Sails of Salt · published
Main menu: The game opens over the Caldera’s bay, with three profiles, each with its own line of captains.
You now choose permadeath for each voyage when you create your captain.
After a sinking you can always load your last departure.
Voyage start: When you set sail, the camera flies down from the bay to your ship.
New ship, the gunboat: a small ship whose only gun fires over the bow. A gunboat opens each new voyage and otherwise never sails alone.
Going ashore: A beach landing is now a real place. Your crew sits round the campfire, the ship’s boat lies on the sand, and there is a wealth of new things to do.
On the beach you cast nets, gather bananas and herbs, set traps, dig for treasure, hold a feast and more.
What a beach yields depends on its surroundings and the size of your shore party – and it runs out over time.
Felled trees really fall and stay down for the voyage.
At the campfire, one of your crew can train a bad trait out of another.
Repairs: In every harbour and in the Caldera you repair part of your hull, at a cost of time and wood.
Rigs: Square, gaff and mixed rigs are now each fastest on a different course, and the ship stats name it.
The compass marks your fastest course with dark arrows.
Anchor: It has its own key, R – tap it to drop the anchor, hold it to weigh. F moors, boards and goes ashore.
Treasury: Bank part of your gold and withdraw it again for the voyage.
Right-click cargo in the Ledger for a menu: pour a round, reserve it or throw it overboard.
Fleet: Every fleet ship shows her distance in the Ledger and brings her crew and cargo over to you at a click. You can sell her without emptying her first.
Overboard: Round shot sweeping across a deck throws a sailor into the water – on your ship and theirs.
Contract cargo and passengers can be thrown overboard.
Enemies and your fleet ships aim better and pick their ammunition: chain shot for masts and sails, grape for the crew.
Heavy smoke: Broadsides send a dense cloud rolling flat over the water, drifting off on the wind.
Damage shows on the ship: scrapes and sodden planks spread as the hull bar drops, and masts, yards and bowsprit get scraped too.
Mountains rise as massifs around a central peak, with ridges, rock needles, gullies and weathered stone, and forest and moss climb their slopes.
Jungle: Lianas hang at the forest edge, lone ceibas tower over the canopy, trees bloom in red and gold, and heliconias, bananas and bamboo grow along the edge.
Mangroves line the quiet bays, sea grape the foot of the forest, and agaves and columnar cacti grow on windswept headlands.
Ground: Bare earth shows between the grass, narrow animal trails wind down to the beaches, and leaf litter lies under the canopy.
Leaves blow off jungle coasts – a few in a calm, a whirling stream in a storm.
At night towns glow far out to sea, their lamps and windows light up one by one, and a lighthouse can be seen from afar and is mirrored in the water.
Smoke rises over every harbour and campfire, so you can spot them from far away.
Ambient Occlusion: The new graphics setting puts a little shade into the corners on deck, at the quay and in the bay.
Weather: The sun beside the day count shows the weather over your ship, the moon at night, and its tooltip names sky and sea.
Hover a price to see its base price and what changed it.
Messages at the top of the screen are written in dark ink, a coloured seal shows at a glance whether the news is good or bad, and every one plays a sound.
Fishing: Luggers in your fleet fish the schools they pass, and captured fishers come with their nets.
Formation: Fleet ships sailing abeam form a staggered line, and convoys and squadrons wait for their slowest ship.
Shipyard: An installed part lifts, drops into place and throws up building dust.
Forts and harbour guns rebuild silenced guns a day after you have sailed away.
Spyglass: It always shows a ship’s class and flag.
Chart: It also opens in harbour, on a beach, in the Caldera and during a landfall.
Gulls on ships and beaches flap their wings and fly short rounds.
Drawing now runs on its own thread: the game runs at a clearly higher frame rate, and islands build more smoothly.
If the game crashes since this update, add “--render-thread safe” to its Launch Options in Steam (Properties → General).
In the pause menu, Exit takes you to the main menu or out of the game.
The pause menu stops the whole world, waves included, and silences it.
In calm, clear weather the sea lies much flatter; with wind the waves rise as before.
Heat: Boarding, taking or sinking imperial ships raises it less.
Fluyts are sturdier.
Wounds heal faster ashore than at sea, fastest while resting.
Events don’t always tell you before you choose what they will cost your bounty, morale or reputation – you find out afterwards.
The Ledger and the chart stop time at sea by default.
Perks now say exactly what they do, and a tooltip explains your crew’s backgrounds.
At sea, music begins only when the time of day changes or you set sail, and plays more quietly. Coastal birds are quieter, wind and water carry more.
Shadows reach twice as far, High is sharper, and Medium is the new default.
Wood splinters are slim shards, sail hits tear out strips of cloth, and debris stays dark at night.
Smoke takes on the colour of dawn, dusk and moonlight and no longer glows pale at night.
Campfires burn in a ring of stones, and fires char the wood.
Explosions are bigger.
Harbour houses have wooden corner beams.
Shipyard: The ship you are looking at sits on its own card above the parts list.
Ledger: Ship headers are tidier, with icon buttons and larger hull bars.
Buttons have rounder corners, icons are as sharp as the lettering, prices are written in dark ink, and hours show as a small clock.
Tooltips appear and disappear faster.
More hints and tooltips, for example on wounds, selling empty ships and crew you leave at a quay.
Feedback asks whether you want to go to Discord or to Steam.
Fleet ships no longer run onto coasts and cliffs, no longer capsize in collisions and jam against each other far less often.
Fleet ships stay where you left them when you load.
Your fleet ships no longer fire through your own ship, and enemies and forts no longer fire their round shot over low hulls.
Ships take in sail before they run into another ship, and your fleet ships no longer turn into the wind to give way to you.
Ships leaving the Caldera give way to you, and imperial ships no longer lie still at the mouth of the bay.
The trader charges exactly the rounded price shown, and buying and selling no longer stalls the world with every unit.
Shipyard: A figurehead, flag or carving you only looked at no longer stays on your ship, and the arrow keys or A/D step through the ships.
Shadows no longer flicker and follow the shapes that cast them more closely.
Ships sunk in shallow water settle on the seabed instead of sinking through the coast.
Another ship never carries more than her hold has room for.
Burn marks stay until repaired, cannonballs still hole a sinking ship, and torn sails are patched as soon as the rigging is repaired.
Hull and health bars no longer look full while the number is still below full, and a repair click no longer charges gold for an invisible sliver.
Legends and named captains join at the level their skills show, instead of level 1.
Loading no longer moves landmarks, and a lighthouse you put out stays dark.
Information bought at a landfall points to a real fort or harbour instead of empty sea, and treasure maps no longer mark a beach you cannot reach.
Hunters no longer lose you behind low rocks you can both see across, and the spyglass shows a ship there too.
Enemies no longer show a lit match at their guns before they have spotted you.
The odds beside Board count your fleet ships and the enemy’s escorts that are close enough.
Your gun crews stay at their posts after you use the spyglass, and nobody stands inside the guns any more.
Trading ships no longer sail under the navy’s red sails, and in the spyglass only the navy is red.
Town lights no longer turn into big discs in the spyglass, and they glow softly in fog.
Dolphins no longer join you while you sail into the wind or lie becalmed.
Getting hit shakes the camera the same at every zoom, in the sight and in the spyglass too.
Coming out of reverse, the rudder turns round only once the ship makes way ahead.
Dousing the lanterns darkens every ship in your fleet.
At the end of the demo the chart shows your own chart with everything you discovered, and the harbour buttons and HUD stay hidden until the credits end.
Settings no longer slip out of line in French, Italian, Spanish and German, long tooltips wrap, and the mouse wheel over a slider changes only that slider.
The Wishlist button opens the store page in Steam instead of your browser.
The chart marks harbours you have not visited, and your ship stays visible when you sail past its edge.
In the Dock you can drag crew into the Ashore and Aboard columns.
A landfall scene no longer comes back if you quit the game while it is open.
A drain grate breaks the moment the keg goes off, and the beach watch no longer reports ships that never come.
Mooring while you are hunted shows “A ship is closing in” at once.
Tooltips in a row of buttons open above or below it instead of covering the next button, and crew cards reliably open right under the portrait.
The gap that wobbled in the sea behind big ships at fast forward is gone, and a whale just under the surface no longer leaves a huge ring.
Flags keep flying while a window is open.
Anchor chains hang straight from the hawse and show their links.