Patch Notes: The Open Sea

The Eltheric Ocean is an open PvP zone

• Online, everywhere past Veilhaven's peace is now open PvP: the Veil, the water within about 10 km of Veilhaven and the way home east of her to the Veil stay safe; every other isle, freeport, ruin and stretch of open water does not.
• The sea's depth bands are the zone's tiers, as the Wrothgarian Mountains' rings are: the Shallows +25% loot, the Reaches +50%, the Deep Aether +75%, the Abyss double. Crossing a band says so, and the zone tile on your HUD names it.
• Your party gets the mountains' PvP warning before a party walk onto the open sea.
• Foes on the isles and in their ruins are four times as strong, plus the band's share, and drop loot to match. Overworld packs past the peace are four times the size.
• The mountains' rules apply: other players may attack you (never your party or guild), a death drops your bag and half your purse where you fell for twelve minutes, your killer may claim one worn piece, the dead wait two minutes, strangers are hidden on the map and marked red near you, a wagon parked on an isle is with you when you die, only one revenant may walk at your side, /unstuck doesn't work outdoors on the open sea, and no teleport works into, out of or around the open sea. That includes the bank's linked ship cabin.
• If you die at sea, you rise at the nearest freeport, however far it is. Your ship's hold is not dropped.
• Unlike the mountains, sea travel has no speed cap, and crew ashore can still be sent back aboard.
• Online, the crossing's question now warns you before you sail out.
• No private instances on the open sea: an isle's ruin is always the shared one, as in the mountains.
• The captain's chart draws Veilhaven's peace as a green ring, with a key entry.

The Eltheric Tidemail

• A new Aetheric set found only in the Deep Aether and the Abyss: nine Adamantium pieces.
• 2 pieces (Stormwrack): shock resistance and Speed. 4 pieces (Undertow): extra damage on your blows, in full on the open sea past Veilhaven's peace and half elsewhere. 6 pieces (The Captain's Due): your ship's guns hit harder and her hull takes less damage.
• Where it drops: the Deep Aether's legendary ships one time in four, the Abyss's legends every time; the treasure piles of ruins in those bands; the daily vaults of the deep; the treasure fleet's flagship; and the Aether Storm's wrack.

Vaults of the deep

• Every day, four ruin isles of the Deep Aether and three of the Abyss are vaults: elite dungeons that work like the Wrothgarian Mountains' daily halls.
• A vault's foes are the band's toughest. Leaving locks you out for an hour, unless your own remains still lie inside. An empty vault resets after twenty minutes and its chests fill again. Crows gather over a vault where someone has fallen, and everyone on the open sea past Veilhaven's peace hears of it.
• The captain's chart marks each day's vaults, with your lock and the crows.
• Vault treasure piles have a better chance at a Tidemail piece: a quarter in the Deep Aether, half in the Abyss.

The Aether Storm

• Every two hours an Aether storm blows for fifty minutes somewhere in the Deep Aether or the edge of the Abyss. Everyone sees the same storm in the same place; the captain's chart shows it.
• Inside it: thunder, rain and wind. Lightning can strike your ship, damaging her hull and sails and sometimes setting her on fire. A strike alone never sinks her, but a fire it starts burns like any other.
• Every 90 seconds the storm throws up a cask of wrack alongside: Eltheric goods, and now and then a Tidemail piece. Each cask can be hauled once.

The treasure fleet

• Every three hours a treasure fleet sails for ninety minutes: a laden merchant carrack and two or three corsair escorts, heading east through the Deep Aether or the Abyss. The chart shows where it is, and a freeport's harbourmaster tells you when the next one sails.
• Sink or take the flagship for her strongroom (6,000 gold in the Deep Aether, 12,000 in the Abyss) and a Tidemail piece, once per sailing. Every captain whose guns were on her in her last twenty seconds gets both.
• Online, once a flagship goes down the fleet is scattered for everyone until the next sailing. A reload doesn't bring her back.

Bounties on the open sea

• A freeport's harbourmaster now keeps a Wanted board: every player who has killed another player at sea in the last 14 days, and anyone with a bounty on their head.
• Post 500, 2,000 or 10,000 gold of your own on a wanted captain. Bounties add up, and they stay until that captain dies at sea at another player's hand or their ship is wrecked by another player's guns.
• Whoever ends them at sea is owed the whole bounty. Collect it at any freeport's harbourmaster, straight into your bank account.
• If a wanted captain's character is deleted, or stays dead for two hours, your bounty comes back to you: collect it at a freeport.
• A character with bounties, plunder or hold goods waiting at a freeport can't be deleted until they're collected.
• You cannot post on your own head, or on another character of your own account. Only kills at sea count, not the Wrothgarian Mountains or the Iliac Bay.
• Online realm characters only.

The season's captains

• A freeport's harbourmaster now shows two seasonal boards for the whole realm: the deepest voyages past the Veil, and the most legends sunk or taken.
• Seasons are the realm's eight-week seasons, the same as the arena's. Each board lists the top ten, says where you stand, and names last season's leaders.
• Your figures reach the boards with your character's saves. A character held for an impossible save doesn't appear while the hold stands.
• Online realm characters only. Voyages made offline, or in a copy brought online, don't count.

Ship-to-ship battles

• Past Veilhaven's peace, your broadsides now hit other players' ships, and theirs hit yours. Your party and your guild are never targets.
• The servers referee every shot: how often a ship can fire, how much damage she can deal and how far she can reach. Her hull sets how hard she hits; reach and rate of fire are the same for every ship.
• Leaving your helm, sailing out of the zone, logging out or crossing into the next stretch of sea doesn't repair your ship. She's whole again after two minutes nobody hits her.
• You can't go below to your cabin while another captain's ship is within 700 m.
• A player's ship that is battered to nothing is wrecked and lies crippled, as a pirate's guns would leave her. She doesn't sink.
• Come alongside a wreck you made within three minutes to board her and take a share of her hold: her most valuable piece, then more of her best goods up to a third of what she carries. Locked, bound, classic and quest items, summoned items, ship deeds and parts, and bags are never taken.
• While a wreck can still be boarded, her hold is shut to her captain.
• Logging out or sailing off doesn't save a wrecked ship: she can still be boarded where she lies.
• Your plunder goes straight into your pack. If it can't, a freeport's harbourmaster holds it for you under "Prizes taken at sea".
• If the captain who boarded you never collects your goods within three days, you can reclaim them at a freeport.
• Wrecking a player's ship counts as a kill at sea for the bounty board.

Fixes

• /unstuck past the Veil (where it works: in Veilhaven's peace, or offline) now takes you to the nearest freeport. It used to send you to a town in the Iliac Bay, across the Veil.

What's Changed

• SEA VENTURES: the open sea's PvP, the Tidemail, vaults, storm and fleet, bounties, season boards and ship-to-ship battles - audited by @Lattymoy in #1135

Full Changelog: app-v0.1.10667...app-v0.1.10686