Test Server Update – New Ocean Fleets, Targeted Loot & Balance Changes

Added new Dutch Ocean Fleets patrolling the Deep Waters between La Mona and Curacao (Benedenwinds region on the map).
The fleets do not attack players for now (unlike the patrolling NPCs on Trincomalee ships).
It is impossible to join a battle on the side of the Ocean Fleet, and the same applies to initial pulling into the battle — this prevents players from disrupting others’ engagements.
On Live Servers, these fleets will sail at full strength with 20–25 NPC ships.
On the Test Server, fleet size is limited to 3 NPC ships for more comfortable small-group testing.
Sinking these ships provides a chance to loot rare offensive modules (e.g. gun reloading, boarding modules) and rare books for collections, with an increased drop rate.

We are gradually introducing activity-specific loot targeting.
This means different activities now yield different loot types.

Current implementation:

Ocean Fleets → Rare offensive modules (blue to gold) and rare books for collections.
- For example: Gun Sights, Marines, Gunners, etc.
Raiders Port Battles → Rare defensive modules (blue to gold) and rare books for collections.
- For example: Planking, Reinforced Sails, Reinforced Masts, etc.

We believe this approach will help players determine which activity to focus on in order to collect a desired module or book.

The effectiveness of double shot has been significantly reduced at long ranges:

Double shot is now exclusively a close-range ammunition.

It is currently impossible to teleport from/to outposts, create new buildings, or craft in existing buildings in the following Free Towns:

This issue will be resolved in the next hotfix.

UPDATE – The issue was fixed on September 27 and Free Town functionality has been fully restored

Spotlight image by Revard, from the January 2022 screenshot competition.