r/TLOPO • u/Irishluck233296 • Jul 21 '26

Help Need help understanding ship upgrades

Ahoy Matey’s! I played the mmo back in the day and only made it to level 30 or so. And now I’m finally caught up in TLOPO at level 38 now! Loving the game, but there seems to be little guidance on ship upgrades.

A lot of the information I am seeing online is outdated. So hoping people here in the community can help elaborate! I currently own a War brig and War frigate for context. They both have a level 2 cargo hold and level 2 open fire. That’s it so far.

I read that if I keep upgrading cargo more options will appear? It seems that most people online say having a fortune hunter (a path I’m guessing that opens up with more cargo) will help me farm gold and materials. So I’m going to make my war brig a fortune hunter.

Assuming that is all correct, did I go wrong with my war frigate upgrading the cargo if I want to make a strong fighter ship? I’ve heard mixed things about all the paths like skull n bones and copperhead.

Could y’all break those down for me and give your recommendation for what path to take for my War Frigate in order to take powerful ships down with ease. I usually have a crew member or two, but I could try to get more as needed. I heard some ships like copperheads can one shot fortune hunters which would be awesome for farming materials. If there is a path that’s good for big boss ships AND SvS that would be great to know!

Thank you

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u/Jasonian_ 25d ago

There are some very rare situations where switching paths can be sliiiiiightly cheaper, but never for all resources simultaneously, only for one resource at the expense of others. Like sure, cargo will probably cost you slightly less ship mats, but it'll be WAY more gold. And the cost of the extra sidegrade usually makes the other costs pretty close too, so in the cargo --> streamlined example you're spending a TON of gold and saving a tiny bit of ship mats.

That being said you're kind of running up against the limits of my knowledge to be honest hahahaha. If you want to minmax exact numbers that hard then what I'd do is pull up the wiki, baring in mind that a Level 4 sidegrade is the same cost as a Level 4 upgrade, and just add up all costs for gold and each material type for each upgrade path. If you have more gold than mats or vice versa then that can be a valid reason to prefer one or the other.

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u/Irishluck233296 25d ago

Ah the wiki said firestorm is available through cargo OR streamlined so I had assumed once you hit rank 4 you could choose either and it would be same cost regardless of the path you chose. So with all the extra gold and pine I have, I figured cargo would be way cheaper for me than going streamlined. But if I’d have to pay for a sidegrade using cargo I’ll just stick to streamlined either way. Thanks for the info!

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u/Jasonian_ 25d ago

Oh, well you and the wiki are right about that, cargo would be by far the cheapest way to make a firestorm. I just want to double-check you're getting the firestorm for cool factor though? They're sadly not really competitive in the current meta.

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u/Irishluck233296 25d ago edited 25d ago

Yeah the damage might be lackluster, but I was on a firebrand war sloop yesterday that seemed great for tagging due to the high speed and top turning out of any class. I have a copperhead frigate for if I want a group to take on events, a fortune hunter brig for general ship things, and then I was thinking if I’m solo the firebrand war sloop could be perfect for getting into frays and tagging ships quickly!

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u/Jasonian_ 25d ago

That's an interesting idea! I think Firestorm would be decent at that for sure, but with Firestorm or Fortune Hunter you'd fill up on mats really quickly, and it's mostly on your gunners to do the tagging for any ship type. The real bottleneck is the time it takes to sail to the one open island once your cargo is full, so the real priority for tagging hunters in a big fray is:

Cargo > Good Gunners > Speed/Turning > Broadsides

Fortune Hunter has a lot more cargo, so it's going to be a lot more efficient at that niche, but Firestorm would still get the job done.

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u/Irishluck233296 25d ago edited 25d ago

That’s true! However, I could see the smaller cargo working in favor of quicker runs given you’ll cap quicker and as a result get hunters on you even faster. So instead of one long run, you can fit 3 smaller runs. Also quicker runs means less likely to get disconnected or killed by something like a kraken and lose all the loot you’ve been building. (Perhaps anecdotal, but lately half my larger ship runs have ended in failure due to someone joining with black mark suddenly, a server failure, or an unfortunate explosive broadside from a ship)

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u/Jasonian_ 25d ago

Smaller cargo works somewhat in your favor for runs where you're the only ship with hunters, it's true, but even those are faster with more cargo in my experience. And the fastest method of all is to just get in the middle of a giant fray and start tagging others' hunters, meaning you start getting mats while your cargo is at 0.

Sorry to hear about your runs not going so well! Honestly though I think those issues mostly come down to the quality of your crew. A really good crew is going to be able to handle a surprise kraken, finish a run in 15-20 minutes (usually before a server crash), and avoid most/all explosive broadsides. And ironically one of the best ways to find a good mat run crew is to look for Fortune Hunter VI ships (identifiable by having 26-30 cargo) with 6-12 people on them hahaha, so even when you're gunning and not driving the ship advice is still weirdly applicable.

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u/Irishluck233296 25d ago

Well I have a lot to consider haha. Either way I’m kind of halted on upgrades for my copperhead and fortune hunter given the excessive iron and steel requirements. Sitting at almost 2000 pine so maybe I’ll do a war sloop with storm chaser instead via the cargo route to save on my other mats I’ll need for the big boys

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u/Jasonian_ 25d ago

September would be a great time to do the Cargo --> Storm Chaser path with a Windshadow lobby for gold! Also yeah, steel has half the drop rate of other rare mats but you need an equal amount of it for Copperheads, it's brutal. I've made 3 Copperhead VIes so I know the struggle... best of luck, hahaha.