RuneScape Player Owned Ports Guide

RuneScape Player Owned Ports Guide by WoHenRe

Okay, so since Pop has come out alot of people have offered opinions about how to run your port. So why should you listen to me instead of every other person who has posted about PoP before me?
Because i have done the math. I have done the logic. These point clearly, at least in later regions, as to what your plan should be throughout your entire port experience. Now, without further ado, let me begin.

Table of Contents
What to do in the Arc
What to do in the Skull
What to do in the Hook
What to do in the Scythe
What to do in the Bowl
What to do in the Pincer
General Advice

The Arc

Okay, so in this region the goal is, aside from getting to the skull asap, to gather a stockpile of bamboo for later spending. The reason is later, in the scythe, you will need an office that can support 3 ships, and to get that you will need 3k bamboo.

In the arc, the only crew members that you should hire are the free ones and the ones that cost only chimes, do not hire any crew that costs ANY bamboo (aside from possibly the ardougne shopkeeper).

Do not buy many (if any) ship upgrades. These all cost bamboo.

WHILE IN THE ARC, speed doesn’t matter at all. Also, WHILE IN THE ARC, never reroll a voyage. You have easily enough time to do all you voyages (do i really need to say where again?)

As for your crew setup, here i would recommend:
5 Catherby Fisherman
5 Varrock Chef
5 Brimhaven Pirate

The Skull

Okay, since none gunpowder has very little use outside of the skull and the port upgrades that go with it are relatively… useless, your goal is to rush it as quickly as possible while having the best possible starting stuff for the hook (and later regions) rather than in the arc where you are gathering stuff for later. The one thing i should note though is that you may want to buy a few speed stat crewmembers, as they will be useful when you hit the bowl, and you don’t really need faster crew.

If you play RS very casually, you may not have time to complete all your voyages. For most people who are are reading this, this probably won’t happen, but if you happen to not be using all your voyages consistantly, consider buying a rudder and working on speed/ rerolling bad missions (those with unreasonably high reqs/arc missions) so that you will be able to do more good missions.

However, for most people completing all missions shouldn’t be an issue and thus shouldnt worry about speed or reroll anything (although i would still reccomend getting the gunpowder rudder upgrade after you have gotten a good crew and maxed all the other gunpowder ship upgrades, as it will be useful in the hook)

Once you have all the gunpowder upgrades to your crew and ship, you should do ALL the scroll missions you see. The reason is that in later regions scroll missions become harder and there isn’t much to spend gunpowder on anyways.

For your crew here i would recommend:
5 Eastern Musketeers
5 Eastern Bannerman
5 Eastern Guides
2 Eastern Overseers
3 Siren Whaleriders

The Hook

Okay, so you remember that stockpile of bamboo you have from the arc? This is the region that you get to use it all in. If you don’t have 3k bamboo yet you want to do all the bamboo missions you can while having your focus set to Hook.

For this region you want to severly limit the amount of slate you spend, because by now there is a good chance that you aren’t doing all your voyages, but with an upgraded office you will most likely be able to do all of them.

Basically the main goal of the Hook is to get the office BEFORE you reach the scythe, because if you have to turn back at the scythe it will harm your port alot more than failing a few extra missions in the hook.

Basically limit yourself to about 8-9 crew members and 0-1 deck upgrades then start going for as much slate as possible until you reach about 3k slate, then if you have 3k bamboo keep collecting slate, but if you don’t then change your focus to the arc to collect more bamboo.

As soon as you reach the requisite amount of bamboo you need to go back to collecting slate untill you can afford an office upgrade.

A few things about collecting slate effectively. When collecting slate, do the math about what will give you the most slate, without worrying too much about completing as many missions as possible.

For example, lets say i have a choice about doing an 80 slate mission with an ardougne shopkeeper at 100% or an 125 slate mission at 77% or the same 125 slate mission at 71%, only replacing one of the crew with an ardougne shopkeeper. For the first mission, the average amount of slate i will get is (1.1)x(80)x(100%)=88 slate. For the second mission, the average amount of slate i would get is (1)x(125)x(77%)=96.25 slate. For the third scenario the average amount of slate would be (1.1)x(125)x(71%)=97.625 slate.

Since the highest average slate i will get is the scenario in which i risk the 125 slate mission with an ardougne shopkeeper, i should do that mission.

Once you have the office upgraded, you will probably be very close to the scythe, where any new ship upgrades you will get will become quickly outclassed by scythe upgrades, so i do not reccomend upgrading your ship after the office. It is better to save the slate for port upgrades.

As for crew you should get:
5 Blazing Lanter Clansmen
5 Golden Katana Clansmen
5 Storm Rider Clansmen

And after the office upgrade:
3 Trader

The Scythe

Okay, so your goal for the scythe is mainly to have a large enough stockpile of cherrywood to afford your 4th ship (when you get the jade from the Bowl). Since it costs 8k Cherrywood, we need to calculate about how much cherrywood we will have gained in the Scythe in total to decide how much we have to spend.

Scythe missions give 1400-2400 distance, so say the average mission gives 1900 distance. The distance from scythe to bowl is 230,000. So, 230,000/1,900 is roughly equal to 120 missions. From what i’ve seen, most cherrywood missions give 125 or 150 cherrywood. Going by the pattern set by previous regions, later there will probably be missions giving 350-400 cherrywood, so lets say the average mission gives about 200 cherrywood. 120 missions times 200 cherrywood equals 24k total cherrywood in the scythe (it could be even less if you decided to wait until the scythe to go for your third ship. aren’t you glad you did the work for the third ship in the Hook?)

24k total we will get in the scythe – 8k we will need in the bowl leaves us with 16k spending cherrywood. This leaves us with a fair amount of cherrywood, enough to fully upgrade your ship.

So here are what i reccomend you spend the cherrywood on first-

Rudder- It improves your speed quite a bit, which in the scythe is very important. Make this a priority (but make sure you have 1 or 2 crew first).

Crew- Your highest priority in the scythe. That said, stuff other than the merchant and the 3 single stat crew types are not worth their price.

Deck- If you have “holes” in your slate deck upgrades, you should choose one of these to upgrade. If not, i reccomend choosing the sefaring upgrade, because sefaring is slightly neglected by the mast and hull. It makes very little difference if you choose to buy the morale or combat upgrade instead however.

For your crew, you want:
6 Crows’ Nest Sniper
6 Card Sharp
6 Cartographer
4 Merchant

The Bowl

Okay, so your first goal in the bowl is to get the 4th ship asap. The only upgrade you should consider getting before the 4th ship is the rudder and jade merchant, and the rudder is kinda iffy. It will slow you down on your way to 10k jade but allow you to do more voyages sooner, thus helping your distance. I would say not to get until you have the 4th ship, but it is debateable.
The jade merchant is good to buy if it would replace a 10% merchant, but if it would replace a 20-25% merchant the extra jade you would get on your way to ship no.4 is less than the jade merchant costs.

After you have you fourth ship you need to get rudder first, then 4 jade merchants, then single stat crew (you might have to buy the single stat crew before jade merchants if the crew turn up like that). Next you need to buy all of your ship upgrades. I do realise that by now the first deck item gives more stats than crewmembers, however it is still advantageous to buy crew first because that will give you a better start on pincer due to level-ups.

Finally after you have 8 of each single stat crew member (except one type should have 4, otherwise you will break the crew limit), a fully upgraded ship, and 4 jade merchants you should buy a single Judge of Dice. I know in the general advice section it says not to, but it’s good to buy one (or 2-3, depending on how many you want for the pincer) in the bowl because you do have a fair bit of excess resources in the bowl, and the Judge of Dice is still viable in the pincer.

As for your final crew, you should probably have either 8 sea dogs, 8 bounty hunters, 4 farcriers, 4 jade merchants, and a Judge of Dice or the same thing i mentioned above just replacing 2 of the bounty hunters with farcriers.

The Pincer

So your first goal in the pincers is to get the rudder. Once you have that, you need to get all the steel to get pincer crew (minus the oxheads, that comes later). Buy pincer crew whenever you see it (unless you have already have 5 of that crew member).

Next, you need to go back to previous regions and buy all the port upgrades that don’t need steel or jade. A good order to do this in would be to buy the lodging first, then the bar (make sure you get the one that attracts adventurers), then the shipwright, then totems and the warehouse are about on par.

The next thing you want to do is fully upgrade your ship.

Then get 3 Oxhead and Horsefaces.

After that go for the port upgrades that require steel or jade.

After that you have all that, you should do 4 things.
1) stop buying resources from the black marketeer.
2) reroll any voyages that only give resources, unless you can send in crew that is all below level 10. This is for leveling purposes.
3) do all scroll, story and trade good missions. (except if you get the choice of a 20k slay exp mission or a spice mission from the assassin, in that case go for the experience.)
4) if you want a high port score, now is the time to get those ship upgrades that you skipped from the arc and the hook.

Finally, you want to focus pretty much only on trade good missions.

For the final crew setup, you want
5 Traveling Bands
5 Harem of Fortune Tellers
5 Ferocious-Tiger Rider
4 Jade Merchants
3 Oxhead and Horsefaces
1 Judge Of dice

You are left with 2 free spots. These don’t matter as much, but here are some ideas for them anyway. Basically for these slots do whatever works best for you.
Sacrificial soothsayers.
1 extra Judge of Dice
1 extra Oxhead and Horseface
Extra Harem of Fortune Tellers/ Ferocious-Tiger Riders/ Traveling Bands
Empty slot for hiring new crew in the hopes of getting better traits.

General Advice for every region:

-Your port score means nothing. It contributes in no way to the functionality of your port.
-The most important thing i can say here, however, is that your goal arc through bowl is to rush pincer. If i can get to pincer 1 day earlier at the cost of reducing my crew to shabbles i should do it because almost everything that doesn’t come from pincer will eventually become redundant.
-Do not EVER send your crew back to previous regions for “training”. Going back to the hook or arc to gather resources to upgrade your office is however adviseable.
-Crew>Deck>Ram. Where the rudder and hull fit into this depends on how much you need speed.
-Do not use golems. The chance of a crew member dying is slim to none and even if your golem is on the same tier as your crew (which kinda defeats the purpose of staunch because golems are more expensive than stat specific crew of the same tier) it doesnt have as good stats as a crew member of the same tier (unless you happen to be doing a voyage that requires every stat, but even then, the golems advantage is minimal)
-Icons are very helpful.
-Speed is of greater or lesser use depending on if you are going to be on when it arrives. For example, if i have a scythe mission that says it is going to take 5 hours but for the next 8 hours after i send the ship i am going to be in bed sleeping then i shouldn’t really worry about speed too much.
-“Soliditary” crew members seem good, but are generally to expensive to justify their use before the Bowl.
-Use any rerolls you have at the end of the day to get better missions.
-Multistat voyages are harder for the same reward as single stat missions so if you aren’t doing all of your voyages in a day avoid multistat voyages.
-As soon as you have 4 of a scroll change your scroll focus otherwise if you do more scroll missions they will be wasted.
-Single adventurers can be doing multiple voyages at one time if you use rerolls or the day changes when they are out adventuring (the fact that they are “under way” doesn’t seem to affect your chances of getting them)
-If you are training a skill to 90 for PoP, keep in mind the fact that different adventurers are more prone to certain resources (listed below):
-Whaler / Fishing / Plate / Tetsu Armour
-Convict / Thieving / Lacquer / Death Lotus Armour
-Occultist / Runecrafting / Chi / Sea Singer Armour
-Missionary / Prayer / Ancient Bones / Scrimshaws
-Biologist / Herblore / Ancient Bones / Scrimshaws
-Assasin / Slayer / Spices / Rocktail Soup
-Generally the whaler, Convict, and Occultist give the most profit, followed by the Missionary and the Biologist, and the Assasin gives the least profit.
-Don’t fire captains that cost 10k chimes unless you can replace it with another captain that costs 10k chimes immediately and you have all your captain slots filled.
-Crew members with merchant above the Ardougne Shopkeeper should almost always be used if you have them.