Ys X: The Nordics lets you sail the open seas on your ship as you strive through naval battles, defeat the undead and explore the islands of Obelia Bay. But you get Sandra's, a ship that can barely set sail and works better as a monument than a naval vessel.

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Ys X: Nordics – Complete Affinity Guide
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But luckily, the game allows you to upgrade and refit the ship to improve its abilities as you progress through the story, making it a worthy companion on your journey through the Gulf of Obelia. While the upgrades may seem minimal at first, you'll quickly notice that even the smallest update can drastically improve your ship.
How to upgrade and refit your ship
To make any changes to your ship, you must do so switch to a shipbuilder. The first shipbuilder you meet is Ulvar on Baltaön. During your first meeting, Ulvar will make some necessary adjustments to Sandra's, so you can safely complete the rite of shield brotherhood.
But when you're done with all that, you can return to Ulvar. Now you will be able to upgrade and improve your ship for a priceand you can also dress up your ship in decorations you have Sandra's Pack DLC. For now, Ulvar will be the only shipmaker you will have access to until you get further into the story.
After you rescue Cruz on Termina Island, he will join your team. Once you've moved on to Chapter 4, Cruz will be available on Sandra's as a shipbuilder. After that, you can access the ship's upgrades and rebuilds from anywhere in the open sea heading over to the family room table below deck.
How to unlock more upgrades
As you progress through the story, you will automatically unlock several upgrades for your ship. However, the best way to unlock more upgrades is by finding villagers in Carnac.
Every time you rescue a villager in Carnacyou will receive a corresponding upgrade on the Shipwright Shop's Upgrade/Refit menu. The upgrades you get for rescuing these villagers also reflect their role in the crew. Note that you are upgrading your ship requires gold, along with other materials.
The most common material to upgrade your ship is Basic Craft Stockso make sure you have it in stock when you want to upgrade your ship. Alongside the Basic Craft Stock element, some upgrades will require additional materials such as Celadon Clay or Aged Wood.
One of the best ways to collect these items is by participating in naval battles and by collecting the scattered items in the open sea.
Some blueprints and upgrades can only be unlocked after you complete a certain part of the story or can be purchased from merchant ships. These blueprints can unlock a new type of ammo upgrade, which can be purchased repeatedly to increase capacity.
However, you must ensure that you only purchase the capacity upgrades according to your needs. If you buy too many capacity upgrades, you will have no resources left for other more useful upgrades early on.
There is a small priority icon next to the upgrade request. The upgrades with higher priority gives more bonuses compared to the lower priority ones, but they also require more material to be unlocked.
How to handle ship loading
There are a total of six options in the ship's loading. The first place is for normal artillery. You can get multiple types of ammo for this slot by purchasing upgrades, but you can only choose one at a time.
The standard ammunition for the normal artillery allows you to deal a moderate amount of ship damage and breaking damage, while the Smasher Shot ammunition allows you to deal high breaking damage, but moderate ship damage.
The other slot in the loadout allows you to select your heavy attack ammo, there standard ammo is best in most cases, and the rest of the four slots in the charge are for special ammunition. Note that special ammo is limited, but capacity can be increased by purchasing upgrades from Shipwright's Upgrade/Rebuild Menu.
If you scroll down to the Loadout tab you will notice decorating departmentwhich is where you can dress up your ship with all the cosmetic upgrades you've gotten from Sandra's DLC Pack. Once you have your cargo ready, you can head out into the open sea to capture any stray undead ships or to recapture any island under Griegr's influence.

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If you want to learn the full story of Rollo in Ys X: Nordics, you need to find all 12 runestones scattered in the seas.