Patch Notes: The Captain's Sea

Your crew grows with you

• Every hand now earns rank from the fights and boardings they have been through: Green, Seasoned, Veteran, Old Salt.
• The six posts aboard each do something, and do more the longer their holder has served. The Gunner speeds the reload, the Carpenter the mending, the Lookout lets you see further, the Cook keeps spirits up, the Bosun adds way under sail, and the First Mate brings extra hands over the rail (never more than your crew has men for).
• A companion who sails with you works his post while you're at the helm.
• A new hand takes whichever post is emptiest, so a fallen Cook is replaced before you get a third Bosun. You can still reassign posts on the Fleet page.

A captain's name

• The new Captain tab in Holdings keeps your log: leagues sailed, ships sunk, taken and beaten off, contracts done, your best prize and the plunder you hauled.
• You also build standing with each crown, from Unsworn to Admiral. Each rank brings perks in that crown's harbours: a discount at the shipwright, better-paid and more contracts, a letter of marque for sale (Privateer), the Admiralty's carrack for sale and seasoned hires (Commodore), and the navy always coming to your aid against pirates (Admiral). A captain whose notoriety runs too high in a crown's waters gets none of them there.
• Beating off a pirate boarding now pays. The pirate is beaten then: taking or sinking her afterwards is logged but not paid again.
• A letter of marque makes a rival crown's merchantmen and navy lawful prize in your crown's eyes. The rival still calls it piracy.

The deep waters

• Far from every port, pirates are more common, bolder and bigger, and every hold and floating cask is richer. The helm plate tells you when you're in the deep.

The spyglass

• Ship names no longer float over every sail. A ship you haven't identified is just her hull, such as "a sloop" or "a two-master", and her card says nothing else about her: no colours, no damage.
• You learn her colours by sailing close, from your Lookout's call, when her guns turn on you, or through the spyglass.
• Press K aboard to raise the glass and use the mouse wheel to zoom (x2, x4, x8). Hold it on a ship to read her name and colours. Hold it on her up close to see her guns, crew, damage and cargo. The glass can't see ships behind land, or dark ships far off at night.
• Some wary pirates sail under false colours, passing for a merchantman of their own size with a trader's name. The glass can see through them, and they run up the black flag when they come for you.
• On a controller, the d-pad press you give the Spyglass works at the helm too, and the right stick's click zooms while the glass is up. On a touch screen, the Glass button sits at the helm and as a corner-button choice, and the glass has its own Magnify and Lower buttons.

The harbourmaster's board

• Every port's shipwright window now has a Harbourmaster tab with the day's contracts, while your ship lies at that port's quay. Bounties on a named pirate, hunts in the crown's waters, cargo to carry to another port, a wreck's casks to raise, and Admiralty surveys of ships through the spyglass.
• Contracts pay by your level and rank and run to a deadline. Finishing one raises your standing with the crown; failing or giving one up lowers it. You can hold three at a time, and the Captain tab lists them. Each kill or survey counts toward one contract.
• The bounty's pirate is waiting in the waters named on the contract. If someone else sinks her first, the bounty is void, with no loss of standing. A wreck's casks float up when you reach its mark.

The exchange

• An Exchange tab buys and sells eight goods of the Bay: wine, grain, wool, iron, spices, silk, silver and ivory. Each crown's ports make some goods cheaply and pay well for others, every port has a twist of its own, and prices drift from day to day. Each port only deals in so much of a good each day.
• Goods load into and out of the hold of the ship at the quay. A full hold slows her. The exchange tells you how much more she can carry and won't sell her so much she can't move.
• Shops don't buy the exchange's goods. Sell them at an exchange.

Treasure charts

• Pirates you sink or take sometimes carry a treasure chart, more often in the deep waters and most flagships. Read it from your inventory to mark its cache, then sail to the spot and the cache floats up beside you: gold and a strongbox's worth of loot. A cache you've already raised stays raised.

The Etheric Sea

• Sail far out on the open Abecean, west of the Bay's mouth and well away from any land, and you're asked whether to sail on into the open sea. Three days later your ship comes out off Veilhaven, the first port past the Veil, with her crew and her hold aboard. Sail back into the Veil, at the sea's eastern edge, to be asked the way home. If an enemy is close or another player is aboard, you're told so, and asked again once the deck is clear.
• Past the Veil lies an endless sea of isles, the same for every player. Port isles have a town and a freeport quay, ruins have a dungeon to delve, wild isles bear exotic goods, and bare rocks are just rocks.
• The farther west you sail, through the Shallows, the Reaches, the Deep Aether and the Abyss, the deadlier the corsairs and the richer every hold. Ruins in the Deep Aether and the Abyss are Elite dungeons.
• No crown's law reaches past the Veil. There's no navy to call on, and nothing you sink there counts as a crime. Corsairs and the isles' traders sail under the sea's own names, and a corsair's papers sometimes chart her waters for you.
• Exotic goods: ether-amber, starglass and voidsilk are made on the isles and wanted in every port of the Bay, and the isles pay well for the Bay's goods. Sail close to a wild isle and casks of its good float out alongside your ship; its strand fills again seven days after you first gather it.
• Six legendary ships haunt the depths, each with her own terror and a purse on her head: Sorrow's Wake, The Drowned Queen, Ninefold Hunger, The Lantern-Eater, The Pale Regent and The Starless. A freeport's harbourmaster will tell you where each was last seen. Sink one for her purse and a name with every crown, though a month later the sea raises her again.
• The Chart of the Etheric Sea: past the Veil, the travel map key opens your chart of the isles you've sighted, the depths, the Veil and the legends' haunts you've heard of. Drag to pan; zoom with the wheel, a pinch or the chart's own buttons; point at or tap an isle to name it. Isles are charted as you sight them, and a freeport sells a chart of its waters.
• The Veil holds the Bay's magic back: Recall, guild teleports, portal stones and a party's travel to its leader don't cross it, and your Fleet can't summon or send a ship across. Sail her yourself. Fall past the Veil and you wake at the nearest port isle.
• The light past the Veil is cold and violet.
• The crossing out is part of the enhanced game and online play. The classic game keeps Daggerfall's own sea, though a captain already past the Veil can always sail home.

What's Changed

• The Captain's Sea: a crew that grows, a captain's standing, the deep waters, the spyglass, contracts, trade, treasure charts and the Etheric Sea by @Lattymoy in #781

Full Changelog: app-v0.1.7990...app-v0.1.8014