The Black Chest

Docking

Sail to a port marker and use the dock prompt when you are alongside. In harbor: trade, shipyard, crew, and quests depend on the port.

Trade goods

Buy and sell for gold. Towns have limited warehouse stock. Free cargo space before buying bulk.

Repairs & upgrades

Shipyard for hull, rigging, and class upgrades. Story and bounties start with the harbormaster.

Officer stations

Assign sailors by dragging their cards in the Crew tab onto Command, Guns, Navigation, or Sails. The berth holds idle hands. Skills are rated 1–5; bars show progress toward each tier.

Gunning

Gunner (or your best gunnery officer) shortens broadside cooldown and reload time, tightens the red firing-arc wedge on PC, and reduces round-shot yaw error and grape spread.

Sailing

Sail station boosts speed with the wind. At sea, open the log Ship tab to patch the hull using salvaged wood from cargo — efficiency scales with sailing skill and crew morale.

Navigation

Helps the ship make better use of prevailing wind when trimming sail.

Commanding

The captain raises overall morale efficiency, keeping the company effective when provisions run thin.

On PC, hover a crew card skill bar for the same summaries.

Prices & warehouses

Each port keeps a warehouse stockpile of trade goods. When a commodity is scarce, buying costs more; when the sheds are full, sell prices sag. Watch the warehouse line in the trade UI — it hints whether the town is hungry for cargo or glutted.

World market drift

Over time a single market index nudges all buy and sell prices together — good years and lean years. You feel it in every port at once, on top of local scarcity.

AI trade & convoys

Merchant hulls shuttle goods between charted towns. Their runs slowly shuffle stock from port to port, so coasts that see heavy traffic rarely stay empty for long.

Faction treasuries

The great powers keep faction wealth that rises and falls with events (missions, spending on troops, and random drift). It backs how aggressively they patrol and project force — you mostly see the effects through diplomacy and port garrisons rather than a single number on the HUD.

Technical readouts for the market index and per-faction treasury totals live in the Navigator console (F3 after unlock), under the world chart.

The five powers

Isles belong to one of five factions by history and chart color. Ports fly that power’s ensign, merchants wear its colors, and patrol corsairs often share its allegiance. Names on the map pick up a colonial flavor that matches whoever controls the harbor — if a rival seizes the quay, the governor’s plate and prefix change with the flag.

Your standing

Every faction tracks your personal relations. Sink their merchants, smuggle through their blockades, or complete court business and the numbers move. Fall too low and you may be banned from their docks until you make amends.

State diplomacy

Separately, each pair of powers keeps a state-to-state score. When relations crash, they are treated as at war: letters of marque get hotter, patrols less forgiving, and the world map’s “Courts & crowns” matrix shows who is feuding.

Letters of marque

While docked, the governor may offer letters to sink enemy-flagged shipping or, in quieter times, “accidents” that please the court. Accept from the port quest list; progress ticks when you defeat the right hulls.

Commissions

You may swear a formal commission to one faction (when offered). That alliance shifts how their rivals treat you and which objectives pay best.