The Brethren's Guide

Sit down, greenhorn, and pour yourself something strong. Every captain of the Coast learned the sea the hard way; this book lets you learn it the easy one. Everything below is true as of today, and the numbers are the ones the Quartermaster is using right now.

The sea is a grid of 99 × 99 archipelagos. Each archipelago holds up to 12 islands, so an island is written [x:y:i]: archipelago x, archipelago y, island number i. Every captain starts with one island, called the capital.

At the very middle of the world, at [50:50:1], lies Tortuga, the free harbour of the Brethren. It belongs to nobody and nobody may take it: it is the heart of the map. Its name is reserved: no captain can call an island Tortuga.

Tortuga also runs the scrapyard. With the Scrap mission you send any ships you like to Tortuga (the destination is always [50:50:1]; no cargo, and you only pay the Rhum for the way there). When they arrive the ships are broken up, and one of Tortuga’s boats brings you 50% of their cost in Lumber, Metal and Gold, together with the crew who sailed them. The boat takes as long to come back as your ships took to get there. The report arrives in Messages.

In a back alley of Tortuga Gaspar, the Rare Merchant, sells items that, in the legends, exist only once. In the game every captain can buy one copy of each, paying with the resources of the island he is on; the item waits there. When you send a fleet you can pick one item that is on the island of departure: it works only for the missions written on it (for example extra Gunnery in an Attack, more Treasure on an Expedition, extra speed or cargo on any mission, extra Spying levels for a Spy Parrot). It sails with the fleet and comes home with it. If the fleet is lost, the item is lost at sea for as long as the voyage home would have taken, then it turns up again on the island the fleet left from. On Deploy and Colonize it stays on the island where the fleet arrives. The Ghost Cannon is different: it does nothing at sea. You carry it with a Transport (to one of your own islands), a Deploy or a Colonize, and it stays there, making the defenses of that island hit harder as long as it stands on it.

On the same board Adventures are pinned (menu Sea → Adventures). They are jobs against a fixed enemy: you send a fleet with the Adventure mission to the open sea of your own archipelago, which the fleet lists call Uncharted shores (no cargo goes out), it fights and, if it wins, sails home with the reward: resources, crew and sometimes extra ships. There is a story of six chapters, each opening when you win the one before and won once only, and a few standing jobs that open along the story and can be repeated after a rest. Along the way other stories of six chapters each open on the board, every one after a different chapter of the main story and with its own title; they work in the same way. Some jobs ask for certain ships, or a minimum or a maximum. A fleet that loses comes home with what is left and nothing else, and the job stays open to try again. The report arrives in Messages (tab Adventures). Rare items do not sail on adventures.

On the Sea map you can look at any archipelago. Islands with a captain show his name; empty ones are lost in the fog until somebody settles them. Click an island to see what you can do with it. Looking at an archipelago where you have no island costs 1 Rhum each time you change archipelago (your own archipelagos and Tortuga are free).

Your island works for you day and night, even when you are ashore: the game counts what you produced while you were away the next time you look. You never have to be online. The bar at the top of the screen shows what you hold and, after the slash, the most your storage can hold. Production stops when a store is full, so spend before you overflow.

• 
  Lumber
  Primary resource used to construct buildings, upgrade facilities, and build ships.
• 
  Metal
  Main resource required for high-tier upgrades, ship hulls, and defensive fortifications.
• 
  Gold
  Rare resource needed for advanced research and high-end ship construction.
• 
  Rhum
  Consumed as fuel when you send fleets out to raid, trade, or explore.
• 
  Crew
  Generated passively by the Tavern, up to the capacity provided by Crew Quarters. Crew is not spent: it comes home with the fleet.

Raise the Warehouses, Vault, Cellar and Crew Quarters to hold more. Stock above the limit (a gift, a plunder) is never taken away, but nothing more is produced until you drop below it.

Each island builds one building at a time. A building pays its cost at once, takes some time and then works for ever. Higher levels cost more, take longer and give more. The Workshop makes your builders faster. Some buildings need others first (the page tells you what is missing).

The Academy opens research: gunnery, sails, spying and many other arts. You study one subject at a time; it is paid, like a building, with the resources of the island where you start it, and its effects count on all your islands.

Everything keeps going without you: when a building or a study finishes while you are away, it is already there when you come back.

The Shipyard builds ships and coastal defenses. You can queue several orders; each order takes time, and a higher Shipyard (or Drydock) makes them quicker. Some ships need research first. Ships are either warships or support ships (transport, salvage, colony): warships fight, support ships carry things or pick up the pieces.

Crew is needed only to sail: every ship needs hands on deck when it leaves, and they come home with the fleet. Ships and cannons waiting in port need no crew. The Tavern recruits crew over time; Crew Quarters decide how many you can keep.

Defenses stay on the island and shoot at anyone who attacks it. After a battle part of the defenses is rebuilt for free (about 70% of what was lost).

Fleets are sent from the Fleet page or by choosing an island on the Sea map. A voyage takes time (the farther the target, the longer; Sails research makes ships faster) and burns Rhum as fuel for the round trip, paid when you leave. Sailing slower costs less Rhum: at 10% speed you pay 25% of it, at full speed all of it (the crew needed does not change). You may have only a few fleets at sea at once (more with the Navigation research); Spy Parrots do not count. A fleet at sea can be recalled and turns around.

Sailors measure distances in leagues and speeds in knots; the figures are only a way of speaking and change nothing in the game. An island of your own archipelago is “just over the horizon”.

Attack

Fight the island or fleet at the target and plunder what the defenders cannot hold.

Transport

Carry resources to one of your islands or to another captain.

Deploy

Station ships on another island of yours.

Colonize

Found a new colony on a free island.

Espionage

Send a Spy Parrot to learn what is on an island.

Expedition

Sail to the open sea of your archipelago and see what the waves bring back.

Go to island

Switch to playing on another island of yours (button of the Sea map).

An expedition sails to the open sea of your own archipelago, where nobody lives (the fleet lists show it as Open sea). Start it from the Sea map (select your own island and press Expedition) or from Fleet with the Expedition mission: there are no coordinates to enter, and the travel time is multiplied by 10. It carries no cargo, uses a fleet slot and needs Navigation level 1. The fleet explores for a while and comes home with what it found: treasure (more if the holds are big), castaways who join your crew, derelict ships, a tailwind or a storm on the way back, or an ambush that sinks part of the fleet. Rarely, the Kraken takes everything. Nobody knows beforehand; the report arrives in Messages.

To colonize you need a Caravel and the Mapmaking research: every level lets you own 1 more island (you start with 1). Only Caravels can go on a colonization, and every Caravel you send stays to found the new island, with its cargo and crew. The Fire Ship and the Salvage Barge only join attacks.

Sailors whisper about the Flying Dutchman, the ghost galleon of Davy Jones. Once a day it surfaces in a free patch of sea in one archipelago of the starting area (the same for every captain, never Tortuga). A small ghostly galleon appears on the Sea map: click it and Davy Jones makes you an offer, resources in exchange for men.

He asks for between 30% and 60% of the Crew on the island you are playing (at least one man, never more than you have) and pays in Lumber, Metal and Gold equal to some hours of that island’s production: the bigger your island, the richer the cargo. The men you hand over do not come back, and the cargo can go beyond the warehouse limit.

You can meet him once a day, and only with at least 10 men on the island. The offer vanishes as soon as you accept it, refuse it or leave the page, so think before you click. Looking for him in another archipelago costs Rhum like any other trip on the map.

When a fleet attacks an island it fights the ships and defenses there for up to 6 rounds. Every ship and cannon fires at the enemy; weapons are better against some targets than others. Your Gunnery, Ballistics, Hull Armor, Fortification and other researches improve the odds.

Every ship also has an evasion, the chance to dodge a shot (listed for each ship in the Shipyard). Helmsmanship adds 1% per level, and the total never goes above 40%. Dodging is partly a matter of luck: a ship with 5% evasion dodges about 5% of the shots, sometimes a little more, sometimes less.

If the attackers win, they plunder resources from the island, up to what their holds can carry (a fraction of the defender's stores: 50% normally, 75% with Raiders). Sunk ships leave debris in the water (30% of their lumber and metal): a Salvage Barge picks it up and also saves the drowning crew. Without barges, sailors of sunk ships are lost; a surgeon aboard (research) saves more of them.

Chain Shot Batteries weaken the attackers: each battery reduces the damage dealt by all enemy ships by 0.25%, up to 30% in total. The reduction is fixed once, at the start of the battle, from the batteries standing then: it lasts for every round, even if some batteries are destroyed along the way. It reduces the damage of ships only, not that of defenses.

You always get a battle report in your Messages, with every ship before and after. Spy first: a Spy Parrot tells you what waits on the island (more with higher Spying), and a parrot can be shot down. The chance is 30%, plus 5% for every level of Spying the defender has over you (minus the same for every level you have over him), at most 85%. A parrot that is shot down does not come back and brings no report: since parrots are unlimited, you lose only the Rhum of the trip. The defender is told who sent it.

Before you attack, ask the Boatswain (menu Sea → Boatswain). Give him your fleet and the enemy's and he works out the average result: who wins, what is left on each side, the debris and the plunder. Nothing is sent or spent. In a spy report that the parrot could read, the button Analyze with the Boatswain fills in the enemy for you; what the parrot could not see you write by hand. A real battle can go a little differently, and he does not know about rare items.

Not every captain of the Caribe is alive. The ghosts of famous pirates still sail these waters, guard their spectral islands and raid the living now and then. They are run by the game, they are tagged Ghost in the Ranking and on the map, and their names are shown in pale blue.

You cannot write to a ghost (the dead do not read letters). You can spy on them and raid them, and they may do the same to you. Ghosts leave greenhorns alone.

A new captain is a greenhorn until he reaches 500 points or 14 days after founding his first island, whichever comes first. While a greenhorn is involved, neither captain may attack or spy on the other if one has more than 5 times the points of the other. The Code works both ways: a greenhorn cannot raid a mighty captain either.

Peaceful missions (transport, deploy, colonize) are never blocked. Ghosts do not attack greenhorns. A greenhorn shows a Greenhorn tag in the Ranking and on the Sea map.

The Ranking sorts captains by points. Every building level, research level, ship and defense you own (ships at sea too) is worth the resources it cost, and one point is 100 resources. You can sort by total, buildings, research, fleet or defenses. Points go up as you build and down when ships are sunk or defenses destroyed.

When you study Strategy you hire the Admiral, a first mate who follows a list of orders you write (build this, study that) and carries them out when resources allow, even while you are away. He does only a limited number of actions per day (2 plus 2 per Strategy level), keeps back the reserve you choose and can stop when enemies are sighted.

Be a pirate on the sea, not a pest at the table. The Code is short:

1. One captain, one account. Do not sail under several flags to help yourself, to feed your own island or to dodge the greenhorn rules.
2. Play with your own hands. No bots, scripts or tools that hammer the game or play for you (the Admiral is the only mate allowed).
3. Keep your tongue. Names of islands and messages must not insult or harass anybody. Offensive island names are refused automatically.
4. No cheating. If you find a bug, tell the admin; do not use it.
5. The admin may warn, suspend or remove those who break the Code. See also the Terms of Service.

1. Build the Sawmill and the Metal Mine: planks and iron pay for everything else.
2. Then a Distillery (Rhum for voyages) and a Tavern (crew).
3. Build a Warehouse before your stores fill up, and a Shipyard to build your first ship.
4. The Workshop and the Academy make you faster and open research.
5. Follow the Captain's Log: every finished page pays a reward in resources.

Be patient: this is a game of days and weeks. The sea does not run away.

What every building, research, ship and defense does.