Supply routes run themselves, research becomes a tree you climb, and your world prints a daily newspaper
Set a recurring shipment between two of your islands and a dedicated crew of merchants loops it for you, so you stop babysitting fleets to keep a colony fed. Alongside it, research stops being a flat list and becomes a branching tree with gates to unlock, and your world starts writing its own daily front page.
Supply routes
Set a recurring shipment between two of your islands in three steps and the harbourmaster picks the ships for you, small and swift first. A new Sailing study, Supply Lines, is what lets an island run routes at all. Study it deeper to raise how much each run carries, from 8,000 up to 150,000. Each route’s page shows what it is doing right now, at sea or in harbour, and why, plus its recent voyages and its rest between runs. A route that stalls pauses itself and tells you what went wrong. The route limit counts per island, so a larger realm can keep more convoys running at once.
Research is now a tree
For a while now a lot of abilities have been live but ungated, open to everyone from the start, so we could watch how you actually used them. That playtesting is done, and those abilities are better as something to climb toward. Research is redesigned as a climbing tree: four branches, each a path of studies with Laboratory gates along the way, and new abilities you unlock by studying. Actions you haven’t earned yet, patrols and plunder and blockades, now show you exactly which study unlocks them.
Each island can now lean a direction, a resource island, a colonisation island, an attack island, and the branch you climb is how you commit to it. You decide what each island is for, and work toward it.
What existing realms lose on day one
Patrols, plunder runs and blockades were open to everyone while we were watching how they got used. From this release they sit behind studies, and because those studies are brand new, no island starts with them. On the day this lands, every one of your islands will find those three actions locked. Each island earns them back on its own, because knowledge belongs to the island that studied it.
Patrols come back with The Harbour Watch, which needs Laboratory 4 and Sailcraft, around two hours of study. Plunder runs come back with Night Landings, which needs Laboratory 4 and Espionage, and takes about the same. Most established islands already hold the prerequisites for both, so those two are a short errand.
Blockades are the long one. They need Letters of Marque, which sits behind Laboratory 8, Sailcraft 3 and The Harbour Watch. If your Laboratory isn’t near 8 yet, it will be a while. They are the most powerful of the three, so they sit deepest, but that means going without for a stretch if you had built around them.
Your existing studies are untouched. Nothing was reset, and everything you had already researched still counts toward the tree. If this lands wrong for how you play, message me directly and I’ll tune it. Blockades especially: if the Laboratory 8 gate is the thing that stings, tell me and I’ll look at it.
The Daily Chronicle
Your morning report becomes a newspaper. Each day your world publishes a paper drawn from its own events: who rose, who fell, who freed an island, who angered a god. A front-page engraving set to the day’s news, Your Estate on page two with your resource gains broken out one by one, a Days-of-Rule stamp, and a two-column classifieds page. Tucked in it is the Harbormaster’s Riddle, printed faintly. Tap to hold it to the light and read the answer. Saturday’s edition reviews the whole week, and on a quiet day the paper runs shorter rather than padding out empty pages. The news desk holds Recent, Politics, and a Chronicle tab with your back issues.
New
- Supply routes: recurring island-to-island shipments run by a dedicated crew, set up in three steps.
- A new Sailing study, Supply Lines, the gate that lets an island run routes, raising cargo from 8,000 to 150,000 as you study deeper.
- A route’s page shows its live status, its recent voyages, and why it is resting. Stalled routes pause themselves with a reason.
- The supply-route limit counts per island, not per account, so a larger realm can keep more convoys running at once.
- Research redesigned as a four-branch tree with Laboratory gates and new abilities to unlock by study.
- The Daily Chronicle: a newspaper your world writes each morning from its real overnight events, with back issues on a shelf.
- A new Oceans section in the rank editor: choose which ranks may call an ocean vote, or rename and surrender the oceans you hold.
- See another governor’s compass on their profile, their realm name and the shape of their deeds.
Improved
- Locked actions, patrols and plunder and blockades, now tell you which research unlocks them.
- The advisor stops nagging you to expand buildings that cannot grow, and suggests real alternatives instead: garrison abroad, ship the surplus out, raise a statue.
- The advisor now speaks up when spirits are high enough to raise taxes, and fully-built islands get their own counsel.
- Advisor tips now fit the island you are viewing, covering patrols, treasure islands, wreck salvage, the Black Tide’s taste for lumen and blockades, with fresh jokes from the steward.
- Getting back into the game after a refresh is faster, and a new loading screen shows progress and a reveal once your island is ready.
- Trade wakes on the regional chart show up after a single cargo run instead of only busy routes, and every wake is easier to see.
- Choose what an alliance channel may interrupt you for: war, roster, alliance business, or member messages, set per channel from the bell. Everything stays readable in chat either way.
Fixed
- Answering the daily muster now earns your alliance XP every day, as the handbook says, not just the once. Depot runs too.
- Stacking a Rite no longer asks for more Lumen than its listed price. A rite costs what it says, and the shrine no longer blocks a purchase you can afford.
- Freeing a blighted island no longer prints your name in the world news, the campaign card, or the defender’s report. Unwitnessed strikes stay unwitnessed.
- Any crewmate can now be given the right to put an ocean to council. It was missing from the rank editor entirely, so no rank could hold it.
- A sector’s claim buoy now floats in the middle of the sector instead of drifting toward the islands.
- A full storehouse or reliquary on the Realm list no longer glows red like an island in trouble. Coins and lumen at cap read as normal.
- A governor struck from a world no longer leaves a phantom behind, a name still listed in the world while holding no islands at all.
- The fleet-template picker names the mission when it is empty, so it is clear it only shows templates saved for that mission.
- The old morning report no longer flashes on screen before the Daily Chronicle opens.
