3. Progression

Skills and player level

Players gain experience for nearly any activity in the game, and it levels up the skill it belongs to:

• Pilot, for piloting ships
• Gunner, for dealing damage to enemies
• Munitioneer, for reloading cannons
• Mechanic, for repairing your ship in combat
• Sailmaster, for managing the masts
• Fishing, for hauling up resource-laden fish

Experience in any skill also raises your player level, which runs from 1 to 60. Skill levels and player levels reset at the start of each new war.

Piracy is earned by taking from others rather than by working the ship, and it does not raise your player level. It pays in two ways:

• Doubloons you scoop from chests at sea, 1 point per doubloon.
• Loot you take from the wreck of a ship that went down, any ship, crewed or not. Doubloons count 1 point each, and goods count at what the auctioneer at Coffer Cay pays for them. Other items count for nothing. The points go to the captain of the ship that picks the loot up.

Taking from the same captain again and again pays less within a war. The first 50,000 points' worth from one captain pays in full, the next 50,000 pays half, the next a quarter, and so on. A different captain starts again from full, and so does everyone when a new war begins. Your own wreck never pays you.

Damage on its own pays no Piracy. Sinking a ship is how you get to its loot, and the loot is what counts.

Piracy resets with the war like every other skill.

Repairing

A ship's health is her hull, and on every ship you can sail the hull is mended by patching her holes and bailing out the water, not at a station. Ships has how: a plank from the lumber pile over each hole, and a bucket from the rack to bail the hold over the rail.

Damaged cannons, sail blocks and masts are mended where they stand: hold the left mouse button beside one.

Repair work pays Mechanic experience: 10 points for each hole you patch and 5 for each bucket you empty over the side. Mending a cannon, a sail block or a mast pays the same skill.

Rating

Players gain Rating by playing. There are two: a PvP rating and a PvE one. Rating resets at the end of each war along with everything else.