This update gives ranged crew a clearer role aboard your ship, makes local production follow harvest seasons, and improves menus in smaller windows. It also fixes sailing controls, text rendering, and language switching. These notes cover changes since the previous Steam and itch update.
Crew and combat
- Deck volleys now reflect your healthy ranged crew: archers and hunters fire bows, crossbowmen fire crossbows, and gunners fire firearms. Three available archers contribute three arrows; buying weapons no longer turns ordinary sailors into extra shooters.
- Weapon upgrades improve the matching crew's damage both ashore and afloat. Crossbow upgrades now have their own damage bonus rather than improving bows.
- Hiring and crew-management screens show weapon icons beside crew who can shoot from the deck, with a small explanatory legend. Crew experience still improves ship handling.
- Updated historical battles and duel combat to use consistent deck-weapon staffing and equipment rules.
Trade and harvests
- Goods now have distinct production rates. Common provisions replenish faster than rare metals and elaborate manufactured goods.
- Reduced ongoing gold production globally. Existing market stocks remain available, but a depleted source takes longer to refill, encouraging other trading routes between gold runs. Trading remains a viable way to build wealth.
- Agricultural arrivals follow regional harvest calendars, including multiple harvest windows where appropriate and opposite temperate seasons south of the equator. Stored goods remain available outside harvest season.
- Port greetings can mention a specific local harvest when it is relevant.
- In the full game, suitable southern Chinese rice regions support early and late harvests with higher annual output, independent of who owns the port. Clove and nutmeg sources replenish faster, while remaining geographically scarce. New World gold sources begin new games with finite opening reserves.
Menus and voyages
- Action menus prioritize at least three visible choices when three or more exist. The Inn now fits Ask about work, Hire crew, and Manage crew together on the tested smaller windows, with Back to city kept separate.
- Trimmed unnecessary spacing, stopped short exit buttons inheriting the height of detailed actions, and corrected narrow market/loadout text measurements. Long loadout translations use full-width rows when needed. Decorative portraits yield their space on especially cramped layouts.
- Centered building-button labels and other controls by their visible glyphs, including Set sail. Default pixel text remains pixel-perfect; High legibility text remains available.
- The quest log now explains when to ask at ports or hail passing ships for white-whale sightings or treasure-map rumors.
- Fixed unfinished banquet-chef quest state carrying into a new voyage, and checked other temporary voyage state for the same issue.
- Added a way back from ship-information pages opened through the top bar while visiting a city.
- Made the deck-firearm icon match the one-bit bow and crossbow icons.
- Completing repairs requested during departure now sets sail instead of unexpectedly reopening the port menu.
- Clarified Sailing Help so rowing and shore-hauling instructions do not imply that a sail-only ship needs held input.
- Sorted the Duel ship selections consistently.
Sailing and encounters
- Auto-row affects oars and shore hauling, not sails. Sail-only ships keep moving under wind when steering input is released.
- Fixed zero-time and very short frames incorrectly snapping turns straight to the requested heading. Turning remains limited by elapsed time.
- Long gaps caused by sleep or a suspended game no longer consume hours of food and water in a single resumed frame.
- Visible NPC ships follow their local position rather than being moved, docked, or hidden by an offscreen route timer.
- Improved sinking feedback so another same-frame combat message cannot immediately replace the sinking notice.
- Port-defence credit remembers a ship's recent attack on the port, including when that ship turns to fight you. Standing rewards are labelled Port defended.
- Ship references in revenge commissions, sightings, and quest markers now use the captain's name rather than internal fleet designations, including saved quests.
- Corrected street placement and drawing order for earthen-hut buildings, including Inns in native-architecture towns.
Text and languages
- Corrected a Windows font-hinting problem that could fill the gaps in pixel letters such as W. Bundled font selection is checked instead of accepting a silently substituted system font.
- Russian pixel text now uses a more appropriately sized Cyrillic font.
- Fixed quest text retaining a previous language after changing languages.
- Filled missing translations in inn dialogue and other dynamic text, and reviewed nautical, religious, diplomatic, and historical terminology.
- Localized loading messages before startup, including the matching font.
- Strengthened build checks for missing translations and text-rendering paths that bypass localization. Gameplay uses bundled translations, not a live translation service.
Thank you for the continued playtesting and feedback!