Uncharted Waters Origin Land Exploration Guide

Uncharted Waters Origin Land Exploration Guide

This explains the game’s land exploration mechanic. This also lists zone levels, and thus, the implied order of various regions in the game.

You can stop near most land in the game for land exploration. Land exploration costs a bedroll each time, but gives you a chance to make discoveries, acquire ship parts, and acquire items that can be turned in at a collector or gifted to mates or inn employees.

Land exploration operates by zones. Unlike other Uncharted Waters games, you don’t have to drop anchor at particular, small spots to explore. Rather, most of the shore areas are divided into zones. Stopping anywhere within a zone to do land exploration is equivalent to any other place, with only the exception of quests that lead you to a very particular spot.

Each land exploration attempt will last two to four days. There are two events per day. If the last event of the second day fails, then the land exploration attempt fails. If it succeeds, then it continues for the third day. Similarly, if the last event of the third day succeeds, then it continues for a fourth day. Land exploration always continues for at least two days and stops no later than the end of the fourth day.

Land exploration events are divided between combat, observe, and gather. At the menu to start land exploration, it will give you probabilities of each event type appearing in each particular slot. Usually, they are 40% for each of two types and 20% for the third, though sometimes it is 60% for combat and 20% for each of the others.

Every land exploration zone has some difficulty rating. It uses the same difficulty rating for each of the three event types. Your party also has a rating for each of the three event types. Your chances of success at each event depends solely on the difference between your rating and the zone’s rating in the relevant event type. All three types use the same formula. I don’t know the exact formula, but empirically, this formula seems to be very, very close:

success chance (as percentage) = 96.42/(1+exp(-0.05451*((party skill)-(zone difficulty)-18.73))-1

That formula is so close that the true formula is definitely some sort of logistic curve. It also levels off at something significantly less than 100%.

The party skill rating depends mostly on particular skills. The relevant skill, by event type, is:

event	skill
combat	melee
observe	nature
gather	supply

Nature and supply are adventuring skills that have fleet levels. Your skill for land exploration depends on the fleet level, not on the exact skill value. You get 14 points per fleet level in the skill. A table up to level 13 looks like this:

skill level	fleet points	event skill
1	0	14
2	850	28
3	1490	42
4	3360	56
5	5980	70
6	9340	84
7	13460	98
8	18320	112
9	23930	126
10	30290	140
11	41130	154
12	54290	168
13	70010	182

Note that it is only the fleet level, not the total number of points. Having 6300 points in nature or 9300 makes no difference, as either will give you nature level 5. Having 6300 points rather than 6200 makes a big difference, as that’s the difference between level 4 and level 5.

Combat goes by melee skill, which is calculated separately for each ship. Each ship in your fleet gives a bonus based on its own melee skill. A table up to level 6 looks like this:

level	melee stat	combat skill
1	0	5
2	870	8
3	1350	12
4	3300	14
5	6210	17
6	12180	20
7	21220	23

Thus, which mates are on which ships does not matter for nature and supply, but it does matter tremendously for melee.

You can also increase various stats by using exploration items that are sold in item shops. Each land exploration attempt will consume one of each item that you use, so this increases the cost of exploration considerably. The items available to buy are:

Item	Price	Skill	Increase
Old Rope	2800	observe	3
Hand Axe	2800	combat	3
Clean Glass Bottle	2800	gather	3
Normal Rope	5800	observe	5
Machete	5800	combat	5
Flimsy Wheelbarrow	5800	gather	5
Superior Rope	15200	observe	7
Pancho	15200	combat	7

Prices given are base prices, before the language discount.

Every ship gives a large stat bonus to some particular stat, in addition to the stats that the mates in the ship cabins give. The ship stat bonus depends only on the particular ship type, such as a cutter or xebec. You can find the list of them in my ships guide.

All ships that give a bonus to supply are low grade. For land exploration, it is optimal to have only ships that give a bonus to nature or melee rather than stats unrelated to land exploration.A melee ship’s bonus gets you to melee rank 3 all by itself, and depending on the ship, possibly even to rank 4 or close to it. You don’t gain that many combat skill points for going from melee rank 3 to 4 to 5, though you should at least try to get to rank 4 if the ship bonus alone puts you close.

In contrast, you gain a lot more points by going from melee level 1 to 2 to 3, and it only takes 1350 stat points in melee for a ship to be melee level 3. If you can, you want to get your nature ships up to melee level 3. This can entail putting your best melee mates on nature ships, not melee ships. Until you are very high level, there is little sense in trying to get nature ships above melee level 3 or melee ships above level 4.

Do be sure to set your ship cabins to have an appropriate mix of adventure, trade, and combat cabins. In particular, you do want some trade cabins, as S-rank trade mates and likely also A-rank trade mates will tend to give you better stats than B-rank adventure or combat mates. You may also want a combat cabin on adventure ships to help get the ship to 1350 melee points.

Basics (continued)

The event difficulty and bedroll type depend on the company level requirement of the zone. Rather than listing them separately for each zone, I’ll only list the company level requirement for the zone. The gear grade is for the highest grade of ship gear available in that zone.

Land exploration zone boundaries mostly match company level region boundaries. Or perhaps rather, there can be several land exploration zones with the same company level requirement, but almost every land exploration zones have nearly all of its shoreline in territory with the same company level requirement. As such, you can see the boundaries for a lot of zones on the world map if you display company levels.

There are some major exceptions for zones that span multiple company level requirements that have the same difficulty. There are also a lot of minor exceptions where the level boundary doesn’t quite match the zone boundary. There are a handful of major exceptions to the normal rules, and they are discussed at the end of this guide.

Level	Difficulty	Bedroll	Gear
1	5	D	C
15	14	D	C
18	14	D	C
20	30	D	C
24	48	D	B
27	65	C	B
30	65	C	B
35	89	C	B
40	108	B	B
45	122	B	B
50	136	B	A
55	155	B	A
60	155	B	A

Right now, the map of level requirements is fairly broken. For now, I’m listing zones based on the level requirement that they had at launch. They don’t seem to change the land exploration difficulty and rewards for land exploration when they change the company level requirement in the surrounding seas.

The name of each zone gives the approximate location. Some are a little misleading, such as that there is a “Near Bahia” zone, but the shore that is actually near Bahia is all part of the “Near Caracas” zone.

I give a separate column for my own description of the location. Directions generally mean the coast, so something like “east USA” includes the east coast of Florida but not Vermont, even though the latter is objectively further east. My references to countries use the modern political boundaries, not those from the 1520s.

The level column is the company level requirement to reach the zone. As above, that also determines the difficulty rating of the zone, as well as the type of bedroll needed.

The S/A/B/C/D columns are the number of discoveries of each grade available in the zone.

The sea, mom, and ice columns are the minimum values of seaworthiness, momentum, and ice breaking needed to reach the zone. A lot of zones straddle multiple values of this, so I pick the lowest one. For example, part of “Near Ushuaia” requires 30 momentum and part has no momentum requirement, so I report is as 0. If you just want to get to the zone at all, you don’t need any momentum.

There are some zone that may spill slightly into a lower level (or seaworthiness or momentum) sea region than the main difficulty rating. These have the level marked with an asterisk. They use the difficulty rating of the main zone level even in the lower level sea zone. I’m not entirely convinced that they really do spill into the lower level region as opposed to the zones marked on the global map simply being wrong, though.

Zone list (Europe, Mediterranean, and Americas)

name	level	S	A	B	C	D	sea	mom	ice	location
Near Lisboa	1	0	1	0	1	5	0	0	0	Portugal, Spain
Near Nantes	1	0	1	1	1	4	0	0	0	west/north France
Near London	1	0	1	0	2	4	0	0	0	British Isles
Near Amsterdam	1	0	1	0	2	3	0	0	0	Netherlands, Germany
Near Bergen	1	0	1	0	1	5	0	0	0	Denmark, Norway
Near Stockholm	1	0	1	2	3	0	2	0	1	Sweden, Finland, Poland
Near Marseille	1	0	1	0	1	5	0	0	0	south France
Near Naples	1	0	1	0	1	5	2	0	0	Italy
Near Athens	1	0	1	0	1	5	0	0	0	Greece, Crete
Near Kerch	1	0	1	2	1	1	0	0	0	Ukraine
Near Trabzon	1	0	1	0	1	5	0	0	0	Turkey
Near Alexandria	1	0	1	0	2	4	0	0	0	Egypt
Nile River	24	0	1	2	1	3	0	10	0	Nile River
Near Casablanca	1	0	1	0	2	4	0	0	0	Morocco. Algeria
Near Cohasset	18	0	1	2	1	2	7	0	0	east USA, east Canada
Near Santiago de Cuba	18	0	1	2	1	2	15	0	0	Greater Antilles
Lower Mississippi	18	0	1	2	1	2	15	0	0	south USA
Mississippi River	18	0	1	2	1	2	15	10	0	Mississippi and Missouri Rivers
Near Trujillo	18	0	1	2	1	3	15	0	0	east Mexico, north/east Central America
Near Caracas	18	0	1	2	1	2	15	0	0	north South America
Lower Amazon	18	1	1	2	1	2	15	10	0	eastern Amazon River and tributaries
Upper Amazon	18	0	1	2	1	2	15	10	0	western Amazon River and tributaries
Near Bahia	30	1	0	2	2	2	35	0	0	south Brazil
La Plata River	35	1	1	0	2	2	55	30	0	Parana, Paraguay, and Uruguay Rivers
Near Usuaia	35	1	1	1	2	1	55	0	0	Argentina
Near Valparaiso	35	1	1	1	2	2	65	0	0	Chile
Near Tumbes	40	1	1	1	2	2	75	0	0	Peru
Near Guatemala	40	1	1	2	1	1	75	0	0	south/west Central America
South Iceland	35	1	1	1	0	0	55	0	40	Iceland
South Greenland	35	0	1	2	1	0	55	0	40	Greenland
Near Arviat	35	0	2	2	2	0	55	0	40	Hudson Bay

There are probably more further up the western coast of North America, but that requires seaworthiness of at least 110, which I don’t have yet.

Zone list (Africa, Asia)

name	level	S	A	B	C	D	sea	mom	ice	location
Near Arguin	15	0	1	0	3	3	0	0	0	west Africa
Near Benin	20	0	1	2	1	2	7	0	0	Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon
(Largest river in western Africa) River	20	0	1	1	1	3	10	3	0	(Largest river in western Africa) River, Benue River
Kongo River	24	0	1	2	1	2	15	10	0	Kongo River
Near Benguela	24	0	1	3	1	2	15	0	0	Angola, Namibia, South Africa
Near Natal	27*	1	0	2	1	3	35*	0	0	Mozambique
Zambezi River	27	1	0	2	2	2	35	20	0	Zambezi River
Near Toamasina	27	1	0	2	1	2	35	0	0	Madagascar
Near Massawa	27	0	1	3	1	2	35	0	0	Tanzania, Somalia, Red Sea
Near Dhofar	27	1	0	2	2	1	35	0	0	Oman, Yemen
Near Hormuz	30	1	0	2	2	1	45	20*	0	Persian Gulf, Euphrates and Tigris Rivers
Near Goa	30	1	0	2	2	2	45	0	0	west India
Near Masulipatnam	35	1	0	2	2	2	55	0	0	east India
A remote island near the Indian Ocean	35	0	0	2	0	0	55	0	0	Kerguelen Islands
Near Pegu	35	1	1	1	0	3	65*	0	0	Myanmar
Near Hanoi	35	1	1	1	2	1	65	0	0	Sumatra, Thailand, Vietnam
Near Macau	40	1	0	0	4	1	75	0	0	south China
Near Kuching	40	1	1	2	1	2	75	0	0	Borneo
Near Surabaya	40	0	2	1	3	1	75	0	0	Java
Near Brunei	40	1	1	2	2	0	75	0	0	Sulawesi, Phillippines
Near Tainan	45	0	1	0	2	4	85	0	0	Taiwan
Near Naha	45	0	2	0	4	1	85	0	0	Okinawa
Near Hangzhou	45	1	1	1	2	2	85	0	0	east China
Yangtze River	45	1	1	2	1	1	85	40	0	Yangtze River
Yellow River	45	1	2	1	3	0	85	40	0	Yellow River
Near Hanyang	45	1	2	1	2	0	85	0	0	Korea
Near Nagasaki	45	1	1	1	1	2	85	0	0	Kyushu
Near Edo	45	1	2	1	3	0	85	0	0	Honshu
Near Banda	45*	0	3	1	3	0	75	0	0	western New Guinea
Near Pinjarra	50	0	3	0	1	1	85	0	0	west Australia
Near Port Pirie	50	0	1	1	0	0	85	0	0	south Australia
Near Kakadu	55*	0	2	1	1	0	85	0	0	north Australia
Near K’gari	55*	0	1	2	1	1	95*	0	0	east Australia
Near Samarai	55	0	2	2	0	1	95	0	0	eastern New Guinea
Near Yeongil	60	0	2	1	3	1	100	0	0	east Korea
Near Korf	60	0	0	2	0	2	100	0	0	east Russia
Near Ezo	60	1	1	1	2	1	100	0	0	Hokkaido
The Pacific Northwest	60	1	1	1	3	1	100	0	0	Kuril Islands, maybe more?

As in the previous section, there are more zones that I can’t yet reach, due to a requirement of 120 seaworthiness or higher.

Exceptional zones

The general rules above accurately describe most zones, but there are some exceptions.

First and most important is the Kerguelen Islands zone. It gives A-grade ship parts rather than B-grade. It is also very remote, and not remotely near to any port. You’ll have to take plenty of crew and supplies for a trip out to do land exploration, expecting to lose a lot of crew, but still have enough crew and supplies left to return to port, at least if you don’t want to be stranded at sea.

The Near Hanoi zone pretty flagrantly crosses level boundaries. Part of the zone is in a level 35 region and part in level 40. The zone itself uses level 35 stats.

The Near Kakadu zone likewise crosses level boundaries. Part is in a level 50 zone and part in level 55. The zone itself uses level 55 stats.

Finally, the Near Banda zone is a level 45 land zone, but it is mostly in a level 70 sea zone, but also accessible at the east edge of a level 40 zone or the north end of a level 55 zone. Most of the sea around it used to be level 45, but required 200 seaworthiness. They increased the level to 70 when they reduced the seaworthiness, but didn’t change the level of the land zone at the same time.