Sailing Era Speedrunner’s Guide to Yoshitaka Shizuma

This guide was made as a thought exercise over how to speedrun Yoshitaka, but should also be useful to those who just want to get through the character quick or people who are stuck and want to figure out what to do next.

Warning: This guide will, of course, be full of spoilers. I will be skipping the content of the cutscenes (they won’t even be indicated in the guide), as people can easily watch them if they want, but there will be more than enough hints to spoil part of the story.

You have been warned.

Chapter one is very straightforward and and pretty much a tutorial, and there isn’t much you can do there. A number of the stores and functions are unavailable, and that means one simply has to follow the tracks.

• Go to the inn
  1. Talk to Amagai
• go to the shipyard
• go to the store
• go to the pier
  1. Put Amagai as Sail Master
• Sail to Pohang
• Go to the store
  1. buy 2 Korean Pine Wood

  Note: Buying all available Korean Pine Wood can be useful for the following chapters. Just leave it in the Pier Warehouse for the moment

• Sail to Haizhou
• go to the store
  1. buy 2 brass
• Sail to Nagasaki
  1. Fight pirates outside nagasaki

  Note: This fight is easily, and should be taken as training for the fights to come. While there are less fights in Yoshitaka’s story than, say, Abdullah, there are still three more after this one, and the middle one is rough

• Go to the shipyard
  1. Order Ocean ship

  Note: Do not add any material save the ones required. At this point of the game, there isn’t much available, and my tests revealed no useful traits that the ship could get. You are better off saving your money.

• go to the Inn
• Sail to Sakai
  1. Put Amagai on lookout once in Sakai
• Go to the public residence
• Sail to sunken ship and take all cargo
• Sail back to Sakai
• Go to the public residence
• Leave the public residence
  1. Put Garaba as Sail Master
• Sail to Nagasaki
• go to shipyard
  1. get the Ocean ship

Chapter two is the most freeform of all chapters, as doing things correctly here will make the rest of the game pretty straightforward. There will be a lot of fighting involved to set up the rest of the game correctly, and random chance very much has an impact here. You’ll be hunting pirates for components for most of the chapter, but once that’s done

• Modify hull in shipyard
  1. Put two Shrapnel guns and a Small Aftercastle on Ocean ship
  2. change mapping room to warehouse on Naniwa maru

  Go to the inn

  1. Recruit Sailors
  2. Talk to the Inn Keeper (necessary for the imperial house quest)
  3. Talk to the Sailor (necessary to find the Hidden Wolf Stream)
• Go to the Imperial house
  1. Talk to the Minister
• Go to pier
  1. Put the Ocean ship as your flagship
  2. Assign sailors

  Note: The Ocean ship will be doing all of your fighting for pretty much all of the game save the very last part, so you will need to get used to fighting with it. You’ll mainly be using the forward guns, as paired Shrapnel guns will mow through crew quite fast.

  Note 2: You may also want to leave the Naniwa Maru behind while going on pirate hunting expeditions. It is very fragile, and replacing would lose you quite a bit of time. You will unfortunately have to fight with it at least once, but that fight is easy and by that point there will be other targets crowding the area.

• Sail to straight north of Western Japan landing zone and grab Hidden Wolf Stream Discovery
• Deal pirates north of Hidden wolf stream
• Sail to Nagasaki
• Go to the Imperial House
  1. Talk to the Minister

  Note: As you’ll be pirate hunting from this point on, it is a good idea to grab whatever bounties the Minister has. Just make sure there aren’t in the same area or in the Bay of Siam, the first as you’ll be forced to fight two pirate fleets at the same time, and the second as that pirate area is very distant.

• Find and Fight Guanchuan pirate fleets (Single ships or groups of three) to:
  1. Get the Guanchuan blueprint
  2. Get the components necessary to build three Guanchuan (3 Reinforced Penal, 3 Light mast, 3 Reinforced Canvas, 3 Coating)
  3. Get the components for the Arab Schooner (1 Light mast, 1 General Canvas, 1 Light Keel)
  4. Whenever you have the components, go to a port with a shipyard and build another Guanchuan for your own use. Continue doing so until you have two built in your fleet ()the third will be built later).

  Note: This is the single step that will take the most time along will the sailing near the end of the game. You’ll need to fight at least three (if not more) fleets of three Guanchuan, and finding them can be a pain. They tend to generally seen between Nagasaki and Haizhou or passing in front of Zhangzhou. They are not particularly difficult to beat; just make sure you do so by crew elimination, as this grants more drops.

  Note 2: The Light Keel may be the more difficult to find in all of the components. If you have all but the General Canvas, stop hunting; one can be bought in Gia Dinh later when you’ll end up there.

• Gather Korean Pine Wood (30)

  Note: This is the reason why so many ships are required. You’ll be needing 50 units of cargo capacity not counting supplies for a quest in chapter three, and you’ll be carrying all of that until then. Korean Wood can be found in Pohang and Anping.

  Note 2: You’ll want to have Yoshitaka at level 30 for this, as this will let you add extra warehouse on your ships to get to said 50 Cargo Capacity.

• Sail up the Yellow River and grad the Seed Plough

  Note: You’ll need two discoveries to speed things up later in this chapter, and both Seed Plough and Hidden Wolf Stream together have the best coverage along being easy to get.

• Sail to Manilla
  []*Fight Trifid Nebula

  Note: Second mandatory fight of the game and, surprisingly, the second toughest. It is not that difficult, however, and between shrapnel and boarding you should have no difficulty with this one. You could also cannon it to death, but the drops are better when ships surrender.

• Sail to Manilla
• Go to the Teahouse
  1. speak to European Merchant
• Sail to Gia Ding
• Go to shipyard
  1. talk to Bashung
  2. Start building third Guanchuan
• go to the Trade center
• Sail to Malacca
• Go to the Teahouse
  1. Get her to one heart
  2. Talk to Amagi

  Note: If you’re speedrunning, this is where you beg for the RNG gods’ favor. If she requests one of the four subjects you have, you can have a full heart in a single conversation. If not, you have to either load and wish for better luck, or wait until the first of the next month. If you have only a few days left, coming and going from the ship list in the Shipyard, the Bounty List at the Governor, or the trade screen in the Trade Center will add a day to your counter with each repetition.

• Sail to Gia Ding
• Go to governor’s House
  1. Report two discoveries
  2. Get Land Expedition Qualification under Permit

  Note: This here, along with Latia, is why the discoveries earlier. You require a hundred contribution to get the Land Expedition Qualification permit, and discoveries can be easily made in the earlier game.

• Go to post
  1. Explore straight east for the exclamation mark.
  2. Return to town

  Note: If you’re playing for time, dodge all the event areas save the exclamation mark.

• Go to shipyard

Normally, chapter three is the most painful and annoying of the bunch, with a lot of back and forth, but with all the work you’ve already done, it is a cakewalk. There’s a little work to be done at the start, but after that it’s nearly smooth sailing all the way.

• Grab your Guan Chuan from the Shipyard,
• go to the Trade Center
  1. buy all the needed teak (20)
  2. If there is not enough buy everything then go to post to spend time if needed
• Sail to Calicut

  Note: There are two things you can do along the way if you’re running out of cash. First, you can grab the Straits of Malacca as you’re passing, as it’ll be directly on your path. Second, you can grab the treasure at the bottom of the island of Ceylon for an extra 20 000 gold and an item that sell for quite a bit.

• Go to teahouse
• Go to shipyard
  1. Order the ship
• Sail to Suez
• Go to shipyard
• Go to the Commerce Guild
  1. Accept commission (30 Korean Pine Wood, 20 Teak)
  2. Fulfill it

  Note: This is why you’ve been carrying that much cargo for so long. Doing it this way skips a mandatory fight, as you’d be attacked while coming back to Suez otherwise. From this point forward, cargo capacity is irrelevant; you’ll want to put nearly everything in supplies instead.

• Go to the shipyard

Note: Chapter 4 has the toughest single part of the game, and it is a battle. Be prepared to have to reload that one; it is one of the most brutal mandatory battles in all the characters. Outside of that, you’ll be spending a lot of time sailing, and not much else.

• Sail to Barcelona
• Go to the Church
• Sail to Seville
• Go to the Shipyard
• Sail to London
• Go to the Shipyard
• Go to the Tavern
• Go to the Item Store
  1. Buy new world route
• Sail to Asterdam
• Go to the Shipyard
  1. Recruit Joyce
  2. Modify Hull – put bask the Mapping Room the was removed earlier

  Note: You haven’t used Auto-Sailing much in this game, and that’s because you rarely end up going back to where you came from. Coming up is the one exception to all this: the route back and forth from the New World. With the distance, Auto-Sail is a massive gain this time, and we’ll be putting all the experience we got into Joyce so we can make it to the other side.

• Sail to Plymouth

  Note: This is so we can use that route when coming back.

• Sail to Nassau
• Go to the Tavern
• Sail for the Florida Strait

  Note: Welcome to the fight of your life! This battle is rough, both because of the enemies (), and because of the terrain. The Florida Strait is a horrible place to get into a fight, as everyone will be in knife range from the start. Brawlers would like that, but in a speedrun no one is strong enough to take that entire fleet that way. For manoeuvring advantage, go around Cuba and approach the Strait from the west; that’ll give you more space to hopefully drag the flagship into a one-on-one fight where you can slowly maul him with your Shrapnel Guns.

  Note 2: You will probably lose most in not ll of the rest of your fleet in that battle. That’s no issue; you’ll be getting a new ship soon, and it’ll let you cruise through the rest of the game with no problem.

• Sail to Jamaica
• Sail to San Diego
• Sail to Nassau
• Auto-sail to London (if possible)

  Note: put all the experience you have at this point on Joyce, and add to that whatever items you found that increase mapping. As long as you can make it to Plymouth, you’re fine; you’ll have gained more than enough time that it’s worth it.

• Go to the Tavern
• Recruit crew for the San Martin
• Go to pier
  1. Assign crew to the San Martin
  2. Make the San Martin your flagship
• Sail to Nagasaki

  Note: There’s four ways to go back to Japan, and those are over Russia, through the North West Passage, the South America Route, and back the way you came around Africa. The latter two aren’t worth it without having them mapped already (which would take more time than it saves), so one of the others is the one to take. I think the Northwest Passage is the faster one (London -> Hopedale -> Rapa Nui -> Petropavlosk -> Nagasaki), but I haven’t yet tested the Russia Route (London -> Murmansk -> Mangazeya -> Petropavlosk -> Nagasaki). The latter is clearly rougher in term of distance between ports, but I do not know yet about speed.

  1. Win final battle

  Note: The final battle is a joke. You’ve used broading and your forward guns the entire time, but now it’s your broadside that will sink everything there. Even better, there’s only one real target; if the enemy flagship is taken out, the game is over. Five volleys should be more than enough with the San Martin’s guns.