Glossary
A quick A to Z of the words you will meet in the game and on this wiki. Follow the links for the full story.
Ammunition (shot) — What your cannons fire. It comes in types (round, bar, chain, grape, canister) and in sizes to match your guns. See Ammunition and Ship combat.
Armor — The protective layer on each face of a ship’s hull: port, starboard, bow and stern. It reduces the damage of each hit and soaks up damage before it reaches structure.
Auction house — The player market where goods, ships and fittings are listed for sale. Listings are regional. See The economy.
Battery — A group of cannons on one deck covering one arc (port, starboard, bow or stern). Ship pages list each battery.
Bind on use — Some better items become permanently yours the first time you use or equip them, and can no longer be traded.
Boarding — Grappling an enemy ship and fighting its crew on deck, sword in hand. Winning leaves the ship abandoned for you to loot or take.
Bow — The front of a ship. Its armor is thinner than the sides.
Broadside — The guns along one side of a ship, or the act of firing them all together. Most of a ship’s firepower is in its broadsides.
Career — Your character class: Naval Officer, Privateer or Freetrader for the nations, Buccaneer or Cutthroat for the Pirates. See Careers.
Contention — The state a port enters when unrest has been pushed high enough; a port battle is then scheduled. Players also earn contention points for a port by taking part in its unrest, and those points improve their chance of a place in the battle.
Contestable — A port that can change hands in a port battle. Capitals and starter ports are not contestable.
Craft time — How long a structure takes to finish one batch of a recipe. Jobs run on a real-world clock, and you can queue several batches at once. This replaced the old labor hours system.
Crew — Your sailors. Crew is a damage area: lose too many and you reload slower, repair slower and fight worse when boarding.
Deed — The inventory item that stands for a ship or a building. Use a ship deed in port and the ship appears at the dock. Use a structure deed to start building. See Understanding ships.
Derelict — A beaten ship left floating without a captain. Derelicts can be claimed as prizes, scavenged or captured. See Capturing ships.
Dismantling shot — Bar and chain shot, used to wreck sails and masts and slow a target. Many slowing skills require it.
Doubloons — The game’s money.
Durability — How many times a ship can be sunk before its deed is lost for good. Captured ships usually have less.
Fitting — A single piece of ship outfitting.
Grappling — Throwing hooks to lock two ships together and start a boarding. Your grappling offense is tested against the target’s grappling defense.
Hull size — Small, Medium, Large, Huge or Colossal. It decides which size-specific fittings a ship can use.
Lot — A building slot. You have 10 across all ports. Most structures use one, bigger shipyards use more, and warehouses use none.
Mast — Masts and sails share a damage area. The more damage they take, the slower you sail.
Natural resource — A raw material a port offers, such as oak, game or fertile soil. It decides which harvesting structures can be built there. See Ports.
Open sea — The world map you sail across between ports, as opposed to the close-up battle view. Ships have separate open-sea and battle speeds.
Outfitting — The fittings you equip on a ship to change its stats. It can only be changed in port. See Ship outfitting.
Point of sail — Your heading relative to the wind: upwind, close hauled, beam reach, broad reach or running. It sets your speed.
Port battle — A large scheduled fleet battle that decides who owns a contestable port. See Port battles.
Prize — A derelict claimed by a national captain and sent home for a reward.
PvP — Player versus player combat. The contested waters of the open sea are where most of it happens. See PvP.
Rake — A broadside fired into an enemy’s bow or stern, where the armor is thinnest.
Recipe — The instructions for one production step: materials and time in, goods out, at a named structure. See Recipes and the crafting guide.
Recipe book — A book you read once to learn a set of advanced recipes permanently.
Region — A group of neighbouring ports. Auction listings are normally browsed by region.
Shuttered — A structure whose upkeep has lapsed. It cannot run recipes until you pay.
Skill line — A themed chain of five career skills learned in order.
Society — A player guild.
Stern — The back of a ship, and its weakest armor.
Structure (building) — A building you own in a port, such as a logging camp or shipyard. See Structures.
Structure (ship) — A ship’s core hit points, underneath the armor. At zero the ship sinks.
Surrender — An offer by a losing captain to hand over part of their cargo in return for being let go.
Swivel gun — A small anti-personnel gun that sprays enemy decks. Counted separately from a ship’s cannons.
Timber variant — A version of a hull built from a different wood (Cedar, Oak, Mahogany, Roble) with slightly different strengths.
Unrest — Pressure that builds in a contestable port as its enemies sink its shipping and complete missions against it. Enough unrest puts the port into contention.
Upkeep — The gold, and sometimes provisions, a structure costs every two weeks.
Warehouse — Your storage building in a port. It must be built before any other structure there, and you can have only one per port.