Ahoy, sailors!
We've recently identified and fixed a relatively major bug with ship crew experience. We're normally hesitant to make such a large change just before the championship games, but this one was putting certain ships at a disadvantage for no discernible reason, so we're giving you all a heads up so you have a bit of time to adjust (and perhaps find more suitable ships), if necessary.

Despite the commonly held belief that crew experience made certain actions (and your overall ship speed) faster, until now each ship was assigned a certain, permanent malus (ranging from the equivalent of a lubber I to lubber IX crew), and experience had no effect on anything whatsoever (except for plundering, but pirates are meanies so they don't count). Moving forward, crewmate experience will affect your ship's rowing speed, and both crewmate and shipmate experience will affect your turning speed and order balance times. You should find yourself far faster in all these matters, especially if your ship's crew is already quite experienced.

This change will likely have an impact on the outcomes of the upcoming races, especially if you are ill prepared, but we've decided it's better this than the races coming down to an arbitrary and unseen hand slowing down certain ships.

Happy sailing!


Penned by My hand on the 18th of Sarapin, in the year 852 AF.