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[Surfsuds]

Bultro, the Captain's cabin has the information you're looking for. Click on the blue book on the bookcase. It's full of logs with lots of information. The Trading Log will give you prices in cities all over the world. Makes it a lot easier to plan routes. The ship in the bottle will allow you do repairs at sea after a battle, much better than limping into the nearest port while pirates smack at you like a cat with a mouse. The closet has the save, quit and other options. The plate lets you adjust crew rations if you're in a financial fix. Frames on wall show your stats and awards.

The ''Tips'' link on the main HST page has lots of the in's and out's, too.

I'm playing a much more aggressive game than I did years ago. I was sick of getting creamed in pirate attacks back then, skittish at sea, had trouble aiming cannons. Just a mess. This time I followed the advice of a very helpful poster a few pages back. I chose England as my home port, fewer pirates in northern Europe. The shuttle between Liverpool (arms) and Bordeaux (liquor) is a safe and quick way to get started. The Boston (arms) to Charleston (tobacco) shuttle he mentioned is also good. I can't remember the details but check out a shuttle between St. Petersburg and Stockholm and possibly a third city. A mix and match triangle of ports can be very profitable. I did well going from Boston (arms) to Puerto Bello (sugar) to Belize (spices, jewelry) and back to Boston. I'm still missing the equatorial Atlantic map so I can't get to the Orient yet. It will come.

My ship choices (it will vary with each player's style) are the starter fluyt for seed money, the corvette as soon as I can afford it to travel quickly to many ports free from pirate attacks, back to the fluyt to earn bigger gold and get battle experience to move up to to the tall ships. Another poster made the frigate sound good, too.

For the player looking for Asian maps, I got some in Stockholm.

These tips are really to help players get started. Once you earn some gold and get the hang of plotting trade routes, you'll really enjoy it. Very addictive!