Bounty Contracts

• Bounty contracts are now available at governors' residences and merchant companies. Hunt down the target pirates in the search area, then return to the client to claim your reward.
• Bounties use a contract slot and support objective tracking and logbook entries. Target pirates are marked with a bounty icon on their nameplates.

Research Expedition

• Once your Civilization & Technology research reaches Tier 5, you can begin a new expedition at Antillia's academy. The expedition requires one contract slot and can be abandoned freely.
• Follow clues at sea, challenge the Kraken, and complete the investigation after battle to unlock Tier 5 Civilization & Technology research.
• Added battle models and portraits for the Kraken's body and tentacles, along with a dedicated encounter introduction.

Bug Fixes and Stability Improvements

• Fixed issues where a recruited companion's old dialogue and drink-buying actions remained available, or the back action stopped working after recruitment at the tavern.
• Added a rendering driver setting on Windows. Changes take effect after restarting the game.
• When the rendering driver is set to Auto, a detected DirectX 12 device-error termination from the previous session will trigger a switch to Vulkan on the next launch.
• Improved graphics resource cleanup when ships are removed.