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Update notes via Steam News

Sea Forts, Trade Routes, Wanted Levels and new Weapons & Upgrades!


Greetings Captain!

We have just released a Major Update: The Perilous Bounty.

This packs in a bunch of exciting additions to Abandon Ship, and the post below explains these in greater detail.

We have also released a trailer showing the new features, which you can view here:

YouTube™ Video: Abandon Ship: Major Update 02: The Perilous Bounty

Views: 6,381

'The Perilous Bounty' update has been released for Abandon Ship, featuring sea forts, wanted levels, trade routes, new weapons and lots more!

Before we look at the latest changes, some important house-keeping: Because we’ve had to change the world to accommodate these new systems, your saves from previous versions will not work with this latest update.

If you are mid-playthrough on the previous version and wish to continue it, then you may switch over to this older version of the game via the Beta Branches system:

  1. Go to your Steam Library

  2. Right-click on Abandon Ship and select "Properties"

  3. Go to the tab marked "Betas"

  4. In the drop-down box, select the one called "0.5.8433 – Treasure from the Deep Version"

  5. Wait for the game to finish updating, you should see the branch name listed after the game name.

If you’re up-to-date on the Beta Branch (i.e you already have the items listed below) then your saves will be unaffected.

Here are the major new features in the update:

Sea Forts

Sea Forts are a new type of enemy you can battle. As giant stone structures, they cannot be sunk, so you’ll have to defeat them in other ways.

They have an outer-ring section which can be damaged and repaired just like a ship. This can house up to 4 mortars and 2 Sick Bays.

The inner-ring section is a raised stone platform that houses a new weapon – the Mega-Mortar.

The Mega-Mortar is auto-fired and auto-reloaded from mechanisms within the Sea Fort. It cannot be mounted on a ship, as the recoil would tear the vessel in half! This weapon will continually fire at you, and as well as the devastating damage it causes, will also momentarily halt the movement of your ship.

You can disable the Mega-Mortar by damaging all 4 inner-sections, which cannot be repaired. Once the Mega-Mortar is disabled, the Sea Fort will surrender (although it should be noted that Cult-owned Sea Forts will never surrender).

Of course, you could always charge in, board the Sea Fort and slaughter the crew to win as well, but the Mega-Mortar will make it tough-going for you!

Sea Forts provide a slightly different challenge for Captains to overcome. Victory provides a high reward, but you will take damage trying to defeat one – so only attempt hostilities if you’re in a strong position. In our playtesting thus far, we’ve found that specialised builds are more effective, so make sure you’re able to either get in super-fast and finish the battle quickly, or are set up for anti-crew warfare, or are extremely powerful at long-range and can disable the Mega-Mortar before it causes too much damage (the new Catapult weapon is handy for this).

Sea Forts are immune to ‘Brace’ tests and cannot be rammed, so if your strategy is heavily reliant on those tactics, you’ll need to change things up. Also, the imposing structures rise above the highest waves, so Tidal Waves have no effect on them.


-- Attacking a Cult Sea Fort --

In exploration mode, the Sea Fort will open fire on you if it’s hostile. While they won’t sink you, they will whittle your hull health down. Also, if you engage in battle within range of a Sea Fort, an off-screen bombardment may come into play. This could be a help or hindrance depending on the combatants. For example, if you battle a Cult vessel in range of a neutral Sea Fort, the Cult ship will be bombarded. If you fight a pirate in range of a Cult Sea Fort, you’ll both be bombarded.

Wanted Levels

If you engage in lots of piratical acts (or attack neutral Sea Forts) then the new Wanted Level will rise. As it passes certain milestones, negative-effects will come into play. Previously neutral Sea Forts will open fire as you sail into their vicinity, and Bounty Hunters will be dispatched to bring you to justice. Depending on your notoriety, they may offer to collect the Bounty in money, or prefer to shoot first and ask questions later!


-- At Wanted Level 1 and above, neutral Sea Forts will open fire if you sail too close --

You can reduce your Wanted Level by doing good deeds (either in events or liberating Cult-owned Sea Forts), or heading to the Magistrate in Port to pay your fine.

Side note: In order to fit in this new functionality, the old Magistrate menu has been changed to the “Explorer’s Guild”, just in case you’re looking to file your charts and use your Captain’s Log Saves.

Trade Routes

Trade Routes snake out from ports, and little trading vessels sail along them to their destination. You can raid these by sitting on the dotted line and pressing the “Raid” button.

Doing so will increment your Gold, but will also raise your Wanted Level.

Trade Routes can be raided by Pirates – in which case they’ll appear yellow, or completely blocked by Cult vessels (where the dotted line will appear red). If you displace these ships from the Trade Route, your Wanted Level will decrease.

The dotted lines of a Trade Route are also a handy navigational point – you know one direction will always end in a port!

Floating Outposts

If you reach a high enough Wanted Level, Ports will close down and not allow you access. If you reach this position and need to get those pesky Bounty Hunters off your back, then find a Floating Outpost.


-- Racing to a Floating Outpost with a Bounty Hunter hot on our heels! --

These neutral places act like mini-ports and are open to even the worst pirates. They don’t have the full range of options you’d find in port, but you’ll be able to boost crew morale, purchase supplies, patch up the worst of your hull damage and most importantly, pay off your wanted fines.

New weapons and upgrades

This update also includes 5 new weapons, and two new combat-upgrades.

We posted information on the Lightning Gun, Gargoyles, Catapult, Web Gun, Anti-Boarding Spikes, Timed Bomb and Berserk Dart Gun here, if you liked to read about how they work:

[

Abandon Ship AnnouncementFri, July 13, 2018

Coming Soon!

Hello fellow-Captains! We put updates on our progress in the Community Forums, but we wanted to post up some details of the new weapons and upgrades that are coming as part of the...

](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/551860/view/5278738040561044142)

Passage of Time

All maps will now repopulate their events over the passage of time, so you’ll no longer revisit previously explored places to find them empty.

Repopulation is handled through transitioning between exploration maps, or by waiting. You can wait by pressing the new button on the right-hand side of the screen – but be careful, waiting can result in being ambushed.

Kraken

The Kraken has received some love and attention. When it chases you throughout the game, it’ll now perform additional attacks on top of the standard hull-grab – so be prepared to deal with other things while you’re cutting those tentacles.


-- Several other attacks can disrupt your attempts to fight off the Kraken --

The Kraken will now ‘Aggro’ in the Boss Battle – once they reach a certain health they’ll play an aggro anim and from then on, attack more aggressively.

We've also improved the effect of the Kraken chasing you in exploration mode!

Expanded Crew Sizes, New Skills

This has been a popular request, so crew size is now dependant on the ship class and on the larger ships, goes up to 8.


-- Only the biggest vessels will support a crew of 8 --

We've also given the rest of the crew unique skills to differentiate them further:

  • Captain: Leader. Provides a passive bonus to whatever action the crew on your ship are doing.

  • Navigator: Evasive Manoeuvres. When manning the wheel, reduces the accuracy of enemy fire.

  • Marine: Dodge. Reduces the damage received.

  • Sailor: Special Repairs. Provides a bonus to extinguishing fires, repairing hull cracks and pumping water.

  • Gunner: Accuracy. Increases the chance of hitting when firing cannons or mortars.

The Surgeon of course already has their 'Heal' Skill.

Autofire & Targeting

Another popular request: every single weapon in the game can now be toggled between manual fire and autofire!


-- Weapons set to Autofire will have a gold highlight that circles the Weapon Button. Right-Click the Weapon Button to toggle Autofire on and off --

Cannon Targeting has now been visualised with a system which is much clearer to read.


-- Targeting the enemy ship with cannons will now display a red highlight to show which section you are targeting --

Iron Captain Mode

In previous updates, we added Explorers Guild Saves; a way of manually saving if you found a rare Captain's Log. 'Iron Captain' Mode is something you can select when creating a new game and means there are no Captain's Logs in the game.

Key Bindings Menu

You can now re-map your keys in the new Key Bindings menu!

Miscellaneous

We've fixed a load of bugs and made lots of other improvements to the game.

We have also been re-balancing from feedback and the new features. In particular, combat should feel less attritional when targeting sections, the AI should be more aggressive, and we've made some big changes that should greatly reduce any leftover feelings of "I got a new ship and so did the AI".

For the patch notes on everything that was changed, you can check out this post here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/551860/discussions/9/1736589520009196666/

Of course, as we continue to improve the game we'll refine everything even further.

We hope you enjoy everything in the new update. It's been a lot of fun creating it.

Next, our focus will turn to unlocking a new region, including special gameplay associated with that area. The ETA for that is mid-to-late October.

We'd love to hear your feedback, so please join us in our Steam Community Forums, and thanks to those who have left us a Steam Review. If you haven't done so yet, please do!

The Abandon Ship Crew

PS - Thanks to everyone who provided feedback from the Beta Branches :)

Major Update 02: The Perilous Bounty (Version Number "Early Access 0.5.9688")

We have released a Major Update, called " The Perilous Bounty ".

This pulls together all of the new content and systems we had released in the Beta Branch since our previous Major Update.

Important!

Before we look at the latest changes, some important house-keeping: Because we’ve had to change the world to accommodate these new systems, your saves from previous versions will not work with this latest update.

If you are mid-playthrough on the previous version and wish to continue it, then you may switch over to this older version of the game via the Beta Branches system:

  1. Go to your Steam Library

  2. Right-click on Abandon Ship and select "Properties"

  3. Go to the tab marked "Betas"

  4. In the drop-down box, select the one called "0.5.8433 – Treasure from the Deep Version"

  5. Wait for the game to finish updating, you should see the branch name listed after the game name.

If you’re up-to-date on the Beta Branch (i.e you already have the items listed below) then your saves will be unaffected.

The Perilous Bounty

You can read a post that describes all of the main new features here:

[

Abandon Ship Announcement    Sep 4, 2018

Major Update Released: The Perilous Bounty 

Greetings Captain! We have just released a Major Update: The Perilous Bounty. This packs in a bunch of exciting additions to Abandon Ship, and the post below explains these in greater detail.

](https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/1691552256164152883)

This includes the following:* Sea Forts

  • Wanted Levels

  • Trade Routes

  • Floating Outposts

  • New Weapons and Upgrades

  • Expanded Crew Sizes & Unique Skills

  • Autofire and Improved Targeting Visualisation

  • Iron Captain Mode

  • Key Bindings Menu

  • Passage of Time System

  • Kraken Chase Improvements & Battle Aggro

There have been a whole host of other fixes and improvements, and the list below covers everything else:

Balancing

  • The way the AI scale in difficulty no longer has anything to do with your ship class

  • The difficulty will only increase if the player changes maps. This, combined with the above change should remove / greatly reduce the feeling of “I got a new ship, and so did the AI”.

  • Reduced hull damage from Ship Smasher, as this was overly powerful

  • Rebalanced section damage caused by weapons so it feels less attritional

  • Fires and Hull Cracks are more likely to appear when firing weapons that cause them.

  • Fires and Hull Cracks will be less dangerous on Easy Mode and more dangerous on Hard Mode.

  • Lifeboat Mode: Having zero morale and being rescued with crew no longer triggers a mutiny

Miscellaneous Kraken

  • Setup Kraken so that it was a different Damage Type from ships, meaning weapons that previously did little damage to it (Section Damager, Acid Bomb) now do correct levels of damage.

  • Kraken Deep Dive: This was too slow and ineffective, so made it faster to appear with a shorter warning for bracing, and quicker to move into a follow-up attack.

  • Kraken Slam attack now causes ship section damage.

  • Cut Kraken Tentacles now play a blood visual effect.

AI

  • The AI are now more aggressive.

  • AI crew will now man extra cannons if there is nothing else to do.

  • If wanting to repair a section, the AI will try to man something in the section rather than directly repair it (making them more efficient).

  • Fixed AI system attempting to use destroyed Haliphron as potential worker resources.

Visuals

  • Sea Arena Main Ocean Overlay is now pushed up the screen 80 units to maximise its screen coverage (rather than have a third of it behind the camera). Sea Arena will also update its position, greatly reducing the times you can see beyond it.

  • Tidal Waves crest visual effect extended all the way along the top, and extended the Wave Impact trigger boxes to cover the whole tidal wave. Previously there were situations you could get in where no splashes or wave crest would be visible.

  • Prevented waves from popping off when they reached the end of the overlay, they now lerp to nothing.

  • In Combat, the Temperate Day Clear Fog was way too bright, so added a special toned down version.

  • Fixed Haliphron torpedo dive swim vfx not being removed at the end of the swim

  • Sea Arena lightning now faces the Camera, preventing you seeing it side-on.

  • Ship models on Quest Events now have a random rotation.

  • Kraken Sea, Devourer and Ice Sheet maps no longer have ambient fish or birds

  • Hooked up Monologue Text Images 1, 2 & 3 – this is the start of our ongoing efforts to replace the black backgrounds around narrative text boxes with images like we have in the monologues.

Bugs

  • Fixed the “black screen” and “crew disappearing” bugs caused by crew being deleted when jumping to an enemy ship when the battle was exited.

  • Fixed issue with crew movement and "Bring About" where they would leap insane distances.

  • Fixed an issue where events could spawn in the same place where you interact with a port, triggering both at the same time.

  • Fixed Repair skill not applying correctly.

  • In Crew Management, we’ve fixed the crew bio not updating the name if the player renamed that crew-member.

  • Fixed characters bouncing between squares when in combat in certain situations.

  • Selling cannons individually or the whole battery in one go, now gains the player the same amount of gold.

  • Man O War now correctly displays the maximum 6 cannon pips in the shop.

  • Added a "wait for 1 frame" node before a manual save to prevent a blocker from happening in a specific situation.

  • Fixed a blocker if you loaded directly into a “New Quest” node and immediately quit out.

  • Fixed the Captain not being able to earn any Leader Skill XP.

  • Lifeboat Mode: Could be blocked by an event that required you to have supplies to continue (now event will not trigger if you don't have enough supplies).

  • Disappearing Lifeboat: If the player wins a battle but then their ship sinks and they abandon ship on the lifeboat, after the battle a new lifeboat is now spawned on the player ship

  • Fixed a specific island being able to block an exit gate.

  • Fixed stutter on older PCs when loading the shipwright menu.

  • Numerous text fixes.

Quality of Life Improvements

  • Monologues and single-choice event message boxes can be continued by pressing the main "Enter" key. Escape can now be used to close the Settings UI and "Cancel" Confirmation boxes.

  • Crew commands can now be given when hovering over their widgets in the bottom left (e.g. making it easier to heal when the surgeon is selected, or stabilise someone who has been incapacitated)

  • Shop UI – If you try to drag something in the shop, it’ll display a red X over any slot where it cannot be placed.

  • Player can collect Flotsam while being chased

  • When buying a new ship, the crew attempt to position themselves on the new ship manning the same sort of thing they were on the old ship.

Miscellaneous Polish and Improvements

  • There is a new music track in the game, which can be heard in Sub-Tropical areas. For those that own the Abandon Ship Soundtrack, you'll have already heard this.

  • Overboard crew are no longer instantly killed when you perform a “Bring About”. Their "swept away" timer pauses and crew cannot be knocked overboard. We also pause the timer during a Tidal Wave (i.e. a situation where the player was helpless to save the drowning crew).

  • Tooltips now appear when you hover over a Haliphron.

  • Reduction in crew standing in the same space to improve readability when boarding.

  • Ship Generation will not generate ships with cannons that have min/max ranges that conflict – i.e. it wouldn’t make sense to have a ship with Catapults and Double-Shot on the same side.

  • Renamed Magistrate to Explorers Guild to make way for a new Magistrate menu for paying off Wanted Levels.

  • Moved Fast Travel option out of the Tavern Shop and into the Shipwright Shop so that we have enough room for the new shops in that section of port.

  • Implemented tooltips for the Map Frame, Gates, Water Bridge and Void to narratively explain these elements.

  • GUI sound when purchasing certain types of items from the shop.

  • Added new newsletter names, removed hard bounces and unsubscribed names.

This is another step along our Early Access voyage, and we will of course continue to expand the game with fun systems and new content. Thank-you for your support and feedback, it is greatly appreciated.

If you are interested in knowing what the current focus for the dev-team is (new region!), visit this sub-forum:

Latest Dev-Team Focus

For the longer term plans, visit this sub-forum:

Early Access Roadmaps

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