We’ve got something very exciting lined up for tomorrow: The King of the Pirates Tournament!
10 top Twitch streamers will captain teams of three players each in a knock-out tournament. The winning captain will be crowned the first ever King of the Pirates - and their team will forever be enshrined within the game itself.
We're also having a special 25% discount on the game all week - so you can get in on the fun for yourself as well!
There will also be a television highlights special courtesy of our official broadcast partners GINX Esports TV - follow them on Twitter to find out exactly when and where!
THE TOURNAMENT Starts Saturday March 13th (Tomorrow) - 09:00 PST / 12:00 EST / 18:00 CET Follow all 10 captains on Twitch to watch the action LIVE!
Additionally you pirates can try to predict who will win via this pick’ems form!
If you can predict all pools correctly + the winner of the finals you’ll win an emblem pack containing all the EXCLUSIVE emblems from the participating streamers + 4 copies of Blazing Sails. Of course, only one form is allowed per person and all forms must be sent before the tournament starts.
Update 1.3.4: Crew status icons, NEW bell, NEW teleport compass and more!
Ahoy mateys!
We all know the feeling of desperately steering away from danger while you wonder what your seadog crewmates are up to. Well, no more! In this update, we've added crew status icons so you can always see what those scurvy no-good landlubbers are doing. Their icon will change based on their activities, like shooting cannons, steering, etc.
You can now also tell which sewer dwelling rat is trolling the team by voting to drop at Trident when there's four chests in Bandit Bay, because your voting knives are now colored!
In-Game UI:
Crew status icons added which show what a crew member is doing (shooting the cannons, manning the sails, steering, manning the capstan or repairing) More states will be added soon such as pumping, teleporting, on the ship or on land, ...
Knives in the spawn selection screen are now colored with the player colors
Teleportation rework:
Teleportation amulet replaced with a magical compass with audio and visual charging effects (actual teleporting effects will be added as well soon)
You can now view another player's teleporting progress
Ship bell:
New bell model and animation added
Streamer mode:
Streamer mode has been further implemented into the actual game hiding playernames
Gameplay:
Half barrel projectile damage increased from 25 to 30
Dual quad barrel flintlocks projectile damage increased from 14 to 15
Deadzone damage no longer causes sprint to be blocked
Pirate customisation:
Added 6 new skin colors
Added 6 new tattoo colors
Bug fixes:
Music should no longer cut off when too many sounds are playing at the same time
Fixed a bug that caused the primary fire to no longer work sometimes when clicking and selecting a command from the command wheel
Fixed a bug that allowed blocking after switching weapons even if the block cooldown was not finished yet
Voice chat should no longer stick anymore when spamming the voice chat button
Fixed a bug that caused the "empty" click to no longer work when trying to fire an empty weapon
Update 1.3.3: Weapon balance overhaul, improvements and bug fixes!
Hello there seadogs! We've got another small but relatively significant update for you all this week with some changes to the weapons in Blazing Sails.
We've seen a lot of pirates falling back to the same loadouts again and again to the point where it became obvious some of the weapons were too dominant. Namely the musket and sniper rifles. Some of the sidearms weren't getting much love either due to them being overshadowed by the stronger weapons. So we took another good look at the balance and did some changes to hopefully put all the weapons in the game on a more even playing field. We ideally want every weapon in the game to be viable and serve a purpose. The multi barrel weapons for example weren't solid enough in combat versus the one shot weapons which were quite fast to reload and therefor overall more reliable than multi shot weapons. With today's balancing update one shot weapons have received a slower reload time which should make the multi shot weapons a more attractive choice. We've also tweaked the fire rate of some of the sidearms to allow them to shoot their bullets faster to increase their DPS.
Of course changes like these are based on feedback and what we see from the community. Nor are these changes or any changes we make ever final. If things turn out to be worse, we will have another look and as many after that as needed to get it right. We are still very much in early access and still molding the game to get the overall experience as awesome and balanced as possible.
Full patch notes below:
Weapon balance rework:
Dragon pistol reload time increased from 2.3s to 2.5s
Musket reload time increased from 1.8s to 2.3s
Fast Sniper reload time increased from 1.8s to 2.2s
Heavy Sniper reload time increased from 1.8s to 2.5s
Crossbow reload time increased from 1.8s to 2.5s
Flintlock reload time increased from 1.3s to 1.8s
Quad Barrel flintlock fire cooldown decreased from 0.35s to 0.20s
Dual Flintlock fire cooldown decreased from 0.25s to 0.10s
Dual Flintlock projectile damage decreased from 40 to 35
Dual Quad Barrel flintlocks fire rate decreased from 0.25s to 0.18s
Cosmetic changes:
Jolly Roger flag emblem and sail emblem made a bit bigger
Gameplay options:
You can now manually set the time it takes to drop your own anchor (min 0 seconds to max 1 second)
Visual fixes:
Dragon Pistol gold material made a bit more shiny (was appearing too flat colored due to a mistake in the material)
Bug fixes:
Dragon Pistol headshot kills now show a kill confirm message as intended
Fixed a bug that caused the camera shake to still play from cannons when zoomed in with a sniper
Ship stats should now always show to correct stats
Update 1.3.2: Dragon Pistol, profanity filter and more!
Yarr me hearties! T'is time for another update.
This week we're spicing up the playground with a new and powerful weapon, the Dragon Pistol. There are pirates and there are pirates if you know what I mean. The latter kind knows the importance of a good pistol. When facing an opponent in combat it's important to not only dominate but also look good doing it. We've got you covered!
Seek and equip the the new Dragon Pistol to take your fancyness to the next level. Reload in style and blast those pesky boarders in the face to send them on a one way trip to the locker.
Beside making sure you pirates can keep your cool on we've also improved the game's experience with new features such as a profanity filter for the in-game chat, an FPS counter and a small interaction time to drop the anchor.
Full patch notes below:
New weapon:
The Dragon Pistol has been added firing a 57 damage bullet that kills instantly with a headshot. It's item rarity is Tier 4 (purple)
Visual improvements:
Pistol type idle animations improved. Pistol hand pose should be cleaner.
Added some tint variation to the ship wood planks
Censorship:
Optional profanity filter added to hide most common swear words (still work in progress, will be improved over time as more words are black listed and exceptions are white listed)
You can now also hide chat messages from players completely (command messages and kill feed remains visible)
FPS counter:
FPS and ms counter option added
Gameplay changes:
Dropping the anchor now takes 0.5 seconds
Dropping the anchor as an enemy now takes 2 seconds
Anchor dropping progress gets reset every time you take damage
You no longer receive a camera shake when zooming in with a sniper while cannons are fired closeby
Treasure chests now always spawn at least tier 3 items (used to be tier 1) which increases the probability to find better items in treasure chests
Containers now also show the item weight and percentage of the inventory the item or item stack occupies
Blunderbuss pellet spread reduced from 0.2 to 0.15
Bug fixes:
Floating wood crates should be easier to interact with now (interaction sometimes wouldn't show)
Fixed a bug that allowed players to zoom in or aim down sight while reloading
Update 1.3.1: Ship stats, Less respawn time for small teams and more!
Ahoy Mateys! Hope you're enjoying the Lunar Update so far. Make sure you get those few extra cosmetics while you still can! The Lunar event will end on the 25th next week. In the meantime we've got another update for you scallywags!
Check out the patchnotes:
Brigantine model rework:
Upper staircase and higher platform removed
Lower hull staircase moved forward a bit
Ship ladders moved forward a bit more (so they appear more central)
Front mast and sails size increased a bit
Stern reworked to appear more elegant
Added a rope between the two crows nests for easy traversal between the two
Fortification rings added to both masts
Other ship changes:
Ship ladders revamped (rope attachments can be seen from the deck making it easier to see where enemies pop up when climbing a ladder)
Rope to crows nest changed to a rope ladder
Ship flags:
Ships now have two types of flags (one normal flag on the main mast and one triangular with no emblem on the secondary (front) mast - the triangular flag will later become an unlockable)
Ship menu:
The ship menu now shows handy ship statistics and a small description (translations will follow)
Gameplay changes:
Respawn time is now reduced based on the amount of players in a crew (4 players = 100%, 3 players = 85%, 2 players = 65% and 1 player = 50%)
Balancing:
TNT barrels now cause less ship damage when exploded on the ground (2 x 2 ship damage instead of 3 x 4 ship damage)
Inventory UI improvements:
Item tooltips now show how much the items weighs
Hovering over an item or stack of items in your inventory will now highlight the amount of space it takes
Weapon tooltip:
Melee damage now shows the correct damage amount (global melee damage multiplier was not taken into account yet)
Blunderbuss and nockgun (shotgun type weapons) now also show a small pellet icon
Bug fixes:
Getting stuck in primary fire mode should be fixed
Getting stuck in secondary fire mode should be fixed
Zooming in and out in the worldmap no longer changes the steering wheel view mode
Hotfix 1.3.0.2: Ship collision improvements and bugfixes!
Ahoy! We're rolling out a small hotfix again to fix a few bugs and with some ship collision improvements.
Ship collisions:
Ships should no longer overlap / intersect during boarding or close ship combat
Further performance improvements:
Fixed some performance issues with the elevators
Fixed some performance issues with the masts
Fixed some performance issues with the username widgets
Bug fixes:
Fixed a bug that caused projectile impact effects not to appear when firing from one ship to another
Fixed a bug that caused the character to become two floating arms and a torso when using the world map while viewing the steering wheel in third person mode
Fixed a small visual offset in the cannon UI
Fixed some materials that didn't have red outline implemented yet such as the straw hat and other hats with rope-like materials
The 50 initial wood planks should now be visible in the barrel
Fixed a bug that caused the flags to be rotated 180 degrees
Ahoy! We're rolling out some small changes / fixes following-up yesterday's bigger update.
Performance Improvements:
Fixed some performance issues with the ships
Fixed some performance issues with the water
Fixed some performance issues with the masts
Experimental features:
You can now view your character in third person while using the steering wheel (use mouse wheel to swap between first person mode and third person mode) - known bug: when using the worldmap your character becomes two floating arms, will be fixed tomorrow
Ships now start with 50 wood - known bug: Wood barrel doesn't visually show the 50 initial wood planks yet, will be fixed tomorrow
Bug fixes:
Fixed a bug with the fire animations that wouldn't play due to the automatic reload happening too fast
Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the party leader ship to be your own ship
Fixed some collision issues in the new Lunar Lands
BIG 1.3.0 Lunar Update: NEW Island, Sail Damage, Lunar cosmetics and much more!
Ahoy me hearteys!
The Lunar New Year will soon be upon us (depending on when you're reading this)! That means it's time for Blazing Sails' Lunar Lands update. This is potentially our biggest update yet, with a new island, new cosmetics, a new feature, and TONS of QoL updates!
Check out the trailer!
[previewyoutube="HIUhn_PiBzw;full"]
The Lunar Lands
As with every major update, this one brings an all-new set of islands with it: The Lunar Lands. These massive rocky pillars are connected through walkways and bridges, and make for excellent sniping spots. You'll find the Lunar Lands in the North, between the Trident and Bandit Bay clusters!
Sail Damage
Do you aim your cannons too high? Are you constantly surprised by the incredible laser accuracy of the patented Blazing Sails Cannons™? Well, now you too can be of use, with sail damage! When you hit an enemy sail, it will take some damage, causing their ship to slow down.
Want to learn more about sail damage? Check out our earlier sneak peek (or play the game!)
New cosmetics
To further celebrate the Lunar New Year, we've created a bunch of oxcellent and oxciting new cosmetics for you to get yer grubby hands on! Always wanted to be a pirate wearing a dragon hat? Same here, that's why we made 'em.
To get you started, you'll get these special Lunar lantern flag and sail emblems if you fire up the game during this event!
QoL changes and optimizations
New stuff is exciting, we know. But you know what else gets the blood pumping? Quality of life changes and optimizations, and this update brings a lot of those! You can check out the full patch notes below, but here's a few commonly requested features that we've implemented:
You can now see the wind direction while behind the wheel
An ADS slider has been added
Pirate and ship loadouts can now be saved
In-game weapon stats have been implemented
Dropping the anchor will now allow for much tighter turns (multi-wave drifting!)
Colorblind players rejoice, you can now change the color of the deadzone!
Here are the full patch notes:
New island:
The Lunar Lands have been added in the north (between Trident's Fall and Bandit Bay)
New gameplay features:
Sail damage has been added (hit your masts using the hammer to repair)
Equiping your hammer will now show a sail HP widget on each mast of your ship
Anti-Sail cannonballs added (they cause 15 sail damage while other cannonballs only cause 5 sail damage)
New cosmetics:
Event exclusive Items:
Lunar Knot Sail Emblem
Ox Sail Emblem
Lunar Dragon Sail Emblem
Lunar Knot Flag Emblem
Ox Flag Emblem
Red, White and Black Dragon Hat
Black, Yellow and Red Dragon Hat
Red, White and Black Lion Hat
Black, Yellow and Red Lion Hat
Green and Beige Dragon Hat
Black, Red and Yellow Dragon Hat
Purple and Yellow Dragon Hat
Black and Bordeaux Dragon Hat
Green, Yellow and Red Lion Hat
Purple, Black and Pink Lion Hat
Yellow, White and Red Lion Hat
White, Red and Yellow Lion Hat
Gold and Red Dragon Hat
Blue and White Dragon Hat
Gold and Red Lion Hat
White and Blue Lion Hat
New non-event Items:
Beige and Black Straw Hat
Black and Red Straw Hat
Beige Straw Hat
Red and Beige Straw Hat
Black Straw Hat
Blue Straw Hat
Dark Green Straw Hat
Dark Green and Red Straw Hat
Pink and Beige Straw Hat
Left Bright Red Footwrap
Right Bright Red Footwrap
Left Blue Footwrap
Right Blue Footwrap
Left Green Footwrap
Right Green Footwrap
Left Brown Sandal
Right Brown Sandal
Left Red Sandal
Right Red Sandal
Left Blue Sandal
Right Blue Sandal
Left Green Sandal
Right Green Sandal
Left Purple Sandal
Right Purple Sandal
Left Young Bamboo Pegleg
Right Young Bamboo Pegleg
Left Old Bamboo Pegleg
Right Old Bamboo Pegleg
Mom Tattoo
Double Fish Scale Sleeve Tattoo
Left Fish Scale Sleeve Tattoo
Right Fish Scale Sleeve Tattoo
Mister Moustache Shoulder Tattoo
Diamond Tattoo
Octopus Tattoo
Crossed Swords Tattoo
New main menu features:
Pirate outfit preset saving added (click the list icon in pirate to open the preset menu)
Ship style preset saving (click the list icon in ship to open preset menu)
You can save outfits / styles, remove them, rename them and overwrite them
New cannon UI:
Cannon UI now shows an actionbar listing all the cannonballs you have with you and now includes hotkeys to quickly select a specific cannonball type
Weapon tooltip improvements:
Weapon tooltips now show some weapon stats like damage, reload speed, ...
Special weapons with AOE damage, vampiric damage or with a scope now a have special symbol in the weapons tooltip
Weapons now show a rarity color (white = tier 1, green = tier 2, blue = tier 3, purple = tier 4, yellow = tier 5)
Sniper changes:
Snipers rifles (fast sniper and heavy sniper) now have a breathing wobble while aiming down the scope
You can hold shift or spacebar to hold your breath for a short moment to get a steady aim (keybind will follow shortly)
New settings:
You can now change the color of the deadzone in any color you want (for colorblindness or just for fun, setting located in gameplay options)
You can now change the camera sensitivity while aiming down sight seperately
Item and inventory improvements:
You now automatically pick up as much as you can carry when an item stack is more than your inventory can take
Gameplay changes:
Glass bottle damage increased from 12 to 17
You can now see the wind direction (lines) while using the steering wheel
Trapshot rarity decreased again from tier 4 to tier 3
Trapshot loading time increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds
Anti-cannonballs loading time increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds
Trapshot projectile drop now same as heavy cannonballs
Explosive barrel impact damage reduced from 12 to 4 damage
Explosive barrel AOE ship damage increased from 2x 2 damage points to 3x 4 damage points
"Marked a location" voiceline can no longer be spammed (you can still spam the actual marker though, but the voice line will only play once every 2 seconds)
Ships now tilt much more when turning during anchor drop
Weapon spread will now also be applied when jumping or in air (falling)
Weapons are no longer reloadable while aiming down the sight, they reload automatically when going out of aim down sight though
Sound changes:
New cannonball flight sound
Voiceline improvements:
"They corked us" and "We're sinking" voicelines now use the voice and pitch you have selected
Optimisations:
Ship culling has been added which should greatly improve performance with many ships
Ships that are behind obstacles are massively reduced in cost
Ship interiors are massively reduced in cost when interior is not visible
Bug fixes:
Invisible player bug should be fixed
You no longer get sprint blocked when blocking a melee attack, only when you receive actual damage
Fixed a collision gap on the brigantine (you could fall through the floor in front of the upper staircase)
Fixed a bug that showed 0 open slots in green instead of red sometimes
Fixed a bug that would make the bow figure uncolored sometimes
Fixed a bug that sometimes made the beard uncolored (white)
Sorting on free crew slots should now work as intended
Fixed a bug that caused party members to always switch back to unready whenever a new player joined the party
Fixed a bug that caused selected cosmetics not to be highlighted as selected in the pirate and ship menu
Fixed a bug that caused the capstan to move off center after a while
Fixed a bug that caused the cursor to jump to the end when trying to edit ship name in the middle
Fixed some incorrect offsets in the body settings menu screen
Fixed a bug that caused teammates to appear with a red outline for a short moment after using the worldmap
Fixed a bug that caused the weapon spread to be only vertical (now horizontal and vertical)
Ahoy ye scurvy Seadogs! In preparation of our upcoming BIG LUNAR UPDATE (coming soon™) we'd like to share a little preview of the sail damage we'll be adding soon. No longer will you look like a fool for shooting a tad too high and missing the hull, because sails will soon become a juicy target.
And we'll make the joke for you. Yes, Blazing Sails will soon have actual blazing sails.
Without further ado, check out the video below for the full sail damage preview!
[previewyoutube="ZdG5xHjtw_4;full"]
Sail Damage for dummies
It's very simple: damaged sails will cause your ship to sail slower the more damaged they are. Luckily sail damage can easily be repaired by hammering the mast and doesn't require any resource!
How will sail damage impact gameplay?
Speaking from experience (we've had sail damage during the pre-alpha) we know this feature adds a lot of extra depth to the gameplay and rewards teamwork even more. While the hull will stay the most important thing to repair during a match, sail damage and thus sailing speed can heavily impact the outcome of a game. Especially now with the recently added, agile Junk Ship we felt like this was the perfect time to re-introduce this feature to the game. Also during chase-situations damaging the sails can come in quite handy.
Will certain cannonball-types do more damage?
Yes! And not only that. We've added a new special cannonball type to the game: "The Anti-Sail Cannonball". This is a commonly found type of ball that does a lot of sail damage. All other cannonballs can also damage sails but do far less damage than the Anti-Sail. Thus, they are less effective at damaging sails.
Why don't I need cloth or another resource to repair sails?
While we think having even more resources is not preferable at this point we know from testing (we also had cloth in the prototype) that the need for a resource for type of damage is highly unpractical. Imagine being out in the ocean, your sails completely shredded, you look in your inventory and what do you NOT see? Cloth. You're stranded. (in the deadzone maybe) Have fun sailing at 1 meter per hour to any island or crates. Hence, this would greatly reduce the fast-paced flow of the game.
That about wraps it up pirates! Hope you're excited for the upcoming update!
Like this sneak peek thingy? Let us know on Discord!
Hotfix 1.2.4.1: Trapshot rarity increase, weapon drop improvements and more!
Ahoy! We're rolling out some small changes / fixes following-up yesterday's bigger update.
Gameplay changes:
Weapons now always drop from defeated players even when they are respawning or using a vehicle
Trapshot rarity changed to tier 4 (from tier 3)
Exploit fix:
Can no longer enter vehicles from the air while not on a ship
Bug fixes:
Kraken roar should work again now (it's also more optimized now)
Sprays should work again
Blunderbuss now has the proper weapon name in the inventory (no longer called "Butcher's Knife")
Smoothing group issue fixed on small woodplank in the front on the Brigantine
