Shipping Lane Buoys

Shipping lanes are marked with buoys that are, at a maximum, 50 tiles apart. This allows you to see the next buoy as you approach each buoy along the lane, weather permitting. In order for this to work, you must have your graphics set up to see a reasonable distance, and particularly you need to ensure that your Game Configuration has the Contribution Culling setting turned off, otherwise you will only see the buoys when you are very close.

The buoys may be color coded, sometimes even including the light they give off. Here are some typical colors and their meanings:

Buoys that mark an intersection of two shipping lanes (either where they cross or where a new one begins) are green.
Significant destinations (such as towns) that are along or at the end of lane are marked with an orange buoy.
Yellow buoys are paired. You will usually want to stay between each pair; they are most often located at the approach to tunnel entrances.
Blue buoys (and their blue lamps) signify a shipping lane that leads to another server. ¹ These buoys are named for the compass direction they leave the server (N, S, E, W) and the percentage of distance that exit point is from the West (for N/S exits) or North (for E/W exits) edge. So as an example, the `E38` buoys will have you exit the Eastern border of the server at approximately 38% of the distance down that edge. The percentage is used to allow the buoys to match up with their counterparts on servers of different sizes. Thus, after crossing over from `E38`, you will immediately encounter `W38` buoys, if the shipping lane exists on that server.
There is a special buoy that is the last one you will see before you cross over to another server; this one is red with a blue lamp. It tells you that you are approximately 20 tiles from crossing over. After you cross over, you will be approximately 40 tiles from the server's edge, and mostly likely near a blue buoy from which you can navigate to your ultimate destination.

¹ You can plot a course from a boat to travel to a specific server when leaving the current server in any direction; you will enter the target server on the opposite side of the server you left, at the same (proportional) location on that edge. Without plotting a course, you can only travel to the server (if any) that happens to be in the specific direction you are heading. See the Cluster Map on the main page.