This milestone patch is mostly bug fixes as we focus our efforts on getting Power & Prestige ready for primetime. However, check out your Character UI! Nice to see yourself instead of a generic male, no? Also, if you’re a Naval Officer, please visit Sadet in the Headquarters in Port Royal – he’s got a tale to tell. :)

Please note: starting with this build, it’s no longer possible to build 1st or 2nd Rate ships of the line. Lum has written a devlog to explain why.

Release Notes for 1.25.28.0 are here.

Differences between 1.25.28.0 and 1.26.27.0 include but aren’t limited to:

Ships / Outfitting:

• Corrected the levels of fallback ships. For example, at level 9, a Naval Officer would receive a Bermuda Sloop even though that was a level 12 ship. Now it’s a level 9 ship.
• Conquistador: The high resolution version was being used in low resolution situations such as the Open Sea. Fixed. We use low resolution models on the Open Sea and for ships at a distance to improve performance.
• Corrected an exploit in Ship Storage.

Ship Combat / Skills:

• Demoralize Shot (Privateer): Corrected the tooltip. It does not, in fact, require round shot.
• Previously, it was possible to sail into a number of forts as if they weren’t really there, and possibly even fire through them. We believe we’ve fixed this in almost all cases. Let us know if you find a fort that seems to behave strangely now or NPCs that get stuck where they shouldn’t because of this.
• Improved the look of ship explosions. This may cause a performance hit – let us know if you think it causes a big problem.

Missions:

• Community Spotlight – Sadet: Talk to Sadet McTavish in the Naval Headquarters in Port Royal to hear the sad tale of the wrong flag and sail. Note that the sail has been fixed. :)
• Damien Dessain (in the Naval Headquarters in Pointe-a-Pitre) was a Freetrader. He has now been commissioned into his king’s Navy. He now has new clothes as do his British and Spanish counterparts.
• Red Tide (and missions using that same ship room): The fort appeared to be floating above the water. Fixed.
• Groundbreaking: You could end up fighting 7 Mayans when there should be only 6.
• Speedy Delivery to Golden Lake: Corrected text.
• Smash the Squadron: The fort no longer floats in the room used in this mission (and several others).
• Thieves in the Night: Gave Helen Zandweg a weapon so she can help you fight.
• Curious Pistol: They are now laying on the desk like proper keys should instead of floating in the air.
• Heirs in Judgment: You must now use the door to leave – the Exit Encounter button won’t do it. Also, the enemy was lame. This mission should be more challenging now.
• You Get What You Pay For: This mission was too difficult with the recent AvCom changes. Changed the personas used for a better-tuned experience.
• Beach Head: Fixed some confusing destination references. Also, fixed the hovering rowboat. Rowboats float, they don’t hover. And we fixed a similar rowboat issue in Delivery Pains.
• Old Money: Fixed a bug that caused problems on the zone server.
• Several missions in the Jaqueme arc did not have the destination information formatted correctly. Fixed.

Economy:

• Removed the recipes for the Invincible, Prince, Trinity, and Triumphant. These First and Second Rate ships can no longer be produced.
• The Ironwood Logging Camp did not Harvest Common Wood like all other logging camps. Fixed. Similarly for the Advanced Ironwood Logging Camp.
• The icons for Fine-Grained and Pre-Measured Gunpowder were swapped. Fixed.
• The Careening Camp was missing Rebuild recipes for the Locust Corvette (Captured) and the Mediator Cutter (Captured). Fixed.

Open Sea:

• The red circle showed larger than it should in the local map. (The compass was accurate, though.) Fixed.

PvP / Port Contention:

• Corrected the port model in the Jawbone Bay port battle room.
• Skirmish: Added tooltips to the Avatar Skirmish Create UI and to the Victory UI.

Art / Sound:

• Fixed a bug that prevented clicking on Josette Liborne in some taverns.
• Floaties were appearing in some avatar portraits. Fixed.
• Cayo de Marquis: Corrected some lighting issues.
• Fort de France (and towns that look like it): Fixed a hole in the world that was letting water leak in.
• Jenny Bay: Improved the lighting in this town and fixed a number of graphical issues.
• Oranjestad (and towns that look like it): Corrected a number of camera issues.
• Fort Spire: Fixed a number of graphical issues.
• Hedge Maze Skirmish room: Fixed a number of graphical issues including preventing the camera from getting outside the world quite so easily.
• Langridge Bay: Fixed a bug in the local map and other graphical issues. Also moved the floating fort down to the water.
• When females rubbed their hands together, the hands often went through each other. Fixed.
• We have long had an issue where animations could remove props. One example was crew repairing ships – they’d pull out their tools, put them away, and them mime repairing. They should be using their actual tools now.
• Several of our horses looked as if their right rear leg was broken. Fixed.
• Tweaked graphics to improve shadows.

UI:

• Your own character (rather than a generic male) shows up in your Character UI.
• Fixed the bug that would stick the Alt key down when you Alt-Tabbed out of the game and back again.
• The tooltip for Underdog Points in the Conquest UI was code instead of text. Fixed.
• Fixed a typo in the “Report Spam” UI.

Misc:

• Group Strength wasn’t showing up correctly in German. Fixed.
• The battle map info wasn’t showing up in the Conquest UI for the Russians. Fixed.
• Updated translations from SOE.