We’re getting ready to push 1.3 to testbed and I wanted to give a high level overview of the new features that it will offer. Watch for more devlogs in the coming days that go into these features in more depth.

One of the major changes in 1.3 is a revamp to the PvP reward structure. Our goal is to make it so that PvP players can focus on PvP combat and earn enough to replace their losses. The most visible part of this change is the Exchange shops, which will let you do all sorts of new (and profitable) things with the Marks of Victory. Isildur will provide the details on this with his devlog coming on Friday. If you play PvP, you’ll definitely want to keep an eye out for it!

Another new feature for 1.3 is the Dueling system. While in port, a player can challenge any other player to a swashbuckling or ship duel. If the target accepts both players are teleported to a combat space to fight their duel. There are no consequences to this fight other than whatever ammo or consumable you may use along the way. This is an exciting feature in its own right, made even more exciting by the fact that this is just the first step toward the full-blown Skirmish System.

In 1.3 we are adding repeatable group-focused missions to all the contestable ports. These missions are designed specifically for groups, and will require more coordination and tactics. You can read all about it in Gavin Irby’s devlog on Monday. The other Conquest system upgrade in 1.3 is a revamp of how ships are spawned on the Open Sea. DrewC has a devlog coming out on Wednesday with the details about how ports will now be much more likely to have the appropriate NPCs to kill for both defenders and attackers.

The UI Strike Team has been busy this month too. They spent 1.3 focusing on the mission journal, and replacing the turn-in missions. The mission list itself has seen a lot of attention, including sortable columns and other upgrades. We also replaced the horrible turn-in mission UI with nice easy-to-use exchange shops. These have been rolled out in all areas of the game, and they’re a big improvement. Fraxl will have the details in her UI Strike Team devlog which comes out on Tuesday, and AnnaM has a devlog describing the new exchange UI coming out on Wednesday.

To help with the deja vu that playing some avatar combat missions can cause, we have just started adding new environments to play in, and the first of these are some new jungles to fight in. These new environments should start showing up from the very early missions and are scattered throughout the level progression. This is just the beginning: now that we have Pointe-a-Pitre done, we’re going to focus a lot more on new avatar, ship, and interior rooms spread throughout the world.

Speaking of Pointe-a-Pitre, you may remember a few weeks ago when Pointe-a-Pitre slipped out of the 1.2 patch. Well it’s taken a little more time than we thought, but the new French Capital is now ready to go and will go live with 1.3.

All of these changes will go live on the testbed server on Tuesday April 8th. We will keep testbed character copies up and running until Tuesday morning, so if you want to check out the changes while they’re still on testbed, copy your character from the live servers to testbed, and then update your testbed install. Give it a try and let us know how you like the changes!

Once we get 1.3 out, we’ll start talking about 1.4, which will include some big updates for pirates, a revamp of the contention system which I think will make a LOT of you very happy, and as always, more UI love from the UI Strike Team.

Joe Ludwig
Producer, Pirates of the Burning Sea