Sailing
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Sailing
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Sailing is player-controlled travel by boat and ship. Build 358 opened The Great Sea and Smokehaven and lets players take a wheel or oars, drop anchor or tie off, and carry a vessel's recognized crew between zones.[1] The planned Seafaring skill school is switched off and is not needed to operate a boat.
Getting under way
Sailing vessels
- Board the vessel using its boarding point, ladder, or accessible deck.
- Interact with the ship's wheel to take the helm. Whoever controls the wheel is the helmsman.
- Use the movement controls shown by the client to steer and change the vessel's setting. Sailing ships accelerate, slow, and turn gradually rather than moving like an Avatar on foot.[2]
- Use the interact control while at the helm to drop anchor or tie off as appropriate.
The sail becomes translucent for the helmsman so it does not block the view ahead; passengers continue to see the solid sail.[3]
Rowboats
Anchoring, tying off, and going ashore
The interact control at the helm or oars performs the appropriate stop action: it drops anchor away from a berth or ties the boat off where mooring is allowed. A beached or anchored vessel offers Climb aboard from its side, while a crew member aboard can use the available Go ashore interaction.[3] See Anchoring and mooring for the focused procedure and current verification points.
At a harbour mouth, the helmsman is asked whether to sail into the open sea or remain in the harbour. Choosing to remain turns the ship back while retaining its current helm setting until the player steers again.[4]
Crews and zone crossings
Everyone whom the game recognizes as aboard crosses with the helmsman. The crew arrives together on the same vessel and in the same instance, with the same hull damage.[4] Player-owned towns, and towns with no charted way back to the water, instead land the crew ashore. Characters merely swimming beside the ship or standing on a nearby dock are not part of its deck crew.
This deck distinction is also used by the planned Hull Patching and Crew Drill skills, but neither skill is available yet.
Sailing water ship houses from their lots is built but switched off. See Sailable ship homes for the planned models and behavior.
The Great Sea and destinations
The Great Sea is a person-scale sailing map around Novia, Mistrendur, and the Hidden Vale. Approaching a supported coastal destination offers the helmsman a choice to go ashore or continue sailing. Build 358 lists Central Brittany as one harbour from which players can reach the Great Sea and adds free ferry captains at Central Brittany, Kingsport, and Ardoris for travel to the Ember Isles.[1]
The launch notes record one known limitation: going ashore from the Great Sea uses a town's normal arrival point, and harbours do not yet have dockside Set Sail spots.[1]
Hull condition and repair
Hull points and existing damage persist across zone crossings. Damage stages and sinking are switched off: a hull at zero is held to slow speed and the vessel does not sink. Hull Patching is also unavailable because the Seafaring school is switched off.[5] See Boat damage and sinking for current status and development-stage behavior.
Development-stage thresholds describe the disabled system and are not current player instructions.
The planned Navigation skill and crow's-nest lookout bonus are switched off. No vessel with a crow's nest is currently in service.[6]
Wakes and sound
A moving boat leaves foam behind its stern. Sailing vessels also spread foam from both sides of the bow; the wake grows stronger with speed and becomes wider and longer-lived on a larger hull. A moored, grounded, or sinking vessel leaves no wake, while going astern produces only a faint churn.[7] Build 358 includes wakes as part of the live boat launch.[1]
Boat audio includes water running along the hull, lapping while still, timber creaks, bow slaps, snapping sails, and wind heard by the crew. The sounds follow the Ambient volume setting.[8]
Launch-week development logs and images show ship cannons and grapnels, but neither should be presented as usable build 358 equipment. Grapnels were built switched off, and the Ship's Cannon was switched off on QA on November 5 after its stand-in model was rejected.[9][10] If a later patch enables either system, it should be documented separately with that build number.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Catnip Games, “What changed in build 358”, November 5, 2026.
- ↑ Catnip Games, “The New Britannia Herald”, October 24, 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Catnip Games Work Log, week of October 26, 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Catnip Games Work Log, boat entries through November 4, 2026.
- ↑ Catnip Games Work Log, “Seafaring review fixes,” November 1, 2026.
- ↑ Catnip Games Work Log, “Crow's nest lookout,” November 2, 2026.
- ↑ Catnip Games Work Log, “Boats under way now leave a wake”, November 3, 2026.
- ↑ Catnip Games Work Log, “Boats now make sound”, November 4, 2026.
- ↑ Catnip Games Work Log, “Grapnels for ships”, October 27, 2026.
- ↑ Catnip Games Work Log, “Switched the Ship's Cannon off on QA”, November 5, 2026.