(Not every single detail will be explained here as this is already too much text for a huge update. And as always with a big update like this expect bugs and things to change as we tweak going forward. For reference, the words "square," "grid square," and "tile" will be used interchangeably below with regards to the new Naval Grid.)

Ship System 2.0

The Ship System has been completely overhauled. Although there will many elements players will recognize, most of it has changed one way or another. The biggest change here is the move to the Naval Grid, with ships having a physical location on the grid itself to navigate on.

The grid represents the area of the Trackless Sea surrounding Arelith, with Arelith in its center grid square. Arelith's square ("Origin," at 0,0) is considered "safe-waters," and within here you can travel to all Arelith-specific ports as before and still encounter some events like NPC vessels and Locations. However, any Player vs Player ship interaction is disabled within this center-tile.

Outside of the Origin square, we have the wider Trackless Sea: here Ships can now navigate a large grid with fixed landmarks and encounter random events based on the region of the map the ship is currently located at.

The CR of these events will increase with further distance from Arelith at the center. Sailing deep waters is now consistently dangerous, but can also be rewarding as some encounters will only be found so far from friendly coasts.

Player vs Player Ship Combat

The Trackless Sea is open for Player vs Player ship combat, but any direct interaction between ships can only be done if their locations are close enough to each other.

Ships are only valid targets to another ship if they fail a Hide check, and are physically close to one another on the grid. Furthermore, hostile actions such as Grappling and Ship Weaponry are only allowed if a target ship is within 1-tile distance (non-diagonal) of one's current location.

If a ship is diagonal from another ship's location, it may be spotted and one can scout its direction to try and pursue it but it can't be engaged by any hostile means until pursued and directly adjacent again.

Traversing The Naval Grid

When sailing outside of Arelith on the Trackless Sea you must choose a Cardinal Direction to move your ship towards. This will move your position between tiles on the map and the duration it takes to travel 1 tile in distance depends on a number of factors:

* A straight Cardinal Direction (North, South, East and West) will have a shorter duration than moving Diagonally (South-West, North-East etc).

* Ship's base Speed skill

* Weather

* Upgrades

* Ship Health

When reaching a new Tile on the map the ship will continue to travel along its given direction automatically and you have to order it to stop in that tile if you wish to stay there. As explaiend above some tiles offers unique landmarks

and events so staying there is always a valid option. The Ship's Navigator lets you plot a Direction.

The In-Game Naval Grid Screen

Spyglass / Vicinity

Another new feature is the Spyglass option. This option lists everything your ship has spotted and found in the surrounding area. It can be a Landmark, Random Event or another Player Ship.

Landmarks are fixed and always spotted when in the same tile and can be docked at (ex.: Red Dragon Island).

Random Events are just that, random, and are based on Tile and Distance from the center tile of Arelith.

Player ship spotting mechanic takes a few things into consideration such as:

* Ship's base Hide skill

* Weather

* How the ship is moving

* Ship Health

* Docked or not

The Spyglass can be accessed from the Navigator and the Navigator will also report any findings each tick.

Ship Weaponry

Some ships can now hold ship weapons. Smaller ships are unable to use weapons but larger ones can and this comes in 4 Tiers:

* Tier 1 - Light Ballista

* Tier 2 - Heavy Ballista

* Tier 3 - Mangonel

* Tier 4 - Bombard

Ships have a Max Tier strength in how weapons can be deployed on them. For instance a Ship with a Max Tier of 3 can hold a Mangonel but not a Bombard. Alternatively It could also hold 3 Light Ballistas (Tier 1) that together becomes a total of a Tier 3 or 1 Light Ballista and 1 Heavy Ballista. This offers different loadouts one can experiment with. The penalty of using weapons on a ship is losing speed. For each Tier strength a ship will lose 7% speed, so a fully maxed weapon loadout at Tier 4 would give a 4 x 7 = 28% penalty to Ship's Speed.

Weapons behaves like fixtures and you simply place them on the Deck of a Ship to make use of them. Each weapon has its own type of projectile that is required to fire them. Valid targets are spotted within a straight, non-diagonal, vicinity of the ship as already explained.

You can always grapple a ship that is within vicinity but the more Health and Speed a target ship has the more difficult it will be to grapple it. Why its always better to weaken a ship first with weapons before grappling.

Upgrades

A ship can be upgraded by spending resources and gold at a Shipwright NPC. Higher Tiers require more rare and sometimes very unique resources or items. Currently we only have two upgrades:

* Hull - Increases a Ship's Hitpoints

* Sails - Increases a Ship's Speed

Rentable ships are excluded from this for now.

Ship Destruction

A ship can be destroyed and sink if its Health goes below 0. When this happens all players on board the ship will fall into the sea much like the "Jump Overboard" feature. A destroyed ship is useless until the next server reset where it will be brought back again. However, the penalty of losing a ship will also decrease all its Upgrades by 1 Tier and destroy any deployed weapons on deck.

You can repair your ship's hull at a Shipwright NPC.

Ship Abilities

Some ships have unique abilities that can be triggered from the Navigator. If a Ship has multiple abilities the cooldown of all abilities will be the last ability activated. Only one ability can be activated at a time. (Ex.: a "Horn Blast" which provides minor buffs to the attacking crew and debuffs to the defending crew.)

Persistant Locations

Ships are now storing their location persistently by Landmark or Dock. Meaning each time a ship reach a new harbor (Not random Location Events) it will spawn there next reset. Rentable ships are excluded from this.

Weather

The weather will change depending on region of the Trackless Sea a ship is currently located at: e.g colder in the North, warmer in the South. Weather has a large impact on many features of the Ship System. For instance a thick fog will make it more difficult to spot ships and target them and tailwind will increase the speed of a ship.

Most ships now have a map placable one can use. Interacting with this map lets you view the Trackless Sea grid and the ship's current location on this grid.

Skiffs

Skiff mechanics has been changed; instead of spawning a useable skiff for each ship at a location there is now instead a useable Dock placeable that everyone can use and it will list all ships currently anchored at this dock. Skiffs will still spawn but instead in the surrounding water purely for immersion purposes. Reason for this is several but mainly because its starting to get crowded with skiff spots and they always caused bugs one way or another mainly by pathfinding issues.

Here's a list of other, smaller, features in this update:

* Ship communication - Ships on the same tile (Outside of the center origin tile) can use the Shout channel to communicate with eachother.

* Cruisers - A new type of NPC controlled ship allowing journeys between two ports. Will see an introduction later this month probably.

* Navy Intel - Has been removed completley, its not used anymore as it doesnt fit the context of the new system.

* Critical Ship Alerts will now alert players below deck or in other areas linked to a ship.

* In general the feedback of the system has been greatly improved, e.g texts and highlights and statuses.

* Prepared for Undrenzee update

* Some new Event Locations. Wish I could've do more of these but this was taking too much time already.

Full details of this update, as usual, can be found on our forums.