[Nightmare, Level 1, Durability 300/300, Capacity 400 units, Speed 40 knots]
[Ship Skills:
Nightmare: Sleeping on the ship will cause nightmares, energy recovery efficiency -75%.
Curse of the Angler: This ship is cursed, unable to catch normal fish.]
[Description: This ship has been drifting at sea for hundreds of years, and it has finally found its new owner....]
Lucas Hall looked at the ship information, his expression darkening.
This was a ghost ship.
The outer hull was covered in barnacles and seaweed, clearly untouched for many years.
The deck was wet and made a creaking sound when stepped on.
He had played many horror games before.
In scenes like this, there was a high probability of hidden monsters!
Fortunately, after a thorough search, he didn't find anything else that could move.
Lucas let out a sigh of relief.
He didn't want to start off by having a bloody fight with some inexplicable creature.
As for the ship's structure, he had figured that out too.
The ship was about twelve meters long, with parts including the helm, captain's cabin, deck, and cargo hold.
The helm was located on the platform at the front of the deck, raised a bit, offering a good line of sight.
Behind that was the captain's cabin, which contained a bed and simple furniture.
Further back was the ship's midsection, where a tall mast stood.
At the rear was the cargo hold, which led into the ship's interior, used for storing goods.
Lucas went into the cargo hold and found it empty, not even a bug in sight, only a damp and disgusting moldy smell.
His starting supplies were zero....
After all, this ghost ship had been drifting for who knows how many years. If there was food and drink, it would be strange!
Lucas opened the log and continued to browse the world channel to see what other players had discovered.
Most of the people in the chat were showing off their ships.
The majority had regular ships, but a few special ones stood out.
[Gale, Level 1, Durability 800/800, Capacity 500 units, Speed 70 knots]
[Ship Skill: Ride the Winds: Ship speed increases by 100%, lasts for 5 minutes.]
[Description: You'll never even get a whiff of its exhaust, trust me!]
This was probably the fastest ship currently.
Other basic ships, depending on their size, had speeds between 30 to 40 knots, with larger ships generally having higher durability but slower speeds.
Lucas's Nightmare ship had an above-average speed.
[Sakura, Level 1, Durability 1000/1000, Capacity 1000 units, Speed 35 knots]
[Fortune of Radiance: The cherry blossom tree on board emits a glowing fortune, occasionally changing the attributes of the crew, possibly causing evolution!]
[Description: Hopefully, the crew will remain human.]
When this information appeared, the world channel fell silent for a rare few seconds.
"Haha, my ship is awesome! I feel like I'm evolving, Wryyyyy!"
"Are you sure that's not mutation?"
"Sakura, huh? I suggest you sail faster, or I'll shove my cannon right up your XX!"
The speaker was the Iron Will, who had un-anonymized and revealed their ship's name.
They even attached a screenshot from the log.
It was a massive iron warship, armed to the teeth, with twenty cannons on either side. Its firepower was maxed out, and its martial virtues were abundant.
But when people thought about its speed of only five knots, everyone burst into laughter.
"Baka! Try surviving tomorrow first!"
"Damn it! Just wait, I'll get you!"
The chat then devolved into meaningless insults, many words getting censored.
"Looks like the system translates everything into your native language, no matter the original language...."
Lucas typed a message: "Count me in!"
Then, he continued scrolling and finally found some interesting information.
"Have you guys tried fishing?"
"Shut up, I'm fishing right now!"
"I just discovered I can fish, suddenly I don't want to go back."
"I fish once a week, and catch enough for a week!"
"I've just set up my fishing spot."
"Your ship is moving, what kind of spot are you setting up, are you stupid?"
"Damn! You should have told me earlier, I've gotten used to it, my black bread!"
"You guys won't believe what I caught, a bottle of Farmer's Punch!"
Lucas's eyes lit up. If they could catch freshwater, then it'd be manageable.
His ship also had a fishing rod, lying on the deck.
[Name: Moldy Fishing Rod with Barnacles]
[Type: Tool/Artifact]
[Quality: Good]
[Description: Reduces the chance of catching normal fish, slightly increases the chance of catching unknown objects.
Trust me, you won't like what it catches.]
"Unknown objects," Lucas thought. "That probably includes freshwater!"
But before starting to fish, Lucas needed to adjust the ship's course and speed.
He had no specific destination yet, so he decided to just go forward in the default direction at full speed.
At the far end of his vision, he saw a streak of black, which he guessed was the boundary of the black fog.
So moving forward was certainly the right choice.
Controlling the ship was simple; it didn't require any skill, all magic-based.
All he needed to do was hold the helm, and he could easily change the ship's course and control its movement.
This included adjusting the speed and using shipboard equipment like grappling hooks.
Overall, the controls felt similar to the sailing games he had played before, even simpler than driving a car—skipping the learning curve, and seamlessly merging with the ship.
The helm was located at the front of the ship, so the player could steer while keeping an eye on the sea ahead.
Without this, it would have been impossible to operate the ship alone.
As for the power...
Lucas looked up at the mast, which only had a few tattered pieces of cloth hanging on it.
He decided not to think about this issue and focused on grabbing the floating objects.
[Rotten Wood +1]
[Rotten Wood +1]
[Tattered Cloth +1]
[Rotten Wood +1]
The activity log kept popping up new messages.
The gameplay was similar to the Gold Miner game, but the target was dynamic.
When objects were caught, they would be converted into resources and stored in the ship's hold for later viewing.
Each piece of rotten wood had a chance of being converted into one unit of wood, and each tattered cloth would convert into one unit of fabric.
Lucas quickly calculated that this conversion probability was less than 10%.
It took about ten pieces of rotten wood to get one unit of wood.
If he consciously grabbed some good quality floating debris, the chances would be higher.
Lucas grabbed over a hundred floating objects and collected five units of wood, three units of cloth, after three hours. The efficiency wasn't great.
But this was a skill-based activity. As his proficiency increased, efficiency would improve.
These materials could be used to upgrade the ship.
Lucas's ship needed to reach Level 2, which required the following materials: [Wood x200, Cloth x100, Captain's Remains]
He already knew what the remains were—the bones in the captain's cabin.
So he couldn't dispose of them.
To collect that much wood and cloth, conservatively estimating, it would take more than a week.
And that was just for a Level 1 ship.
When he reached higher levels, upgrades would probably get even harder.
But the fact that upgrading the ship required remains...
Lucas suddenly realized that special ships might have different upgrade materials.
He immediately opened the chat channel for more information, and sure enough, he was right.
For regular ships, the upgrade materials were fewer.
They only needed Wood x100 and Cloth x50, and didn't require remains at all.
As for that Iron Will ship... it needed steel to upgrade.
"Damn! Where am I supposed to get steel from in this sea, what am I supposed to upgrade!?"
"As everyone knows, iron sinks in water, it'll just sink to the bottom of the sea."
"The Angler can fish anything! I just caught one unit of steel!"
"Huh?"
"High price paid for steel! Whoever gives me steel, I'll take them as my underling."
"Baka! You're still collecting steel? Try surviving tomorrow first! The black mist is about to catch up with you!"
"Sakura, huh? If you have the guts, don't be anonymous! Wait until I catch you!"
Lucas closed the log.
It seemed that special ships weren't all advantages—upgrading was difficult, and they could easily fall behind in terms of level.
He picked up the fishing rod, ready to fish.