Alliance Quests
A quest is a shared goal a whole alliance works toward together. It is not a personal errand with extra steps. The first rung is soft enough for a small banner to start, and the higher rungs ask more crews to put their backs into the same work. The fellowship acts, and the fellowship is rewarded.
Why they matter: alliance XP
Completing quests earns your banner alliance XP: the standing that the alliance leaderboard now ranks by. Quests pay the biggest lumps, but they are not the only way to climb. Every winning raid your members land earns XP too, more for striking a rival's island than a wild one, with a bonus for the plunder hauled, and raiding has no weekly ceiling. Smaller trickles come from answering the daily muster (logging in) and running the alliance depot, each once per member per day. The Alliance XP guide spells out every route. Unlike raw strength, XP only ever climbs. It never falls when members come and go, so a long-standing banner's record endures even as its roster turns over. What you accomplish together, you keep.
The board, and the ladder
Open Alliance → Quests. The Board lists the quests your alliance may take. Each quest is a ladder: you accept a level, work it, and finishing it unlocks the choice to take the next, harder and richer. Only one rung of a quest runs at a time, and the next is always opt-in: no surprise clock starts while everyone is asleep. The top of a ladder reads Mastered.
It fills while you sleep
Progress is measured from what your members do out in the world: raids landed, fleets sailed, ground discovered. It is counted server-side from resolved events. A raid you launch before bed still feeds the bar when it lands at 3am. You are never asked to be online at a particular minute.
Everyone's contribution is on show
Open an active quest and the Contributors tab shows who fed the bar and by how much, with your own row highlighted. The point is the fellowship: many active members count for more than one strong one, and the shared bar is the one thing on screen only the group can move.
Some quests need many hands
Certain quests ask for more than a full bar: they also require contributions from a minimum number of different members before they count as won. One mighty raider cannot carry these alone. The quest screen shows this as Crews needed alongside the progress bar, and warns you when the bar is full but too few crews have pitched in — that is the moment to rally more members before the clock runs out, because a quest that ends with the crew mark unmet expires unrewarded, however full its bar. If your alliance has fewer members than a quest needs, the quest says so before you start it. You can still take it and recruit during the run.
For Eyes on Every Harbour, a successful spy mission adds one only when your alliance has not already scouted that island during the current quest. Several members may watch the same harbour, but the shared count moves once per island. The crew requirement and each member's contribution limit still apply. A harbour, once counted, stays counted: a scout who leaves keeps their share, and a newcomer's spying counts only from the moment they joined.
For Harry the Tide, a sortie is an attack or raid against a Black Tide island. A victory counts. A defeat counts only if your fleet killed some of the Tide's defenders, though a lost combined strike always counts for every fleet in it. Spy missions, colonisation attempts, plunder runs and raids under Unsigned Sails do not count.
The first quest: Reaver's Tithe
A bell rings across the fellowship. For a few days, every coin and crate your alliance rips out of enemy holds feeds one shared Tithe bar, whether torn from unclaimed shores by raids or lifted from a rival's harbour by a stealth plunder run. The first tithe is a reachable start for a small banner. The later ones ask for broader raiding, more holds emptied, and a steadier clock before they pay their larger lumps of alliance XP.
The rock quests: Strike and Raise the Colours
Two quests are fought over the rocks, and each lasts a single day. Strike Their Colours counts every rival flag your members bring down in battle by wiping out the garrison under it. Planting over a flag nobody guards does not count, and neither does a raid under Unsigned Sails. Raise the Colours counts every rock your members plant a flag on, each rock once per run. Rocks your alliance already held when it took the quest never count, even if the garrison sails home and back again.
Striking pays more alliance XP than raising, rung for rung. An alliance runs one quest at a time, so while one banner lashes its colours to every rock in reach, another may be out hunting exactly those thin garrisons.