Sea of Wonders

Credits
Info copied from yviro.

Thanks to Guilder for writing this guide, with info from Padda for Artisan NPC's name, Alrn for the recipe entries, MarcoS for the plunder info, and GFriend for taking Guilder on a first trip to the Sea of Wonders.

Introduction
Beginning Steps
 * 1) Indian Ocean port permit (at minimum; some of the 1-C possible steps require port permit of W. Coast of Latin America or East Asia)
 * 2) Completion of a national story chapter depending on your nation. This step may actually be put off until later; I'm told it's more to do with opening the Mina storyline and not strictly necessary to access the Sea of Wonders. If that's wrong, please do mention it in a reply below. The chapters, just to be safe, are:
 * 3) England: Chapter 11 -- "A Weakened Navy" completed
 * 4) Portugal: Chapter 8 "A Letter to the North Sea" begun
 * 5) Spain: Chapter 5 "17 Long Years Ago" completed
 * 6) The Netherlands: Chapter 8 "Increasing the Pressure" completed
 * 7) France: Chapter 5 "The Devil's Shadow" completed ("Non-war allowed")
 * 8) Venice: Chapter 7 "An Ostentatious Banquet" completed
 * 9) Ottoman: None. Because no storyline for you!
 * 10) To complete one of a few specific Treasure Hunt relic quest. The options are:
 * 11) Shining Hill Shining Hill - El Dorado
 * 12) Treasure Legends Treasure Legends - El Dorado
 * 13) The Lost City The Lost City - Hanging Gardens of Babylon
 * 14) A Mysterious Land of the East A Mysterious Land of the East - Peach Blossom Spring

Remember you really only need the 3rd skill listed to accept a quest if -- and I stress the word 'if' -- you can fleet with others doing the same TH who have the required ranks. Boost equips/translation items work for quest acceptance/completion if needed. Also, you only need ONE of the listed relics, not all of them, thankfully.

Once you've done all of that, take the following steps.
 * 1) Talk to Port Official (major capital player city, doesn't have to be your own) -- doing so triggers a cutscene with Ibn and Mina.
 * 2) Talk to Ibn in Alexandria twice -- he's not far from the Harbor entrance; when looking for him, keep in mind players will be crowded around him.
 * 3) Go and talk twice with:
 * 4) Artisan looking man in Tunis, by the bank
 * 5) Young Merchant in Naples, close to the Gatekeeper
 * 6) Middle-aged Man in Cairo, next to the item shop
 * 7) Talk to Ibn in Alexandria again, once.

At this stage, the entry point to the Sea of Wonders should appear northwest of Alexandria. Look for a swirling blue cloud, similar to the cloudbank found at the entrance to Atlantis (if you've ever seen it).

Mysterious Waters
The seas are a mysterious place indeed, but none quite like this fabled realm. The Sea of Wonders is like a water-bound dungeon -- there are treasure boxes to loot, enemies roaming about, multiple floors, and oh yes, a timer. While in the dungeon, consumption of Water/Food and decrease of Equipment Durability will not occur. Consumption of coal for steam engines is currently untested. Key points:


 * 1) You have a set period of time to investigate the Sea of Wonders before being kicked out -- 45 minutes if you enter solo, 30 real life minutes in a fleet of 2 or more. The timer located at the top-center of your screen helps you track how long you have left.
 * 2) You and your fleet members (if any) will be set at randomly generated positions on each level. So while 5 of you may enter the Sea of Wonders in a fancy 'V' formation, you'll each appear at different points on the map each time you move to the next level -- I suggest using party chat to coordinate and report your locations to one another while treating the Survey map as a compass, with four cardinal directions of North-South-East-West.
 * 3) Surveying skill is essential to surviving in here and finding your way around, so be sure you have that, or an item which mimics it. The actual skill is probably better since higher ranks mean it won't wear out as quickly.
 * 4) On the Surveying map, you will see icons. Their legend is as follows:
 * 5) Red treasure chest icon -- Mysterious Objects, which contain treasure. They're covered under 2-F.
 * 6) Star icon -- this is the exit to the current level. This changes locations every run, so don't expect it to always be where you recall seeing it last time.
 * 7) An important note about the exit is that any member of your fleet can activate it. It only takes a single inspection to confirm activation, so it's advised to have one member of your fleet camp by the exit and wait for when the rest of your fleet has collected as much treasure as you can to speed up transition to the next level.
 * 8) Caution/High Lookout skills are not needed to avoid invisible enemy ambushes as there are none. Visible enemies are another story as three types of NPC ships can be found, and you often can't see them waiting in the fog until you're already in battle range. They are:
 * 9) Wanderer -- -- x5 Ghost Ship-type ship; being ghosts, magic items like Amulet of the Sun will do little damage.
 * 10) Assailant -- x5 Ancient Galley-type ship; reportedly AoS does okay damage to them as they are not ghosts.
 * 11) Plunderers -- x5 Satisfaction-type ship; AoS is thought to do okay damage to them as they are not ghosts.
 * 12) MarcoS has reported no item/trade good/ducat plunder from one of these fleets, and JP-wiki shows no drops from them either. Alrn reports: "If you somehow got defeated by the fleet, your ship durability (not the ship maximum dura) and crew will be restored, but you will back to your previous spawn location, so that's pretty annoying considering all the trouble to sailing through the narrow paths and chests. I don't know if you can get plundered, but it won't take much time for you to get shipwrecked because the fleet keeps attacking you with cannon." Troublingly, blue-flag no-attack items are said to not work while in SoW, and Ceasefire/Tribute items will not cancel the battle with any of the above fleets either. Pay very close attention to your surroundings and try to avoid these hinderances as best you can.
 * 13) Treasure box icons appear on your map. These are Mysterious Objects which represent, surprise surprise, treasure. They may appear as anything from sunken towers, to rotted titan statues, to shipwrecks -- get close enough and you can click on them to open said boxes for neat items. Available drops are:

Arguably one of the best rewards is the Paper Fragment, which can later be turned in to Ibn for very nice (but random) rewards detailed under its article page. The Strange series are also sought after as they can be used to create nice new ship equipment. Be careful though; sometimes Objects will spawn just outside of your sailing range, and certain ones can be difficult to get close to without becoming stuck.


 * 1) Access to the next floor is designated by a star icon on the map. I'm unsure as to whether or not only fleet admirals can activate it; if not, try to have a player wait close by after raiding boxes in the area for speedy access to the next floor.
 * 2) Entry to the Sea of Wonders can only be done once every 3 real life hours. You will exit automatically when your timer hits zero, when you reach the deepest point and make a discovery detailed in section 3, or when you suffer a 2:2 disconnect error -- a common occurrence on Maris server. Sadly, this 3-hour cooldown rule applies absolutely as I understand it, barring a special item not apparently released in Maris yet called Feather Broom of the Wonder Map Feather Broom of the Wonder Map which seems to have an effect of Re-enter the Sea of Wonders Re-enter the Sea of Wonders -- pretty sure this was a special event item in JP servers, so who knows if and when it'll ever appear on Maris.


 * 1) On exiting the Sea of Wonders normally, you will sometimes be ambushed by a fleet of 200ish dura rowboats. Toast them with AoS, or sink them with cannons. You could possibly escape or let yourself be sunk too I guess; where's the fun in that? Don't know if Ceasefires/Tributes work on this fleet right now, though they might.


 * 1) To quote Alrn: "I don't know if anyone have this before, but after a lot of running Sea of Wonders, there appears to be a different map that features green-ish fog instead purple fog, making you able to see further than before. Also, the map features chests far more than chests in any map. The loots are amazing too. First time getting this one after so many runs.

Unfortunately, I don't have many time left to get all the chests, as my fleet members got disconnected and kicked out from Sea of Wonders. Now, I wonder if that map has actual meaning.."

How very mysterious. Hmm... If anyone has information on this strange occurrence, please share what you can about it.


 * 1) Funny thing: it is fully possible to fleet with and be escorted into the Sea of Wonders by those who have already unlocked it, even if you have not yet met the requirements yourself. This means anyone can enter regardless of their Sea of Wonders access completion status. This is not an exploit as you'll soon see, though.

Finally, we come to the ever-changing nature of the Sea of Wonders. You will explore and advance through three different levels, drawn from a specific pool of pre-rendered maps.

Maps are selected at random. Their difficulty ranges from easy to DOOM. The ones I know exist are:

Sea Dragon -- easy; shaped a bit like a swimming serpent. Mushroom -- easy; it's shaped like the power-up from Super Mario and fits nicely on your survey map. Lobster -- bit tricky; the "claws", "legs" and "antennae" can be a little challenging to sail around sometimes and treasure is often nestled in-between its limbs. Coral Reef -- moderately difficult; it's an enclosed coral-like shaped maze full of tight turns and passages. As Alnr warns, there are several of this type; more specific guidance related to them will hopefully materialize later. Canals of Atlantis -- AKA the Circle of Doom, likely the worst of the maps and supremely difficult to navigate in a short amount of time. You may do better to head straight for the exit here.

Placement of treasure box icons sometimes hides narrow straits or dead-ends on Surveying map, so consult your compass mini-map too if you're close by. Enterprising/helpful voyagers would do well to consider screenshotting their survey maps and compiling them somewhere to look at -- UWO wikia, imgur, here, whatever. Just a thought.

Wonderful Finds
I mentioned earlier Ibn has goodies for you. In fact, he has an exchange option for the Paper Fragments, and Casting/Sewing R15 recipes for some very nice new ship parts. There is a catch: Ibn will not give you access to his recipes or his Paper exchange program until you've found something wonderful deep within the Sea of Wonders. That is the Lighthouse of Alexandria discovery. To reach this mythic wonder of ages gone by, you must clear THREE maps in one run within the allotted time. Lighthouse of Alexandria

JP wiki seems to suggest that's all which is required, and as I've only gone once as a guest, I do not know if your best bet is to race to the exit each time, or to open as many boxes as you can while racing for the exit. Naturally, more people in your fleet would help with the latter approach, as well as optimizing your run's reward yield. My fleet of 5 ransacked all but two boxes on three floors, and we reached the discovery with 4 minutes left on the clock.

Once you've found the Lighthouse, Ibn will be quite happy to open up shop for you to exchange Papers, or to access his Production Techniques of the Great Lighthouse recipe book -- provided, of course, you've done the above steps needed to reach the Sea of Wonders. If you've not done that yet and just went along for the ride, Ibn simply won't offer those services to you. See? Not an exploit.

Now, as to the battle-scarred Lion statues, they -- err, wait, no. This doesn't apply as they cannot be found in-game yet. Come back in Chapter 2. And bring guns. Lots, and lots of guns.

... And that's it. This guide may be revised again in the future as more information becomes available. Please comment if you can. Cheers, and great online voyaging to you.

Others

 * 1) Regarding the time limit. If you do it solo, you will get 45 Minutes. If you do with someone up to full fleet, you will get 30 Minutes (regardless how many toon in your fleet).
 * 2) Regarding the maps, other than 4 you mentioned above..
 * 3) 8-shaped map or (the EASIEST one, because the paths are really easy to navigate, but still be careful maneuvering in top-left because the objects are kinda blocking a path)
 * 4) Not all Coral Reefs are same, there is the most notable one with the top path being really narrow, so narrow you will going to have bad time to navigating it. Even worse, since the chests are the end of that passage, you will have to sail all the way again to the exit unless your fleet member is already in the star position.
 * 5) Another version of Coral Reef is the one with snakey-like passage in southwest of the map. I suggest to not using that passage and just go to center because usually the chests are located in the end of that passage.
 * 6) About the usage of Amulet of the Sun, when i got ambushed, there's still an option to use it, but it gives very small damage to 'Ghost Ship' fleet but okay damage to 'Ancient Galley' fleet. Not sure if it works with 'Satisfaction' fleet. But yes tributes will not work.
 * 7) If you somehow got defeated by the fleet, your ship durability (not the ship maximum dura) and crew will be restored, but you will back to your previous spawn location, so that's pretty annoying considering all the trouble to sailing through the narrow paths and chests. I don't know if you can get plundered, but it won't take much time for you to get shipwrecked because the fleet keeps attacking you with cannon.
 * 8) CaliCaddy46 said if someone in your fleet gets DC (2::2 issue), the toon will get kicked but still getting the loot somehow from the current map (but not for next map). Not sure if this is a bug, but just nice info considering how badly you get DCs here.
 * 9) Lastly, about the production recipe, it is possible to conserve the materials (if you have refined production skill, or getting Boston skill that conserve materials. Actually both stack together anyway.) especially for the Strange Sail/Cannon/Armouring so you might need less exploring if you aim for making something.