Special event effects

An island covered with snow, one of the winter special effects.

Special event effects are extra visual effects which appear throughout the game at certain times of the year. These include frozen waters and snow on islands in Winter, as well as blood-red seas and pirates turning into skellies, zombies, werewolves or ghosts around the time of Halloween. Special event effects are toggled manually by the Ringers.

These effects are enabled by default for new pirates, but can be switched off via the general options tab.

Winter

The battle navigation board has frozen over, and rocks have turned to ice.

A ship sails the icy winter seas.

Ice has formed on this ship's rigging.

Water surrounding the islands has frozen. However, ships may still traverse the oceans as normal.

Winter special effects appear during the months of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. They are added in early December and removed at variable times between January and February. The following effects appear in winter:

• Snow appears on island scenes.
• The seas that surround islands and ships freeze over. The water keeps its original texture but now appears as a lighter blue. Water on the battle navigation puzzle boards (but not on a Haunted Seas board) also freezes in this way.
• Rocks on the battle navigation board appear as blocks of ice.
• Ice appears on the rigging of ships. The Frost class sloop and Frost class longship have ice on their rigging all year round, and are not affected by this. Note that while ice being present on a real life ship would affect its handling, this visual ice does not affect the efforts of those playing the sailing or rigging puzzles in any way.

Halloween

The bnav board

View from the crow's nest

View from aboard a ship

View from land

The Halloween seasonal effects include the following items:

• Seas that surround islands and ships take on a dark blood-red color, but keep their original textures. This also applies to the battle navigation board.
• Some Halloween events resulted in pirates being turned into various monsters. See Halloween events for more information.

Historical notes

• Snow was introduced with release 2005-12-09.
• The winter snowfall is often accompanied by a range of seasonal snow-themed furniture, which players may purchase from the palace shoppe:
  • Snow balls
  • Snow block
  • Snow fort wall
  • Snow pirate

All of these items will melt (be destroyed) at the same time as the island snow melts.