Patch 2.0 Open Beta

Ahoy!

• Open Beta 2.0 is live!

• The game has finally climbed out of the 2000s — into the 2010s! And in places, the 2020s. ːcharles_happyː

• This post comes with a hearty list of 200 changes

• We've unbanned everyone banned in our Steam community

• A new game is required!

• During the beta and after the full release you may have to start over again — or you may not

• No mods will work

• The game now has graphics settings — don't forget to dial in your own

• Speeding up and slowing down time on land is off by default — you can switch it back on in the new game settings

• This is not the final level of quality — the game will keep being tuned and put together

How we got here

This beta and this patch are unlike anything you've seen before. I don't know of a single game that has ever gotten an upgrade like this in a patch.

To move the game onto new technology, we first had to take it completely apart — and then build it back up. I'm serious: we started with rendering a single texture of a red square on a black screen, right where the main menu stands now.

A year of work, weeks of crunch and the sheer dedication of our alpha testers got 80% of the rebuild done. The remaining 20% we're hoping to close with your help.

Please send us any feedback, point out every seam, every rough edge, everything we missed — in the dedicated channels on Discord and Steam.

We're especially interested in:

• Any crashes

• Performance and stability on your hardware

• How the sea behaves in naval battles and in different weather

• The mood of each location: color grading, temperature and so on

What we know still needs work:

• Islands out at sea

• Storms

• Effects

• Beaches

• A number of locations and houses — especially late-game ones

• The world map

• How sailors behave on deck

Even so, patch 2.0 brings an incredible sense of novelty and fills the sails of Caribbean Legend with fresh wind.

We've put real work into stability. The game can be played all the way through, there's a huge number of improvements waiting for you, and in places the view is genuinely stunning.

https://youtu.be/35z5A66FdhY https://youtu.be/h0OcIEWbeUw

The Great Caribbean Amnesty

We've unbanned everyone banned in our Steam community. These have been three and a half nervous years for everyone who cares about this series of games.

Patch 2.0 is a sunrise, a new day. Let's take the first step into it together and leave the old grudges behind?

How to get into the beta

What's new

Renderer, Lighting and Materials

1. Moved the game to a modern Vulkan-based renderer, the foundation of the revamped graphics: new lighting, realistic materials and a new sea.
2. Completely reworked lighting for locations, the sea and ships. Light and shadow better define buildings, coastlines and ship details.
3. Added global illumination and cascaded shadows. Objects in shadow receive ambient light, while shadows remain detailed both nearby and in the distance.
4. Added PBR support. Objects now have realistic materials with roughness and metallic surface settings.
5. Reworked shadows in locations, on the world map and on ships; added shadow quality and ambient occlusion settings to suit your computer.
6. Added SSAO: subtle shading in corners and crevices gives the environment greater depth and realism.
7. Added Bloom, a post-processing effect that creates a soft glow around bright areas, making lighting more realistic and pleasing to the eye.
8. Added GLSL shader support. Expect richer visuals, more cinematic effects, and graphics cards finally understanding why you bought them.

Sea, Sky and Weather

9. Completely reworked the sea and ship physics. Wave height depends on wind strength, and water interacts correctly with ship hulls. The sea has never looked so beautiful.
10. Removed sea shimmer caused by draw distance limits.
11. Reworked the sky with dynamic, textured, multilayered clouds that respond to the direction of the light source.
12. Adjusted the movement of the sun and moon and smooth lighting transitions throughout the day and seasons. Dawn, noon and sunset gradually transform familiar places.
13. Reworked weather at sea and storms. Calm seas and storms now have distinct moods, from lighting to the appearance of sky and water.
14. Added dynamic weather: rain starts gradually as clouds move and lighting changes. Rain probability depends on the season.
15. Added realistic lightning flashes that change location lighting.
16. Updated rain, wind and thunder sounds. Bad weather has never been so enchanting!
17. Ship firing arcs now follow the sea surface and its waves instead of floating in the air. They no longer show through other ships, either.

Effects and Display Settings

18. Added FXAA and SSAA anti-aliasing. Every system has a way to get the picture just right.
19. Reworked post-processing and added brightness, contrast and gamma settings. Adjust the image to your monitor and taste: brighter, darker or with more contrast.
20. Added puddles with dedicated materials and reflections, plus raindrops falling from roofs. You can see reflections in water on the ground and drops falling beside buildings.
21. Updated blood marks on surfaces and damage marks on ships. Battles now leave visible traces on the environment and hulls.
22. Reworked spyglass lens effects. They now realistically distort the image and produce chromatic aberration, like actual 17th-century spyglasses.
23. Integrated the Effekseer effects system, bringing effect creation and integration up to modern standards. Some effects have already been updated: you'll like the new fire and smoke.

Locations and Animations

24. Updated the interiors of almost every building type: taverns, stores, shipyards, banks, port authorities, homes, churches and much more.
25. Created around 1000 new environmental objects, including interior details, lights, furniture and vegetation.
26. Completely rebuilt several towns: Basse-Terre, Saint-Pierre, Bridgetown, Capsterville, St. John's and Philipsburg.
27. Reworked jungle locations and updated all vegetation. The Caribbean has a whole new palette!
28. Updated lighting on grass and ship ropes. Grass now responds to local light sources: grass beside a lantern, for example, receives its light.
29. Improved sailors' deck animations. In combat, sailors take their places at the guns and prepare to fire; outside combat, they have several new activities.
30. Added shader animations for palms, vegetation and fabrics.
31. Implemented model levels of detail. We can finally build truly enormous locations packed with objects without slowing the game down.
32. Added skinning support for four bones per vertex, enabling modern character animation. A whole sea of possibilities!
33. Bushes and small plants react to characters moving through them.
34. Implemented modular objects (prefabs), allowing locations to be filled quickly with lush vegetation and hundreds of small details that bring the environment to life.
35. Added texture layers for terrain painting, replacing outdated techniques with sharper, less demanding surfaces.

Performance

36. Added texture caching to prevent repeated loading of the same resources, significantly improving performance.
37. Optimized sea geometry and textures and reduced island texture memory usage. The game now runs more reliably and looks much better.
38. Optimized character updates. Townspeople no longer check thousands of parameters every frame.
39. Reduced the game's size by removing unused textures. It now takes up 30 GB less disk space.
40. Added proper fullscreen mode without the crashes. You can now minimize the game at any time.
41. Added full graphics settings accessible from the in-game menu. Adjust your configuration without restarting.

Engine, Scripts and Localization

42. Added support for DDS textures and compression modes. We can finally move away from outdated image formats and compression that degrades quality.
43. Added formatted text support, including inline icons and on-the-fly color and font changes.

Trade and Colony Reputation

44. Added colony trade capacity. Maximum transaction size depends on ships, skills, the colony's size and wealth, and your reputation.
45. Added colony reputation, reflecting how townspeople and local businesses feel about you.
46. Quests, deposits, businesses and profitable trade improve your reputation. Harming the colony or its internal market lowers it.
47. Used market capacity does not recover immediately, encouraging you to change trade routes.
48. Completely reworked the distribution of imports and exports between colonies.
49. Gave settlements on the same island different trade specializations. Saint-Pierre and Le François used to trade identically; now they differ.
50. The archipelago's economy changes with every new game, making exploration rewarding again.
51. Replaced the old stolen-goods system with full tracking of where goods came from.
52. Stolen goods grant almost no trading experience, unless you are a Rogue.
53. Added tracking of quantities purchased and average purchase prices.
54. Tied trading experience to profit from reselling purchased goods.
55. Revised cargo weights and ship hold capacities. Removed bundled units.

Businesses

56. Added businesses. Buy land and establish your own enterprise in certain colonies. Look for construction sites.

• Your business limit depends on skills and perks. Accountants manage them best.

• Businesses are fully integrated into the world: they buy raw materials from the colony store, pay workers, experience seasonal effects and depend on demand.

• Successful businesses can be upgraded and eventually start producing premium goods on the side.

• You can help a struggling business by delivering raw materials yourself.

• Every business has its own warehouse. Shipyard warehouses have been removed.

• The more successful a business, the better the prices it gets for raw materials at the local store.

Budget, Taxes and Banks

57. Added a unified monthly budget summarizing regular income and expenses. Choose how to pay and face the consequences.

• Income includes deposit interest, business profits and quest sources.

• Expenses include crew, officers, companion captains, ship mooring and taxes.

• Taxes apply to trading profits and legal income. Gifts from the Forest Devil stay out of the state's grasp.

• Unpaid debts carry over to the next month. Sooner or later, a captain in debt will be swinging from a yardarm.

• With good management, business income can cover the full upkeep of a ship of the line.

58. Converted deposit and loan rates to annual interest.
59. Removed the system for sharing loot with the crew.

Miscellaneous

60. Reworked ship prices. Selling stolen ships is now more profitable.
61. Revised ship upgrade costs. Upgrades now require fewer materials.
62. Reworked the Season of Shadows effect: it now affects the price of goods produced by businesses instead of stolen goods' sale prices.
63. The Pirate Code effect has also changed.

Weaponsmiths and Smugglers

64. Expanded weaponsmiths' stock. As you progress, you can buy a decent blade instead of only finding one.
65. Added the option to buy small quantities of strategic goods from smugglers.
66. Reworked smuggler trade rules. Your relationship with them determines the maximum size and number of ships allowed in your squadron.

Colony Information

67. Added a colony screen to the main game menu. The stronger your ties to a colony, the higher it appears in the list.
68. Each visited colony receives a special status, and the first visit date is recorded for whenever nostalgia strikes.
69. Added each colony's history and a few interesting facts. Rediscover familiar places!
70. Colony reputation, fort strength, economic size and potential plunder help you make decisions. No more guessing which colony is most profitable to raid or easiest to strip of its fort: it's all in the description.

Character Creation

71. Completely redesigned the new game screen.
72. Added two backgrounds: Commander and Rogue.
73. Reworked all background perks and added new ones. Each background now has 2 personal perks and 1 naval perk.
74. Added character traits: innate characteristics.
75. Added hobbies, reflecting what characters did in their youth.
76. Enemies, allies and officers can have all of these too.
77. Added a choice of starting honor, opening up new opportunities as early as the prologue.
78. Added a choice of baggage: the items your character brings to the Caribbean. There is plenty of useful gear, so choose wisely.

Roleplaying Opportunities

79. Added over 2000 lines of [noparse][roleplaying][/noparse] dialogue, taking backgrounds, skills, perks, honor levels and past decisions into account.
80. Roleplaying options offer rewards, new information and alternative dialogue.
81. These opportunities appear in story quests, generated quests and even everyday activities, such as recruiting crew at night as a scoundrel.

Officers

82. Revised officer loyalty. Brothels and churches now offer ways to improve the loyalty of scoundrels and virtuous officers.
83. The unique officers from The Dutch Gambit now receive full backgrounds like the protagonist's, rather than just perks, when their personal quests are completed.

Dialogue and Quests

84. Added tutorial dialogue to every important town character. Ask anyone from a shopkeeper to the commandant how things work in the Caribbean for comprehensive information about gameplay.
85. Reorganized shopkeeper and moneylender dialogue, removing unnecessary steps and putting responses in the right order.
86. Completely reworked dialogue in The Black Mark. As you progress and Tommy Irons gradually regains his memory, you can learn about his past.
87. Expanded the ending of The Slave Trader. With high enough skills, you can now achieve a measure of justice.

Difficulty Levels

88. Completely rebuilt the difficulty system. There are now four levels.
89. Character progression speed is now a separate setting, independent of difficulty.
90. Each difficulty now changes enemy behavior, reaction times and attack speeds, not just numbers in formulas.
91. Combat becomes easier or harder both on land and at sea.
92. Added a separate brutal difficulty that locks new game settings to specific values. Completing it awards a special achievement and the right to argue about balance.

New Game Settings

93. Added advanced new game settings. Caribbean Legend has never offered so much freedom to customize its world.

• Economic difficulty lets you put the focus on earning money or pirate adventures.

• Progression speed lets you enjoy the early game longer or reach the late game sooner.

• Land time controls let you experience the immersion intended by the developers and set yourself a challenge.

• The officer skill bonus setting adjusts your character's role in running the ship.

94. Removed the outdated tactical/dynamic sea mode switch. It had barely done anything for the past year anyway.
95. Removed the loot-sharing setting along with the system itself.
96. Removed the separate switch for saving during naval combat.
97. Removed the old hardcore mode setting. Autosaves had made it redundant.

Attributes and Character Progression

98. Reduced the number of skills from fourteen to twelve.

• Merged Luck and Stealth into a single skill, Streetwise.

• Merged Accuracy and Cannons into a single skill, Cannons.

99. Removed Success from the PIRATES attributes.
100. Recalculated how attributes affect skills and revised starting skill values. Non-combat backgrounds now have an easier start.
101. Removed the long-term health condition mechanic and everything that affected it.
102. Recalculated experience thresholds and perk requirements.
103. Updated health, energy and critical hit formulas following the attribute changes. Energy is slightly higher, health slightly lower, and the Rogue now has the highest critical chance instead of the Sharpshooter.
104. Redesigned the equipment screen and added other active character effects, such as attack speed, movement speed and poison immunity.

Perks

105. Reworked the Mastery perk tree. As players have long requested, each perk can now be developed independently.
106. Revised some personal perk costs. The Soldier and Sharpshooter trees are slightly cheaper.
107. Expanded the Gunner tree with 2 entirely new perks. Retaining part of a broadside's reload progress when switching ammunition and selecting the firing order are now separate perks. Other costs have been revised.
108. Many personal perks now grant stagger resistance, adding variety to combat and builds.
109. Significantly reworked the Adventurer perk tree:

• Light Footed now grants a carry weight bonus.

• Tailored now grants health and energy bonuses from suitable equipment.

• Reworked Curiosity. It now increases the goods and money available to merchants and moneylenders.

• Center of Attention now affects businesses instead of squadron power.

• Alchemy now gives a chance to retain some ingredients when crafting.

• Master now has a damage cap. Its description explicitly lists the toolkits it counts.

110. Lone Wolf in the Navigator tree now grants a flat power bonus alongside its percentage bonus, making it more useful early on.
111. Reworked Saber Whirlwind and Palace Guard. Their bonuses now account for weapon type and curvature separately, allowing a wider range of blades.
112. Buffed Hole Punch and Meat Grinder: damage bonuses for straight and short weapons increased from 10% to 15%.
113. Reworked Exhaustion: attacks now drain the enemy's combat energy.

Weapons and Armor

114. Blade length and curvature descriptors now affect damage from different attack types.
115. Rebalanced the relationship between blade weight and damage. Heavy blades no longer outclass lighter equivalents so heavily.
116. Rebalanced damage for every blade, making damage progression more pronounced.
117. Added the Tempered armor descriptor, granting extra protection. You've asked for this a lot. Milanese armor once again offers the highest protection in the game.

118. Added the Padded armor descriptor. It increases stagger resistance, helping you recover faster and combining well with perks that provide the same effect.

119. Added a clear tooltip breaking down the factors affecting damage for each blade attack type. You'll always know which blade suits you best.

Land Combat

120. Revised all combat animation speeds, giving you more time to react and make decisions.

• Basic swings and thrusts are slower.

• Piercing attacks are faster.

• Advanced attacks are slower.

121. Rebalanced attack speed modifiers.
122. Increased reload speed for all firearms. You can now shoot much more often.

Health and Healing

123. Characters can no longer heal beyond their maximum health.
124. Reduced healing potions carried by ordinary enemies and some bosses. No more twenty-minute jungle duels.
125. Increased the weight of all healing potions and reduced the weight of alcohol.
126. All healing potions now restore health over the same duration. Healing speed has increased significantly.
127. Added temporary bonuses from romantic encounters. They last a week, depend on the partner and become much stronger with the lover trait. Cupid's Balm doubles their duration.

Alchemy

128. Completely reworked alchemy with a clear, convenient crafting screen.
129. Tools now stay with you permanently after first entering your inventory.
130. Reworked almost every recipe, especially healing potions. Recipes now have clear dependencies and require different ingredients.
131. Removed the unused vial item.

Ships and Naval Combat

132. Revised crew sizes for all ships to make them more realistic.
133. Reworked ship maneuverability and its dependence on crew size and experience. The ship's own characteristics now matter more than who is sailing it.
134. Rebalanced class 1 and 2 hulls. Battles between large, heavily armed ships now last as long as they should.
135. Reworked naval critical hit formulas and damage, tying them to the Cannons skill. Replaced the random hull critical damage multiplier with a fixed one.
136. Changed the formula that reduces crew losses from grapeshot, reducing its impact.

World Map and Naval Encounters

137. Made world map squadrons more detailed and realistic:

• Encountered ships now show ordinary hull and sail wear and crew shortages. The longer a squadron has been at sea, the greater the wear.

• Added incidents: squadrons may have suffered from combat, storms, disease or boarding.

• Incident probability depends on the season and squadron type.

138. Removed goods trading with ships at sea.

Quests

139. Significantly reworked the opening questline on Martinique:

• Time is no longer frozen.

• Quests can no longer fail due to time limits and remain available until you leave the island.

• Added an alternative route through a loan from Benoit, available at any time. Even the fiercest storm can no longer leave you unable to depart.

• Reworked the search for someone who knows about Michel. You now learn the truth by questioning 3 people.

• People in Le François can now tell you where the merchant's assistant was last seen.

140. Significantly reworked Matter of Honour.

• Added more duelist types and equipment options.

• Equipment no longer disappears from duelists.

• Raised the limit to 40 duels per playthrough.

• Opponents grow stronger with each duel you win.

141. Jürgen's blades can now be obtained regardless of player rank. They have improved stats and the Superior descriptor.
142. Updated Adeline's starting supplies.
143. Reduced the number of pirates in the Spanish engineer's task to two.

Quest Tracking and Journal

144. Added quest tracking. Select any quest in the journal to track it. Newly received quests are tracked automatically.
145. Each quest stage now has a short hint explaining where to go and what to do. No more hunting through guides after a long break.
146. Rewrote quest journals for greater consistency, highlighting important names, terms and places. The beta covers freeplay quests and story quests up to and including The Dutch Gambit.
147. Added missing or disabled success and failure journal entries to many quests.
148. Moved the atlas to a separate window opened from the journal.
149. Added over 1000 quest journal entries. Many quests are now divided into smaller, more logical stages.

Gambling

150. Increased opponents' gambling funds. Replaced manual bet entry with three options.
151. Gambling now shows how much money you have won or lost.

Dialogue and Localization

152. Moved all dialogue to a new system that loads localized text separately from game logic, reducing bugs and inconsistencies.

Ships

153. Added hints about where ships can be upgraded at shipyards.
154. Reworked the ship upkeep tooltip, separating crew and officer wages.
155. Made the naval aiming reticle and reload indicator easier to see.
156. Updated relative bearing indicator colors.
157. Added world map icons for special squadrons. Identifying them is tied to the Keen Eye perk.
158. Added separate quest squadron icons to accessibility settings, for anyone who struggles to distinguish colored sails.
159. Updated naval encounter descriptions with nation icons and colored text for quick reading.
160. Added repair time display at shipyards.
161. Added tooltips for spyglasses and their magnification.

Characters and Perks

162. Integrated character inspection with the main perk interface. Tavern officers now show the familiar perk window instead of an awkward list.
163. Updated personal and naval perk tabs to make them more attractive and convenient.
164. Moved detailed skill progress into tooltips.
165. Updated perk, skill, item and attribute descriptions with highlighted terms for entities and actions.

Inventory and Trading

166. Simplified inventory and trading tables.
167. Added equipped-item markers.
168. Removed the outdated display of goods in bundles.
169. Removed unnecessary headings from trade interfaces.
170. Added a Reset button to the chest window. One click transfers inventory items of types already present in the chest.
171. Other people's chests now show Steal instead of Open, making their ownership clear.

Controls and Notifications

172. Added new buttons, arrows and tabs throughout the interface. Navigation is clearer and controls behave more predictably.
173. Added T as the rest hotkey.
174. Added a restart warning when changing settings that require one.
175. Reworked notifications into a smooth, correctly updating queue of 5 entries. Notifications no longer get lost or confuse the player.
176. Added a quicksave count setting. Keep the entire history or set a limit so older saves are deleted automatically.

Audio and Presentation

177. Changed the game's sound system, removing outdated technology.
178. Updated the soundtrack for a more consistent, classical feel.
179. Added three new tracks.
180. Normalized many audio tracks, balancing their volume and removing noise. The cries of “Goods for every taste!” will no longer make your ears bleed.
181. Updated the game logos.

General

182. Fixed a freeze after shipyard repairs when wages became due.
183. Fixed a rare bug preventing bank deposits from closing.
184. Fixed a progression block caused by a missing sea story.
185. The game no longer crashes when masts break or when entering aiming mode after a mast breaks.
186. Controls no longer get stuck after switching windows.
187. Fixed rare cases of captains becoming immortal after their crew surrendered during boarding.
188. Fixed ship confiscation in The Dutch Gambit. The ship no longer disappears.
189. Fixed transitions and completion of alternative branches in generated quests.
190. The save screen filter no longer resets.
191. The selected inventory item no longer loses its selection.

Quests

192. Fugitives:

• Fixed random encounters remaining disabled after missing the deadline, leaving the jungle completely empty.

• Fixed a dead-end branch after defeating the enemies that prevented quest completion.

193. Port authority freight deliveries: fixed the wrong destination being selected on islands with several towns, preventing quest completion.
194. “Deliver [noparse][passenger][/noparse] to…”: fixed deliveries being marked late despite the passenger reaching the correct town on time, causing an incorrect quest outcome.
195. Ship Replacement: fixed the failure deadline triggering after the recovered ship had been shown to the client, causing an incorrect quest outcome.
196. Matter of Honour:

• Fixed ambushes reappearing and combat ending incorrectly.

• Fixed earlier duels with seconds affecting later duels and preventing another quest from being accepted.

197. The Shipwrecked: fixed survivor delivery triggering again on returning to town, duplicating attributes and causing later problems.
198. The Kidnapper: fixed the ship continuing to pursue you after reporting to the commandant. You will no longer be attacked for sins you never committed.
199. Hot Raid: fixed combat events repeating after quest completion or failure, doubling rewards or trouble.
200. A Reason to Hurry: fixed boarders remaining disabled after a patrol encounter.

Two favours to ask

• Leave a review on Steam. Especially if you've been meaning to for ages and kept putting it off. Reviews directly affect who Steam shows the game to, so 30–40 fresh ːsteamthumbsupː right now would do more for 2.0 than any ad campaign. If you like the game and where it's heading — this is the moment to say so.

• Play the beta and send us reports in the dedicated channels on Discord and Steam. We really need your fresh eyes — ours went blurry a long time ago.

Good luck, corsairs. This day is yours. What we do — we do for you.