Fellow swashbucklers, We just released our tenth update since launch, including challenging new encounters, balance changes, quality-of-life improvements and more. Check out the full list of changes below. The game is also 30% off during the Steam Summer Sale, so if you’ve been waiting for the right moment to come aboard, now is a great time! [b]Buccaneers! Version 1.0.10[/b] [b]New Features[/b] - Added “Elite” ship encounters which present a greater challenge for high-level players. These are denoted by a red skull icon and can start appearing once you reach Level 13 or complete Act 2 (The Hunt). - Added Legendary Treasure Fleets which can start appearing once you have unlocked Elite encounters. The intrigue for these is more expensive to acquire, but capturing the target ships grants you a random Legendary item that you haven’t yet unlocked. - The most difficult Bounties now feature Elite ships once you have unlocked Elite encounters, and offer higher payouts for completing them. [b]Balancing[/b] - The encounter spawn rate is now lower while sailing through friendly regions. - The factions used for random encounters now depend on who owns the region you are currently in: a random enemy in neutral or friendly territory; the owning faction in enemy regions; or a random enemy with partial ownership in contested regions. - Your ship is no longer immobilised while repairing in battle. However, each repair cycle now takes 10 seconds (up from 7.5 seconds) at the default Cannon Reload Speed setting. - The reward for selling prize ships is now reduced by the ship’s repair cost, so you will earn less money depending on how much damage the captured ship has taken. - Increased the Prize Money ability bonus to 35% (was 30%). - Increased the value of all cargo types by roughly 20%. - Increased the reward from completing Bounties by roughly 20%. - The XP reward for defeating ships now increases by 5% for each installed upgrade (excluding the default faction upgrades). The reward for normal encounters is the same as before, while Elite encounters and certain boss ships give more XP. - Ships generated for random encounters and Bounties now have a randomised notoriety value depending on their difficulty (up to a maximum of 4 stars for Elite ships). - The Influence (red ribbon) reward for defeating ships now scales with the notoriety of the target, increasing by 10% for each star. - Increased the starting duration of normal Treasure Fleet intrigues to between 7 and 14 days. (This will still decrease over time, so will be lower if you acquire the intrigue several days after it was generated.) - Moved some of the spawn points in Maracaibo and Puerto de España to make land battles less difficult. - Increased the chance of armour-piercing rounds dealing critical hits against crew. - Grapeshot and Bar Shot can no longer destroy armour. - Mortar shots now ignore armour and have a higher chance of dealing critical hits. - Medium forts now have a single mortar in their central gun battery. - The turn speed of dismasted ships now scales with the global Ship Speed setting. [b]Changes[/b] - Added a new Orders page to the Fleet Status tab which allows you to quickly change the orders for all ships in your fleet from a single menu. Orders assigned to “Fleet” will be automatically applied to ships you purchase or capture. - Pressing the Map hotkey (M on keyboard or View/Back on controller) while in a ship battle now opens the Fleet Status tab instead, giving you quicker access to the new Orders page. - Added an on-screen prompt for accessing the Orders page in ship battles, and moved the Disengage prompt to the opposite side of the screen. - Crew members on Rogue ships now use the pirate models with a unique texture. - Intrigue cards now display a rarity colour to indicate their importance. Quest intrigues always appear as Legendary (yellow). - The green “Importing” icon is now shown next to the Sell buttons in the Merchant UI, while the red “Exporting” icon is shown next to the Buy buttons. This clarifies which actions are recommended to make a profit when trading. - Your current XP and the threshold for the next level are now shown in the Abilities tab of the Captain’s Log. - The owning faction’s name is now shown on the town map UI, and the town name banner is coloured blue for friendly and red for enemy factions. - Added critical hit sounds and sinking/destruction sounds for ship battles. - Your lieutenant now calls out critical hits against crew and forts in ship battles. - Added interaction sounds to some buttons that were missing them in the World Map and Captain’s Log. - Added red splash zone indicators and incoming explosion sounds for enemy mortar shots. - Fort gun batteries now display a mortar icon if they have one as well as cannons, and both icons are greyed out when the battery is destroyed. - Ships are now moved up or down to the default world height when boarding to prevent them sitting too high or low in the water. - Increased the max display value of the Damage stat in the Choose Cannons menu to correctly represent the damage of Bronze Carronades. (The actual damage values are unchanged.) - [VR] Fort battle progress bars now display in front of other objects and have been raised higher above the ground where needed. [b]Fixes[/b] - Improved the obstacle avoidance logic for AI ships to make them less likely to clip through islands. - Fixed a rare bug where AI ships could get stuck in a “fleeing” state in battles. - Fort guns and mortars will no longer target ships which are being boarded. - Adjusted the path mesh on the Brig to make boarding plank connections more reliable. - Added a fallback to force quests to move on if they didn’t advance after completing an objective. - Fixed colliders in some harbours to prevent NPCs from shooting through buildings during fort battles. - Fixed a rendering issue with the ocean when using the “Low” quality water setting. - Fixed smoke particles sometimes not fully stopping after putting out a fire on a ship. - Fixed the ship not stopping if you exit the world map while sailing to a destination. - Fixed an exploit for avoiding random encounters on the world map by starting and stopping sailing at regular intervals. - Fixed the target ship in “The Hunt” not being removed from the town it was docked at if you capture it at the ambush point. - Fixed an error with the Load Game menu if you deleted all saves in a campaign slot. - Fixed the XP bar showing as empty in the Abilities tab once you reach max level. - Fixed incorrect maps and location markers being shown in some towns. - Fixed the custom captain model, name and stats not being used when boarding Fortune’s Favour in Act 3 (Retribution). - Fixed skin tones being randomised on the Admiral and Lieutenant each time they appear in the main quest. - [VR] Fixed the town map showing on top of other elements in the post-battle UI after a fort battle. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️