Anno 1800 Expedition: Essential Strategies for Successful Exploration

Anno 1800 expedition is an indispensable part of the gaming experience and resource gathering. Successful expeditions yield archaeological and zoo collections and useful items. On the other hand, it is also time-consuming, and sometimes risks losing the ships if the morale is too low. With all things considered, what kind of strategies should be adopted for a successful expedition in Anno 1800? Where to check the expedition conditions and progress? When will the ships return? What rewards will an expedition bring? This post is a comprehensive Anno 1800 expedition guide, shedding light on all the questions asked above!

Types of Expeditions

Anno 1800 expedition feature is categorized into five different types (base game):

1. Archeological expedition: yield collections for museums
2. Zoological expedition: give animals to zoos
3. Rescue: give specialists and items
4. Pirate hunt: give items
5. Discovery expedition: unlock new maps

Expeditions are further detailed into three levels, based on their difficulty. While a discovery expedition is less common and will not appear again once all the maps are unlocked, other expeditions pop up pretty often in the game. The more difficult the expedition is, the rarer the rewards it yields.

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How to Start and End the Expeditions?

Once there is a new expedition, the captain will remind players and show a pop-up window in the upper right corner, and the new expedition will appear in the left-hand panel as well. Players can accept these expeditions and start assigning ships and supplies to start the expedition. There are mainly two things that players need to prepare:

1. Assign a ship to embark on the expedition
2. Choose a dock to load the ship with supplies: Mind that if the ship is not at the current dock, it will move to the designated dock for loading first before leaving for the expedition.
3. Load the ship with goods and items to increase morale

To end the expedition, players can choose to return home if the expedition is still ongoing. The game seems pretty dubious about the current progress of each expedition. Usually, the ship successfully finishes an expedition after succeeding in 3 – 6 events during the travel. By then, even if players choose to continue the expedition, the ship will return and bring all the rewards.

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How to Check the Progress of the Expeditions?

Anno 1800 expedition has three stages:

1. The assigned ship travels to the destination
2. Players play through 3 – 6 events after the ship reaches the destination and starts the expedition
3. The assigned ship returns from the expedition

Players can check the destination of each expedition and where the assigned ship is on the world map. If the assigned ship is still on its way to the destination/home, players can hover the cursor over the ship to check the time it needs to arrive. Sometimes, the destination is further away from the starting location of the ship. In that case, it will take longer for the ship to reach and start the expedition events.

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Strategies to Maximize the Success Chance

The general rule for a successful expedition is that the assigned ship needs to have enough morale to succeed in 3 – 6 events. High morale is always good. There is still a chance of failing certain events and causing great loss to morale.

The captain will suggest three types of supplies that players should equip the ship with, with the chance of encountering these choices right under the suggestion. For example, the captain may give suggestions as: Navigation (Almost Certain), Naval Power (Highly Likely), Hunting (Likely). Players have no control over what kind of choices they may encounter later. It all boils down to the preparation stage regarding the outcome of the expedition!

Strategy of Choosing the Ship

As players might have noticed, some expeditions have chances to encounter navigation or naval power events. In these cases, players can choose better ships for the optimal outcome! To make it simple, players can check the attributes of all kinds of ships from the buildings – Sailing Shipyards and Steam Shipyards.

Generally speaking, it would be practical to send ships-of-the-line for level 1 – 2 expeditions, and battle cruisers for level 3 expeditions. Both ships-of-the-line and battle cruisers have very high naval power attributes. Most of the items that can be equipped on ships give a navigation bonus. This way, players can solve most of the navigation and naval power issues and save the cargo slots. Battle cruisers can guarantee success in certain events, which makes them perfect for level 3 expeditions.

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What Is the Best Way to Arrange Supplies?

Take ships-of-the-line (3 item slots and 3 cargo slots) and battle cruisers (4 item slots and 3 cargo slots) as examples. The optimal arrangement is to:

1. Equip 1 – 2 cargo slots with rations that can add attributes: Rations can help keep up the morale during the expedition, and players can discard them for rewards found during the trip!
2. Load the rest of the slots with items that have highly relevant attributes accordingly: Items and specialists usually have high attributes, and each of them only takes up one slot!
3. Additionally, try to prioritize the preparation of the two types of events that have the highest chance of occurring.

For example, an expedition that may encounter: Navigation (Almost Certain), Hunting (Highly Likely), Force (Likely). Players can try to top up the navigation attribute to near or more than 100%, hunting to near or more than 60%, and assign the rest of the available slots to Force.

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Start with Level 1 – 2 Rescue and Pirate Hunt, Then Level 3 Archaeological / Zoological Expeditions

While the captain will push all difficulty level expedition tasks to players, players can adopt their own strategies when choosing which one to go for. Usually, rescue missions and pirate hunt expeditions reward players with items and specialists that can be used in later expeditions. Especially for gaining uncommon, rare, epic, or legendary items, it can be a great boost for the expeditions. Although goods can contribute to the attributes needed for the supplies, valuable items have much higher attributes, such as faith (50 points), and help save more slots for rewards picked up during the expeditions.

The items and specialists obtained from Level 1 – 3 rescue or pirate hunt can make Level 3 archaeological and zoological expeditions much easier. Compared to level 1 – 2 archaeological and zoological expeditions, level 3 yields rarer items with a higher attractiveness bonus, which is worth the time and influence points spent on building slots at the museum and zoo as well!

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Conclusion: Anno 1800 Expedition

Anno 1800 expedition section is an integral and engaging part of the base game, as it is not only akin to a mini-game with interesting short stories and choices, but also grants players valuable loot. For one successful expedition, players can not only obtain the rewards upon the return of the ship, but also pick up rewards after passing some events’ tests during the trip. However, the cost of low morale and losing the ship during the expedition is also grave. That’s why strategies on which expedition to choose, which ship to assign, and which supplies to load are so important in navigating through the expeditions. With good supplies and ships, success is almost guaranteed at a later stage of the game!