The best strategy is to hit land mobs which are lured by a character who can tank them. Auto attacking with boat is done by holding Ctrl + Shift and clicking on the area where the ship will do AoE damage.
This is a good strategy because:
- it can be done while semi-afk.
- The monsters give loot, which will also yield small, but still existent money.
Notice how I used the word "semi"-afk... There's two things that have to be paid attention to:
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Auto-attack reset. As with all auto-skills, ship's auto attacks stop after 10-15 mins. This requires at least some attention or merely glancing while alt + tabbing to re-use it.
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Fuel. Naturally, the ship will lose fuel and, as everyone probably knows, should the fuel drop to zero, the ship will die shortly after. This is solved by either refueling the ship at a nearby dock, but if that's not possible, use Food Generations. These items are so good, because they give 650 Fuel back per piece. Meaning that you need 3-4 to fully refuel an Eagle/GWS.
As for the spots, there's two which are considered the "best". The first one are Lizard Kings, northeast of Barren Cavern. They are low level and die fairly fast. They can also drop NSS which the tank can loot.
The perks of this spot is that the mobs are weak and it's not a requirement to have a champion or a high-con/high level character tanking them. The cons would be that Food Generations are a must because there is no harbor operator in miles from the spot. Another bad aspect is that, if the ship is leveled up steadily, rather than at once, the monsters will eventually stop giving experience, so it only works for a set amount of levels.
I recommend an Eagle for this spot because the mobs have low health/defense anyway.
The second spot is Glacier isle, right above the Teleporter and slightly to the left.
This is a good spot because the ship can be refueled and salvaged from very closeby (in case it dies if no attention is paid to it), but the bad side is that the mobs are tankier and thus take longer to die. They also deal substantially more damage, so a more-less decent tank is required.
Although there are quite a few, and they occasionally drop Sealed BPs and Equipment which can be NPC'd for a fair amount.
I recommend a GWS (Great white Shark) for this, because it kills the monsters at a much quicker pace than an eagle. This spot can be used for much longer than the Lizard one, so even a higher level Eagle can hold its own against the monsters' beefiness.