Combat
informed gambling: the odds are on screen before you ever cast off
Combat is bounty-hunting, not a war, and it isn't its own launcher any more — it's the hunt focus on a voyage leg (see Voyages). Pick an enemy tier, sail a leg toward a real destination, and that leg resolves into a win or a loss when it completes. There's no positioning, no button-mashing, and no way to peek at the result early: just a captain, a target, and a chance worth knowing before you take it.
The tiers — bounty hunters and merchant raiders alike
Tougher targets sit in tougher waters, so the ship you're sailing gates which tiers you can even pick a fight with — there's no separate combat level to grind first:
| Tier | Waters | Loot |
|---|---|---|
| Rowboat Rats | The Shallows — any ship, Shallop and up | gold, sprats |
| Merchant Sloop | The Shallows — any ship, Shallop and up | gold, plunder cargo — the same waters as Rowboat Rats, raidable from your very first voyage |
| Merchant Convoy | Tier-2 waters — sloop and up | gold, trade goods, T1 salvage — the plunder from raiding merchant shipping |
| Corsair Brigs | Tier-3 waters — brigantine and up | gold, gear drops, T2 salvage |
| Merchant Brig | Tier-3 waters — brigantine and up | gold, plunder cargo — a richer merchant target for the same ship that can already take Corsair Brigs |
| Ghost Ships | All waters, top-tier ship | rare materials, cosmetic drops |
A Shallop — the ship every captain starts with — can already raid a Merchant Sloop. That's not a typo: the merchant lanes sit in the same waters as Rowboat Rats, on purpose, so plunder is a session-one fight, not a Tier-2 unlock.
Beyond these sits The Leviathan, a boss tier saved for post-launch group content — not something a lone captain is meant to solo, and not one of the tiers above.
How the odds work
Your power is built from exactly the things you'd expect: how ready your ship's tier is for that water, your equipped weapon, and your Gunner officer's bonus. The target has its own power. Before you commit a single ration, the game shows you both numbers and your exact win chance — power vs. target power, never hidden math you have to reverse-engineer from patch notes.
That includes your very first hunt-focus leg. A brand-new captain with no gear yet still has real, sailable odds against Rowboat Rats — combat is designed so there's no dead entry point where the only honest advice is "don't fight yet." If the number on screen looks bad, the answer is simple: don't sail, come back with a better ship tier or gear, and take the fight when the odds favor you.
Win or lose is always shown as a probability before you leave port. That's the whole design promise: informed gambling, not a mystery box.
Winning and losing
A win pays out the tier's full loot table — gold, and depending on the tier, trade goods, salvage, gear drops, or rare materials. A loss means the leg was for nothing: no loot, some hull damage on top of the leg's ordinary travel wear, and the rest of your voyage plan carries on regardless — one lost fight never force-stops the whole trip.
- You keep every leg's rations spent, gear equipped, and officers hired — a loss changes nothing about your roster.
- You never lose gold on a loss.
- You never lose cargo or items on a loss.
- There's no permadeath and no gear loss, ever — the worst a bad fight costs you is a repair bill.
Repairs
Hull damage only comes from choosing to fight — nothing decays while you're away, and a bad leg is the only way to dent your ship. Repairing is a timed job at any port's Shipyard: queue it, pay the bill up front (it scales with how much damage you took and your ship's tier — bigger ships cost more per point of damage to patch, but they also carry far more hull to begin with), and it's done a while later, same as any other job. There's no waiting for a slot and no limit on how often you can repair.
See Voyages for how a hunt-focus leg fits into a wider plan, and Officers for what a Gunner actually does to your odds.