I think the most common question I have heard on channels about ships is "How much do ships cost?" Since this depends on several variables, and is not easily answered briefly, I decided to write this guide. Presence has written a very good general guide to ships, but I will be discussing costs here.

Just like buying an automobile, the price of a ship can vary wildly depending on what class you want and what options you want on it. For simplicity's sake, I'll be limiting the options to the following for each class of ship: Maximum amount of sailor, speed, and lift quarters, Informative console, Captain's cabin, and 1 cargo hold. In automotive terms, you get crank windows, no A/C and an AM radio, but it gets you from point A to point B. I will also only be talking about the "luxury" classes of ships, Class 3 and up. Now, beyond the ship hull, you also need a crew, and a navigator to help you fully utilize your ship. Your crew size will vary, depending on which class and how many of each crew quarters you have. As far as your crew goes, I will be showing costs of a Rank 4 crew, with no special crewmembers. For more info on crew costs and what the specials do, you can read my Ship's crew guide.

A navigator is a special crewmember that will allow you to easily and quickly cruise around BatWorld in your ship. Costs for these range from 800 gold for a Rank 1 navigator, up to 2,500,000 gold for a Rank 6 navigator. A navigator's rank is important for several reasons; first, the higher the rank, the more easily your navigator can maneuver around obstacles. Also a higher ranked navigator will allow you to string together longer cruise commands, have more paths stored, and store more maps in the bookshelves in your captain's cabin. A higher ranked navigator will also find it easier to make new maps for your bookshelves. I go into more detail about paths in my Ship's path guide. I would recommend having at least a Rank 4 navigator, which costs 100,000 gold to hire. If you can afford it, I would go ahead and get a Rank 5 (500,000 gold) or a Rank 6 (2,500,000 gold).

So, all these "if"s "and"s or "but"s (heh, I said "but") out of the way, here is a breakdown of the costs of a basic ship hull, with basic crew, and various navigator pricing. Please be aware, the hull pricing is just a "ballpark" figure. Each merchant charges what he or she thinks is appropriate, and more options, such as more cargo holds, a lounge, teleportation chamber, galley, or a few others, will add to the price. This chart will give you some idea of what you are getting yourself into, though.

* NOTE * Finally updated with new, lower, crew pricing that has been in effect for a while now. I've just been lazy.

Class	Hull cost	Crew cost	Total with R4 nav	with R5 nav	with R6 nav
Class 3	3,150,000	31,500	3,281,500	3,681,500	5,681,500
Class 4	5,600,000	48,000	5,748,000	6,142,000	8,142,000
Class 5	8,600,000	73,500	8,773,500	9,173,500	11,173,500
Class 6	10,750,000	73,500	10,923,500	11,323,500	13,323,500

Back to general Ship info page.