Joruba here.
Participants will be notified in their Alpha Discord channel. This is an incredibly important milestone for me and for the team. We have been working toward it ever since the release of 1.0. As one of our new teammember recently put it:
“The progress is awesome. It’s a strange feeling, watching the game grow into something I never thought possible. I’m really enjoying seeing the specialists do their thing. It honestly feels like magic.”
I’m very happy that more people will soon get to see it for themselves. Kirill, break a leg. Set the studding sails! Course for the Bay of Creativity! Kirill here, and a very emphatic welcome to you all. This is our third development diary covering the gameplay side of Patch 2.0. When the fifth diary goes live, the open beta for Patch 2.0 begins. Last time, we covered the foundations of the new economy:
The hidden penalty on stolen goods is gone.
The Commerce skill only improves when you buy low and sell high. Piracy does not level it.
Colonies will only pay a fair price for large shipments from trusted trading partners.
To become one, you will need to “level up” a colony by trading there regularly, improving your relations with its nation, and developing the right skills.
You can also build that standing by sailing merchant ships, opening deposits and taking out loans at local banks, keeping ships in local berths, and building businesses.
Businesses are a new gameplay system that lets you build a trading empire that works for you and leaves a mark on the game world.
And that was only the first half of the new economy. Today, we are covering the second. But first, a short FAQ. The previous diary raised a lot of questions. Let’s answer the most common ones.
We play this game for piracy. Will the new economy kill off selling loot? Quite the opposite. We removed the hidden penalty on stolen goods, so piracy will become more profitable. Pirates will simply have to choose whether to dump everything at once in one or two favorite colonies, or spread the spoils across the region. Is Caribbean Legend turning into an economy sim? When starting a new game in 2.0, you will be able to choose the economy difficulty. If you want, you can keep playing much like before without digging into every new system. More on that in future diaries. Will all this mean more busywork and grind? We are not adding new mechanics just to make anyone’s life harder, and we are not punishing players who simply are not interested in them. Yes, businesses require some attention, trade routes are dynamic, and you can overload a colony’s market by suddenly dumping 2,000 units of mahogany on it. That may sound complicated, but the game is still about piracy, naval battles, quests, and treasure hunting. Now it is also about trade. Dig into the system and you will gain a huge advantage. Ignore it and you will not miss much. What will happen to smugglers and pirate settlements? Pirate settlements have their own counterpart to the Turnover Limit, tied to the overall strength of the Brotherhood of the Coast and increasing as the game progresses. Smugglers, meanwhile, will take on a broader role and become an early-game source of strategic goods, making ship upgrades more accessible. Why doesn’t Commerce level up from selling stolen goods? Selling loot and actually trading are still different activities. Piracy already develops almost the entire skill set—from Navigation and Gunnery to melee combat and Streetwise. We want different playstyles to shape different characters instead of leading everyone toward the same universal build. A lot of players found this decision controversial, so we decided to compromise. We will not remove Commerce XP from selling prize goods entirely—we will simply reduce it sharply. Now, on to the diary itself. Time to finish our tour of the new economy. Previously, you had to grind out millions of pesos in advance just so you could stop worrying about ship upkeep while questing or enjoying freeplay. Not anymore. Played Mount & Blade? We have something similar now—only bigger. By the 17th century, banking, bills of exchange, and trading companies were already well established. A respectable sea wolf should not have to haul a mountain of silver around in their pockets. You will no longer need to show up in person to pay every berth fee or collect interest on every deposit. At the end of each month, the game will settle your recurring income and expenses: businesses, deposits, quest dividends, taxes, crew upkeep, and so on. If the month closes in the black, everything is simple. You receive the difference and go spend your honestly earned pesos. If the balance ends up in the red, you can cover the entire bill from your personal funds. Or pay the crew first and leave the rest hanging. Or pay nothing at all. The world will not end. Your ship will not sink, and the crew will not mutiny—at least not that same day. Debt is only a problem if you are poor. The debts themselves, however, are not going anywhere. They roll over into the next month and gradually start to bite. Eventually, the consequences will arrive through cities, nations, and the people you owe. But there is a pleasant side to all this as well. Invested capital starts working for you right before your eyes. A successful raid on a merchant convoy? A good loan? A valuable treasure? Open a couple of bank deposits, build a bakery—and suddenly a substantial part of your ship’s expenses is already covered by income on shore. Your success at sea now stays with you for good. A personal trading empire can bankroll an entire fleet of heavy ships. And all of it leaves a mark on the game world. The old trade map was static. There was very little to discover: coffee was always bought and sold in the same places. In 2.0, every new game will give the Caribbean one of several economy variants. Each changes how imports and exports are distributed between colonies: the same good may be a staple of local production in one playthrough and something the colony is eager to import in another. Every variant is handcrafted to preserve the logic of the world. Blueweld will not suddenly lose its mahogany plantations—but it may gain competitors. Each version still has a proper economic structure: producing regions, markets, intermediate ports, short routes, and long ones. The random element decides which version of the world you get. It does not simply shuffle goods between shops. Neighboring settlements no longer have to share the same economic life, either. Saint-Pierre and Le François are on the same island, but they are two separate markets, and their specializations may differ. The chosen variant is fixed for the entire playthrough. Gather rumors, discover new colonies, and the picture will gradually come together. And do not worry—the game will remember the information for you, so there will be no need to memorize trade tables. We now have a new tab in the character menu for exactly that purpose. Think of it as your own Caribbean filing cabinet. We want knowledge of the Caribbean to have real value. After a few dozen hours, the colony list should no longer look like a collection of identical shops, but like a familiar map: this is a good market, your business is running over there, you should probably stay away from that place for now, and these people are very interested in rum. In simple terms:
Discover a colony.
Unlock its card.
The card records import and export data.
“Level up” the colony through deposits, ship berths, businesses, and trade.
The card fills out and becomes richer.
A list of your favorite colonies gradually takes shape, with a filter keeping them pinned to the top.
The left side shows every colony you have already discovered. At a glance, you can see who controls the city, your Local Trade Reputation there, and whether you own a business. And not just whether one exists: the list also shows whether it is operating, idle, losing money, or doing suspiciously well. Undiscovered colonies do not appear in the list. The colony card itself contains the essentials: governor, fort condition, prosperity, and major local industries. Next to that is a short description of the colony and, far more importantly for trade, its place in the economy—what it produces and which goods are in particularly high demand. Instead of thinking, “I’m pretty sure sugar was an export somewhere around here,” you can open the city you need and restore the whole picture in seconds. The date of your first visit is recorded as well. A small detail, but I like the idea that a gradually explored archipelago leaves a trace somewhere other than the player’s memory. Below are practical tabs for your business, ship berth, and bank. Everything you own or maintain in a particular colony now lives inside its card. So, to sum up the new economy in 2.0:
The hidden penalty on stolen goods is gone. Goods now remember their provenance.
The Commerce skill only improves when you buy low and sell high. Piracy levels it very slowly… unless you are playing a Rogue.
Colonies will only pay a fair price for large shipments from trusted trading partners.
To become one, you will need to “level up” a colony by trading there regularly, improving your relations with its nation, and developing the right skills.
You can also build that standing by sailing merchant ships, opening deposits and taking out loans at local banks, keeping ships in local berths, and building businesses.
Businesses are a new gameplay system that lets you build a trading empire that works for you and changes the game world.
The game handles all the accounting for you. You no longer need to collect interest and business income by hand, and payments can be postponed.
Success at sea can now be made permanent by investing your capital in production or banks. You no longer have to grind endlessly just to buy yourself time for freeplay or the story.
The world’s economy variants are now randomized. Trade routes and your standing in colonies change with every new game.
Information about the world, your capital, and colony progression all come together in one completely new screen.
And you can ignore all of this if you want. Economy difficulty can be lowered—or raised.
We are done with the overview of the new economy. Now let’s build a couple of characters around it.
Take the Accountant backstory, the Intellectual trait, and Chess as a hobby. The Intellectual trait cuts your combat damage by 35%, but grants an additional skill point every time the character ranks up. Chess grants the same bonus to officers. The result is a captain who develops faster as a specialist, while fighting, gunnery, and sailing can increasingly be left to people hired specifically for those jobs. Then the Accountant’s own perks come into play. Golden Tongue increases the Turnover Limit by 25% and Local Trade Reputation gain by 5%. Monchrestien’s Doctrine lets you own two additional businesses and sell the goods they produce for 15% more. During the first weeks, explore the Caribbean and discover new colonies. Look for routes. Trade within the Turnover Limit, build Local Trade Reputation, run ever larger shipments through your favorite ports, and put your first serious capital into a merchant ship—then into bank deposits and businesses. In the right Season, of course. Higher sale prices help businesses pay for themselves faster and weather bad months. Then the snowball starts rolling: trade → Local Trade Reputation → higher Turnover Limit → capital → businesses → higher profits → even more capital. Eventually, the monthly summary shows that your shore-based holdings can cover the monthly upkeep of a ship of the line. The Accountant has won. Time to stop working.
The Rogue’s road to financial independence can be even shorter—provided he robs a few Accountants at sea. In a straight fight, the Rogue starts out behind dedicated combat backstories, so let’s tune him for boarding actions. Take the Short-Tempered trait and Hammer Throw as a hobby. Enemies at full Health take 25% more damage from you, while melee critical hits deal another +20% damage, knock enemies back, and drain their Energy. The personal perk Opportunist keeps scaling this build through Streetwise. Every 2 points of Streetwise grant +1% melee critical damage, every 4 grant +2% backstab damage, and every 20 grant +1% melee critical chance. Head-on, the Rogue still will not match an Athlete, Duelist, or Sharpshooter. But for treasure hunts and boarding actions, this build is more than enough. And afterward, the personal perk Raider makes stolen goods and captured ships count as legitimately purchased. Yes… that makes the Rogue the only backstory that can level Commerce without the usual penalty while selling stolen goods. Prize ships stop going for pennies, too. If you get tired of hunting ships, there is always Treasure Hunter. Map merchants appear more often, treasures become more valuable, and that strong personal combat build comes in handy there as well: the guards around worthwhile treasure know how to hit back. From there, it is the usual path—deposits, businesses. You can even switch to a merchant ship for a while, give it a useful ship trait at the Dutch West India Company office, and put on your best fox face while pretending to be an “Accountant.” The Rogue gets rich first, then starts explaining to everyone that this was the plan all along. And… that is all for today! What we do - we do for you ːjollyrː