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

Repairs are made at the repair station, 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.

The station mends the hull, and the hull is all the health a ship has. Ships carry no shield, so every hit comes off the hull and the health bar moves with it.

Each repairer adds 3 points a second. Up to five repairers count at once.

Repairing pays Mechanic experience, 10 points for every 10 seconds you spend at it. The station 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 repair station, 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.