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[Surfsuds]

My tips:

1) The sail at the bottom of your screen can be a big help in combat. Use it as a scope for your cannons (I use all four at once). Fire when an enemy ship is on or above the tip of the sail and you'll have a hit. Every time!

2) I've found if you turn toward your enemy head on, you can minimize your damage. Let's say you fire from the starboard side like me. After you fire, turn the steering wheel to the right. The enemy ship will gradually move left just off the screen. You've become a much smaller target, Stay there until your cannons are ready to fire again. Then, turn your wheel left until the enemy ship reappears and is broadside above the sail. Boom, you have a hit.

3) Buy new charts as soon as you can. Not all ports carry the same charts and you don't want to double back.

This is a wonderful game that I'm enjoying no end. Didn't care for it in the beginning, though. Pirates were coming after me from all sides and I couldn't hit the side of a barn. My little trades were earning pitiful amounts of gold. The posts here were very helpful, though. I decided to forget everything and go for an estate. I found a great trade route buying opium, jewelry and silk in Tunisia and selling them a short hop across the Mediterranean in Marseille. (Can anyone sell opium in Marseille without thinking of, "The French Connection"?) Then, bought arms in Marseille to sell back in Tunisia. Gold really started rolling in. There may be better trade routes but this was fast and relatively safe.

Once I had the estate (really very beautiful), I settled in for some serious gaming. I traded up to a Corvette to visit new ports for points and adventure. Corvettes carry little cargo but can outrun almost any other ship. So, not worrying about pirates, I sailed around the Horn to the East. Aha, found treasures! And, brought an intelligence officer in from the cold for great loyalty points. (Visit every tavern in every port you enter. That's where you meet people and buy estates and treasures.) After I returned to Europe, I rebought a Fluyt to haul cargo for more gold.

If you let your imagination play, you will really enjoy this game. Listen for the gulls in harbor, the slap of the sails at sea and the ominous thunder of an approaching storm. Don't miss a great little place for bouillabaise near the docks of Marseille (just kidding). Best of all, after a long stretch at sea you can return to your estate and put your feet by the fire. Have a snifter or two of fine brandy and admire your treasure. You earned it.

Tough out the very beginning stages of the game and you will be richly rewarded.

The folks here at Abandonia do a wonderful job. Thank you for all the great games and hours of fun!

My question now is.....

-- What Keys/mouse action should I use when I am trying to board a ship? Are there any set keys I should hit to make my men board faster? I've been bashing the keyboard at different points during this operation, in the hope that something will work. I tend to lose a LOT of men during these fights and then spend the rest of the game making up men from every tavern I can find.

-- I think Arms are safe to carry...but now I'm not sure. I know Opium, Tobacco and Liquor are contraband, without losing points, but what about Arms?

-- What is a failsafe way of making fast points for Daring? My tally is always so much lower than the others ...???

[Doc Adrian]

I believe the boarding action is all automatic..the only way to reduce the casualtys that I know of is to have more Soldiers to inflict more damage.

To my knowledge you can carry arms, tobacco, opium, and liquor to any port without penalty, you get a penalty for helping a smuggler that wants to to sneak things "No questions asked" but I haven't lost points running any of the cargos on my own.

Daring..acts of piracy against an enemy nation or attacking pirates, also helping sneak agents from your own country may help.

Hope this helps you Ainslee

My favoutite route : Opium from Shanghai/Macao/Fu-Chao ===> Goa

A fairly short distance. Another good one is Liverpool arms ==>Charleston, Charleston Tobacco ==> liverpool.

I've been looking for the music from this game as well. The tracks for the Middle East are from Erik Satie's Gnossiennes Nos. 1 & 3. (If you were getting these, I'd recommend all six Gnossiennes, anyway)

I have no idea why, but High Seas Trader is very sluggish and skips a lot, even when I increased the CPU cycles and frameskip on Dosbox. I didn't have this problem before...

I`m trying to play the game but it moves too fast. There`s a way to slow it down ?

How do you play the game with actual PC ?

Emmmmm...... I answer myself . Just put HST.exe -P in the command line !!!

I`m not very good with this game , my crew always decides that y must leave the ship ..... When we are in the middle of the ocean!!.

make sure you have some money left to pay their salaries, and above all, have grog!

Its a light alcoholic drink that makes your crew happier

If you are just starting, my favorite is Amsterdam-st petersburg/stockholm, dont remmeber, a very profitable liquor-arms route if you dont have too much cash

As to combat, when I played it a long time ago I amused myself by going pirate hunting near africa. After a while, most of my enemies surrendered after my first shot, wether I hit them or not

Slight downside, I never figured out the estate part, so I was stuck with the medium ranks

good luck to all ya landlubbers with no heart for sea combat

remember: a colision at see will ruin your entire day

I was wondering why the original voices aren't included in the download. Is it to reduce the zip size? I really missed the " what'll be captain " Fortunatly I found my old CD and was happy that just adding that folder worked to include the speeches without having to mount the cd drive in dosbox.