Sea Dogs – Infinite XP and Reputation Points

This guide will allow you to grind infinite XP and rep points due to a dialog bug.

The Preparations

Note: Credit goes to Komisarz Adam Zawada

Be aware that there are certain conditions that need to be met in order for this to work and you will have a small window of opportunity to do it.

You will need to have your character set up and this can’t be a fresh start – that said, the class 6 pink ain’t gonna cut it. I highy recommend having at least rank 8 (the first one which allows a class 4 vessels) and a proper ship – I did it with a trade caravel, but a brig should do just fine.

It is also vital that you get your hands on some superior glass. You will be able to see all the health bars on enemy ships, which, as I will explain later, is crucial for this strategy to work. It will still be technically possible, but annoying and unreliable. Just do the quest from Montefi on El Caimano – he happens to even be on the same island as the guy we are interested in.

The Quest

The quest you are looking for is received from Roland the Lawyer on El Caimano. He tasks you with challenging his nemesis on his behalf. Set sail for Gray Sails and do it. After you return to Roland, he will be eager to take on the guy alone, which you can let him do or intervene – you have to choose the latter option.

Roland will join you with his Class 5 Shnyava, and you in turn will have to fight Class 4 Brig and Class 3 Frigate. Hardly even odds, no doubt. At the same time, you have to make sure roland survives, which is the hardest part. The quest will complete either way, but you will not be able to use this exploit.

Some tips about the fight:

1. Save when you get to Chaktcha. Not only for safety reasons, but more importantly saving and loading resets aggro on enemies. That said, you will be able to swim past enemy ships and they won’t attack you unless you shoot first (they will still board your ship if you get too close though). This gives a good window for maneuvers and/or allows you to land a devastating first blow.
2. To complete the quest, you only have to destroy the brig. This is a quite fragile ship and a couple of bombs will sink it quickly. If you load a previously saved game and with a little bit of luck, you should be able to aggro one ship at a time, which will make the fight so much easier. If you don’t feel like it, you can entirely skip the frigate and it will be just fine.
3. Don’t restrain yourself from retreating to repair. These ships are quest related, meaning they don’t repair and any damage you will deal will stay indefinitely. This applies to sinking ships as well – nothing stops you from sinking one ship, retreating and then sinking the other.
4. The hardest part about this fight and keeping Roland alive is that you need to protect him… from yourself. Roland will leave your service the moment the brig is sunk and will immediately turn hostile. This is the moment when sinking ships one by one will come in handy, since you can sink the frigate, repair and then quickly sink the brig and flee from Roland. Or just sink the brig, as mentioned before.
5. This could take several attempts. Much of the naval warfare is based on luck (the accuracy, the weather, AI behavior etc.) so don’t be discouraged if you fail the first time.
6. What will irk you the most is the fact you have to run away from Roland after a hard fight (which will probably leave your rigs torn apart). You will have to exploit the fact that when ships are on very low health (their hull bar is almost invisible) they run away themselves. This could take you some time to execute properly, since you have to almost sink Roland’s ship.
7. I advise not to go overboard (no pun intended) with your ship, since Class 1 or 2 ships have so much firepower you could kill Roland without even noticing. A Class 3 or 4 ship should be ideal. Class 5 is certainly doable without fighting the frigate.

The Exploit

Now, if you sank the brig and Roland’s Shnyava is alive, you should be able to meet him back at El Caimano.

The exploit is as easy as it gets.

Talk to Roland, he will thank you, you will get 2k XP and +3 rep.

The loop on the dialogue is broken and you will be able to talk to him indefinitely. Each time grants you 2k XP and 3 rep.

Moreover, if you click Space fast enough on dialogue end, the game will register each click as a new reward, allowing you to reap up to 4x as much rewards per dialogue

Note: This particular part of the exploit works for every reward in any other quest, as long as you get it at the exact end of dialogue, you will get a reward every time you click Space until dialogue window disappears.

At this point, you can just assign autoclick on Space or keep pressing the button and the XP and rep will grind by themselves. The devs probably didn’t patch it since this way to finish the quest is so niche that nobody even bothered.

Note: After you first talk to Roland and he will thank you, he will be gone the next time you visit El Caimano. If you already did the quest the way I desribed it and left the island, you are out of luck.