Major Update 03: The Haunted Seas (Version Number "Early Access 0.5.10369")

[Gary]

We have released a Major Update, called "The Haunted Seas".

This pulls together all of the new content and systems we had released in the Beta Branch since our previous Major Update.

Important!

Before we look at the latest changes, some important house-keeping: Because we’ve had to change the world to accommodate these new systems, your saves from previous versions will not work with this latest update. The new Quick-Starts (detailed in the main post that is linked below) should help get you back to where you were.

If you are mid-playthrough on the previous version and wish to continue it, then you may switch over to this older version of the game via the Beta Branches system:

1. Go to your Steam Library
   
2. Right-click on Abandon Ship and select "Properties"
   
3. Go to the tab marked "Betas"
   
4. In the drop-down box, select the one called "0.5.9802 – The Perilous Bounty Version"
   
5. Wait for the game to finish updating, you should see the branch name listed after the game name.

If you’re up-to-date on the Beta Branch (i.e you already have the items listed below) then your saves will be unaffected.

The Haunted Seas

You can read a post that describes all of the main new features here:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/1691558597331600976
This includes the following:

• New Region Unlocked
  
• New standalone story with a new Captain
  
• Ship Storage
  
• New Section Upgrades
  
• New difficulty levels
  
• New quick-start locations
  
• New main menu new game/load game layout to support multiple stories

There have been a whole host of other fixes and improvements, and the list below covers everything else:

UI

• Shop Port UI - Fixed the ship repair by a percentage box not working if the player comes into the port with < 1% hull damage
  
• Crew Journal UI - Crew Cards now show a red highlight if the Character is badly hurt
  
• Implemented the ability to set the Active Quest in the Quest Log Journal UI
  
• Implemented recording of past player crew in the Journal
  
• Changed the two "Transfer" buttons on the ship purchase screen to a single "Transfer all" button

Bugs

• Main Menu - stopped the ocean overlay being pushed too far up resulting in the edge of it being visible at the bottom of the screen
  
• Fixed Time of Day change failing under certain circumstances
  
• Split GameContent scene into smaller chunks so that an engine texture corruption bug was fixed
  
• The Exploration Camera is now reset when entering the Sea Arena. This fixes not being able to exit sea arena when entering it during a "view object" camera
  
• Fixed a separate trigger of the “black screen” bug when exiting a sea arena having lost with enemy characters on-board the player ship
  
• Fixed error on trade routes blocked due to a cult controlled port
  
• Fixed audio volume sliders sending the wrong value range to Wwise
  
• Fixed a string for Victory Outcome that was incorrectly assigned to ship sinking (it described searching the ship, when it should have described searching the wreckage)

Miscellaneous Polish and Improvements

• Swivel Guns on ships are no longer paired meaning the player can have a different swivel gun on each side
  
• AI will now cut boarding harpoons
  
• Expanded the "Afraid of monsters" trait to include zombies
  
• Implemented new Character Skin system to support Young/Old skins, set the haunted seas story captain to old.
  
• Combat Music now plays at max Combat Level in Mutiny scenarios
  
• Enemy Ships in battle will now face the other way if they default facing direction side has less cannons on it than the other
  
• Exploration Sea Forts no longer fire on the player if in a View Object Camera Behaviour
  
• A Character in a web now gets 100% armour protection from fire
  
• Numerous text fixes.

This is another step along our Early Access voyage, and we will of course continue to expand the game with fun systems and new content. Thank-you for your support and feedback, it is greatly appreciated.

If you are interested in knowing what the current focus for the dev-team is (new region!), visit this sub-forum:

Latest Dev-Team Focus

For the longer term plans, visit this sub-forum:

Early Access Roadmaps