This initially started as a way to make use of my ship while waiting for ph8, since I didn't want to kill off my Santabrutenclaws fishing for BP (still sad he got replaced with ching when she came out :c ) So the general idea is this: Cross as many squares as possible, in the shortest amount of time, while using up your entire ship's range. Each square you cross has a chance to give you a reward. So by doing as many as possible, you're maximizing the number of rewards you can get. One of these rewards is gems!! There are a couple different paths I've done, depending on where things spawn and if I'm trying to avoid battles (battles take up a lot of range and time, for much less reward, but you may want to clear your initial farming path) My latest path is as follows: Notice it uses all my range and crosses a large number of squares, but only takes 2 hours 3 minutes (with observatory). This is the aim. While a couple things did spawn in my path, because I set sail before they spawned, they did not add to overall range restrictions (unsure if they added time). Notice how many rewards I'm getting from crossing squares. This run I only got 1 gem square, but it had 5 gems in that square. On average, I see 1-3 gem squares; sometimes I get 4, sometimes I get none. The depth of the water effects the number of gems that can be dropped, and I've found the second and third shallowest waters are the most efficient in terms of gems vs time/range to cross. But the shallowest waters take 5 seconds and very little range, so might as well add them in. If you're going to sleep, it may be worth skipping some shallows to cross a more rough sea, however. I would say I average 5-8 gems a trip. The most I've gotten is 15, and there are some times I've gotten 0. But if I'm diligent enough about resending my ship out, I've been able to pull in 50-75 a day in the past. Not a lot, but enough to gem 6-10 extra armies when farming. And to the high rank players that gem resources, this is an easy way to get gems and resources without costing you a single troop, which might be enough to get you an extra couple attacks or a mine or two reset when you're hurting for grog at rank 900. My farming army takes 8 gems with pc3 (10 brutes 25 gunners- 1 brute 4 gunners x 6, 2 brutes 1 gunner, 2 brutes) which means every trip or two I get an entire free army, or an extra 400-600k of both loots every 4 hours. This is an extra 100-150k gold and grog per hour. 30 days of diligent farming would have been enough to completely speed up PH8 when you first start building it. Which is approximately how long I spent farming gems before it was announced. A huge advantage, especially for a non-spender or light spender. The downside is you're sacrificing approx 2k bp per day from farming fishes, so you may want to build up a bit of a reserve even after you've finished your ac7 and mm3s, or hunt fish while you sleep and farm gems while awake. But if you're like me and have a decent pile of BP and EP to spare, and are looking to speed up your wall farming a little bit, I promise these trips add up after doing 5-10 a day for a week. If anyone finds a better path to use all 1600 range in a shorter amount of time, I'd love to see it.
As a follow up, as I've done about a month's worth of explorations experimenting with this I typically notice: -lightest blue shallow waters are typically 1 gem, drop rate seems very low, but they only take 5 seconds so you can do a bunch in a very short time which kind of balances that out. -one shade darker is typically 3 gems, drop rate seems slightly higher, but it takes longer. Still seems to be a better average return for an equal amount of time spent versus doing an equivalent sailing time on the lightest squares. -one more shade darker is typically 5 gems, seems to have the best drop rate versus time taken. I'm not sure how many you get on other darker colors, but the time taken definitely isn't worth it. The three lightest shades are the best. If you're really patient and bored, you can sail all the lightest blue squares near your base in 1 minute 5 seconds, and not use your entire range. The drop rate is very low on these squares, and you will likely only get 1 gem when it does drop, but if you're patient enough and have nothing else to do, its an option. I didn't find it worth it, since you can't keep a second army on your ship while doing this, but if you already killed off most of your ships crew, you could use this method if you're bored while waiting for your crew to train.
Thanks a lot for this post, this is great. All of my upgrades that require BP are either baked or baking and I still have 28k of BP with nothing to spend it on except the Observatory, so I've been hunting Sea Serpents as they sometimes give gems. I'll give this a go as soon as my boat comes back!
Great post. I started doing that once I finished my map. I just couldn't stand having my ship not sailing
So I've followed this route (or very similar routes) ten times now and thought I'd share my results (I only counted gems, not EP, gold or grog): 3 gems 0 gems 0 gems 0 gems 1 gem 2 gems 6 gems 5 gems 2 gems 0 gems It seems quite hit and miss and to get nothing 40% of the time is frustrating. But sometimes it works, so I think I'll continue doing this during the day, and send my boat on longer trips for BP during the night.
You've been getting a lot less than I was. The route I was following about a month ago was 50% longer (just over 3 hours), but had more of the third level of sea, which seems to give 5 gems most of the time, and drop more often. I'll see if I can find a screen of it. Its also possible the loot went down, as fish seem to have been giving less BP since the 1.6 update as well.
