These caravans will come in varying sizes and capacities.^[38]
By default naval caravans have a racial appearance. Players will be able to apply caravan skins to change this appearance.^[38]

Combate naval

Combate naval involves different types of Navios with varying capabilities, armaments and roles to play out on the high seas. There will be a balance and counterbalance between ships from Pvp and PvE perspectives.^[21]

Naval PvP is between ships.^[21]
Naval PvE includes open sea raids and sea-based bosses.^[21]

Battles at sea will be epic. They will have some supreme rewards and/or losses if the battle succeeds or fails.^[22] – Steven Sharif

Naval PvP

Operators of a ship's weapons platform can initiate naval PvP against another ship in the following three cases.^[40]

The result of events (such as guild wars or node wars) between the parties.^[40]
When the ships move into an area that automatically flags them for combat.^[40]
As the result of open-world PvP, utilizing the flagging and corruption system.^[40]

Hijacking ships

Certain ships can be hijacked. Naval caravans can not be hijacked. The cargo on a trade ship will be similar to caravans in that the ship must be destroyed in order to capture the loot from its wreckage.^[41]

Coastal/island nodes

Pre-alpha naval concept.^[42]

There will be nodes along the coast and on islands.^[5]

These nodes will have specific water oriented influences and abilities, services, questlines, that relate to the seas.^[5]
Coastal nodes change the spawn tables of the nearby water content and can also trigger specific events.^[23]
Harbors in coastal nodes will have quest lines that relate to the ocean and nearby islands.^[23]
It may be possible to siege a coastal city by sea.^[43]

Island chains are part of Ashes of Creation naval content.^[4]^[9]

Harbors

Alpha-1 harbor early preview concept.^[44]

For coastal nodes there are hooks out to points of interest that take control of harbors. Harbors have a significant amount of influence over the waters. That's their their primary hook.^[3] – Steven Sharif

Harbors appear along the coast as a result of a node being developed on or near to the coast.^[6]^[7] Harbors have a significant amount of influence over the waters.^[3]

Coastal nodes have hooks to points of interest that take control of harbors.^[3]
Harbors will grant quests that are related to naval content.^[3]^[7]
Harbors will provide a number of services including upgrades to ships.^[6]^[7]

There will be harbors that boats can go inside of those will be present along the coast. Harbors can pop up as a result of a node being developed nearby, if it's near the coast or if a node itself is on the coast it can have a harbor component to it. There will likely be quests that are granted from this harbor, specifically with regards to the sea and sea content; and what you can do in this harbor will be a lot of different things including upgrades to the boats.^[7] – Steven Sharif

Fishing boats

There may be fishing boats in Ashes of Creation.^[45]

Tides

Waves on a beach by Michael Bacon.^[46]

There won't be tidal patterns in the ocean, but the ocean will not be static content all the time. Unique content will be represented at certain times with regards to certain climates.^[47]