Ahoy, Captains!
March was packed with improvements, bug fixes, and new features to enhance your naval adventures. Below is a full breakdown of all the changes, organized by category. Let’s dive into what’s been happening!
⚓March Patch Highlights
Throughout the month, I've been refining the game with community-driven improvements and fixes. Here’s a breakdown of the biggest updates:
Combat & Gameplay Changes
- Sticky tar from original Windward is now in WH, called "Sticky Grog chance", a newly added stat found on mortars (and in the future: certain upcoming ship).
- Attacking traders now presents an ever-increasing challenge with higher and higher stakes (up to 10 traders). As you defeat more traders, they will start bringing in allies.
- Attacking traders that aren't rivals of your current faction will incur an increased reputation loss.
- Fishing and diving no longer awards skill XP on use. Instead, a greater amount is awarded on completion. In case of fishing, higher tier catch awards more skill XP. In case of diving, the more loot you bring back, the more skill XP you'll earn.
- Players can now choose a set of faction buffs from a faction other than their own, provided they've unlocked it (which is generally done by joining said faction first). As an example, you can now choose to sail under the Exchange pennant, while keeping a Sojourn faction buff. The buff applied this way scales normally with your actual faction's rank.
- Added the ability to finance pirate raids by bribing pirates that try to ambush you. This lets you trigger a pirate raid at the province of your choice. Without players participating in its defense there is a good chance that the province will be plundered, its goods and prosperity wiped out, and its active governor deposed.
- Traders will now join ocean battles to fight against or alongside the player.
- Sight Buoy skill has been buffed. It now gives greater sight than before, and also offers the same buffs/debuffs as being near a dock to all ships near one of the buoys.
- Proximity mines are now correctly limited to 5 per player. Having the proximity mine skill now also prevents that ship from triggering nearby hostile mines.
- Improved targeting checks for manual aiming. Volley is now usable in more situations (such as targeting land or firing it over small hills).
- Mortar projectiles now have properly colored fires.
- Added a way to reach 50 talent points. They currently come from various sources.
- Items will now generate with a random amount of experience, between 0 and 75% needed to level up.
- NPCs will now drop random commodities, not just random items.
- There are now stats that can allow mortars to launch more than one projectile at a time.
- Skill XP is now saved on the player rather than items, meaning you won't need to re-level skill XP after upgrading items. Also means that skill XP is now shared across all your ships.
Economy & Trading
- Players can now designate one of the provinces they've established as their home province. Home province generates passive income based on tax, collected from all transactions that happen within it. Home provinces store up to 14 days worth of taxes, and the player has to visit it to collect the funds.
- Provincial influence pressure is now scaled by the number of provinces that the faction controls. The more that faction controls, the less overall pressure their provinces contribute.
- Province settling is now only possible near the province that gave the quest, or near another province of the same faction.
- Traders will now bring influence from the province they acquired the goods instead of their home province.
- Town supplies are now on a flexible timer (per town). You can't spam them anymore to grow towns/provinces. You can drop them off for 100% every 10 minutes (per town), scaling linearly based on the time since the last drop-off.
Governance & Faction Control
- Assigning a governor no longer instantly flips the province to that governor's faction. Instead it gives a significant boost to that governor's influence, allowing that governor to take control of the province easier (similar to winning a coup for that faction). Assigned governors also override the province's exerted pressure, changing it from the province's controlling faction to that of the governor's.
- Players can now install a governor of their choice at their home province. Governors installed this way can only be deposed via a successful coup or a pirate raid. You can only select governors that you have Rank 3 or higher reputation with.
- Coup quests are no longer offered unless the faction offering them has at least 50% pressure in that region.
UI & Quality of Life Improvements
- Added rudimentary controller support for ship movement. Will add rebind-able axes at a later date. Not a prio since it can be done via Steam.
- Items with reduced stats (such as high level items slotted by low level players) will now show their actual effective stats instead of their full stats. Holding Shift before opening up the tooltip will show their full stats.
- Added a visible fast forward time toggle to the world map right next to the Pause button.
- You can now use the gossip page in towns to search for a specific item skill or buff by its name, such as "death ward".
- Made Treasure Hunting a lot more lucrative, especially at higher skill tiers.
- Added two different indicators that become visible when sailing into the wind.
- Massive rework of various UI elements to make them more intuitive, informative, and overall better.
- Added extensive contextual tutorial windows that show up when something occurs and teach the player all the important basics. The tutorials are saved with full history and can be navigated and revisited at any point.
- All province and town names in quest descriptions are now clickable and ping the target.
- Ship's accuracy now affects sight range (past 100%), allowing sniper builds to have an even longer range than before.
- Removed the UI scaling feature on 1080p displays. Instead, player and town inventory windows will shrink in size if both are opened at the same time.
- When selling an item to town via CTRL+Click, the correct tab will be automatically opened, for convenience.
- Items in towns will now always be sorted by item type and quality.
Bug Fixes & Performance
- Fixed NPC traders not bringing their influence into regions.
- Fixed the issue where certain quests would block conversations from others (example: Sonya's quest blocking delivery quest turn-ins).
- Fixed traders not visibly selling their inventory and sailing back and forth.
- Fixed inability to join teams properly on ocean maps.
- Fixed ship item generation which was completely backwards: stronger tier ships were spawning with stronger tier items instead of weaker, leading to oddly strong opponents at times.
- Fixed the bug where your ships would duplicate and/or be lost to the void sometimes.
- Performance improvements that will be noticeable in prolonged combat instances.
🗺 New Beginner Player onboarding Experience!
I've been re-doing the tutorials to have better conveyance of the game's mechanics and overall make it easier for players to digest the knowledge from them. Below are a few examples:
🌟 Community Spotlight
A huge shoutout to the players who have gone above and beyond in helping others and keeping the community engaged! This month, we want to recognize:
🏴☠️ Sapholin (Sir Pencil), Edwyndham, and Captain Jack – for their constant support in Steam and Discord discussions and answering community questions.
📜 LimDood – for sharing detailed mini-guides that help new captains navigate the game’s mechanics.
Your contributions make the Windward Horizon community a better place, and I appreciate everything you do!
🌊 On the Horizon
As we move forward, the plan is to continue and fine-tune gameplay, replace the AI portraits, and build towards 1.0 Release. If you have feedback or suggestions, be sure to join the discussions on Steam or our Discord server!
Thank you for sailing with us! More updates are coming soon, and please wishlist the game if you haven't, as it helps a lot! ⛵
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2665460/Windward_Horizon/