Gran Atlas
One of the new features is the possibility to map the seas of the world. This does not give any kind of discoveries, but it does give a great amount of adventure experience and you will need some adventure skills to complete it.
Basically you will move from sea to sea, doing activities in each sea that will further the investigation of that particular area. Like this you can compile an atlas of the world.
Here is the official OGP guide explaining in detail how compiling maps works. The requirement to start is to have finished at least one intermediate school (adventure, trade or battle in either Groningen, Ceuta or Syracuse).
To safely investigate these seas it is recommend having these skills:
- Recognition is required to investigate certain areas, which is obligatory for map completion
- Surveying is required to find the coordinates where you need to use recognition
- Fishing is a skill you will need to finish most map investigations
- Repair to fix the damage from ice floes in the Northern Passage
The cartographer is a nice job, which favours all except for fishing. You will not gain any recognition proficiency from mapping.
To start you need to visit the Mercator in his mansion in Amsterdam, which can be found near the Company district. He will ask you to map the North Sea. Open your map to start an investigation (Journal -> Charts, or press ‘m’).
In this case go to Northern Europe and in the top right select North Sea. Then in the bottom click the Research button and a new screen will appear. There you can see some tasks that improve the level of investigation. To finish the sea investigation you need to reach 100%. To do this you can chose to do multiple tasks.
Most importantly you need to do the Required Actions, which are of course obligatory. They commonly require you to use recognition at certain coordinates, or else to sail for a few days in that sea area. You can open your research screen at any point by going to Journal -> Marine Region Investigation. I recommend putting the menu as one of your shortcuts (f1-f9).
In the research menu there are two percentages, one is your current investigation progress in % and the other is your current maximum progress in %. Your current progress starts each investigation at 0% and your maximum progress starts at 10%. By doing required actions your maximum progress increases. Doing optional entries, while your actual % is the same as your maximum %, is useless as your completion rate will not increase.
Therefore try to always start an investigation by doing some required entries first.
As said above, required entries are always using recognition or sailing for a few days. As you progress more optional entries will appear. Possible optional entries are alternative coordinates for recognition, fishing, sailing a few days, sinking NPC ships, trading in towns in that region, making a discovery at sea or raising a shipwreck.
In all sea regions you complete the investigation with the first three (sailing, recognition and fishing), except for the South Caribbean where I had to trade a few times in order to complete it.
In the link you can find a map with Required Action recognition locations in order: Gran Atlas map, this is based on a world map in Korean that a helpful someone sent to me. Apparently it works with GVOnavi, but I do not use the program so I have not tested this.
Adventure experience & fame
Lastly you will get an increasingly amount of adventure experience and fame with each map that you complete.
Sir Thomas Gresham 