Caribbean Legend · build 24358758 · published
The game is now 75% off—our biggest discount ever, and it will not go any lower;
Immediately after this sale, we will significantly raise the game’s price;
Major Update 1.9 is out now;
No new game required;
We recommend disabling mods;
Ship, crew, and cannon management have all been overhauled;
New events have been added to towns and jungles.
Version 2.0 has taken the entire team a year of hard work. Once it arrives, Caribbean Legend will finally leave the 2000s behind and enter the 2010s. We believe that raising the price of a game offering 200 hours of content with greatly improved visuals is only fair.
Here are both previously released teasers for Update 2.0, in case you missed them:
Caribbean Legend is currently on 120,000 wishlists, and it would be unfair to raise the price quietly without warning—or without giving everyone one last chance to get an exceptional deal.
Until August 6, the game will be available at a record-breaking 75% discount
On August 7, the price of Caribbean Legend will increase by 10–25%, depending on the region
DLC prices will remain unchanged
This means that the next two weeks are your last chance to purchase the game at its historically lowest price.
That’s enough sales talk for today. Now—to what really matters. ːcharles_happyː
This is a landmark update: the penultimate major update for the game, and the last one built on the legacy DirectX engine.
Nothing less than the biggest and most advanced Sea Dogs experience ever created on Storm Engine.
Update 1.9 adds new events to towns and jungles, solves the problem of constant stagger-locking in combat, and—most importantly—makes ship, crew, and cannon management far more engaging, intuitive, and considerably less tedious.
No new game is required. We recommend disabling mods. As always, you can roll back to any previous version at any time.
And one more thing.
From time to time, some of the series’ most devoted veterans accuse us of casualizing the game and simplifying everything too much. To be clear: we are not trying to dumb the game down. Our goal is to make it cleaner, easier to understand, more accessible, and more engaging—in short, better!
Many of the systems that series veterans considered important did not actually work as intended, had barely any effect, or did nothing at all. Yet they still occupied space in the UI and demanded your attention—sometimes taking up half the screen and drawing focus away from mechanics that were genuinely important and interesting.
Of course, there may have been places where we got carried away and made the experience a little too casual. But that is temporary. Once there are no longer any barriers preventing a new player from understanding the game, we will immediately turn the difficulty back up. If necessary, of course.
In other words: clarity first, difficulty second.
Enjoy the update—and the read! ːrespect_soldierː
The centerpiece of Update 1.9 is a sweeping overhaul of ship artillery. We completely rebuilt cannon wear, redesigned the management screen, and introduced separate caliber limits for different parts of each ship.
Every ship now has three separate caliber limits: the main battery, bow chasers, and stern chasers. This means you can fit three different types of cannon to the gun deck, bow, and stern. Spend a lot of time chasing down skittish merchants? Bow-mounted culverins are the obvious choice. Need every last bit of cargo space? Mount lighter guns on the broadsides and something heavier aft. Don’t want to wear out your bombards firing at schooners? Give your man-of-war 24-pounders fore and aft, and let them know exactly who they picked a fight with!
What used to be a hidden mechanic—mildly baffling to newcomers and endlessly irritating to veterans—is now a fully fledged system.
Cannon durability and condition are averaged per broadside and displayed throughout the interface.
Cannons can now be repaired at the shipyard.
Cannons can be mounted and removed during battle.
Cannons in pristine condition grant bonuses, while ruined guns impose penalties.
The Gunner ability “Bombardier” and the “Hammer of Thor” ward no longer prevent cannons from exploding. Instead, they increase the bonuses granted by cannons in pristine condition. These effects stack.
All these new mechanics lead us here: the cannon management screen. The old version was cumbersome, demanded far too many clicks, and even allowed you to adjust the number of guns on each side manually—a feature that served very little practical purpose. Historically, an unbalanced ship would lose stability and could easily founder in heavy seas. The new screen is genuinely satisfying to use: one click seats every cannon in place with a fitting sound. Give it a try!
We have standardized arrow controls across the interface, expanding the familiar industry-standard system originally tested on the item-transfer screens.
Hold Ctrl to transfer 10 units or Shift to transfer 100. Use Ctrl+Shift or right-click an arrow to transfer everything at once.
This allowed us to remove the double arrows and clean up the interface without sacrificing any familiar functionality. A few screens still use the old controls, but we hope to bring all of them up to the new standard by version 2.0.
We put a great deal of work into rebuilding the entire ship screen from the ground up. It is now much easier to navigate and read while providing far more useful information. Let’s go through it section by section.
The most important ship stats now use status bars, just like the battle interface. This makes the situation much easier to assess at a glance.
The redundant numerical sail-health value has been removed. The sail plan is now displayed in its place.
Speed has been split into two values, and measurement units have been added.
Maneuverability now comes with a descriptive rating. If you have ever wondered, “Is 35 Maneuverability good or bad?”—the answer is now immediately clear. The old numerical value is still available in the tooltip.
Cannon caliber and cannon count are now shown as separate values instead of being crammed together into a confusing jumble of pounds and numbers.
When a stat is at its maximum, it is displayed as a single number or word. No more 1000.0/1000.0.
The ship’s hold is now divided into two tabs: Cargo and Supplies. The Supplies tab handles all the routine calculations for you and presents the ship’s condition in a clear, convenient format. Where provisions once had to be estimated by eye, you will now receive exact projections and can make informed decisions based on them. Tooltips provide additional calculations, such as how many minutes of gunfire your powder will support or how much rum a fully crewed ship will consume.
This section contains the crew’s experience and morale values, as well as buttons for training the crew and raising morale. We will cover these systems in greater detail below, but it is worth noting that hovering over either button shows exactly how much experience or morale will be gained.
The most important information about the ship and its current status has been moved to the top of the screen. The captain’s portrait is now smaller, making room for upkeep, combat power, notifications, and the ship’s current location. Notifications display important information about the ship and warn you of potential dangers. The location display also means you will never again forget which cove your boat is waiting in: The portrait itself is no longer just decoration, either. Clicking it takes you directly to captain reassignment mode.
Sailor recruitment costs, wages, and experience scaling have all been completely reworked. Sailors now earn proper wages, while keeping an experienced crew alive is far more economical than constantly hiring replacements. Officer salaries have been slightly reduced to compensate. Loot sharing will be removed in Update 2.0—consider this a preparatory step.
The crew-overcapacity mechanic has been removed. Nobody ever chose to sail understaffed, three separate crew values only confused players, and the relationship between overcrowding and morale was far from obvious. The system is now much simpler: a ship can take aboard as many sailors as its current capacity allows. Anything that previously affected overcapacity now affects the maximum crew instead. Morale now decreases continuously, making a healthy stock of rum a necessity. The closer the crew is to maximum capacity, the faster the appalling living conditions take their toll on the sailors’ mood.
The three separate crew experience values have been combined into one wherever they previously appeared. Aboard ship, every sailor needs to know both the rigging and the gun carriages, so dividing their experience no longer served any real purpose. If this feels like a grave blow to the spirit of the old ways, rest assured: the three values were unnecessary complexity. Each one affected only a handful of variables in the code.
Your options for influencing the crew have been expanded. Once per day, you can now spend resources to raise morale or improve experience.
A kind word is not enough to lift the spirits of men packed into a wooden box in the middle of a hostile ocean. You will need to throw a small celebration: hand out extra food and rum, then sweeten the occasion with an unexpected bonus.
Theory alone will not turn your crew into an experienced and disciplined fighting force. You will have to spend some ship supplies on live-fire drills and sparring practice.
All these changes make sailors a far more valuable resource. You will need to keep your people alive and pay attention to their health. The horrifying losses inflicted by grapeshot in nearly every naval battle did not fit into this new system. So we changed it. The fewer crew members remain, the less damage they take. A grapeshot volley fired into an overcrowded ship will claim far more lives than the same volley fired into a half-empty one. We have also introduced protection from the hull. An intact hull now slightly reduces damage to the crew, giving you more reason to switch ammunition during battle. All of this makes boarding a matter of choosing the right moment. In a prolonged battle, a numerical advantage in crew quickly narrows, and endlessly hosing the enemy deck with lead is no longer an effective strategy.
It has been almost a year since the combat system was radically overhauled in version 1.6. Throughout that time, we have closely followed your feedback. Update 1.9 introduces several important changes based on it.
Stagger-locks were one of the most common complaints. Most combat encounters pit you against superior numbers, and different enemy attack speeds could easily trap you in an inescapable chain of stagger effects. After being staggered, any character now gains brief immunity to further stagger. This gives them a chance to recover and evens the odds considerably. In a large brawl, you will always have an opportunity to strike back. Duels, meanwhile, will become more demanding now that you can no longer stagger-lock an opponent by simply mashing attacks.
We have reworked the energy system. Energy now recovers faster, and its recovery rate increases as it approaches zero. This raises the overall pace of land combat. We have also adjusted the energy costs of several attacks, particularly circular strikes, making characters with low energy more comfortable to play.
The land has not been left untouched. New events and random encounters are intended to bring more variety to familiar land-based gameplay.
For a long time, the jungles were empty and uneventful, turning travel across an island into an endless sprint through a featureless sea of green. On those rare occasions when the great god of RNG decided to bless you with an encounter, you might meet five fleeing women in a row—which only made the world feel even less believable. That is about to change.
We built a new random generator for jungle events. It prevents long streaks and makes encounters much less predictable and more varied. For those interested in the technical details: jungle events now use a weighted discrete selection system. The weight of a selected event is reset, while events that have not been selected receive an additional coefficient based on their base weight. There are now twice as many jungle events, and we have increased their chance of appearing. The jungles should no longer feel completely deserted.
We have added five new events, each beginning and ending in the same location. No lengthy quest chains and no sailing across the entire Caribbean. There is no forced participation, either: exits remain open, and you are free to ignore everyone involved. Each new event below has at least five variations.
Two groups are fighting each other. You can join the battle by attacking either side and claim a reward if you emerge victorious.
A guard is patrolling the area, exhausted by the tropical heat. Treat him to some rum or wine, and he will put in a good word for you with his fellow guards.
He can share the latest local rumors. If you are not particularly concerned about your reputation, you may also relieve him of his valuables—provided you can be persuasive enough.
You can help a man in need—or finish him off.
The jungle is a dangerous place. But whatever someone valued in life may still prove useful to you after their death.
This is an existing event, but it frustrated players enough to earn a dedicated set of changes. Almost every outcome in which the player does nothing obviously vile will no longer cost Honor. Refuse to escort her or return the runaway to her father—neither choice will make you a scoundrel anymore.
Whenever ships are present in the harbor, you may now encounter their captains inside buildings around town—including merchants, naval officers, and pirates. Each captain can share fresh news, offer useful advice, or sell you something valuable, such as an amulet or a couple of Adder Stones.
At low Threat levels, you can now guarantee a reduction by bribing the governor. If your crimes against the nation are too severe, however, the governor will call the guards instead. Paying off bounty hunters also reduces Threat slightly.
Rebalanced the volume of the main theme and reduced the game’s overall volume.
Fixed animations on older character models. Slaves and plantation runaways no longer attack at breakneck speed.
The Storta and Maltese Sword now carry the “Quality” descriptor.
Ship repairs now work even without the Repair skill unlocked.
Reworked the formulas for various payoffs. All such payments are now capped at 25,000 pesos.
Reworked smuggling payoff calculations. The amount offered and the player’s Charisma now affect the chance of getting away with it.
Fixed numerous localization issues.
Fixed a rare bug that caused street merchants to disappear from towns.
Escort assignments from the Port Authority are now issued correctly for Class 1 ships.
The number of Excellent maps is now calculated correctly.
After a landing operation, crew members are now distributed correctly across the player’s squadron.
Fixed several progression-blocking quest issues caused by dialogue errors in multiple languages.
Reduced the requirements for the naval path of the Black Mark quest.
Fixed an issue that could duplicate the Strange Amulet.
Unique ships now have unique nameplates.
Numerous quest fixes and improvements to overall game stability.
And... that's all for today!
Give the update a try and please leave reviews — blue ones ːsteamthumbsupː, like the Caribbean Sea!
What we do — we do for you.
ːjollyrː