Welcome to the Sinister Woods

Hark ye! Thar be strange news afoot! Fer years a scourge o’ werewolves has plagued these waters, risin’ out o’ the sea n’ strikin’ terror into good folk. But from where do they come? A lone survivor tells the tale: an isle o’ dark woods be the lycanthropes’ haven. And there, as the autumn moon grows fat, so too does their feral power!

The time has come at last fer bold pirates to brave this shadowed place n’ seize the elemental might o’ the moon itself to break the hold o’ the sea wolves. The forest be full o’ danger, so don’t get complacent fer one moment while the moon hangs in the sky. Those beasts ain’t to be trusted, and knowin’ ’em as we do, they likely have somethin’ more up their sleeves.

Use a Wolf-skull Wayfinder to find these creatures at sea an’ follow ‘em to their den. Strange treasures await, if’n ye dare to set foot in the dark woods! But be wary: the howlin’ foretells danger.

Something Sinister Stirs

Werewolves n’ skeletons aren’t the only things stalkin’ the shadows on the oceans lookin’ to cause chaos. Some can be found inside a box that appears fairly ordinary, yet is filled with all kinds of horrors. Ye’ll know ye’ve found one of these Sinister Boxes by the strange scratchin’ sound emanatin’ from within. Look closely inside the darkened crate and ye may discover Blood-bone Monkey, Shadowblood Shades, Shadow Skelepunks, Shadowblood Tigers, Shadowblood ships, 'n more waiting to leap out at ye. Sinister Boxes are only available until 3:00 PM PDT on November 2, 2026, so act before they disappear into the night!

Full Release Notes

Auction House, Spectating, and Purser Pete Set Sail

Lots of exciting changes are hitting the oceans. Grab a comfortable spot in your cabin to read the extensive full notes. The highlights of this release are below:

• The Auction House is open! Buy and sell items with any pirate on yer ocean at fixed prices, whether or not they're online. Post buy offers, sell ships, and find it all at the Palace.
• The Purser's Tally: Purser Pete has taken to checking manifests. Now and then he'll call for a tally, so complete each tutorial before taking a station on a ship.
• Blockade spectating: Any pirate on an island under blockade can now watch from the shore, no ship needed, with a spectator chat and Shout Outs.
• Logging on: A new gilded login frame, plus account search, sorting, pins and nicknames.
• Puzzle size and the game window: The new Puzzle Size panel replaces Display size, and the window remembers its size for each account.
• And more: crisper art scaling, plenty of booty and inventory improvements, and a heap of bug fixes.

Full release notes

Dueling Debuts

Swordfighting just got a whole new edge! With the addition of Swordfight Duels, pirates can now go blade-to-blade n' watch the whole fight unfold. Both puzzle boards are visible throughout the duel, so ye can track your opponent's moves as closely as yer own.

Dueling mode is available fer challenges, tournaments, and table games. If ye'd rather watch than wield a blade, head to the Notice Board n' spectate any duel in progress, or catch up on the 30 most recently completed duels to see who's a cut above the rest.

Also in This Release

• Brigand King Collection Cases — New customizable display cases for Brigand King trinkets, now available at the Trading Post.
• Choose Your Puzzle Difficulty — A new Difficulties tab lets you fine-tune the challenge level on your puzzles.
• Ye Known World Upgrades — Clearer map nodes, colonized island indicators, and a new league point export button.
• Smarter Duty Reports — Tooltips now show maneuver tokens and cannons loaded, plus one-click copying of report data.
• Shoppe & Labor Improvements — Rack search, CSV import/export for pricing tables, bid ticket percentages, easier to locate shops, and a cleaner labor log.
• Quality-of-Life Upgrades — New commands (/hwho, /cheer, /cry), inventory export to JSON, vessel mass/volume display in shipyards, and more.
• Bug Fixes — Trade disconnect issues, trinket inscription display, Blacksmithing click loss, Patching tile misalignment, and shortcut key reliability.

Sharpen your blade ye scallywags! — the ocean's watching.

Full release notes

The Puzzle Embiggening Project

You now have the option to play at one of four additional puzzle resolutions, ranging up to twice the size of the “classic” puzzle size. We hope it will be fun being able to see them in all their finery without having to squint too much. The puzzles otherwise play the same in every way. You can configure your default resolution in your options.

Making the puzzles bigger did require us to make the game’s display more flexible. You can now resize the game environment itself, the navigation bar on the right of the game interface, and the chat space at the bottom. You’ll notice that the fonts in the game are now responsive to these changes. For example, enlarging the chat space increases the size of the chat.

After much discussion, we decided to leave the game environment itself unchanged. In part this is because given the amount of art that already exists, we would have had to compromise the quality of the game art if we uprezzed all the items in the game environment. Keeping it at the same resolution also means that you can comfortably include a much larger view of the game world by sizing up the game window.

Lots of plans in store for the seas. This was a first, yet big, step.

Full release notes