The addition of deckhands was one of the biggest changes to shipping. You no longer need a large number of players to manage your ship. Without deckhands, your ship isn't going to be much use, so you are going to need to manage them.

Worker Levels

Deckhand's levels directly impact how fast they perform their duties. At level 100, a deckhand has the equivalent skill of a player and at level 1 they are half as skilled. Once a deckhand reaches level 77, they will move around the ship performing their duties much faster. They will also respond almost instantly to your fire commands.

You can review your deckhand levels with J R D (job review deckhand).

The level of your deckhand will also affect how accurate your fire volleys are, how fast they repair, how efficiently they pump water, and, how fast they raise or lower the sails.

For a full review of deckhands, take a look at the help file DECKHANDS

Jobs

Deckhands can perform a variety of actions, but you will ultimately need to tell them what to do.

• Guns: Deckhands man the guns and fire at ships and serpents using commands issued via shout
• Sails: Deckhands will lower or raise the sails. You will need multiple deckhands to assist you with this task.
• Repair: Deckhands repair the closest damaged room to their current location when issued the commands to repair.
• Pump: Deckhands will move to hull rooms to pump (not all rooms below deck contain pumps).
• Douse: Deckhands will rush to the closest room on fire to douse the flames

Assigning jobs

Deckhand jobs are assigned using the job manage deckhand command or J M D. Each job can be abbreviated down to the first letter.

Some examples of crew distribution: (Uppercase is not required)

• J M D G 100 - 100% to guns
• J M D G 90 P 10 - 90% guns, 10% pump
• J M D G 50 R 30 P 20 - 50% guns, 30% repair, 20% pump

The job distribution is divided into percentages of 100. If you miscalculate, the game will attempt to determine what you meant and balance the distribution accordingly.

J M by itself will list all the deckhands and show you what they are doing. You will see them performing their actions or where they are moving to. When a deckhand has nothing to do (IDLE), they will gather at the capstan.

Firing your guns

Guns can be fired to the larboard, starboard, stern, and bow. You can also split your volleys into top and bottom. As there is only one bow gun t or b will not help here.

The commands to fire at a serpent are

• shout fire lb - Larboard deckhand gunners will fire at the serpent
• shout fire lb t - Top deck larboard gunners will fire at a serpent
• shout fire sb - Starboard deckhand gunners will fire at a serpent
• shout fire sb b - Bottom starboard gunners will fire at a serpent
• shout fire st - Stern deckhand gunners will fire at a serpent
• shout fire b - Bow deckhand gunner will fire at a serpent

When you are in combat with a player or with Khrait you can ask your deckhands to tell you if a ship can be targeted. To do this you will Shout SHIP lb, sb, st, or b.

Firing on other ships.

The commands to fire on ships are different to those of serpents as you will need to target the hostile ship. You can also focus fire on specific areas.

• shout fire lb *ship name* - will fire an unfocused volley at the ship, hitting randomly
• shout fire lb *ship name* hull - will direct your fire at the hull
• shout fire lb *ship name* rigging - will fire at the sails
• shout fire lb *ship name* crew - will fire at the guns

It would be of great advantage to any prospective captain to alias their firing commands. Ship combat can be overwhelming and events can escalate very quickly. For information on ship combat go to Ship Combat: PVP