Player-owned Ports Guide
Guide still needs a lot adding to it and stuff will need to be re-worded to make it more understandable. More screenshots to be added soon as well.Welcome to my Player-owned Ports (PoP) guide, hopefully this be useful for those uncertain on how to do it and provide additional information for those already doing it.
Tables of Contents -
1. What is Player-owned Ports?
2. What use is Player-owned Ports?
3. What are the requirements?
4. Tutorial
5. Where is it?
6. Entering the Portal
7. The Regions
8. Standard Voyages
9. Special Voyages
10. Captain and Crew
11. Sending your ship
12. Random Events
13. A Barmaid's Tip
14. Meg - Weekly D&D
1. 
Player-owned ports is a members' only minigame where you recruit your own crews and send them on missions and voyages to bring back resources among other goods.
2. Considering it is a free minigame (although cash can sometimes be used but not required), you can unlock scrolls to create high level Melee/Range/Magic armour, skilling scrimshaws, name titles and experience in the required skills.
3. Playing the minigame requires level 90 in at least one of the following skills: Fishing, Slayer, Runecrafting, Herblore, Prayer, or Thieving. If you do not have any of these, this minigame isn't for you, so get training.
4. Upon entering the portal, there is a brief tutorial you have to follow that will teach you the basics, just follow the instructions. After finishing the tutorial you'll receive a Captain's Log which is highly useful.
5. The portal you have to enter is at the north side of Port Sarim, the easiest way to get there the first time is using Port Sarim lodestone and running north. After you get the Captain's Log you can right click it and use the 'teleport' option to appear right outside the portal.
6. This is your screen when you enter the portal - [Top left 'resources' and top right 'visitors' can both be closed, I opened them to show all options] You can also see in the screenshot what it looks like when the ships come back in.
7. The Regions -
Your resources are what you have obtained from the voyages your ships have been on. There are 6 regions, each region unlocks a new resource you can get. Each region gives chimes which is the basic currency.
Region 1 - The Arc - Chimes & Bamboo
Region 2 - The Skull - Gunpowder
Region 3 - The Hook - Slate
Region 4 - The Scythe - Cherrywood
Region 5 - The Bowl - Jade
Region 6 - the Pincers - Steel
Each voyage gives distance, you need a certain amount of distance to reach each new region.
Taken from rs wiki, this shows the amount of voyages you need to do at the highest region you can currently do to hit the next region.
8. From the main screen, the six options at the middle-top, the very top left one is your voyages, clicking it will bring up the following screen:
You get 15 normal voyages per day, each voyage requires a random amount of Morale / Combat / Seafaring (MCS) or a mixture of two or three of them. In my screenshot, you can see the top voyage is selected and in the bottom right it shows that I need 15k Morale to 100% complete the voyage. You can send voyages at any percent, but obviously the higher you have it the more likely it is to succeed.
9. Special voyages are just the same but the requirements are normally a lot higher. Special voyages is where you will get most of your trade goods and it's the only place to get scroll pieces, experience missions and story missions.
10. Okay, to get your MCS up for the voyages, you obviously need a crew to improve your percent. You have to have a captain on each ship else you can't send it. From the main screen clicking the top-middle option (the three people) will take you to your crew roster.
Or from the voyage list above the voyage requirements there is also 'Crew Roster', which will take you to the same place.
Each day there will be a new Captain and 15 new crew you can reroll (clicking the arrows in the circle). Your crew from the previous day will stay in the three options until you reroll them which is a good way to keep crew there until you can afford them.
You can have a maximum of 5 Captains and 25 Crew. Only buy the ones you need so save your resources.
Each new region has upgraded crew that you should replace, here is a full list of everything from first region which I will go over:
As you can see, the first three people are FREE, because they are junk. You should recruit them at the beginning only to send ships with 5 people on. You can always dismiss them later.
The best option to buy 5 Morale / Combat / Seafaring for each region at least. The engineer and golems are pretty useless, along with all the fortune tellers that come from region two onwards.
The First Mate is good, even thought it's stats aren't that good overall, but it's trait 'Solidarity' means every different crew member you use gives +25 overall which soon racks up the points. It's good to have a couple of these.
The crew from the first region isn't that important because it doesn't take a great deal of voyages before you hit the second region and then you can upgrade crew.
The last person in each region (Cyclops, Siren etc) is unlocked from a normal voyage which has raised requirements. The Cyclops isn't that good but all the ones from second region onwards are worth buying until next region is reached.
All crew can level up from sending them on voyages, each level they gain 10% of their base stats. For example, one of the Chefs is 150 base stats from first region, each level it will go up 15, to 165, 180, 195 etc. Capping at level 10.
If the crew you buy has a negative trait, it's best to dismiss them and buy them again when they appear again.
Full crew list for each region can be found in the spoiler -
11. Once you have bought all the crew you can afford, you are ready to send your ship. Clicking 'edit ship' on the voyage screen, or from the main page, the third option will take you to the shipyard. It's best to pick the voyage you want to do first then go to edit ship so that it will show the requirements at the bottom of the shipyard.
This is your shipyard, the morale at the bottom of the screen, if you highlight over it will show you how much percent you are from hitting the 100% mark. (8000/16000 Morale 50% etc)
The shipyard is also where you buy upgrades, these are extremely useful. The rudder should be the first thing you buy each new region as the higher your speed, the faster your missions are to complete.
If you buy from Deck Item 1, it will also unlock it in Deck Items 2 and vice versa, these are pretty much the best ones to buy as soon as you can. Each time you send a voyage, you want to change the ones you've unlocked at the shipyard to get the best percent you can for your current mission.
For example on my 16k Morale mission, I changed the rams, deck items and the hulls all to stuff that gave the highest morale boost.
Once you've done that, click the + below crew to choose your captain and crew.
It will bring up this screen -
If you hover over each person it will show you their stats, so send out the best people you have for each mission type. Once you are ready, click start voyage.
12. When your ship gets back from its voyage there is a chance you will get a random event, which you will be notified of it your chat box. They are both located in the north-west area past the portal.
The minigames are straight forward, just follow the instructions. The only really useful reward from the random events is the Lifeboat, which in effect means none of your captain or crews will ever die if you fail a mission. You can see what random event things you have on the voyage screen in the 'add effect' part, as seen here:
The lifeboat is permanent.
After each ship comes back click the x to go back to the main screen to see if you get a random.
13. Each Thursday if you speak with the barmaid Surula she will replace whatever your third voyage is with a high level resource one. It's always worth doing because she can give 500+ of one resource which is a great boost for lower regions.
14. Meg appears in the south-west corner of Ports every Wednesday. She asks for 3 pieces of advice, which you can find all the answers for on the following link: -
http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/MegYou don't need the level's to do Ports to play the D&D. If you give her perfect answers she will give you some cash and Huge lamp, lesser answers will give you lower lamps. The lamps are xp in one of the port skills, so it's just a lucky dip.