Era of Sails is in alpha

Era of Sails is in alpha. It is playable, it is being built at the same time, and both of those are true at once. Systems are added and balanced week to week, so you will meet the occasional rough edge — when you do, say so in the global chat and it gets looked at.

Starting today? Use LAUNCH

Enter the code LAUNCH at the counting house for a quick start. One claim to a captain.

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The chart is a real sea now

The old picture has been replaced with a proper chart you can pan and zoom, and every harbour sits at its true latitude and longitude. Twenty more ports have been added — Santo Domingo, Porto Bello, Boston, Cape Town, Malacca, Nagasaki and the rest — reaching from the Caribbean to the Straits.

You are also no longer alone on it. Every captain under way is drawn on the water where they actually are, with their name under the sail. Rest a pointer on one to see who it is, what she is, where she is bound and how long she has left.

Guns, and something to fire

A ship's rating is how many gun ports she has cut, not how many pieces are in them. Guns are now made in the workshop and fitted to a hull at a shipyard — swivel guns, demi-culverins, culverins and cannon royal, each worth more than the last.

A hull with empty ports can still be caught, but she cannot go looking for a fight: raiding in the Death Triangle and taking bounty work both want a battery and shot in the hold. The shot matters too. Round, chain, grape and bar each fight a little better than the one before, and what you load decides how the action goes.

Eighty new goods, and a reason to gather them

Ores, timber, fish and spices, each unlocking as you rise. Iron ore, coal and pine early; teak, silver and saffron in the middle; platinum, lignum vitae and the cannon royal at the top. Nodes are spread across every port by that port's standing, so sailing further is worth something.

The workshops turn them into planks, ingots, beams, rope, sailcloth, powder, shot and guns — and hulls now ask for them. A third rate wants teak and reinforced beams; a first rate wants lignum vitae, ironbound beams and a royal seal.

Smaller things

• The refining bench is grouped by the building that does the work and by what it makes, it folds, and it can be searched — including by ingredient, so coal finds everything smelted with it.
• Companies have their own stores, rank titles, standings and a notice board.
• Consignments will no longer take your crowcoins for goods your warehouse cannot hold.
• Guild crewmates cannot raid each other.
• Rank and experience are back on the bar on a phone, and the bar is thinner than it was.
• Resource nodes are shared ground — another captain working the same node takes nothing from you. Smugglers' anchorages are the exception, and are still taken by force.

More to come. Fair winds.