Tutorials & Exams

Naval Action throws a lot at you at once, so it gives you a sheltered place to learn the ropes: a guided tutorial that walks you through sailing and gunnery without anything at stake, a set of exams that test each of those skills in a real fight, and above them all a notoriously hard Final Exam that pays out a free ship to anyone who can pass it. The tutorial is for everyone; the exams are optional, and the last of them bites. This page covers all three tiers, and the honest answer to whether you should attempt the Final Exam yet.

The tutorial: free lessons, nothing at risk

Before you wager a single ship in the open world, work through the tutorial. It is a set of short, guided exercises that teach the fundamentals in a controlled setting, with no chance of losing anything. It runs as four guided battles — sailing, gunnery, special maneuvers, and pursuit & capture — that between them cover:

• Sailing. Steering, trimming your sails, and finding your best speed for a given wind — the skill that underlies everything else. (Goes deeper in Manual Sailing.)
• Gunnery. Aiming, ranging, and timing a broadside against the roll of your ship. (See Gunnery & Aiming.)
• Survival in a fight. Using the wind to present a strong angle, and patching damage with repairs so a single hit doesn’t end you. (See Ship Protection & Repairs.)
• Special maneuvers. Tighter turns, controlled stops, and using your rudder and sails together to hold an angle the enemy can’t exploit.
• Pursuit & capture. Running a target down, crippling its rig to slow it, and closing to board rather than sink. (See Boarding.)

Do the tutorial first, in full. It is the single fastest way to stop feeling lost, and the muscle memory it builds — turning into the wind, holding fire until your guns bear — is exactly what keeps your first real ships afloat.

The exams: one skill at a time

The tutorial screen has a second tab holding four exams. These are not quizzes — every one is a scored fight, sailed in the same tutorial brig so nobody can buy their way through. Each isolates a single skill:

• Destruction. Sink the enemy ship with gunfire alone. Boarding is not allowed, so this is a pure test of angling and shooting.
• Demasting. Bring the enemy’s masts down with gunfire — the exam that teaches you to aim high and hold your fire for the right roll.
• Boarding. Take the enemy ship rather than sink her: close, grapple, and win the boarding. (See Boarding.)
• Intro. Deal damage to the ships of an enemy flotilla. This one is new — the August 2026 update put it in place of the old Endurance exam, which asked you to sink two ships back to back. The new test asks for damage rather than kills, so it is a gentler bar than the one it replaced.

They unlock in sequence rather than all at once — demasting gates the two that follow it — so work through them in the order the screen offers. Between them they are the best practice in the game, because a mistake costs you nothing but the attempt.

The Final Exam: one hard fight for a real reward

Above the four exams, in a tab of its own, sits the game’s capstone test: the Final Exam. It is a fixed combat scenario, fought in a supplied ship, and it is markedly harder than anything in the tab below it. Clear it and you are handed a free ship to start your career in — the closest thing the early game has to a shortcut past the slowest grind. A successful pass is announced in nation chat, so your countrymen see it too.

It is also genuinely hard, and it is meant to be. The exam doesn’t reward a bigger ship or better gear — everyone fights it on equal terms — only skill: angling to take hits on your strongest side, managing your repairs, and picking your targets. Many new captains attempt it early, get crushed, and walk away thinking the whole game is unfair. It isn’t; the exam is simply pitched as a test of mastery, not an introduction.

The most useful thing to know is that you can retake it as many times as you like. Nothing is lost when you fail — no ship, no gold, no rank — so the smart way to look at it isn’t as a one-shot test you either pass or fail, but as a free practice arena you can run over and over. Every attempt teaches you something about angling, repairs, or timing that carries straight into real battles. Treat each run as a lesson, not a verdict.

How to pass it

The exam is won with seamanship, not aggression. A few principles do most of the work:

• Protect your weak side. Keep your bow or your strong broadside toward the enemy and never sit still being raked end-on. Most exam losses are really a captain taking avoidable broadsides while turning badly.
• Repair on a schedule, not in a panic. Pull out of arc, repair when you have the gap, and go back in. Knowing when you can afford to repair is half the test — and since the August 2026 update it matters more, because your hull patch starts the fight on cooldown and then runs on a twenty-minute timer. Plan the whole exam around two or three of them, not around topping up whenever you are hurt. Sails you can still mend from the first minute.
• Aim for effect. Drop sails and rigging to slow a runner; hammer the hull to sink a fighter. Fire on the downroll for hull hits. Patience between volleys beats spraying.
• Take them in order, not all at once. Use your speed and the wind to isolate one opponent at a time instead of letting them gang you.

Don’t expect to clear it in a run or two, and don’t let it get under your skin — this exam humbles experienced captains too, and a string of losses says nothing about you as a player. Run it, learn one thing, run it again. If it stops being fun, go sail and fight some easy AI in the open world instead; the exam will still be there, free to attempt, whenever you want another crack at it.

Should you bother yet?

Here’s the honest guidance. Always do the tutorial — it’s free, quick, and the best on-ramp there is. Treat the exam as optional repeatable practice. The reward is excellent, but it’s not a wall you have to climb before you’re allowed to play, and it should never be a source of frustration. Run it when you feel like sharpening up, walk away when you don’t, and come back as often as you like — it costs nothing either way. Remember that this exam is hard enough to trouble veteran players, so a new captain losing it repeatedly is completely normal. Plenty of strong captains passed it late, or never bothered.