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.

Repairing

Repairs are made at the shield generator, not at the hull. Stand next to it and hold the left mouse button, the same button you fire a cannon with. Nothing else repairs: right click does nothing on deck, and there is no separate repair key. You need to be within 4 units of it, which is a wider zone than the cannons, the wheel or the sail blocks, so you do not have to be exactly on the spot.

One station covers both bars. The hull is restored first, and once the hull is full the same station charges the shield back up.

Each repairer adds 3 points a second. Up to five repairers count at once, and your AI crew count toward that five. Perks and talents raise the rate: the Patch rune on the ship, and Sealant, Weld, Tinkerfire, Refit and Forgefire on the repairer.

Your AI crew stop healing the hull for a few seconds after the ship takes a hit, so sustained fire cannot be out-healed. That pause is theirs alone. A player at the generator keeps repairing through it.

Repairing pays Mechanic experience, 10 points for every 10 seconds you spend at it. Talents that speed repairs speed the experience with them. The generator is not the only place it pays: patching up a damaged cannon, a sail block or a mast earns the same skill.

Rafts and dinghies cannot be repaired at all. They carry no shield generator, so there is nothing to stand at.

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.