You start with 3 Stone Shooting Machinery for early CS. 3 Light Crossbows are bad because of the range, too risky and you cant do anything to H.M.S except stay back and watch.

The first wave of 7 small ships are the most important income of your early game, since later on most of the time the small ships will be in between mid ships which makes it hard to CS. Practice with Stone Shooting Machinery CS and pray to RNGesus so that your weapons aren't stupid, you should be able to get about 4-5 on average. I suggest you hold on to your Q for kills or interrupts instead of CS. If however, you fell short on gold before min3, I suggest you Q a big ship for 99g so you can transition into Xebec without selling your weapons.

On average, you get 10-15 cs before min3. Sometimes when theres HMS sailing around, you cant make that number. You should still be able to get Xebec at min3. In games when I was not getting Xebec at min3, I usually buy HMS+compass to farm for the next 3min. Prioritize CS over kill because it usually takes time before an enemy makes an mistake, not worth the time to wait if the lane is left open.

Back to Xebec, for the next 6min or 12min depending on how well you do, you will be farming with your Q and weapons. Follow your teammate duel ship when you finish shoving the lane, use your W for an out of position enemy and ulti for that duel target when the creeps are out of the way.

Xebec's ultimate makes the target take double magic damage and removes armor, the tooltip is misleading.


Now you have Sovereign of the Seas with 4 weapons, 1 compass and 1 sail. The game transition into mid-late game.

The ultimate only works when the target is within 800 range when the projectile hit, so Sovereign of the Seas is mostly played as a melee carry.

If the enemy team becomes too tanky or their dps is high enough to threat you, buy Sovereign of the Seas, otherwise fill your slots with weapons, don't sell weapons for upgrade though, think about the game before you make an investment. if the game is tough and you need damage now, spend your money, if you feel you are still ok, save for a better weapon that could last longer. Usually I have 1/2 upgradable weapon, 1/2 low tiered weapon, 1 mid tiered weapon, and I save for Wuhou's Machine Crossbow. This way, wherever the game heads, I have slots to upgrade with optimal choices. A bad investment example would be buying 4 upgradable weapon or 4 Fire Bow. Most of the time, the money spent is overkill, you lose a lot if you sell and buy another weapon, if you feel you can get enough advantage out of this investment though, do it.

If you were HMS at min3, I suggest you suicide your way to Sovereign of the Seas fast, since you won't be able to farm after min6 when theres a Golden Hinde somewhere ready to duel you.

Once you have enough dps to kill a ship in a full freeze time and your HP drops fast, you should buy a Skin of the Seven Head Snake for survivability.

In teamfights, go in after your teams CC land, you don't want to get caught in ice and not be able to utilize your ultimate. Good targets to Q are ones that can cast CCs, if you cast your Q beforehand, you can interrupt their cast and change the tide of the battle.

One last thing, Sovereign of the Seas' ultimate is increased damage to enemy's flank, not increased damage from your flank. The skill tooltip is quite misleading, I hope they change it soon.

Have a nice day on the sea! :D