Official:Releases

Release Notes

Here be a little summary of our recent releases; the complete archive of past releases can be viewed here. Our Alpha and Beta releases are available at Release (Alpha) and Release (Beta), respectively. If ye want to view what we have in public beta testing, please see the Ice Ocean changelog

2026-10-08

Pirates At Auction

From the Release Notes:

Auction House The Auction House is open! Buy and sell items with any pirate on yer ocean at fixed prices, whether or not they're online. Find it at the Palace. Ye can find the Auction House in various palaces. Cerulean: Alpha Island and Dragon's Nest Meridian: Dragon's Nest and Saltstraum Rock Emerald: Admiral Island, Greenwich Island and Quetzal Island Search everything for sale by name or category, filter by colour, and sort by price, newest or soonest to expire. Buy now pays the asking price on the spot; there's no timed bidding. To sell, drag an item from yer Booty into the Sell tab (or Shift-click it), set yer price and post. Recent sales suggest a price. Stacks are priced per piece and potions per swig. Can't find what ye want? Post a buy offer for the item, in exact colours or any colour. Yer PoE is held until the offer is filled, withdrawn or expires. Offers match automatically. A new sell offer is filled at once by the best buy offer at or above its price, and a new buy offer by the cheapest matching item at or below its price, even if the other pirate is offline. Ye can also fill a buy offer yerself with Sell to this offer. Posting an offer needs a free slot. Slots cost 5 doubloons (5,000 PoE on Cerulean), and are reused as yer offers finish. Browsing, buying and filling other pirates' offers need no slot. There's no listing fee. When an item sells, the house keeps 2% of the price (at least 100 PoE) from the seller's proceeds, and the confirmation shows exactly what ye'll take home. Ye can also promote a sell offer on the Front Page for 7 days for 500 PoE. Offers last 30 days. Renew or withdraw them from My Offers, or correct a price within 10 minutes of posting. When an offer expires, its item or PoE comes back to ye automatically, even if ye're offline. Listed items are safe. They wait in a new Auctioned section of yer Booty and don't age while listed. As with a rack, listing costs a day of wear unless the item comes back the same day; clothing and familiars don't age at all. Ye can list a ship that's in port with an empty hold. Other pirates' furniture, pets and wrapped gifts go back to their owners first, and ye decide whether yer own furniture sells with her. The listing names the furniture included, and buyers can Visit to look around. A listed ship can't set sail. Sales appear in Ahoy!, even if they happened while ye were offline, with the price, the fee and what ye received. The History tab covers yer last 30 days, and the Front Page shows promoted offers and recent sales. Names stay private. Listings and sales don't show who the seller or buyer is. The following can't be sold: building deeds, wrapped gifts, anything ye're wearing or using, and items that age every day, such as wayfinders, compasses and expedition maps. Deeds and portraits can be sold but not asked for in buy offers. Greenies can browse, but can't trade or buy slots until they're no longer greenies. Purser Pete: The Purser's Tally Purser Pete has taken to checking crew manifests to tally up those who are flesh and blood pirates. Now and then he calls for a tally: ye are shown a single picture with a question above it, and ye click what it asks ye for. If ye make a mistake, clear yer marks and place them again before answering. A tally may be taken before a battle is joined, before a crew goes ashore on an expedition, or in a lull a minute or so into play after a skirmish break. The whole crew is tallied at once, so nobody is singled out. Each type of tally has a tutorial ye will have to complete one time before taking a station on a ship. Pete requires an answer for all members of the crew. Until ye finish, Pete will stand between ye and a duty station. Pete may slip ye something for yer trouble. Pirates aren’t guaranteed to earn something if they answer correctly, but it will help. There are no penalties for answering incorrectly at the moment, either for distracted humans or more clanky pirates. Any trinkets you do earn can be traded for items at the Trading Post. The items ye can acquire are TBA and may change as time goes on. Real blockade spectating Any pirate on an island under blockade can now watch it, with no ship needed. Go to Notice Board → Blockades and use the "Watch from the shore" section. "Stop watching" puts ye back on the island, and boarding a ship, entering a building or the round ending also ends the watch. A "Board only" checkbox hides the sidebar and chat band so the blockade has the whole window. The header shows each team in its own colour with its flag and score, and marks teams that are present but not contesting as "(not contending)". It also shows the turn and the seconds to the next one, the time left in a break, and a warning before the blockade restarts. When the round is played out the header says so, and then ye are put back ashore. Spectators get a chat of their own (Spectators mode, or /shore). The ships in the fight never hear it, while watchers still hear the battle chat. Spectator Shout Outs are on the Ahoy! tab: Bravo!, Bingo, Booched, etc are available. Click one, then click the board to place it. A second mark of yers on the same square replaces the first. "Don't show shout outs" turns them off for ye. Options → Graphics → Blockade view sets the size a blockade opens at: Standard, Large (2x) or Huge (3x). Blockades remember their own zoom, separate from sea battles. Login Screen Changes A new login frame, gilded, fits the window from 100% to 200% and refits once ye stop resizing. A larger frame shows more of yer accounts rather than larger ones. The account list has a Find field and a Recent / A-Z sort. Ctrl-click an account (command-click on a Mac) to pin it to the top. Accounts can be given a nickname, set in Options → General. Pins and nicknames are kept on that computer only. Double-click an account or press Enter to log on. The ocean picker is now one list, with yer current ocean first. "Pick yer pirate" fits a whole row of pirates even in the smallest frame. The back arrow on the check-your-email page returns ye to entering yer email. QOL: Portraits setup dialog Added a filter for minimum pirates. Portraits are now sorted by size, then name. The dialog now shows a thumbnail of the selected background. QOL: Booty, inventory and furniture Chromas now stack, up to 20. Greatly improved loading of large amounts of inventory. The Sunshine panel's booty content now expands when the panel is expanded. Booty search now matches colours and takes multiple terms separated by commas. Added new categories for chroma and designs. Pets have been moved. Trinkets are now sorted into more categories. The Trading Post now fetches from open categories first. For pets, "trash" now reads "release". Openable items, potions and sealed deeds can no longer be trashed. The storage dialog now shows how full it is. A preview is now shown while customising Collection cases. QOL:Gameplay and UI Added puzzle backdrops and a consistent frame. Added a search field and archipelago filter to Yer vessels. Added employed-at icons. Fixed the duty performance log in expos. It now covers labor and names its source. "Bosses" now get purple names. Tidied up the puzzle tutorial. The intro mission arrow now points at the right tab. Updated the New Pirate Help links. Familiars on the pirate page now show colours on hover. Pets in the Trading Post now show colours on hover. A party now ends when its building changes hands, instead of staying on the notice board under the old owner's name. Puzzle size and the game window Puzzle Size replaces the Display size panel and has one selector. Sizes too large for yer screen are greyed out, and the window resizes to match as ye choose. A preview shows the puzzle at that size with room for the Ahoy! panel beside it. The window remembers its size for each account on this computer, so pirates running several accounts no longer find them all opening at the same size. If ye would rather they all matched, tick "Lock all accounts on this machine to this resolution" in Options. Options' size list shows the window's actual size, and picking a size resizes the window at once. Ctrl+O opens Options from anywhere, in case yer scaling settings leave ye marooned. A puzzle too big for the window now grows the window to show the whole board, as far as the screen allows. The grown size isn't remembered, so the game opens at yer usual size next time. When a new puzzle size is waiting on a restart, the Puzzle Size panel, Options and the first puzzle ye open all say which size ye're actually playing at until ye restart. In small windows, dialogs such as Options now scroll sideways as well as down instead of being cut off at the edges. With HD art on, each screen size is listed once in Options instead of twice. Art and interface Art that has no proper double-size version is scaled more crisply, so puzzle pieces and icons keep their sharp edges. Swords, inventory icons and pirate faces now scale with the rest of the interface. With HD art on, Swordfight now uses its redrawn artwork as standard; it no longer needs the Alternate puzzle art option. Fixed inconsistent click and scaling arithmetic across several puzzles. Fixed island map category labels wrapping when hovered, and the window shifting about while logging on. Clicking the bird view of the island from the notice board returns ye to the island the same way, whether ye had just logged on or opened the board afterwards. Bug fixes Fixed "invisible" pets. Fixed the navigation puzzle sometimes having no targets. In Patching, tiles placed off the board now snap back. Fixed a Shipwrightery tile getting stuck behind another. Fixed the Alchemistry piece under the mouse not rotating. Fixed carpentry textures, Pufferfish and Haul chests at certain sizes. Fixed another case of the Minimap getting stuck. A shoppe or building changing hands, such as when a blockade hands over an island, now shows its new owner and managers straight away. Event blockades no longer require a vessel's voyage type to be set to "Blockade". Fixed links not opening in the default browser on Linux. Fixed the client hanging when ye try to quit.

2026-09-25

Display Size Update

From the Release Notes:

Automatically chosen display settings: Your game window size and puzzle scale will be adjusted once based on your monitor's resolution. "Lock panel sizes" will be turned off so you can adjust your panel layout after the resize. Review your settings with the Display Size preview: After logging into your account, but before choosing a pirate, the Display Size preview will automatically appear. This is a one-time set-up process that will help make sure people are using the best options for their system. You can preview and adjust the game window size and puzzle scale, then click "Apply" to save your choices. Changes to puzzle scale made in the preview require a client restart before they take effect in-game. The automatic adjustment and preview happen only once for your saved client preferences, across all production oceans. Switching oceans will not reset your choices or show the preview again.

2026-09-03

Dueling Debuts

From the Release Notes:

Introduced a new game mode for swordfighting: Dueling. When dueling, players can see both puzzle boards side by side. Duels are supported in challenges, tournaments, and table games. Pirates can also spectate dueling matches using the Notice Board. The Notice Board shows the 30 most recently completed duels since the last reboot. Brigand King trinket collection cases have been added to the Trading Post. Before placing, collection cases are "customized" to show a sub-collection. When customized the collection case changes appearance to match that theme. Collection cases can hold one of each variant of each relevant trinket. Collection cases can share a scene, if they have different collections set. Eg 1 x Admiral Finius collection and 1 x Vargas the Mad could share the same scene. Collection cases can share a scene with a regular display case! Puzzle difficulty selection: You can now choose your own puzzle difficulty. A new "Difficulties" tab in the options panel provides a slider with tooltips describing what changes at each level. If your experience in a puzzle is too low, your chosen difficulty is capped at your normal calculated difficulty. Choosing a difficulty lower than your calculated one reduces your score slightly. You must be narrow in order to adjust your puzzle difficulty. Ye Known World Improvements: Added a new export button that copies the visible league points. The print button now opens the printer dialogbox. Tweaks to make nodes clearer and indicate colonized islands. The league tracker now has a tooltip showing how far you are from your charted destination. Duty Report Enhancements: Duty report tooltips now include maneuver tokens and cannons loaded. Double-clicking a duty report copies the data to the clipboard. Added option to log pirates own duty performance. Found in the "general" options tab. Shoppe Management and Labor Enhancements Added a search bar to tailor racks. Bid tickets now show percentage filled. Added labor totals to lines in shoppe labor log. Allow importing and exporting of CSV in shoppe management prices tables Import/export through clipboard for now. Double-click tab label to export, Shift-Double-click tab label to import. Added a "Cancel Changes" button, closing the tab commits the changes as usual. Pending changes are shown in bold. Issues from importing (such as min stock > max stock) are not entered, but are highlighted as an Issue. Pending orders can be delivered by double-clicking them. Pending order table grows with orders, a bit. Rack interface grows vertically if possible. Buildings that have gone dark, or are not "open for business" have their labels display faded on the map. Stalls that have gone dark, or are not "open for business" have their labels display faded on entry panel in the bazaar. Show featured job in bold if already employed there. Shows labor types in job panel. "Houses" button on notice board now shows all buildings you own/manage. With the option to use a whisking potion where applicable. A stall managed by you is shown underlined in the entry dialog list. Stall and house entry dialog boxes grow with content. Other QOL Improvements: Added notification when a pirate enters/leaves a house or crew hall. Added option to only "fetch duplicate trinkets" at the Trading Post. This means it will leave at least one of each trinket type if enabled, fetching duplicates found until the order is filled. For example, if you have 3 of any trinket, it will fetch two of them. This helps preserve your collections. Added a "hearty who" command: /hwho Increased max number of hearties to 400. Added vessel class to engaged/intercept messages. Made greedy purses untrashable. Added /cheer and /cry commands, which strike the matching pose for everyone in the scene. Added a means to export a pirates inventory to json via double-click on the "Booty" tab in the pirates info panel. Fixed the hold inventory export, which now copies to the clipboard. (this may change) Allow time choices in Treasure Drop turbo mode. Monthly paints now have a tooltip showing which month they can be ordered in. Vessels for sale in shipyards now show their mass and volume capacity. Distilling: Added option to disable "Fire Furnace" on right click Fixes Fix for a disconnect when trading out a large volume of items. Fix for the the min/max bid for dropping an island owned by a BK. Larges are now 3m and 12m. Fix for some trinkets not showing their inscriptions. Fix for ghostly familiars ghostliness in yoweb. Fix for Blacksmithing clicks getting lost to the puzzling gods. Fix for Patching tiles sometimes getting misaligned. Fix for shortcut keys choking sometimes, and being disabled after opening the options panel.

2026-07-08

More small fixes

From the Release Notes:
More small fixes Further improvements for click-and-drag behavior for gunnery arrow Fixes for Treasure Drop when the puzzle is scaled up Fix for screen transition in Carpentry when the puzzle is scaled up

2026-07-07

Release follow-up

From the Release Notes:
Fixes: Animations in Foraging for the earthquake and monkey were slow Distilling animations were sometimes slow Gunning arrows weren't always placed if you were moving quickly We are continuing to make follow-up releases to address remaining issues that have been reported with the arrows Puzzle scaling was not fully enabled

2026-07-06

The Puzzle Embiggening

From the Release Notes:

Puzzle Embiggening The puzzles are having the resolution of their art enlarged to make it more playable on modern systems. Currently we have started this project with puzzles, the most important part of the game. More details. Please note that this is a work-in-progress and we are continuing to improve the appearance of many puzzle assets so that they look the best they can when displayed at these larger sizes. Things like tutorial puzzle art, the notice board, menus, etc are some of the areas we have not addressed. This feature will go live after a quick follow-up release this evening. There is now a dropdown in the Options panel that allows you to scale the display of Puzzles in the game to larger sizes. The default size is 100%, but this can be increased up to 200% if you'd like to see larger versions of the puzzles. You can find this in your options -> Graphics tab. You can enlarge the game's text using the same graphics tab. Players can now drag the boundaries of the User Interface (UI) in order to increase the space available for different areas, such as Chat or the Sunshine panel. The size of the text will automatically enlarge accordingly! The chat, the sunshine sidebar, the puzzle sidebar, and in-world text each scale independently. Panels and dialogs throughout the game now resize to fit the larger text. Rating & scoring Some fixes for the duty puzzle scoring curves. The rating curve already used for labor puzzles now also applies to duties, most notably making Incredible Patching attainable again. Fixed some parlor-game rating inflation in Drinking, Hearts, and Spades. This stops further inflation and existing ranks unchanged. It's possible we need to make further adjustments in the future. Duty report and competitions now use the same performance calculation, for consistent scoring between the two. Other Players will soon be able to access the Obsidian ocean from the standard Puzzle Pirates client, when using Steam. This feature is currently a work-in-progress before it fully goes live. Eventually this means we can remove Dark Seas from Steam without removing your access to that ocean. New command: /whisk <island>. This new command drinks a whisking potion and teleports you straight to the named island. Includes server-side item handling Badges can now be extended. Buying more time adds onto an existing badge (up to 2× the original duration) instead of being wasted. Fix for LE paints. Inactive limited-edition and monthly paints remain usable. They can still be applied, and shoppes can still adjust their prices, after they leave sale. Hiring-while-on-break behavior made consistent across skirmish types (blockade, flotilla, skirmish, sea monster). Several improvements have been made to the age verification process for creating new accounts, to make it simpler and less prone to accidental errors. Fixed a bug with Expedition Maps that could sometimes cause them to not be destroyed correctly.

2026-03-04

Monkeyin' Around

From the Release Notes:
Fix for the Monkey Boat that had been MIA for some time (goes into effect after server reboot) Extended timeout for active labor to a month rather than 10 days (goes into effect after server reboot) Increasing "labor hours per day" from 48 to 72 on Cerulean

2025-07-01

Summer Stuff

From the Release Notes:

Updated the Furniture section of player inventories so that it is organized into subgroups, similar to other sections of the player inventory Monster Boss Dolls will now sort correctly in the player inventory Test Sword 49 was recently enabled in the Palace Shoppe; feedback can be shared on Discord Fixed a bug with the defeat animation for the Skeletal Parrot familiar The following changes will not go into effect until after the oceans reboot on the morning of July 2nd Adding a new Flotilla chat mode that works similarly to Blockade chat mode Increasing the size and quality of Portrait previews The sky will now change color when ghosts are haunting an island Vessel auto-targeting will now default to OFF All building managers will now be automatically cleared when a building deed changes hands Adding a large amount of new Crew titles to choose from Large brigand vessels that can hold 40+ swabbies will now have a minimum allowable skill level for the swabbies they hire In other words, large enemy vessels like Grand Frigates were occasionally too easy to defeat if players intentionally manipulated the difficulty ramp downwards, and that should no longer be the case The small Dark Forest tables that were given out in Werewolf chests had a bug that caused their colors to be randomized. Any newly awarded Dark Forest tables will recolor correctly.

2025-02-25

Patch It Up

From the Release Notes:
Adding upcoming standard content for March (Seals o' Piracy, Monthly Rewards, etc.) Changes to the scoring mechanics for the Patching puzzle so that Grommets contribute more points to overall score. This change will go into effect after the oceans reboot on the morning of the 26th

2025-01-27

Trophy Time

From the Release Notes:

Adding upcoming standard content for February/March (Seals o' Piracy, Monthly Rewards, etc.) Adding several new trophies for players to discover. These trophies will not be attainable until the server reboots Tuesday morning (January 28th). Specific trigger numbers will not be revealed here. The relevant activities are: Using "Wild" pieces in Rigging Using "Grommets" in Patching Taking self portraits Changing your appearance using Potions Adding some test swords to the Palace Shoppe on live English oceans in order to get additional testing feedback. The new swords, machete and claymore, are prototypes and they do not have proper names and use a placeholder icon. You're looking for Test Sword 46 (Claymore) and Test Sword 41 (Machete). They are not rackable and will dust after one day. Please provide feedback in the discord discussion thread here.

2024-09-10

Prep Work

From the Release Notes:

Adding upcoming seasonal content for September/October. Prep work for new swords (coming soon): Test swords that are occasionally available in the Palace Shoppe will no longer be tradeable between pirates Swapping colors in the new Falchion drop pattern to stay consistent with the previous version (details here) Bug fixes Players can no longer be planked in the middle of an expedition, however they can still be planked before the expedition begins or after it ends Don't add indoor summoned monsters to the Mission Manager Auto-abort broken barter negotiations Avoid duplicate merc names on a single vessel

2024-07-25

Swords Galore

From the Release Notes:

Sword Changes Two new swords are currently in testing and will soon be released. For more details, see here. In preparation for this, the following changes have been made: The Falchion drop pattern has received a small nerf The Falchion doubloon cost has increased to 11 The Saber drop pattern has received a small nerf The Saber doubloon cost has increase to 10 These changes are not final and may be modified in the future, as well as changes to other swords; please provide feedback on the Discord if you have suggestions! Preparation for the Pirate Summer Games which will begin on Friday, July 26th Bugfix related to firing of NPPs during expeditions Bugfix for one of the introductory missions Fixes to several hats that were not displaying certain female hairstyles correctly in portraits Preventing neon orange skeletons from spawning on islands Adjusted the weight of Rum Spice so that it matches allspice

2023-10-20

Howlin' at the Moon

From the Release Notes:

Werewolf Vessel Expedition Update Werewolf vessel hunts now spawn with the help of werewolf-skull way finders. Wolf-skull wayfinders can be won from werewolf frays. These expeditions drop new werewolf rewards and trophies. Werewolf expedition trinkets can be traded in for new items on the trading post: Werewolf calendars give information on the next full moon Werewolf summoning site gives players the ability to use werewolf charms indoors. Hunter chroma gives players access to the new werewolf color. Tooth and Nail 4 Event Defeat werewolves on land and sea to earn points for yer team. Werewolves will be spawning at full moon strength for the duration of the event. Vampire Updates The number of vampire vessel expeditions before earning a lair has been adjusted from 3 to a random number between 1 and 3. Fixed a bug with vampire vessel expeditions not being awarded randomly during the new moon. Fixed some issues where expeditions would get out of sync. Blockade Updates Max pay has been reduced back to 10k. Mercenaries now get payed a flat amount independent of the player rate. Other Fixed a bug with forage puzzle rating. Previously not clearing any tiles after the last chest was cleared would booch the whole session. Now the last chest(s) is correctly counted even if there are no tiles breaking after.

2023-09-22

Blockade Boost

From the Release Notes:

Blockade Changes: Added Spectator mode for blockades. Players can now click the "spectate" button when on a ship they control at an island with an ongoing blockade. This will allow the vessel to enter blockade spectating mode. Players can see the blockade board and score board as if they were in the blockade. The vessel does not enter the board and does not require any puzzling. Players may board and leave the vessel. A "job" offer can be displayed to open the spectating vessel to the public. Added blockade chat for blockades. Much in the same way <game> chat works, this chat mode connects anyone who is on a vessel in a blockade. The command is "/blockade" and can only be used while in a blockade. Blockade chat can be muted with "/blockade-off" and "/blockade-on". Players on spectating vessels are included in blockade chat. Mercenaries will no longer fill all ship stations when in blockade mode. They will fill up to a percent of the stations. Currently that's 33% on Emerald for the event blockade on the 23rd. Adjustments will be made after that as needed. Mercenaries will still fill all stations on low population oceans. This number for each ocean may be subject to future adjustments / balancing. Warchests will be increased. The new number is based on island taxes. In addition, successfully defending a blockade will reward defenders with 75% of the warchest (up from 50%). Attackers will now get 50% of the warchest back upon winning. Blockade pay for pirates has been adjusted. The amount of puzzling per segment will now affect player pay the same way as mercenary pay. The old pay system pays nothing until a player puzzles a certain amount, they pays for the whole segment. The new system pays proportionally to the amount puzzled in a segment. Blockade max pay will be increased. Max pay for blockades will be increased to 15000. Other Changes: Reduced the amount of rumspice awarded while pillaging. Players are now limited to 2 additional alts (3 pirates including your main) per ship.

2023-06-16

Figure Elixir

From the Release Notes:

Figure Elixir and balance adjustments: A new potion has been added to the apothecary: "Figure Elixir". This potion will allow you to change the "Male"/"Female" selection from when the pirate was created. If the pirate is wearing clothing that is no longer applicable after the change, that clothing will be unequipped. The potion will force you to re-login in order to complete the change. Injuries, skin tones, and basic hair colors (available during pirate creation) will be retained. Your hairstyle will be randomly selected. The three player-created Atlantis trinkets will now be recognized by the "Fetch" button in the Trading Post, when trading in for the various Collector trinkets. Lavish Lockers are now divvied proportionally to how many greedies each pirate helped battle. Previously this did not account for the number of battles the player was present for. Atlantis citadel payouts have been decreased.

2023-06-16

Collector Trinkets

From the Release Notes:

The following types of trinkets, which pirates typically hold in large numbers, will be regarded as "collector" trinkets: Skulls, sand-dollars, zombie hands, werewolf tufts, vampire fangs Sea Monster trinkets Expedition trinkets Trading in those types of trinkets at the trading post will contribute towards 3 new trophies: "A Collector o' Note" - 100 trinkets traded in "An Avid Collector" - 2500 trinkets traded in "Magnus Congregor" - 25,000 trinkets traded in Players will be able to trade in their stockpiled "collector" trinkets (as described above) in exchange for 3 new Collector medals in the Trading post: Bronze Collector: requires 100 "collector" trinkets Silver Collector: requires 25 Bronze Collector medals Gold Collector: requires 10 Silver Collector medals The motivation for these medals is to allow players a more convenient way to clean out their excess trinkets, while still acknowledging the efforts that were taken to amass such large trinket collections. Players with excessively large numbers of items in their inventory will begin receiving warnings at various stages: 8,000+ items: A warning message will be displayed notifying the player that their inventory is becoming excessively large 10,000+ items: In addition to the warning message, the player will now be restricted from trading until the size of their inventory is reduced (though obtaining items through other methods is not prevented) 15,000+ items: In addition to the above restriction, the player will now be prevented from boarding vessels until their inventory size is reduced

2023-05-06

Standings and Blockade Changes

From the Release Notes:

Blockade Changes: Last weekend blockades were closed because of two issues with mercenary pay in blockades. The first being that players were receiving higher pay. This was a bug related to the flat rate pay for mercenaries being too low in some configurations. The player pay was much higher than the average pay set in the jobbing offer, however it came at the expense of the mercenary pay -- so overall pay was unaffected. We have updated the mercenary pay to work better with every jobbing offer configuration. The second issue was that certain flags were surprised with the amount spent on mercenaries. The root cause appears to be related to the way mercenaries get payed and the fact that they get replaced in the event of a sink. The mercenaries do not have a minimum amount of time stationed before they get payed like players do. This means if someone sinks and takes a new ship in they will pay for two ships of mercenaries. This was intended to avoid pay evasion -- however it appears to be more harsh than expected. Mercenaries now have the same minimum as players but their pay is prorated before that. This means players will still have to pay for mercenaries even if they duty for only one turn of a blockade -- but the amount they get payed is related to how close they are to hitting that minimum. Standings Changes: In our April 5th release, we made some changes so that the criteria for puzzle scores on a duty report ("Fine", "Good", "Incredible", etc.) would be compared against some new thresholds, so that if you score sufficiently high, you will always be guaranteed to achieve at least a minimum corresponding Rating, regardless of how other players might be performing across the ocean. With this same goal in mind, this release includes a change so that if your puzzle scores have reached certain thresholds, you will be guaranteed to achieve at least a minimum corresponding Standing (grand-Master, legendary, ultimate, etc), regardless of how other players on the ocean may currently be performing. This should make Standings like "Legendary" and "Ultimate" so they're no longer out of reach for sufficiently skilled puzzlers. This should also make the oceans a bit more welcoming for Greenies and newer puzzlers, as they begin making their initial ascent through the Standing levels. These new thresholds will be the same for all oceans, so that a Renowned Standing on Cerulean meets the same criteria as a Renowned Standing on Emerald or Meridian, etc. (please note: This change will not go into place until it is enabled sometime after the actual release) Over the course of the next few weeks, pirates might see standings fluctuating as a result of these changes. In many cases this means standings will go up as pirates log in or become active in a puzzle again. We will be closely monitoring the results of these changes in the days and weeks ahead, and will make any necessary adjustments based on the data and feedback we receive. The overall goal for these changes is to bring the Standings to more reasonable levels, as they had become somewhat misaligned over the course of many years. We expect that this will help encourage the health of the oceans for years to come, for players old and new alike. Small updates: There are some other updates and bug fixes either in this release or recent releases: Added banana chroma to the trading post for all those banana trinkets. The mercenary minimum pay on the NB is updated more frequently and should be more accurate. Mercenaries no longer apply LE ship custom appearances due to compatibility issues. Mercenaries should now be able to find DNav stations on all ships. Fanchuan's booty chest should now be replaceable like any other booty chest (this may require an additional reboot).

2023-04-22

Small Blockade Update

From the Release Notes:
Small updates for blockading: Remove "attacker's advantage" in blockades. Attackers and defenders now behave the same way when it comes to which side of the blockade board their vessel will engage/disengage on. Fixed the blockade jobbing table to be highest to lowest by pay.

2023-04-05

Even the Score

From the Release Notes:

Puzzle scoring thresholds: The way that puzzle performance and puzzle standings are determined has always been relative to the performance of other players on the ocean. Over time, as players have become increasingly skilled at different puzzles, these scoring mechanisms have shifted a lot, so that performance that might have one time qualified as "Incredible" will now only be rated as "Good", or less. This is partly by design, but over time these scoring thresholds have become quite exaggerated, to the point where newer players trying to improve their standings or duty reports can become quite discouraged that their attempts at eventually excelling at certain puzzles feels hopeless. This is not ideal for the long-term health of Puzzle Pirates, in terms of continuing to welcome new greenies to the oceans. With this in mind, the goal of this update is to implement some fixed puzzle scoring thresholds for puzzle standings and duty reports. This will mean that if your puzzle performance score is sufficiently high, you will be guaranteed to achieve certain ratings or standings, regardless of how other players have recently been scoring at the puzzle. These are some of the desired outcomes we would like to see from these changes: Providing Expert labor should be a more attainable goal for reasonably skilled puzzlers. Achieving standing levels such as Ultimate should no longer feel like an impossible goal for legitimate players. Unrealistic puzzle performance scores attained by bot usage will no longer shift the scoring thresholds to excessively high values. Bots will continue to be detected and result in bans. Don't use puzzle bots! These new scoring thresholds can and will be adjusted in the future as needed, and we will continue monitoring the impact this has on the oceans going forward. Due to these changes and those of the mercenary update, blockades will be closed to players the weekend of the 8th.

2023-03-28

Lean, Mean, Super Swabbies on the Scene

From the Release Notes:

Mercenaries, or skilled swabbies, have been added to the game. The goal of the mercenaries is to give players the ability to play game-play they previously couldn't because of the ocean population or their rank. Mercenaries can replace regular swabbies on a vessel and perform better than standard swabbies. Mercenaries are not yet enabled for blockades, but will be soon. Mercenaries: Hire mercenaries using your vessel configuration. Make sure you have at least 5 rum spice per mercenary in your hold, or they wont board the ship. Have a higher skill level than typical swabbies. Their duty report score is higher which is more helpful to the ship. Can perform some actions that regular swabbies cannot, such as DNav and defending in SMH. In addition to performing better in SF/Rumble they will team with the rest of the team. They can be hired in higher numbers and don't always leave when jobbing pirates board the vessel. In blockades they count towards influence. There are many things they still don't do like a player would. Cannot treasure haul Generate special maneuver tokens Participate in expeditions Mercenary Cost: Consume rum/grog/swill like any other pirate but in addition they also consume a new commodity called rum spice. The amount of rum spice in the hold determines the total number of mercenaries you can hire (5 rum spice /per -- so if you have 54 in the hold you can hire up to 10 if the ship size allows for it). Earn a regular pirate booty split when pillaging. Refuse to job for crews that are not paying enough. Receive a percentage of chests earned which is currently equal to the percentage of mercenaries on the vessel compared to players and swabbies. For example, if you have 30 humans and 30 players they take 50% of the chests. Players will get to keep the first of each chest but won't get their next chest until the mercenaries take their cut (which could be a while on large/empty boats and when getting chests one at a time like in TH). Earn a percentage of booty pillaged or awarded in a flotilla, this will not be based on the crew shares and will instead be a flat cut. They also contribute a flat rate to the restocking cut. Earn their share of segment pay when used in a blockade. Rum Spice: Higher skilled crews have a better chance at obtaining allspice. The mercenaries change touches a lot of existing mechanics. While we tried to test every scenario we expect there to be some room for re-balancing as we learn how it impacts the game. We may have to disable the feature in different circumstances if they are being exploited or used to harass other players. For example we have disabled blockades the weekend of April 1st (and possibly the following weekend) so that this feature does not impact island ownership. If you run into an issue, please file a /bug report immediately in game. To celebrate the arrival of the Crimson Company, we're hosting a Spicy Weekend this April 1st weekend! Expect to see the oceans become a little more seasoned! That's right, hit the seas and have a much higher chance at finding some Allspicy goodness to make your Mercenaries happy. Keep an eye out, brigands may now also start carrying rum spice, giving pirates a chance to plunder it. Happy hunting!

2023-03-23

A Spicy New Commodity

From the Release Notes:
Added two new commodities: Allspice and Rum Spice Allspice can be pillaged from brigands and barbarians Rum Spice can be made from Allspice in Apothecaries Rum spice will be used in conjunction with Mercenaries who will be arriving on our shores "soon". If you would like to help test this feature, sail on over to the ice ocean and give us some feedback using /bug.

2023-01-17

Haunted Seas graveyard rebalancing update:

From the Release Notes:
Rebalancing some Graveyard changes made during our December update. The post graveyard blast radius has been decreased. The post graveyard protection radius and duration have been decreased. Graveyard chests have decreased.

2022-12-16

Barnabas’ Boo-Humbug and other Haunted Happenings

From the Release Notes:

December event: Barnabas Boo-Humbug Gather wishes o' goodwill by participating in ghost frays, pillages and Haunted Seas graveyards. Ghost frays will spawn on islands for the duration of the event. Trade in wishes o' goodwill at the Barnabas statues for holiday prizes. Players score points for their team anytime they win or trade in wishes o' goodwill. Barnabas only reveals some of his trades, others have to be uncovered by having enough ingredients. Haunted Seas graveyard update: Players can now get chests from graveyard treasure hauling. The post graveyard blast radius is increased. The area around the graveyard is now protected for a short time after the blast -- opposing ships will avoid the area. Windows installer fix: The installer should now work with most versions of Java.

2022-11-02

Werewolves and Bug Fixes

From the Release Notes:

Below is a small update that includes fixes for our werewolves. Because of these changes, we're going to extend the event for a week so we can all exact our revenge. Event updates The event has been extended due to the werewolf rumble bug. It will end sometime on the 7th. (see below) Werewolves will continue spawning and their summoning charms may be available in tourneys and competitions for the rest of the event. The vampires however will now be functioning on their regular new moon schedule and will not be spawning all the time. New stuff Added a Vampirate Booty Chest design to the Trading Post. Item can then be ordered at your local furnisher. Added a special background to werewolf rumble. Updated bat recolor trading. Changed how bat color re-rolls work. You now shouldn't have the possibility of rolling the exact same color. This only applies to the color you're currently rolling. If you start with a black bat and reroll twice, it's possible to get a black bat for the second reroll, just not the first. Added a confirmation box on the bat recolor roll. Are you sure? Fixed an issue where the bat re-roll would allow you to enter multiple bats and you'd potentially lose one of your bats. Bug fixes Fixed a bug with werewolves that would make the match end unexpectedly Adjusted the TH graphics to no longer have alignment and redrawing issues. Fixed a bug where sometimes the rake could apply to an uncalled bet.

2022-10-21

Monster Bash

From the Release Notes:

New werewolf rumble: Introduces a furball that replaces the orange ball. The furball cluster will not count in a combo unless there are 2 charged balls in the cluster. Adding more charge balls to a furball cluster adds more combo counters to a cluster. e.g. a red-orange-blue combo ends in a "BIM!" but a red-fur(with 3 charge balls)-blue combo ends in a "BOOM!". This is capped at 5 per cluster. Since the fur cluster is only valid with a second charge ball, the second ball counts as the ordering for that cluster. e.g. a fur-red-fur-yellow combo will have the order red-fur-yellow. There is a timing bug where players may randomly lose later in the game. This is being looked into and will be fixed, but for now players may want to race against the clock to finish off their werewolf opponents. Vampirate updates: Vampirate lairs now have more custom art and a new character. If pirates last long enough, they'll be visited by the Mother of the Mother o' Nyght herself. Treasure Haul in the lairs has all new art to fit the theme. Vampirates now spawn on the new moon. (This mechanic has been reworked: see below) Vampirate boat expeditions are also randomly awarded on the new moon schedule. Vampirate boat expeditions now spawn from 1-3 leagues away to allow players a chance to recover after a battle. Vampirate boats now follow players so they no longer sail away from players in other engagements. The booty system has been reworked so that players get vampire chests only if they were involved in the vampire activities. The Vampirate lair "back to ship" button should no longer disappear on relogging. New Vampirate trading post options: Winged cat pet: A new vampire themed pet Vampirate overcoat: A new vampirate themed overcoat for both male and female pirates. Bat familiar color reroll: A way to recolor bat familiars to different colors, including some reroll exclusive colors. Warning: this reroll is totally random and may give players a more common color or the same color. Vampirate summoning table: A new furniture item that allows players to use vampire summoning charms in private buildings. Vampirate calendar: A new furniture item that gives information on when vampirates are more likely to spawn. MoN + Vampirate dolls: Trinkets that can be held in portraits. Vampirate bilge/carp/helm/cannon: New furniture items that can be replace standard shipboard furniture. Vampire lair portrait background: 3 new portrait backgrounds accessible only with the design. The design is consumed when used. The garlic amulet is available from the trading post. Other updates: Added a 5% poker rake. Garlic and wolfsbane amulets now block their respective curses from happening instead of solely removing them. Inky hair dye is now available from the TP. The moon mechanic has been reworked, so that monsters that rely on the moon now have multiple days of spawning around the new/full moon. Werewolves were also put on the reworked moon mechanic. Both werewolves and vampirates will be enabled full time until the end of the event.

2022-06-02

Functional Furniture Facelift

From the Release Notes:
Bilge pumps, carpentry boxes and booty boxes can now be replaced in the same way as cannons and helms. Released simple painted versions of all the replaceable vessel furniture.

2021-10-31

Unhallowed Halls

From the Release Notes:

It's time to take the fight directly to the Vampirates Sanctum. This adds to the Vampirate vessel expedition and requires both hammer and sword! After a successful Vampirate Vessel Expedition, players can embark on a raid of the Vampirate's Sanctum. Use your carpentry skills to board up those coffins or risk being overrun. Haul in Blood Boxes during the expo to earn treasure and Vampirate themed items.

2021-09-04

The Stakes Are Higher

From the Release Notes:
Vampirates are upon ye once again. This time as an expedition! Vampire reliquaries will be dropping from vampirate frays. These work similarly to a BK compass, but for Vampirate Expeditions. Pillage Blood Boxes during the expo to earn Vampirate themed items.

2021-06-04

The Stakes Are High

From the Release Notes:
Vampirates are upon ye! The reboot timer now warns you up to 3 hours before a reboot. The game client window is now resizable. You can enable this by going to options > general and checking the box that is right above the size selection. (This isn't new but it was never announced)

2020-11-25

Need for Greed!

From the Release Notes:
The maximum number of Greedies that spawn has been adjusted so that it will not exceed the number of human players on board the vessel.

2020-11-17

Trading Spaces

From the Release Notes:
Greenies can no longer buy or trade Bid Tickets. Guest accounts must now be saved at the time of creation. Preventing links from being used in portrait captions. Fixing bug that affected the trading of certain items. There is currently a bug preventing Mystery Boxes from being traded, which will be fixed when the oceans reboot the morning of November 18th.

2020-09-14

Pets need air!

From the Release Notes:
It has come to our attention that wrapping pets does not allow adequate ventilation for these lovable critters. Because of that, they may no longer be wrapped. Be kind to animals!

2020-07-13

Get Yer Sea Legs, Landlubber!

From the Release Notes:
Greenies can no longer trade Rogue Marks or Familiars Guest accounts can no longer trade with other pirates

2020-05-27

Belated Spring Cleaning

From the Release Notes:
Following directions from ASPCA, familiars can no longer be stuffed into wardrobes. Be kind to animals!

2019-03-26

Scrambling Some Eggs

From the Release Notes:

Note: Some of these changes will not be fully implemented until after the morning ocean reboots on March 27th. Adding seasonal content for April. Adding the new player-created Eggs which will activate in April. Adding a new Periwinkle recolor which can be won as a prize in future promotions. Recent bugfixes (some fixed in prior stealth releases) Fixed launch crash affecting certain Mac users on the most recent version of Java Fixed bug that was causing players to get stuck when warping to and from rowboats in the Kraken Sea Monster Hunt Fixed situation that could result in jobbing notices for empty vessels on the Notice Board Fixed a bug that could cause the displayed bounty on a vessel to not correctly update after the vessel was sunk Fixed a bug that could allow taxes to be paid by the owner of a shoppe that had been shut down by the governor Fixed a bug that would cause emerald-colored clothing to dust into silver-colored rags Updating some text on Obsidian that incorrectly referred to Port Venture as "deserted"

2018-07-31

Dark Seas follow-up

From the Release Notes:

Note: Some of these fixes will not be fully implemented until after the morning ocean reboots on August 1st. Fix to the dynamic ocean recoloring based on overall ocean control. Fix to the outline coloring for War Galleons so that the outline color correctly shows as red for enemy ships at the dock. Graphics fIx for werewolf pirates who are holding a shovel bludgeon. Small adjustment for new portraits of female pirates who are wearing the Rogue Hat with the long curly hairstyle. Adjusting the governor's shoppe shutdown timer so that it functions as a full 14 days.

2018-07-06

Dark Seas!

From the Release Notes:

Final preparation for today's Dark Seas release. Brigand Kings that have been scuttled will not attack islands that were previously blockaded by a Brigand King in the past 5 weeks. Shoppes that have been shut down by the governor will now be destroyed after 14 days, rather than 30. Adding a slider to the Voyage Configuration panel that allows reducing the number of swabbies that should be hired. Bugfix for a situation where Brigand King expeditions could create a target vessel weak enough to trigger the Black Ship.

2018-07-02

All Hands on Deck!

From the Release Notes:

Seasonal content for July. Preparation for the upcoming Dark Seas release. Increasing the maximum number of swabbies that can be hired. There will now be one swabbie for every station on the vessel except for navigation, as long as it doesn't exceed the maximum capacity of the vessel. We'll be monitoring the effects of this change to see if further adjustments are needed. NOTE: Currently, some vessels are receiving less than the new intended number of swabbies. This issue will be fixed when the oceans restart in the morning. Bugfix for a situation that could cause pirates to get stuck in the "preparation" phase when logging on. Bugfix for a minor color inconsistency between the male and female Kraken tattoo. This will go into effect for any new Kraken Tattoos created from this point forward. Bugfix to prevent the use of transformation artifacts during the portrait preparation phase. Pirates can still exit the portrait, apply the transformation, and then re-enter the portrait preparation.

2018-05-09

Follow-up

From the Release Notes:

The following changes will go into effect after the oceans reboot on the morning of May 10th: Sunken War Galleons will now be able to be salvaged in shipyards. The shipyard construction recipe for War Galleons will require 10 less wood so that it can be made in deluxe stalls . The icon for the bottled War Galleon has been fixed. Clarifications: The Quest class LE War Galleon will be available until the end of June. Dark Seas notes: As per this thread Brigand Kings taking over an island will now start the 30 day shutdown timer on shoppes, island attractions, and estate agents. Some ship delivery fees have been adjusted, additional information can be found here.

2018-05-01

War Galleons

From the Release Notes:

The following changes are for all oceans (both Dark Seas and classic YPP) New vessel type: The War Galleon is now available in shipyards! This ship is similar in class to the Xebec, but with less survivability in exchange for increased firepower. To celebrate the release, a new Limited Edition "Quest" class War Galleon is now available for construction on all oceans. Adding seasonal content for May.

2018-02-28

Hello, my pet!

From the Release Notes:

The following changes are for Dark Seas: The Trading Post has been updated with a new Wolverine pet that can be purchased in exchange for Faction PvP trinkets. The special Crimson/Shadow colors have an increased cost. From this point forward, faction trinkets will only be awarded in PvP sinkings if both vessels have an active bounty on them. There is now a cool down period after a pirate receives a Faction PvP trinket, before they can receive more. This limit should very rarely affect pirates who are participating in legitimate PvP battles that require meaningful time and effort. The vessel bounty icon will now appear in the voyages jobbing panel for vessels that are being hunted by the opposing faction. Messages related to faction bounties will now be recorded in the vessel logs. Island building records will now show when a shop is forced to close or allowed to reopen by the governor. Bugfix for the text descriptions of the new PvP bounty trophies. Bugfix to allow flagless vessels to pay the bribe in order to port at enemy faction islands. These changes are for both Classic and Dark Seas: Behind-the-scenes setup and preparation for the new War Galleon vessel type which will soon be added to the Ice ocean for testing and feedback. Fixed a bug that would allow a sinking vessel to be repeatedly engaged before the sinking process completed. Correcting the amount of labor required in the Gold warfrig and Dark warfrig recipes. Adding seasonal content for March.

2018-01-29

Bounty Hunters

From the Release Notes:

The following changes are for Dark Seas: Vessels that have a faction bounty placed on them will now have a special icon shown in the sailing view, making them easier to identify (and pursue). There are 3 tiers of icon, based on how large the bounty on the vessel has become. From this point forward, only vessels that have a faction bounty on them will be able to win faction trinkets for sinking enemy vessels. All sailors aboard the victorious ship will receive between 1 to 3 faction trinkets, based on how large their ship's bounty has become. This provides incentive for jobbing on a ship that has a bounty, despite the increased risk of being attacked by the other faction. Adding new "Owl Eggs" that can be purchased at the Trading Post in exchange for Faction PvP trinkets (under the artifacts section). Opening the eggs will grant a non-tradeable Owl familiar with a randomly chosen color. In exchange for a larger number of trinkets, pirates can purchase a Crimson or Shadow owl egg, which will grant an owl familiar in the respective color (rather than one of the randomly chosen colors). Adding 3 new "Dark" vessel designs at the Trading Post in exchange for faction PvP trinkets. Faction bounties that have been placed on vessels will now slowly decrease over time, so that inactive vessels will eventually fall off of the bounties board. Faction icons will now appear on the island overview page in YoWeb. These changes are for both Classic and Dark Seas: The "Slithery Keepsake" trophy will now be retroactively awarded to players who attacked the white Kraken head during the December team competition. Exploit fix: greedy brigands will now only appear on brigand vessels that were targeting your own vessel. Bugfix: clear any pending transfers for a vessel if the deed changes hands. Adding seasonal content for February.

2017-12-01

Loading the Sleigh

From the Release Notes:
Adding seasonal content for December. Updating the "Shoppe Jobs" tab of the Notice Board with buttons that allow viewing an expanded listed of the jobs available on the island. Preparing the holiday Team Competition for later this month. Preparing the monthly seals for 2018. Bugfix for a specific situation that could result in a faceless portrait.

2017-10-25

Back in Black pt. 2

Note that some of these changes will not take effect until the oceans reboot on the morning of Oct. 26th.

From the Release Notes:
Black Boxes will now include the possibility of Kraken Sea Monster maps. Black Boxes will no longer award Sea Monster maps for disabled Sea Monster zones. Small decrease to the average value of Greedy Purses. Updating the Team Competition text on the Notice Board to clarify that candies are collected in the form of Trophies (not trinkets).

2017-10-19

Back in Black

From the Release Notes:

Updating the Black Box to Series VI. New prizes include a skeletal parrot familiar, two new furniture items (Vampire Basin and Large Smuggler Crate), as well as a black Patchy Fox. Setting up a Halloween Team Competition that will begin tomorrow afternoon (Oct. 20th). Allowing the "Blockades" tab of the Notice Board to be accessed even when not on an island. Added an in-game Doubloon History link on the doubloons panel for the Steam client, since these players don't have access to Billing website login credentials. Adding a "Shift+Escape" key combination that can be used to instantly close the client without triggering the logout process. This is sometimes useful when needing the restart the client without leaving an active voyage. Performance fix for CPU usage in the Steam client. Increasing the maximum number of free accounts that can be created by a player. In chat, "nh" will no longer auto-replace to "nice hand". Experimental update to allow shoppe inventory data to be exported to a text file in JSON format by double-clicking the "Inventory" tab in the client. If tools are created to parse and manage this sort of exported data, the functionality can be expanded to other areas of the game in the future. Displaying faction icons next to job applicant notices in the Dark Seas client.

2017-06-28

Blockades

From the Release Notes:

There will now be some added requirements for pirates to be able to job in a blockade: Participants can not be greenies or unsaved guest accounts. Participants need to have at least Narrow experience in two or more piracy puzzles. If a vessel attempts to enter a blockade but does not meet these requirements, a message will be sent listing the pirate names who are not eligible. The vessel will be unable to join the blockade until all pirates on board meet the above conditions.

2017-06-14

Weigh Anchor

From the Release Notes:

Most changes for this release will go into effect after the morning server reboots on June 15th. Adding seasonal content for July. Making preparations for the public testing release of the Obsidian ocean in the coming weeks as part of our ongoing Dark Seas development. Certain items that are normally created by shops (various swords, bludgeons, mugs, clothing, furniture) will no longer drop from Sea Monster Hunts. These items should instead be ordered via shops and constructed using labor. The Pirate badge will no longer be required. Increasing the maximum number of Hearties that can be stored. Adding a command that will allow the Ocean Masters to fix pirates who are stuck with a "pirate preparation error" during login. Updating copyright info in the "About" tab. Scene Editor: Fixing the "Display commodity object counts" action in the Scene Editor. Increasing memory allotment to allow saving map images for large island scenes. Large assortment of new tiles (props, plants, etc.) for scene creation.

2017-05-02

Flotilla Frenzy

From the Release Notes:

Flotilla changes: Adding the Cutter as a possible type of supply ship in Flotillas. Adding trophies for Flotilla participation (details will need to be discovered by players). Switching Vargas and Yu Jian to sinking Flotillas. Moving Flotilla jobs higher up on the voyages panel. Increasing payouts for non-sinking Flotillas. Flotillas should no longer spawn in uncolonized archipelagos. Competitions: Adding another check to ensure that puzzle performance only counts towards the competition if it took place after the competition started. Players will receive a message notifying them that their puzzle performance did not count if this situation occurs. Fixed a competition scoring mechanic that would sometimes allow lazing to be useful after a high-scoring situation. Adding a global chat channel: This channel is muted by default, but players can join by typing the command "/global-on". It can be switched back off with the "/global-off" command. To use this chat channel, type "/global " before the start of your message. There is a wait period between consecutive messages in this channel from the same player. This channel will replace "/greeter" chat. The Sloop Mark II can now be constructed by Shipyards. This ship has the same functionality as the normal sloop, but uses the expanded floorplan that's found on Limited Edition sloops (sometimes preferred by decorators).

2017-04-04

Spring Cleaning

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for April Added a new YoWeb page to view a list of Colonized Islands, including tax information and links to governor names Example: http://ice.puzzlepirates.com/yoweb/island/info.wm?showAll=true This page can be accessed in-game using a new "Colonized Islands" button in the Island tab Adding a new Trade chat channel that can be used by pirates looking to buy or sell items "/tmute" can be used to toggle this chat channel Players can only use this channel once every few minutes Updating the requirements that must be met before joining a competition, in order to prevent pirates from "saving" a high scoring situation for use in a pending competition If on board a vessel that has recently turned about, players will be required to wait until the vessel reaches a league point before they can join a competition. If a player had already joined a pending competition at the time the vessel turns about, a message will be displayed that the player must rejoin the competition after reaching a league point. Attacking vessels that are much weaker will now greatly reduce the number of Greedy brigands that appear in the melee. Adding a warning message to the client if a player's mute list exceeds 750 names . Storing more names than this can exceed the size limit defined by the Java Preferences class. Fixing a bug that could cause LE ship NPPs to get stuck in the crow's nest Fix for client window size on 4k monitors; the window will now be shown at 2x scale at sufficiently high resolutions Minor update to chat filter

2017-02-07

Make Ready the Guns

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for March. Updating code to begin preparing for Dark Seas later in the year. Making it possible to pay a small bribe in pieces of eight in order to port a vessel at an embargoed island. The bribe lasts for one hour, and the cost increases based on the size of the vessel that is porting. The pieces of eight are placed in the Palace coffers. UPDATE: This feature will go into effect after the oceans complete their normal morning reboot. The bribe panel will then be displayed when you attempt to port your vessel at an embargoed island. When a vessel sinks, a note will now be recorded in the vessel logs listing the players who were on board the vessel when it was engaged. Vessel Deeds can no longer be traded while the vessel is currently at sea. Commodities can no longer be destroyed when placing a new building construction site. Removing obsolete link from the doubloon purchase panel.

2016-10-26

Howl at the Moon

From the Release Notes:

Halloween event will begin after the servers restart: Special candy trinkets can be won from Brigand Kings and Sea Monster Hunts. Three new trinkets have been added for this year's event, in addition to candy from last year. The new trinkets are classified as "Spooky Trinkets", and can be exchanged at the Trading Post for some new items. Two new mask designs have been added to the Trading Post in exchange for Spooky Trinkets: the Catrina mask (female), and Calavera mask (male) Five new furniture designs have been added to the Trading post in exchange for Spooky Trinkets: Lycanthropic Chair, Mounted Deer Skull, Wall Hanging Wolfsbane, Tabletop Meat, and a Werewolf Banner A special new LE ship is being released early in time for Halloween. The Pirate News and Spyglass blog will be updated with details shortly after release. It will remain available until the end of November.

2016-09-28

Pillage and Plunder

From the Release Notes:

Pillaging update! During pillages, players will now encounter new "greedy" brigands. Greedy brigands and barbarians are a special type of enemy brigand, who selfishly hoard bits of treasure for themselves. They appear randomly during the melee phase of a sea battle while pillaging, and are identifiable by their extravagant jewelry that they collect and hoard, such as gold eyepatches and flashy necklaces. Players can win new treasure chests called "Lavish Lockers" by performing certain types of attacks in Swordfight and Rumble. More details on these mechanics are included on the Greedy brigand YPPedia page. Lavish Lockers contain many new types of prizes, including a new familiar, a new pet, furniture items, a new Silver chroma, and special trinkets that can be traded in at the Trading Post. Two new furniture designs and one new clothing design have been added to the Trading post in exchange for greedy trinkets. The trading post also now contains a new Greedy Purse artifact, which can be opened to grant pieces of eight to the owner. Many new trophies have been added related to Greedy Brigands. These will need to be discovered! Pillage payouts have been greatly increased with this update.

2016-05-31

Hoisting the sails

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for June Updating the Mac Puzzle Pirates installer to support more versions of Java Fixing Steam achievements; all Steam users will automatically resend all of their trophies to Steam the next time they log on to their pirate The "Recent PVP battles" section on the crew battle page will begin tracking battles correctly again after the reboot Fixing bug that caused Meridian server crash

2016-04-30

Swabbing the decks

From the Release Notes:
Adding seasonal content for May.

2016-03-24

Sunny Side Up

From the Release Notes:
Adding seasonal content for April. The latest batch of player created Eggs will appear in the Palace Shoppe shortly after the oceans finish rebooting.

2016-02-23

March Ahead

From the Release Notes:
Adding seasonal content for March.

2016-01-21

Sort It Out

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for February. The "Clothing" and "Trinkets" section of the booty will now remember their previous collapsed/expanded state and default to that after logging in. A new checkbox has been added when editing trophy boxes on your trophy page. By checking "Hide these trophies", the box will default to a collapsed state when anyone views your trophy collection. The trophy box can still be viewed by anyone who clicks the "Show" link. If a pirate has more than 1 trophy box that is hidden, a "Show All" link will appear at the bottom of their trophy page. Adding a warning message on login for players who have an excessive number of items in their inventory. Adding grey back into the Gold Box as a possible color for trinkets, furniture, and clothing.

2015-12-17

Acting Sealy

From the Release Notes:
Setting up a Team Competition that will begin midday tomorrow. More information will be posted on the Spyglass Blog at that time.

2015-11-24

Feeling Jolly

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for December. The 12th Order of the Jolly Roger will now be awarded to those who qualify. The trophy will be granted when logging in any time after this release is completed. Minor adjustments to the Events section on the Notice Board: Gallery Exhibits will now include the island name in the Notice Board description. The description text for Parties and Exhibits will now correctly line wrap, rather than being cut off. Fixed a bug where the Large Display Stand would stop working if certain special characters were used in the displayed text.

2015-10-22

Ocean Wide

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for November. Gallery Exhibits for the entire ocean will now be available in the "Events" tab of the Notice Board. Adding three new trinket dolls to the Trading Post that require Ghastly Trinkets. Immediately after the release, Ghastly Trinkets will begin to drop from Brigand Kings and Sea Monster Hunts until the event ends on November 3rd. Guestbook messages can now contain HTML entities (such as ♥) and some additional types of characters, such as less-than and greater-than signs. Bugfixes: Fixing a bug that would sometimes leave a puzzle icon over a pirate's head after leaving a vessel. Increasing the size of the Guestbook panel to accommodate the larger font size in Options. Fixing an Internal Error when deleting the only message on the last page of a guestbook. Sounds for the Patching puzzle will now be muted if "Game sound effects" are disabled in Options.

2015-09-29

Be My Guest

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for October. Adding 3 new interactive furniture items that can be constructed by furnishers: Guestbook Allows pirates to leave their name and a short message in the guestbook. The owner of the guestbook can remove any entry, and pirates can remove their own messages. Large Display Stand The owner of the Display Stand can write a medium length message that will be shown when other pirates click on the furniture. The owner can change this message as many times as they like, it does not affect the furniture age. Small Display Sign This furniture can be inscribed with a short message that will be visible to anyone in the scene; it doesn't have to be clicked on. Bugfixes: Pirate pages will now show the Gallery icon for pirates who are roommates in a Gallery. Adding a separate note in the vessel logs when a pirate uses their personal PoE (rather than the vessel coffers) to pay for commodities. Fixing a vessel log message that is created when commodities are lost because a vessel was abandoned. The Radiant Phoenix feather will be awarded in colors other than red for future Gold Boxes.

2015-08-25

Out of the Woodwork

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for September. Adding 17 new pieces of furniture, all of which can be constructed by furnishers: Chroma Crate (stores chromas) Potion Cabinet (stores potions) Garden Shed Large Mess Table with Runner (plain and fancy versions) Regular Table with Runner (plain and fancy version) Square Table Aquarium Pet Food and Water Bowl Small and Large Pet Beds Small, Medium, and Large Decorative Cannons Coat rack Lit candles (toggles colored room lighting)

2015-07-30

Make an Exhibition of Yourself

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for August. Adding a new type of House: the Gallery. Features a variety of large open rooms with extensive wall space, designed for pirates with large furniture collections. Instead of parties, pirates can host an "exhibit" in their gallery. Exhibits last a week and are shown in the Events section of the Notice Board. The Gallery will be offered at a 20% discount until 3pm PDT August 10th. Bug fixes Fixed a bug that would sometimes stop a building from finishing the deletion process, leaving behind an invalid portal to nowhere. Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause swabbies to not look for duty stations in certain scenes. Marking the Skelly Table as a Seasonal furniture item.

2015-06-25

Treasure Hunt

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for July. Adjusting PoE payout amounts for Sea Monster Hunts to help them stay competitive with each other: Large increase to Haunted Seas Moderate increase to Cursed Isles Moderate decrease to the Kraken Small decrease to Atlantis Adding a "Search" field to the "Your Known World" display to center the map on known locations. Accepts partial text. Adding a new section to the top of the "Where are my vessels?" display that lists only the ships that you hold the deed for. Adding new player-created portrait backgrounds for July. Bug fixes Removed unused recolor from the Phantom Hand trinket.

2015-05-28

Make ready the cannons!

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for June. Adding new player-created Summer trinkets and portrait backgrounds. Adding an icon to the Duty Report for each cannon that is filled by a pirate in the Gunnery puzzle. The /who display will now include a "Help" button, and no longer include a list of Ocean Masters. Adding new "Quinquennial Seal o' Piracy" trophy for pirates who have achieved 5 annual Seals of Piracy. The Seals o' Piracy do not have to be consecutive. Bug fixes Removed incorrect recoloring from the "Golden Dragon Scale" and "Radiant Phoenix Feather" trinkets. Logging on to the Ice client will no longer affect the ocean used by the regular client. Fixed two cannons on the Calamity cutter that were not functioning as duty stations.

2015-04-28

Have ye got a map?

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content and new player-created portrait backgrounds for May. The Explorers' Hall has been reworked to make it easier to find specific maps and compasses: There are now 3 separate sections, one for each kind of map: Viking Raid Maps, Imperial Outpost Maps, and Brigand King Compasses Each section will have up to 8 items. When new maps are spawned, the Explorers' Hall will attempt to replace any missing map types (i.e. small non-sinking maps, or medium swordfight maps, etc.) Decreased the map respawn timer from 7 minutes to 3 minutes. It is now possible to hide a vessel's planned moves during Battle Navigation. By clicking on a vessel's helm, pirates who have at least Officer level privileges in the vessel's crew will see a button to "Hide Navigation Moves". This can be toggled at any time. While navigation moves are hidden, anyone who does not have Officer status in the vessel's crew will not see the individual moves, but rather a simplified token count. If a pirate is ordered to navigate, they will be able to see the navigation moves, regardless of their crew or rank. Added portrait art for the 5 recently added Spring Trinkets: Seed Bag, Lime Lexicon, Flower Pot, Spring Rake, Lime Cocktail Bug fixes: The Patching puzzle was not correctly contributing to the list of requirements for the Battered Hat trophy. This has been fixed, and it should once again be possible to earn this trophy. Fixed a rare bug that would cause a shop order to appear ready for delivery even though a tiny fraction of puzzle labor was still required. Attempting to deliver before the labor was complete would cause an internal error.

2015-03-26

To the Victor go the Spoils

From the Release Notes:

Adding eggceptional seasonal content for April. Adding a new class of inscribable trophy furniture that can be awarded by Ocean Masters as tournament and competition prizes. The inscription will be visible in the scene in which the furniture is placed. Bug fixes: Fixed a bug that affected the earning of bonus maneuver tokens in the Patching puzzle while using Java 8. When a pirate is rabbit cursed, the color of the face icon will now match the color of the rabbit's fur. The rabbit curse will now be removed when starting a Yeti expedition so that the free portrait can be taken. Fixing the capitalization of several of the previously added Winter trinkets.

2015-02-24

Hop to it, Matey!

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content for March. The following types of items will now show color information in their mouse hover tooltips, if the specific item supports recoloring: Trinkets Furniture Sword, Bludgeons, and Mugs Potions with multiple swigs can now be split apart, and multiple potions of the same type can be combined, similar to stackable items like Rogue Marks. There is a limit of 100 swigs on potions. If you try to combine more than this, a new potion bottle will be started. Added a recipe for a larger Whisk potion. While in the drinking puzzle, a player's stain count can be viewed by hovering over their picture. Bugfixes: The Snow Globe furniture item incorrectly melted with the snow. Players who received a snow globe from the December promotion will be automatically granted a replacement when the oceans reboot following this release. The festive yeti will now appear in portraits.

2014-12-16

Krak in the Ice

From the Release Notes:
Adding Team Competition, full details available when the competition begins Thursday morning (Dec. 18th). Building and Vessel deeds in the booty will now be divided into groups (similar to the recent Trinket update). Adding latest player-created portrait backgrounds.

2014-11-04

Get Inked

From the Release Notes:

Added new Kraken Tattoo clothing item for both male and female pirates. Requires a design from the trading post in exchange for 20 Kraken trinkets. Note that tailors will need 5 Kraken ink for each tattoo kit they produce. Trinkets are now divided into collapsible groups in the booty display. This is intended to help pirates who have huge trinket collections and sometimes have slowness or freezes when displaying their booty. The individual groups will only displayed if you possess at least 1 trinket from that group. These are the possible groups: Atlantis Awards Beachcomber Black Box Brigand Kings Cursed Isles Dolls Gold Box Haunted Seas Imperial Kraken Monster Frays Mystery Box Seasonal Viking Odds & Ends (miscellaneous) Halloween candy trinkets will no longer drop. Applying database maintenance to fix data inconsistencies with pirates and vessels that have been renamed over the years. Players should not encounter any visible changes, but note that the servers may take a little longer to start up just this once. Bugfixes Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause Patching to not record a score and display a message about a network connection issue. Added missing image for the November Seal of Piracy.

2014-08-28

Tentacular!

From the Release Notes:

Added new furniture items to Kraken chests. Allowing pirates to "Go Home" from the Kraken. Added a slight cooldown period between leaving the Kraken and re-entering, so that no one gets left behind. Requiring that all pirates aboard first leave any multi-player puzzles, such as Swordfighting, before entering a Kraken lair. Adjusted booty share for bombing the Kraken head. Adding seasonal content. Bugfixes Fixing cases where portions of Kraken boards could get cut off or placed partially out of bounds. Don't allow defendacles spawn on top of powder kegs. Prevent ink from spawning on top of treasure spawns. Fixed issue where an "invisible" powder keg would get left on the board when a vessel turned through two kegs in one move. Fixing bugged map after Viking Expeditions. Hitting "Enter" while creating a new account will no longer lock a player out if they have not yet selected their age.

2014-07-29

Release the Kraken!

From the Release Notes:

Adding the Kraken Sea Monster Hunt. Maps can be won while pillaging, as with other Sea Monster zones. Upon reaching the Kraken, all players aboard the vessel will enter their own personal rowboat to perform Battle Navigation. There will be various treasure, and occasionally Kraken ink, located on the map. Rowboats can retrieve these items by moving over them, and then safely returning to the safezone. If a rowboat sinks, any treasure on board is lost and the player is returned to the safe zone. There is no other penalty for sinking a rowboat. The encounter lasts for 30 minutes, after which players are returned to the original vessel. Requirements for engaging the Kraken: On doubloon oceans, a Bravery badge is required, and on subscription oceans you must be subscribed. The vessel owner will need to have one "Lifeboat" commodity for each pirate that is being brought into the Kraken zone (swabbies don't count as they will not enter the Kraken zone). These commodities are produced by shipyards and "consumed" when the vessel enters the Kraken zone. "Rowboat kits" are a new item type that will be found in your pirate's booty under "Rowboats". If your pirate has a particular rowboat kit in their booty, then the corresponding boat type will be available for you to choose from while battling the Kraken. For example, if you have the "Harpoon kit" in your inventory, then you will be able to select the Harpoon boat while visiting the Kraken lair. If you equip a rowboat kit, then that will be the first rowboat type you pilot when entering. A pirate can proceed to sink as many rowboats as they like in the Kraken instance at no additional cost. If a pirate does not own any rowboat kits, the default "Rowboat" vessel option will still be available to all players and will not require a kit. The following kits can be purchased at furnishers: Bumper, Speed, Chum, Harpoon, and Powder The Kraken can only be approached by the following vessels: Sloop, Cutter, Dhow, Fanchuan, Longship, Baghlah, and Junk (Theories suggest that these vessels are small enough that the Kraken doesn't take notice; any larger, and the Kraken would immediately sink the entire vessel)

2014-03-31

Eggs Marks the Spot

From the Release Notes:

Added eggcellent and foolish seasonal content for April. The number of possible chests from Haunted Sea Ship Graveyards has been increased. Added an Ahoy! notice when earning a new trophy This notice will not auto-open the Ahoy! tab Allowing players to relinquish their roommate privileges This button is located at the bottom of the "Configure house" panel for the house in which you are a roommate Allowing players to relinquish their manager privileges This button is located at the bottom right of the "Manage labor" panel for the shoppe in which you are a manager Adding an age confirmation check on the pirate creation page when creating a new account Bug fixes Fixed Pirate Page width. Pirate pages linked from the puzzle standings lists will take 1 day to update. Fixed bug that could allow two Blockades to be declared on the same island at the same time. Fixed intro animation on the Main Deck for Shipwreck Expeditions. When a pirate is deleted or purged, their sunken vessels will be removed from the crew's vessel list.

2014-02-26

It's Not Easy Being Greenie

From the Release Notes:

Adding excessively green seasonal content. Rebalanced commodity spawns on Cerulean between Midnight and Cobalt sides of the ocean. Bug fixes Fixed issue with Buried Treasure Expeditions returning to ship early. Fixed internal error when replacing the helm multiple times on a ship. Prevented Rum Jug and Sleep Sheep from escaping the Dream Class Sloop parallel universe and into the real world on Jade and Opal.

2014-02-05

Dream a Little Dream of Ye

From the Release Notes:

Adding seasonal content. Added crystal ball furniture to Gold Boxes. Reduced base rent for attractions: 5,000 PoE for Explorers' Halls, 3,000 for Trading Posts, and 3,000 for Black Markets. The maximum numbers of pirates allowed in a portrait will now be shown in parentheses next to the background names in the portrait setup panel. Added logging of paint usage to building and vessel records. Bug fixes Citadels were refusing to spawn if the first vessel to enter Atlantis remained in a safe zone. When multiple vessels are present, citadels will now spawn normally so long as at least one vessel is out of the safe zone. Fixed internal error when replacing the prow or helm on a vessel multiple times before committing changes. The coffer withdraw button on the vessel will no longer be shown if pirate doesn't have sufficient rank to make the withdrawal (rather than just giving an error message). Made sure counts of "done" pirates are kept consistent between client and server to keep players from getting stuck in Buried Treasure expeditions, even when pirates log off. Moved "Return to Ship" button up to be more visible in Ahoy panel. Allowing Steam accounts to make purchases when swapping their session between non-Steam and Steam clients. Added trophy image for Seal o' Piracy: Winter 2014. Haunted seas carpets will no longer recolor with seasonal changes like icy seas.

2013-12-17

The Truth Be Out There

From the Release Notes:
Added seasonal content. Added new expedition. Buried treasure expedition will now mark pirates as "ready to go" when they leave the foraging puzzle. Pirates will return to the ship once everyone is marked as ready (or when ordered back to ship normally).

2013-11-07

Signs Point to Aye

From the Release Notes:
Added seasonal content. Added "10th Order of the Jolly Roger" trophy. Bugfixes: Fixed Valkyrie Statue recoloring. Added icons and tooltips in the furnisher for functional skelly furniture.

2013-10-21

Ghosts of Hedgehogs Past

From the Release Notes:

Added seasonal content. Added Ghost hedgehogs to the possible pets found in Haunted Seas treasure chests. Added persimmon as a possible color from the Gold Box. Changed ordering of items available from the Trading Post. Removed subscription requirement for wearing Vampire raiment. Added Valkyrie Statue recipe and Hellenic Statue furniture to the trading post. Added the Viking Bed and Valkyrie Statue to furnishers. Bugfixes: Fixed potential bug when entering a graveyard while a fray is taking place. Fixed colors for Skelly throne furniture. Stolen imperial plans and Plunder bag trinkets will now show up correctly when held in portraits. Made pirates face the same direction in the "Haunted Night" portrait background. Fixed cuff of Vampire raiment when worn in portraits.

2013-09-16

Swabbies Ahoy!

From the Release Notes:

Increased the number of swabbies allowed on vessels: Sloop: 4 Cutter, Dhow, Fanchuan, Merchant Brig: 6 Longship, Merchant Galleon, Baghlah, Junk: 8 War Brig: 11 Xebec, War Frigate, Grand Frigate: 14 Upon entering a Flotilla, Sea Monster Hunt, or Blockade (non-event), the swabbie count will drop back down to 4 Adding Fall content Black market trinkets are now holdable in portraits Restoring classic color for pirate web pages Removing the "Order for this shoppe" option for estate agents. Bugfixes: Fixed the URL for viewing portraits Fixed the /gift command Fixed many trinkets not being able to be held in portraits

2013-08-21

Indecent Monkey Prevention Society

From the Release Notes:
Tutorial mission changes. Adding new trophies for number of leagues sailed (not retroactive). Adding new content for September.

2013-08-06

This and That

From the Release Notes:

Adding content for August and September Added two furniture items for construction at furnishers: Fancy Bookcase and Small Cannonball Stack Added two furniture items to the trading post: Emperor Bust and Smuggler Wine Crates Minor adjustments to some tutorial text Improving the station pathfinding for NPPs on the Alice sloop Bugfixes: Fix potential error when exporting more than 100 Steam trophies at a time Updating the deed in a player's inventory immediately after a building upgrade/downgrade Allow desktop furniture to be placed on top of short lumber stacks Minor fix to the outlines for many of the items that can be held in a portrait, as well as outlines used for male hands Removing invalid mission text when switching session from the Tablet client

Previous Releases

Archived on YPPedia