The Factions of the Seven Seas

Pirates, Navy and Merchants: three ways of living at sea, held together by a balance of hunting, law and trade.

You begin under no flag. On reaching level 40 you choose one of the three factions: the choice shapes your style of play, unlocks exclusive buildings, research and ships, and grants a permanent bonus. You are not bound for ever: you can change faction later (at a price — see the bottom).

🏴️ Outlaws

Pirates

Bonus: Attack. They plunder ships and besiege islands, but the more terror they sow the bigger the bounty on their heads.

⚖️ The Law

Navy

Bonus: Speed. They hunt wanted pirates, collect the ports' dues and keep order on the sea lanes.

💰 Neutral

Merchants

Bonus: Production. Free and neutral, they live by trade: exclusive items and dealings with anyone.

🏴️ Pirates — the taking

Pirates can plunder other players' ships and besiege anyone's island. This is the way of the offensive and of spoils. But every crime has its price: the more you raid, the higher your bounty climbs and the harder the Navy hunts you.

⚖️ The Navy — the law of the seas

The Navy is the armed hand of the Crown. Its purpose is hunting wanted pirates:

• Capture: by sinking a pirate with a bounty on the open sea, the Navy collects the whole reward from the royal treasury.
• Inspection and shadowing: by mooring at an island the Navy can inspect the ships at anchor and quietly mark a wanted pirate. For the hours that follow, every time that pirate sets sail the Navy is told, and gives chase.
• Collector of dues: a share of the dues paid at the ports flows into a Navy treasury, paid out periodically to all sailors as a dividend.

💰 Merchants — free trade

Merchants are neutral: they do not hunt and are not hunted (so long as they keep their weapons down). They excel at production and at making exclusive items, and they can sell mooring permits from their own Customs House (see below). They are the engine of the seas' economy, courted by everyone.

☠️ The Bounty

The bounty is the "price on the head" of a Pirate, the measure of how dangerous they are:

• It rises when they plunder ships, besiege islands or sink other players (sinking counts for more).
• It falls only while the pirate stays holed up in port and idle: as soon as they sail out to raid, it starts climbing again.
• It is wiped out when the Navy sinks them on the open sea and collects the reward.

For a Pirate it cuts both ways: a high bounty is prestige and terror, but also a target painted on your back.

⚓ Customs for a fee

To moor at another player's island you need a Customs permit. The owner may grant it free or put it up for sale at a price (a toll): whoever pays gets a temporary permit. Manage the toll and your purchases from the Customs window on your island (you must have the Customs House built).

⚔ Pirate Brotherhoods

Pirates can found or join a Brotherhood: a blood pact between captains. Members of the same Brotherhood get automatic mooring permits at their allies' islands and are told at once when a companion's island is besieged.

Every faction can look up the active Brotherhoods and their members on the Brotherhoods page.

🔄 Changing faction

Changed your mind? From Character → Change Faction you can move to another faction by paying a cost in gold and observing a cooldown. Changing flag is a turncoat's act, and it has consequences depending on which faction you leave:

• If you were a Pirate, you lose your bounty.
• If you were a Merchant, you lose your trade points.
• Either way, any non-basic clothing is taken off your avatar (it stays in the warehouse and you can put it back on).

The Island's Buildings

Every building has its own part to play. Many take workers, raising their yield by up to +20%.

Population capacity

Village

Sets the greatest number of islanders on the island: 10 places per level. It is what lets you recruit at the Tavern: with no place free you cannot take in new pirates.

Recruiting & morale

Tavern

Produces 2 visitor slots per level every hour. Lets you hold parties (Cards Evening / Lively Party / Pirate Festival) to raise morale, and to appoint an informant who improves the social mood.

Resource capacity

Warehouse

Raises the maximum you can hold of gold, wood, rum, metal, cloth and research points. Without enough storage, production stops at the cap.

Produces Wood

Carpenter's Shop

Produces wood every tick. Favours workers with good intelligence and strength, for up to +20% output.

Produces Metal

Foundry

Produces metal every tick. Wants workers with high strength (weight 70/level): warriors and brutes excel in this role.

Produces Cloth & garments

Tailor's Shop

Produces cloth and clothing for your character. Values intelligence (weight 60/level): scholars make the best tailors.

Rum & drawing off

Distillery

Produces rum every tick and allows drawing off: load an empty barrel or an empty bottle and fill it with the rum produced, giving you consumable items to use anywhere.

Potions & infirmary

Apothecary

A building with two purposes. The Study lets the resident apothecary brew potions and remedies (recipes with ingredients from the islands). The Infirmary has 10 beds per level: with an apothecary on duty, patients recover +1 Health every 5 minutes (at the cost of rum).

Shipbuilding

Shipyard

Lets you build and upgrade ships. Every type of ship needs a minimum level: Brig Lv 1, Corvette Lv 2, Merchantman Lv 3, Galleon Lv 4.

Personal orders

Market

Creates sell and buy orders for resources, aimed at other players. Your offers are shown to captains who moor at the Ports (see that section).

Crafting armament

Armoury

A crafting system with a multi-slot queue (Lv 1: 2 slots, Lv 10: 20 slots). Produces cannons, ammunition in three calibres (with special variants) and higher grades of powder. In parallel it gathers gunpowder by itself: draw it off into empty barrels loaded at the armoury.

Research & barrels

Research Laboratory

Unlocks the nodes of the research tree by spending research points. It is also the only building that makes empty wooden barrels (4 recipes: teak, oak, lava, petrified), without which you cannot draw off powder or rum.

Mooring permits

Customs House

Issues mooring permits to other players. Without a permit a foreign ship cannot anchor at your island. Not to be confused with the NPC Port Customs, which protects your ship at sea.

👥 Worker slots and the production bonus

Productive buildings take islanders as workers. The slots available are floor(level / 2): a Carpenter's Shop at Lv 6 has 3 slots, a Foundry at Lv 9 has 4.

The greatest bonus is +20% on output, reached when the sum of the workers' statistics hits the building's target. Each building favours different statistics:

🔒 Building requirements

Some buildings and levels need other buildings or completed research:

💵 Refunds on cancelling

The Population

The islanders are the heart of the island: they work, they sail and they fight.

👥 How they arrive

The Tavern produces level × 2 random visitors every hour. Click "Take in" to make them permanent islanders. Once recruited, that slot is gone for the hour.

🌟 Reputation and the quality of visitors

The island's reputation (0-100) sets the minimum statistic of its visitors: a better-known island draws stronger characters on average.

Reputation is a weighted mean of 4 things: recent activity (30%), how full the village is (25%), average morale (25%), parties held (20%).

👤 The six kinds of islander

Every islander has 5 statistics (Health, Strength, Intelligence, Luck, Adventure) from 0 to 100. Their type is worked out when they are generated, from these thresholds:

⚔️ Type

Warrior

Threshold: Strength ≥ 75 and Strength ≥ Intelligence
Fighting, the foundry, the guns

📚 Type

Scholar

Threshold: Intelligence ≥ 85
Tailoring, research, the helm

🧭 Type

Adventurer

Threshold: Luck > 50 and Adventure > 50
The distillery, digging for treasure, hunting

💪 Type

Brute

Threshold: Health ≥ 90
Deckhand work, soaking up damage

💊 Type

Apothecary

Threshold: Int, Health, Luck > 10 (balanced)
The only type able to brew potions and to work in the Apothecary's Study

⚓ Type

Sailor

Threshold: The default when no other threshold is met
Balanced, a hand at everything

💜 Morale

Every islander has a morale (0-100) that starts at 100 when they are recruited. Morale falls by 1 a day (an automatic cron) and rises in several ways: by holding parties at the Tavern, by finding treasure at sea, by delivering port commissions or by using the consumables made for it.

Weekly departures: once a week the cron rolls 1-100 for every islander; if the roll beats their morale, that islander leaves the island. A pirate on 30 morale has a 70% chance of walking off every week.

Parties at the Tavern

Other ways to raise morale

The bonus applies to the player's whole population (every island owned), up to a ceiling of 100. Some events depend on the faction the player has chosen.

😴 Tiredness

Tiredness (0-100) measures how worn out an islander is. It rises with every action (hunting, gathering, digging, fighting) and falls at night through the tick_fatigue_recovery cron.

Above the blocking threshold (80 by default) an islander can do nothing more until they have rested.

⚓ A ship's crew

Islanders taken aboard fill three roles:

• Helmsman (intelligence + luck) — accuracy of sailing, speed.
• Gunners (strength + intelligence) — the power and accuracy of the cannons.
• Deckhands (health + strength) — general endurance, working the ship.

The Ships

Your fleet is the key to exploring, trading and fighting.

A player may own several ships, but only one at a time can be at sea. The others stay at anchor at the base. To build a ship you need the Shipyard at the required level, and the resources: wood, metal, cloth.

Shipyard Lv 1

Brig

Fast (~20s/tile), well balanced, open to every faction. Every captain's first ship.

Light ship

Sloop

Nimble and handy, ideal for quick scouting and for carrying treasure maps.

⏳ HP and sinking

Every ship has hit points (HP). When they reach 0 the ship returns to docked on its own with HP restored to 15% of maximum, and the gunports close. To repair before a battle it is best to head back to base or to use the items made for it.

📦 The hold

A ship's hold has a fixed number of slots (it varies by type) for carrying items: cannons and ammunition, potions, ingredients, treasure maps, containers. Merchant ships have the roomiest holds.

👑 The Flagship

One vessel per captain, built piece by piece over months of work — and never truly lost.

The Flagship is not one more ship to put in the Shipyard queue: it is a project, unique to each player, built in pieces over weeks and made your own stage by stage. It does not replace the rest of the fleet — she is a ship like any other (she fights, sails and carries cargo under the same rules) — but she is the only one that, if she sinks, is not lost: she comes back to the quay as a wreck, ready to be refloated.

🔑 How she is unlocked

She cannot be bought and will not be found by chance: you need the Vessel's Plans, an item you get only by finishing the chain of missions for the Master Shipwright.

1. At level 50 the mission "The Master Shipwright" appears — but it must be accepted by hand.
2. The mission asks you to gather fine materials and bring them to the Master Shipwright, who in exchange hands over the Vessel's Plans, delivered straight to your warehouse.

⚖️ A long undertaking: 7 stages, 8 weeks

With the Plans in your warehouse, you lay the keel at the Shipyard and the building proper begins: 7 stages in sequence, one at a time, each with its own working time and its own cost in resources.

The 7 stages together cost more than 1,000,000 wood, 850,000 metal, 650,000 cloth, 4,000 gold and 12 barrels of rum — not a project for a single island, but for a grown economy. Finishing the last stage brings a hefty launch bonus in score (the Lord category).

🎨 Making her yours: 16,384 combinations

No two Flagships are built alike. Every stage, when it starts, offers 4 variants to choose from: 3 common to all factions plus 1 exclusive to your own (Pirates, Merchants or Navy — the other two factions' exclusives cannot even be selected). Every variant is meant to be zero-sum: it strengthens one quality and weakens another, never a straight upgrade.

The choices show on the outside too: the figurehead follows the variant chosen at the 7th stage, the cut of the sails changes with stage 4 (square, lateen or gaff), and some faction exclusives even impose a recognisable livery on hull or sails — black for the Pirates, a crown for the Navy, a convoy for the Merchants. With enough choices "in keeping" with your faction (or with one coherent archetype — light, heavy, cargo, war) the ship also earns an honorary title, worked out afresh at every stage completed.

A simulator shows the exact statistics of every combination before you choose, and the public Ship Registry lists every Flagship in the game with each captain's progress, title and choices.

☢ If she sinks: a wreck, not a loss

When the Flagship's HP reach zero, the rule that governs other ships does not apply. She still returns to her island's quay, but as a wreck: HP all but gone, gunports shut, unable to move until she is refloated. Her name, her building choices, her title and her figurehead are untouched — only the cargo and the ammunition in the hold are lost.

• While she is a wreck you can not start new stages, nor a Great Refit.
• To refloat her you must pay about 30% of the total cost of all 7 stages (roughly: ~300,000 wood, ~255,000 metal, ~195,000 cloth, ~1,200 gold, 4 barrels of rum) and wait 3 days of work.
• At the end she is back in the water with her HP restored: ready to sail, not to be rebuilt from scratch.

Sailing & Wind

Real-time sailing on a toroidal 100×100 map.

💨 The wind

The wind changes every 10 minutes and is the same for every ship. It has a direction (8 points of the compass) and a strength on 5 levels.

Effect on speed

In a storm there is no favourable heading: every ship slows down whichever way it points.

⚙ The player's skills

Sailing builds experience in two of the player's skills (0-100) that improve by themselves with use, whichever ship you are in.

• Knowledge of the Winds — +1 point for every 100 tiles against the wind. At 100 it cancels the penalty for a headwind.
• Helmsmanship — +1 point for every 200 tiles sailed. At 100 it grants a permanent +20% to base speed.

⚙️ Speed: Full or Reduced

Under the Route/Manual switch there is a second switch that sets the ship's speed:

• Full — the sheets are hauled tight, the ship runs at top speed but the hands grow tired. Average tiredness rises by 1 point every 10 tiles covered (configurable).
• Reduced — the ship makes 70% of her top speed (configurable) but the hands do not tire. It spares the crew when you want to husband their strength for long expeditions or for a fight.

Under the switch there is a coloured bar showing the crew's average tiredness (green → yellow → red) with a gold notch marking the critical threshold.

Hands recover from tiredness with the nightly cron (-15 points by default) and with the right potions. The speed setting is remembered for each ship until you change it yourself.

🧑‍⚔️ Experience for the hands and the Helmsman

Islanders aboard build up individual experience (0-100) as they sail. It accrues by itself for:

• Every islander of the sailor type, in any role (helm, guns, deck).
• The islander assigned as helmsman, whatever their type (even a warrior or an apothecary learns to hold a wheel).

The standard rate is +1 experience for every 500 tiles covered (in steps of 0.01), capped at 100. It is shared with the sailors: same column, same formula.

The bonus is applied when the sailing page loads: change helmsman, reload, and the ship answers to the new experience aboard.

💣 Experience for Warriors at the guns

Islanders of the warrior type assigned as gunners (the armi role) gain experience with every shot fired, hit or miss: +0.01 experience a shot by default, up to 100. Which means about 10,000 shots to make a "veteran" gunner.

That experience, together with strength, feeds three modifiers in battle:

• Less chance of missing — an experienced gunner wastes fewer shots.
• More damage — the more experience, the harder ordinary shot bites.
• Chance of a special shot — luck raises the chance of firing a special shot (extra damage) in place of an ordinary one.

The three weights (strength against experience) can be balanced by an admin: by default strength and experience both count and add up. A strong but green warrior is already a decent gunner; a strong veteran is devastating.

📖 The Logbook

The 📖 button on the toolbar saves single waypoints, so you can sail quickly to places you visit often. For reusable multi-waypoint routes use the Ocean Map instead (see that section).

🚨 What you will meet at sea

• Player islands — other captains' bases. To moor you need their Customs permit, or you are turned away.
• Treasure islands — 9 wild islands to dig, gather and hunt on (see that section).
• NPC Ports — trading posts open to all, with customs, market, supplies and a bazaar (see that section).
• Drifting bottles — they hold treasure maps. Sail over one and you pick it up.
• Kraken — PvE sea monsters in patrol zones; they attack on their own (see that section).

Ocean Map & Routes

The Map page is your headquarters for planning voyages and keeping track of the waters you have explored.

🔒 First you need: Cartography

To reach the Ocean Map you must first complete the Cartography research at the Laboratory. Without it the page is locked and only invites you to unlock it.

Once unlocked, the map shows the tiles you have already explored with your ships (a "fog of war"): the waters you have crossed stay visible, the rest of the world is dark until you sail over it.

🌏 What you see on the map

• Your islands and the NPC ports — always visible, even outside explored waters.
• Player islands and treasure islands — visible once sighted, told apart by type (tropical, volcanic, cursed, atoll).
• Rocks — visible only in explored waters. Remembering them helps you plot safe routes.
• Your ships — in real time, at their current position.

The ⚓ Centre on ship button at the bottom right brings the view back to your active ship. Drag with the mouse to move, scroll to zoom.

📍 Making a route

From the "Saved Routes" panel on the right, click + Plot Route: the map goes into drawing mode. From then on every click on the map adds a waypoint to the route in progress.

• At most 3 waypoints per route: these are the points the ship will pass through, in order.
• The waypoints are joined by a line showing the planned course.
• Once you have at least 1 waypoint, the 💾 Save Route button lights up.
• On saving you are asked for a name (say "Merchant's Run", "Kraken Hunt").
• Cancel at any moment with ✕ Cancel to throw away the current waypoints without saving.

🚀 Launching a saved route

In the "Saved Routes" panel each route has three actions:

• Launch — loads the route's waypoints onto your active ship. Go back to the sailing page and she will follow them by herself in Route mode. The same as plotting waypoints from the sailing page, but reusable and with a name.
• Rename — changes the route's name without touching its waypoints.
• Delete — removes the route and frees the slot for another.

A launched route becomes the ship's active route: you can change it by hand from the sailing page (clicking the canvas to move or add waypoints) without losing the one saved on the map.

💡 Strategy

• Patrol routes: save a course that circles your islands or your favourite ports, to patrol against pirates and Kraken.
• Trade routes: link your home island to an NPC port and back, launching it on the spot when your hold is full.
• Exploring routes: use waypoints to push into waters the fog of war still hides, and widen the map.
• Pair the route with Reduced Speed (see Sailing) for long hauls that do not wear the crew out.

The NPC Ports

Public trading posts where any captain may moor without a permit.

The Ports are special islands scattered over the map, run by NPCs. They cannot be built and belong to no player. They serve as neutral places to restock and as a hub for trade.

⚓️ Mooring at a Port

As you draw near a Port the "Go ashore at the Port" button appears by itself. Open it and you find a panel with four tabs.

🛡️ Customs

You buy customs protection for the ship currently moored. While the protection lasts, enemy ships cannot attack you as long as you stay near the Port. The options (how long, how much) are set for each port.

The usual formula: fee = base_fee + (ship_max_HP × multiplier). A tougher ship pays more. The protection runs out when the timer does, and must be renewed.

💣 The Port's Market

Buy armament and consumables straight from the Port: cannon shot (three calibres, special variants), gunpowder (different grades), rare goods. Prices are fixed per Port and the stock returns at regular intervals.

There is a handy "Fill ammunition" button to top up the ship's batteries with the right calibre in one go.

📦 Supplies

Buy wood, metal and cloth in blocks, at the Port's price per 1,000 units. Useful in an emergency, when the island is far away or short of production.

🏪 The Bazaar (trading between players)

The Bazaar shows the sell and buy orders players have created at their own Market. You buy from them directly, paying in doubloons from the ship; your own offers are visible to anyone who moors at the Port.

• Filter by resource or item.
• Buy or sell part of an order's quantity.
• Cancel your own orders to get the goods or doubloons back.

Sea Combat

Automatic fire, continuous, in real time. No turns.

There is no "battle screen": when the gunports are open, the cannons fire by themselves at any enemy in range, right there on the sailing map. But before you go looking for trouble the ship must be armed: cannons mounted, gunners aboard, powder and shot in the hold.

⚓ Arming the ship

Everything is prepared on the My Ships page, with the ship moored at your base. Three steps: cannons, crew, ammunition.

1. Mount the cannons

Cannons are items in three calibres — small (76 mm), medium (120 mm) and large (180 mm) — made at the Armoury or bought at the Bazaar. Every ship has a fixed number of cannon slots: the even ones (0, 2, 4…) face starboard, the odd ones (1, 3, 5…) face port.

Every pair of slots makes a battery (slots 0-1 → battery 1, slots 2-3 → battery 2…). The two cannons of one battery must be of the same calibre, because they share the same ammunition slots.

2. Take the gunners aboard

A cannon with nobody serving it does not fire. Assign islanders to the 💣 To the Guns role: their strength improves aim and damage, and warriors gain experience with every shot, becoming devastating veterans in time (see the Sailing section).

3. Load powder and shot

Every battery has five ammunition slots, to be filled from the warehouse or the hold. The calibre of the ammunition must match the battery's cannons.

Shot and powder are made at the Armoury. The recipes for chain and grape unlock with the Armoury's level: Lv 3 for the small calibre, Lv 6 for the medium, Lv 8 for the large.

💣 Gunports

Every ship has two independent gunports, one to a side. The ◀ Port and Starboard ▶ buttons appear on the map and glow red when open.

⚫ The families of shot: Round, Chain, Grape, Harpoon

For each broadside you choose what to fire. Beside the gunport buttons is that side's family selector: ⚫ Round (ordinary/special), ⛓️ Chain, 🔩 Grape or 🔱 Harpoon. Port and starboard are independent: you can slow a ship with chain on one side and rake her deck with grape on the other.

⛓️ Chain shot: torn sails

Two half-balls joined by a chain, made for canvas and not for planking. Every broadside that tells puts a stack of "torn sails" on the target:

• Each stack slows the ship by 8%, up to 24% (3 stacks).
• Stacks fade by themselves, one every 75 seconds out of the fire.

When to use it: to stop a laden prize getting away, or to shake off a faster pursuer. Remember, though, that with chain you sink a ship far more slowly: slow her first, then go over to round shot.

🔩 Grapeshot: fire on the deck

A spray of shards that leaves the hull nearly whole but cuts down the crew. Every broadside of grape that tells:

• may wound every member of the enemy crew (the helmsman excepted) with a chance of about 35%, whatever state the ship is in;
• wounds at most 5 members a shot, and those wounds are worse (damage ×1.5) than from an ordinary shot;
• needs you to close: the range is halved.

When to use it: to disarm an opponent without sinking them — wounded gunners stop firing — or to soften the deck before a boarding. The wounded are treated afterwards by the apothecary at the infirmary.

🎯 Aim, range and damage

Base range works out as max(120, range_in_tiles × 40). A cannon with range 3 covers 120 world units, one with range 7 reaches 280. Better powder increases the effective range; chain and grape reduce it (the range circle on the map follows the family selected).

Not every shot tells: each cannon has a chance of missing (up to 20%), lowered by its gunner's strength — and in part by their experience.

⚙️ Cannon efficiency

Every mounted cannon has an efficiency that depends on who serves it and what state it is in:

• The gunner's experience grows by firing (only warriors gain it): the more practised, the more efficient the fire.
• The condition (0–100) is the piece's wear: it drops with every shot and is repaired at the Shipyard for doubloons.
• For a battery it is the mean of the two cannons that counts.

In brief: what depends on what, and what it produces

Efficiency → powder per shot

Consumption starts from a base tied to the calibre (small, medium, large): bigger cannons burn more powder regardless.

Condition → damage penalty (only below 90)

⏳ Reloading

Every cannon has its own reload timer (velocita_ricarica in seconds, 8 by default). Two cannons on the same side reload independently. Changing the family of shot, on the other hand, silences the whole broadside for one full reload cycle before it can open fire again.

💥 Sinking

When a ship's HP fall to 0:

• She returns by herself to docked (at anchor).
• The gunports are closed automatically.
• HP are restored to 15% of maximum.
• Owner and attacker both get a notification.

🧭 Animation on the map

Combat events are shown right on the canvas: a yellow-orange track from cannon to target, a flash on impact, damage numbers floating upwards (red if you are hit, orange if you are hitting).

Player Protection

Who you can attack, who can attack you, and where you are safe.

The sea is open to everyone, but it is not a free-for-all: a captain who has just set sail cannot be sunk by someone who has been sailing for months. The rule is based on the player's level, grouped into six bands. What counts is the band, not the exact level: a level 42 and a level 58 are on equal footing.

💣 At sea: who your cannons can hit

Cannons fire on their own at valid targets within range. A target is valid if it belongs to:

• your own band;
• the band just above yours.

You cannot hit downwards: a ship in a lower band than yours is untouchable. Nor can you aim too high: two bands above yours, your cannons stay silent. This means that a player one band below you can hit you, while you cannot hit them.

⚔️ Revenge

There is one exception: if a ship from a lower band hits you, you can return fire against it for 10 minutes. It works the other way too: if you attack someone one band above you, from that moment they can fire back. Whoever shoots first never goes unpunished.

👁️ The symbols next to the name

While sailing, a symbol next to the name of other ships sums up all these rules. Hover over the ship and the tooltip explains it in words.

⚓ Where you are safe

In some places a ship is untouchable, and to keep things fair it cannot fire either:

• Near your island: within your island's radius no one can hit you.
• At another player's island, if they granted you their Customs permit.
• Near a Port, if you paid for its customs protection and it has not expired yet.

Boarding is a different case: the boarded ship stays immune for 10 minutes wherever it is, but its cannons keep firing. The tooltip over the ship tells you when it is immune.

⚖️ Navy and Merchants

The Navy cannot fire on a Merchant, whatever their band: trade is neutral. But if the Navy catches them red-handed during an inspection, the Merchant stays exposed for 20 minutes. During that time the Navy can attack them, and their band no longer protects them.

🏰 Island sieges

For sieges the rule is stricter than at sea:

• Recruits (band 1) cannot lay siege, and their islands cannot be besieged.
• From band 2 upwards you can only besiege islands of exactly your own band: neither above nor below.

Islands of captains on vacation are always safe, and so are islands that were just besieged, which stay immune for 5 days. Sieges are only allowed on certain days and at certain hours: outside those windows they cannot start.

🪝 Boarding

Boarding with the grappling hook, reserved for Pirates, ignores bands. However, the target ship must already be badly damaged: below 30% of its HP. It usually gets there by cannon fire, and cannons do follow the band rules. You cannot board a ship on vacation, one that is immune, or one that was just boarded.

Sea Creatures

Monsters on patrol and prey to chase: not everything that swims deserves sinking.

The sea is not only routes and trade: it is peopled by creatures the server controls too. Kraken are aggressive PvE creatures that patrol appointed waters, attack ships nearby and dive to surface elsewhere — sighting one means deciding at once: fight or run. Harpoon prey are the opposite: passive, harmless NPCs that swim freely across the whole world and are taken without a fight, with harpoon ammunition alone.

Basic type

Junior Kraken

A young specimen, modest in HP and in aggression. Ideal for a first encounter.

Middling type

Red Kraken

Tougher and fiercer, with serious tentacle damage. It wants a well-armed ship.

Boss

Killer Kraken

The deadly sort: enormous HP and damage, forever diving. The reward matches.

🔱 The anti-Kraken harpoon

To wound a Kraken ordinary shot is enough: cannons always do damage. The harpoon is for capturing it, and only once it is already at its last gasp. Against ships, NPCs and structures its damage is negligible: throwing one in a duel is powder wasted.

🎯 How a Kraken behaves

• Patrolling — it moves within a patrol radius around a fixed centre.
• Aggression — when a ship enters its engagement radius it gives chase and strikes with its tentacles.
• Diving — every tick there is a chance it dives: it vanishes from the map, becomes invulnerable and surfaces a few seconds later at a new random spot within a certain radius.
• Respawn — once killed it returns after its respawn timer (typically 10 minutes), set by its type.

👑 Capture: from cannon to treasure

When a Kraken's HP fall to 25% or less, a pulsing golden ring appears around the creature and the HUD warns you the beast is spent. From that moment the harpoon can bite.

1. Load harpoons into a battery (the grapeshot slot) and select the 🔱 Harpoon family on the right side. Changing family costs a full reload of the broadside: do it before you go alongside.
2. Fire. Every battery that tells tries for a hold: about 7 times out of 10 the harpoon keeps it.
3. If it holds, the Kraken vanishes from the map and lands in your hold as a treasure item (say Captured Kraken, or whatever is configured for that type), with the score: floor(max_HP × 0.05). An 800 HP Kraken is worth 40 points.
4. If it slips away, the harpoon is spent all the same: you need another broadside.

🔥 What failure costs

If your ship sinks during the fight you lose time, position, the harpoons left in the batteries and a share of your cargo on the way back to base. Plan your line of retreat.

🐟 The harpoon's other prey

A Kraken is not the only thing you take with a harpoon. Quieter NPCs swim the open sea too: enormous fish, long shadows that cut the surface and change course when you least expect it.

• They are not enemies. They do not attack, they have no hit points and you cannot sink them: cannon shot will not even aim at them.
• Only a harpoon takes them. Select the 🔱 Harpoon family on the right side: when the prey is in reach it lights up with a sea-green ring. One shot on target takes it — no dice about it.
• They have to be chased. They turn constantly and now and then they dive, vanishing from the map to surface a little way off. The difficulty is getting alongside with the right side, not hitting them.
• They keep certain hours. Some prey shows itself only in certain phases of the day, or under the right moon: if the sea looks empty, perhaps the hour is wrong.
• Once taken they go into the hold (you need room!) and are worth Explorer points. After a while another one turns up, elsewhere.

The Treasure Islands

9 wild islands to dig, gather, hunt and mine on.

The treasure islands are 9 islands laid out on a 3×3 grid. They belong to nobody and cannot become bases. Each has a type (🌋 volcanic, 🏖 sandy, 🌲 wooded, 🪨 rocky) that decides which animals, ingredients and materials are to be found there.

🗺️ 1. Get hold of a treasure map

To dig you need a treasure map. There are two ways to come by one:

• 🍺 A Round of Rum at the Tavern — appoint an islander as the Tavern's Informant, then stand a "Round of Rum for Everyone" (it costs rum from the warehouse, usually 100). Ten minutes or so later you will learn whether anyone talked: the chance depends on the informant's intelligence and luck. Attempts a day are limited and grow with the Tavern's level, as does the worth in doubloons of the maps you find. The map lands in the island's warehouse, ready to be loaded into a hold.
• 📧 Drifting bottles — bottles with a map inside float on the open sea. You see them while sailing: draw near and drop anchor within their radius to pick them up. The map goes straight into the ship's hold, with a treasure worth typically between 35 and 150 doubloons.

🕓 2. Digging for treasure

1. Anchor the ship at the treasure island the map points to (from the hold you can see the bearing and an estimated time, if you have a subscription running).
2. Start the dig by choosing a crew member: every hole takes 20-30 seconds, less if the pirate is strong and adventurous.
3. Resolve the dig: the outcome depends on the chosen pirate's adventure and luck and on how dangerous the island is. Even a partial result yields 25% of the treasure.

🌿 3. Gathering ingredients

Every island holds a stock of ingredients (items of the ingrediente type) that replenishes every 3 days. Ingredients are what the Apothecary needs for potions and remedies.

Success depends above all on the gatherer's luck, with some help from adventure and intelligence; rare ingredients are much harder to come by. You can order up to 5 attempts in a single expedition (never more than the stock left): each attempt lengthens the gathering and tires the gatherer, but every successful attempt yields an ingredient — a good outing can fill the hold in one go. The Tireless Miner skill trains on gathering too, and can hand you bonus ingredients on successful attempts.

Send an adventurer to gather and they will learn the trade: they gain experience with every attempt, and their experience (adventurers only) raises the chance of finding ingredients on later outings.

🐇 4. Big game hunting

With the ship anchored at the island, choose a hunter from the crew (deckhands only: the helmsman and the gunners stay aboard) and an animal to go after. The catch becomes an ingredient for the Apothecary's potions. Every animal has a danger rating and a limited stock that returns over time; dangerous animals can only be hunted with a hunting kit in the hold.

You can hunt in two ways:

• 🏹 Stalking — the hunt is played out live, move by move. Close in to gain ground: every step brings you nearer the shot, but raises the animal's alarm (from calm to watchful, tense, ready to bolt) and risks it fleeing. Once you are near enough you can shoot: an aiming minigame begins — hit the heart of the target and the catch is certain. At any moment you can choose a careful retreat: no prey, but no risk. Strength and adventure help you close quickly, intelligence and luck help you stay unseen. The nearer you get before shooting, the better the grade of the catch: poor, good or trophy (double the spoils!).
• ⏳ A quick beat — you send the hunter off and wait for the outcome (30 to 90 seconds, according to the animal's difficulty). Success depends mostly on adventure and strength, with help from luck and intelligence. You can try for several head at once, but each attempt yields less.

⛏️ 5. Mining rare materials

You mine fine woods (teak, ancient oak, lava wood, petrified wood), metals and filament, according to the island's type. The fine woods are the ingredients for the empty barrel recipes at the Research Laboratory.

The success of each unit depends above all on the miner's strength, with help from luck and intelligence (weighted differently per material). As with gathering, an adventurer gains experience with every unit attempted, and their experience (adventurers only) raises the chance of mining successfully. The Tireless Miner skill trains on the units mined and can hand you bonus drops.

Research & Technology

The research tree unlocks buildings, recipes and permanent improvements.

The Research Laboratory is the pivot of the island's technological growth. Research nodes are laid out as a web of requirements: each node may want other research already completed and/or buildings at a certain level.

📊 What a research costs

Every research spends the 4 standard resources (gold, wood, metal, cloth) plus Research Points (RP), a sixth resource you accumulate like gold or wood. Research Points are produced passively in proportion to the Laboratory's level and are kept in the Warehouse.

⚙ Research slots

• One research at a time per island. You must wait for it to finish (or cancel it) before starting another.
• The Workshop speeds up all research through the research_speed bonus.
• Rare items such as Fossil Amber and Rune Stone apply a one-off multiplier to the next research started.

💰 Cancelling

Cancelling a research under way returns 50% of everything spent (gold, wood, metal, cloth, Research Points included). Useful if you have changed your plans.

🎯 What research unlocks

• Higher building levels (Shipyard Lv 5, say, wants Hull Strength).
• Crafting recipes at the Armoury, the Apothecary and the Laboratory (fine woods at the higher levels).
• Passive bonuses to the island (production, capacity, speed).
• Advanced ships of the respective faction domains.

Items & Objects

From cannon shot to anti-Kraken harpoons, by way of potions and bottled rum.

💣 Ammunition and gunpowder

Cannons want shot of the right calibre and gunpowder to fire. Shot is made at the Armoury through recipes in the crafting queue; powder gathers by itself at the Armoury and must be drawn off into an empty barrel loaded there (see below).

Light ammunition

Small cannon shot

For small-calibre cannons. A special version does heavier damage.

Medium ammunition

Medium cannon shot

A balance of range and damage, for standard cannons.

Heavy ammunition

Large cannon shot

The greatest damage, slow to reload. For the heavy-calibre cannons of galleons.

Propellant

Gunpowder

Needed for every shot. Three grades (standard, medium, long range): the better the grade, the greater the range.

🛡️ Barrels and bottles: the container system

The island produces raw materials (rum, powder) but to carry them aboard or store them you need containers: barrels and bottles. Their life cycle ties three different buildings together.

Material · Common

Empty Barrel

Crafted at the Research Laboratory from fine woods (teak, oak, lava or petrified wood). Loaded at the Armoury it takes gunpowder; loaded at the Distillery it takes rum.

Material · Common

Empty Bottle

Yours free once you have read the map from a bottle found at sea and dug up what it points to. Use it again at the Distillery to bottle rum.

Consumable

Barrel of Rum

What the Distillery makes: 1 empty barrel + 100 of the island's rum. Drinking it adds +100 rum to your stores wherever you are.

Consumable

Bottle of Rum

The small version: 1 empty bottle + 10 rum. Drinking it adds +10 rum to your stores.

Powder

Barrel of Gunpowder

What the Armoury makes. The Armoury gathers kilos of powder every tick (Lv 1: 0.10 kg; Lv 10: 0.55 kg). Load an empty barrel: when the pile reaches 100 kg, press Fill and the full barrel goes into the warehouse, ready to load aboard.

Equipment

Anti-Kraken Harpoon

Hunting ammunition: it loads into a battery in the grapeshot slot and captures a Kraken already below 25% HP. It is spent on every throw, hit or miss.

Kraken drop

Kraken Soup

A rare item from capturing a Kraken. A powerful buff, according to the kind of Kraken taken.

💊 The Apothecary's potions

The Apothecary's Study brews potions and remedies from treasure-island ingredients (hunts, gatherings, digs). One brew at a time per island.

Ingredients are looked for first in the island warehouse, then in the holds of moored ships (by quantity, smallest first).

🧵 Clothing (the Tailor's Shop)

At the Tailor's Shop you make garments for your character: hat, mask, coat, trousers, shoes. They are worn by your avatar and shape how your captain looks.

Hat

The iconic pirate headgear.

Mask

From bandana to skull, the captain's identity.

Coat

The torso: from rags to an admiral's frock coat.

Trousers

Legs and belt.

Shoes/Boots

From rope slippers to tall leather boots.

🎁 Treasure-island items

Digging turns up objects particular to each type of island. Every item has a rarity (common, uncommon, rare, legendary) and an effect.

🌋 Volcanic Island

🏖 Sandy Island

🌲 Wooded Island

🪨 Rocky Island

🔔 How items are used

• Instant — resources, ship HP, islander statistics, morale, skill XP: they take effect at once and the item is spent.
• Temporary — bonuses to production, to combat, to the informant's chance: they last for the hours shown.
• One-shot — research speed-ups: the effect is spent by itself when the next research starts.
• Ship equipment — harpoons, shot, powder: loaded into the hold and spent in battle.

From the Inventory screen you can select an item and confirm its use. For items that act on a target (a particular islander), the game asks you to choose who.

Automatic Cycles

What happens "by itself" while you are away.

The game runs without stopping thanks to a set of cron jobs that update the state of the world every minute, hour and day: building, production, wind, morale, tiredness, island refills, Kraken and much more.