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Shepherd guide: the insurer

What a shepherd does

Shepherds are paid to make the sea safer. Every pirate on the heat map is a paycheck: you patrol the zones where tribute is demanded, escort ships through dangerous water, and answer boarded ships' calls for help. Your work cools the zones you sit on, which cuts the tribute everyone else pays while you are on station.

The sea has more than fifty named pirate zones, from the Gulf of Aden, the Somali Basin, the Gulf of Guinea and the Malacca Strait to smaller waters such as the Rhodes Gap, the Alboran Sea and the Mozambique Channel. Each has a baseline heat, and live heat rises when pirates collect and falls when shepherds patrol. Policed waters (the seas of the US, Canada, the EU, the UK, Norway, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and a few others) have no pirates and no patrol cards.

How Shepherd earns

Patrols are shifts on station over a zone: 24 game hours on a tier 1 hull, rising to 72 on tier 5 (about 25 to 75 real minutes). A patrol pays by the hour on station, more the hotter the zone, and the nation whose waters you protect covers your fuel and crew on top. While you are on station, tribute in the zone is cut by 40% (tier 1) up to 80% (tier 5). When the shift ends the zone is cooler, even below its usual baseline. A patrol earns 6 Elo plus up to 10 more for a hot zone, and patrols can chain by themselves while each shift pays.

Escorts cover a convoy or a captain's ship from your port to another at least 250 km away. The fee is fixed when you take the card, and grows with the heat along the way. Some escorts come from NPC convoys, others from tenders posted by players, who offer 0.5% to 5% of their voyage's gross to any Shepherd who signs on. If no pirate attacks, you collect the fee and 4 Elo. If one does, your combat rating decides it: win and you add danger money (3% of the cargo's value) and the pirate's forfeit, with 12 Elo; lose and you refund half the fee and lose 10 Elo.

SOS calls: when a ship is boarded, only a Shepherd can drive the boarders off. A rescue pays a drive-off fee plus a standing bounty and 22 Elo. Any tier 2 or larger hull can also tow a ship with engine failure.

Combat rating and odds

Every escort card shows its odds. Your combat rating is 200 per hull tier, plus 25 per tree level, plus the bonuses of nodes such as Armored Bridge (+40) and Heavy Armament (+60). The threat on a route is 150 plus 600 times the heat. Your odds start at 50% and move by one point for every 6 points of difference between rating and threat, kept between 15% and 95%. A bigger hull and a deeper tree turn hot escorts into safe ones.

The hulls

Shepherd hulls are the fastest and toughest at every tier. A Patrol Launch costs about $55,000. The calling starts strong at tier 1, sits a little under Cargo in the middle tiers, and is the best earner of all at tier 5.

The upgrade tree

The Shepherd Bridge gives you sight and reach: Sensor Suite shows live heat rather than the baseline, Rapid Deploy shortens the sail to a patrol zone by 30%, Threat Intel shows whether an attack is likely, and Armored Bridge adds 40 combat rating. Each hull commits to one branch for good:

Risks and counters

A lost escort costs half the fee and 10 Elo, so do not take escorts whose odds you cannot afford. Read the odds on the card, and build combat rating before chasing the hottest water. Patrols carry no combat risk, but a far zone spends hours sailing. The board ranks patrols by what you keep per hour, which is usually the honest order. Remember that cooling a zone also lowers what the next patrol there pays.

How Shepherd fits with the other callings

Shepherds and Pirates balance each other. Pirate collections warm zones and raise patrol pay, while shepherd patrols cool zones and cut tribute and toll pay. Cargo, Tanker and Cruise captains hire you through tenders, and every ship you escort is visibly shielded to pirates. The Pirate surge event on the calendar raises patrol and toll pay in one named zone by 40% for two days, and a flare-up in a zone raises it by 50%. The Unrest port state pays escorts into the port 30% more, and six escorts calm it.

Your first hour

Turn on the pirate heat layer and look at the zones within 1,800 km of your home port. Your Patrol Launch's board lists patrols ranked by what you keep per hour, and escort cards with their odds. Take a short patrol over the nearest warm zone and watch it cool. Then try an escort whose odds are above 70%. After a few landings buy Rapid Deploy and Armored Bridge, and keep an eye on the Warnings box for boarded ships within reach.

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