Early Access Prelaunch: The Adventure Begins!
Farm loot, level skills, trade with other players and conquer endless challenges!
Ahoy, pirates! Captain & Company will soon be launching in Early Access across multiple platforms! The swabbies below deck have cooked up a veritable treasure trove of new features for you, and you’ll be exploring those brave new worlds starting this week. Dig in!
Play Captain & Company on any device on capnco.gg.
Early Access Roadmap
Captain & Company will soon enter Early Access on key game stores across mobile, PC, and browser. We’ve spent this last voyage constructing new progression mechanics, new game modes, additional economic meta-systems, and completely new backend technologies to bring our community to the cutting edge of gaming.
The Early Access Prelaunch patch will roll out in four phases over the coming few weeks. Initially playable will be the complete in-game on-chain economy expansion, where encounters now drop on-chain loot, as well as the talent progression and player level system.
In Phase II, this will then be followed by the new game mode, Gauntlet, additional progression systems, and more player-driven crafting. In Phase III, we’ll be adding the world bosses, the land ownership mechanics, and the island governance system. And, finally, in Phase IV, we’ll be listing on the game stores, launching the community-controlled nodes and design poll features, and taking C&C to peak pirate MMORPG performance!
Gauntlet
Captain Balthazar Redhand has a challenge for the bravest seadogs amongst ye — reach the pinnacle of piracy by conquering the Gauntlet, a new endless roguelite PvE co-op trial!
Team up with friends to battle endless waves of new enemies, including fearsome nautical bosses paced throughout your run
Collect, mix, and match temporary Perks to unlock incredible naval firepower as you blast your way through hordes of attackers
Loot resources, blueprints, crystals & more as you conquer the higher tiers of Gauntlet and prove your name on the leaderboard
Gauntlet is a new permanent game mode that’s designed to be approachable for both casual parties of players and hardcore competitive sorts that want to climb to the top of the scoreboards. The mode is reminiscent of other horde-based game modes with three twists:
Co-op matchmaking is enabled and encouraged
Users can “weight” the probabilities of perks that will show up during their runs via a new Perk Card progression system
Users will gain resources and blueprints they can use to further improve their performance in Gauntlet
In combination with other new progression mechanics detailed below, Gauntlet will be a completely new casual & competitive mode for pirates to invite their friends to dominate!
Pillage
The previous “Adventure” mode has now been renamed “Pillage” to more accurately reflect the direction we will be taking with our second permanent game mode.
Players will enter an open sea arena and battle a mix of enemies and world bosses as they collect resources, finish quests, and level up skills
World PvP is permanently on with no safe zones, and players will need to extract via an extraction portal to keep the loot they’ve collected
We’ll be carefully monitoring feedback to this mode, and may be making any assortment of community-recommended changes as we go forward, including potentially:
Increasing the map size and environmental diversity
Including Perks in Pillage mode, with certain drawbacks
Adding additional world bosses or enemy types
Pillage is a mode that has a ton of open-world potential, and we’ve now created a number of the systems we need to properly implement and scale community-led feedback initiatives to make improvements much more quickly going forward.
Talent System
Players each now have a Player Level, which is determined by the amount of total XP you’ve gained across all of your skills in total (e.g. Gunning, Navigating, Sailing, etc).
Players can grow to level 60, and earn one (1) talent point for each level
Players can choose to allocate talent points to any mix of talents in the Tactician, Demolitionist, or Tinker specialization trees
As players allocate more points to any one particular specialization, more powerful talents become unlocked in that specialization tree
The talent system encourages players to spend more time focusing on one account, rather than potentially spreading their efforts between multiple accounts. We will introduce the ability to refund (”respec”) talent points in the future, but note at launch that talent point allocations will be permanent for some time.
The talent system will apply to all game modes: Gauntlet, Deathmatch, and Adventure.
Perk System
Players now each have a personal Perk Deck, which they’ll populate using perk cards that they either buy from other players or craft during the course of collecting resources in gameplay.
Perk cards are crafted by combining specific perk blueprints with designated resources
When a player adds a perk card to their Perk Library, the card is burnt and consumed
Players choose a Perk Deck of 12 perks from their Perk Library to use inside of Gauntlet
The perk cards in your Perk Deck weight the probability of those perks appearing in-game
The Perk Deck system gives players some control over the random nature of per-wave Gauntlet rewards, and, in combination with the Talent system, allows players to begin to specialize in the forms of combat, leadership, or support that they prefer, driving more diverse gameplay outcomes and party-based play.
At launch, the perk system will apply only to Gauntlet, and perks will not be active in Pillage or Deathmatch modes.
Auction House
Players will be able to trade game assets via a new in-game auction house, priced in nuggies.
Players can place buy or sell orders, which are filled on a best-efforts basis
Players can withdraw assets from their game account and trade on public marketplaces if they wish, but the entire game economy can be played now from within the game client
Both Eastern and Western servers will share a single auction house database, meaning you can trade with your friends in the opposite server
Moving the auction house in-game means that players can now directly monetize their gameplay experience if they so choose, and can earn by farming various resources and rare assets to sell. Some assets are consumable, like perk cards, and will have persistent demand, while others are highly limited in supply and may be collected by determined connoisseurs, like cosmetics.
This technology is identical to the way that major hit Off the Grid recently implemented their own in-game marketplace, best explained by popular FPS streamer Shroud here.
Nuggies & Withdrawals
Nuggies are now subdivided into two categories, normal nuggies and “blessed nuggies.”
Normal nuggies are obtained via purchase, and are not eligible for direct withdrawal to digital assets
Blessed nuggies are obtained by selling assets in the marketplace or earning them via most other game mechanics, and are eligible for direct withdrawal
Normal nuggies are always consumed first by default for any purchase or game action
Players will see only their combined balance of nuggies in-game, and normal nuggies will always be spent before blessed nuggies for all purposes. You can view your balance of normal nuggies and blessed nuggies in the Currencies tab of your profile on kap.gg/profile. Players must have a Pirate Pass and have passed Verification KYC to withdraw blessed nuggies.
When players earn items in the game, the items are stored in their KAP Vault, a new backend inventory system that helps us perform blockchain transactions on behalf of players. Players must have a Pirate Pass in order to withdraw items from the game, but can trade assets in-game at any time without a pass.
Crafting Stations
New player-owned crafting stations have been added: the Brewery, the Blacksmith, and the Tailor.
The supermajority (if not the entirety) of player-usable assets must be crafted
The Brewery crafts active perk cards and may craft consumables in the future
The Blacksmith crafts passive perk cards and cannons
The Tailor crafts wearable clothing (”cosmetics”)
All crafts in Captain & Company generally require a combination of resources, nuggies, and a blueprint (with a few exceptions). The crafting fee, which is paid in nuggies, increases relative to the current circulating supply of the crafted asset; this methodology is also referred to as a “bonding curve.” That means that as more players choose to create an asset, the more expensive it will become to create.
Crafting stations are owned as Deeds
One (1) of each type of station can be on each island
Owners with active crafting stations will receive 10% of the nuggies paid to each station as crafting fees.
Crafting stations become active when its owner has both its deed and an unoccupied plot of land linked to their account, held in any linked wallet; holding them together in the same wallet causes the plot of land to become “occupied”
Note that consumable assets, like perks, have a fluctuating circulating supply and therefore will have fluctuating bonding curve values, and thus variable crafting costs over time.
Player-Owned Land
Land economic gameplay has also been added, which will allow our biggest supporters to own a piece of the in-game economy.
Each island is composed of 10 land plots
There are currently two islands, Dragon’s Maw and Blasteron Island
There is currently no in-game visualization for the different islands, and both are represented by the same initial starting island
There will be one of each type of crafting station on each island, and there may be additional buildings that may be created in the future, some of which may be either player owned housing, crafting stations, or other economic gamepieces.
All crafting fees at a particular station type are currently split between all active owners of that station type
Crafting fees are earned in normal nuggies, which can be transformed into blessed nuggies by spending them in the marketplace
There are currently no in-game visual differentiators for land pieces, and the land metagame exists solely in user asset inventories and wallets
Note that land is still a very early feature, and much of this may still be developed over time.
Island Governance
Each island is governed by a player-owned guild, and that governership can be won or lost in periodic tournaments, which may take the form of either PvE or PvP contests.
The guild that governs an island earns 5% of all nuggies crafting fees paid on that island
Players who belong to the guild that governs an island have a special mark and rank in their inspect player profile page
As there is currently only one island visualized, contests will still begin to represent both the existing islands (Dragon’s Maw and Blasteron Island), and crafting fees will be split between the two
Island governance is also a very early feature, and is likely to be iterated on over time.
New User Interface (UI)
We’ve dramatically modernized the game UI to help new players jump into game more quickly and learn the new systems, as well as navigate the more complex marketplace and economic components that have been added.
New login screen UI
New menus UI
New player profile & inspect UI
New auction house UI
Community Polls
As a community-first and player-owned economy, we’re going to be leaning increasingly heavily on player input for designing key features moving forward. Players will be given voting chips for various accomplishments or asset holdings over time, and those chips will allow players to vote their weight in community polls held on Snapshot after deliberation in our Discord.
We’ve taken substantial inspiration from the success of other community poll-driven games, like Old School Runescape, but also must caution that often times there will be technical or economic reasons why we may not be able to implement some community-nominated feature. Regardless, we promise to hold the polls sacred and involve the community during as many steps as possible.
Seasonal Cadence
With the release of our Early Access build, we’re eliminating the practice of numbering seasons and instead will simply name our match feature patches with codenames, largely to help welcome in new players who may otherwise feel that they’re “behind.” We’ll likely revisit the “seasonal” nomenclature after our global launch on various distribution platforms.
Balance Changes
During our Alpha seasons, the community had substantial input around the topic of balancing for solo play vs group play. As a “default multiplayer” game, this is a topic that we’ll continue to pay attention to and listen to community feedback, and will likely continue to require additional adjustment. For this update, the following changes were applied.
In Gauntlet, if a ship is missing a player when a perk is awarded, an additional perk is given to the player currently designated as the Captain of that party
The “gradient system” that causes ships with more players to deal less damage has been substantially reduced, and now causes only a minor reduction in damage per shot if you outnumber your opponent
Ship default speed has been moderately reduced, but matching wind direction by turning the sails now dramatically increases ship speed
Other quantitative changes:
Cannon:
Adjusted damage from 6-22 to 8-12 (depending on crew size)
Ammo capacity reduced from 40 to 20
Gatling Gun:
Adjusted damage from 5-15 to 5-8 (depending on crew size)
Scatter Gun:
Adjusted damage from 10-40 to 10-15 (depending on crew size)
Ship:
Reduced turning speed by 33%
Top speed and acceleration reduced by 40%
Reduced collision damage by 80%
Ship Systems:
Damaged sails now reduce top speed (in addition to acceleration) by 50%
Catching wind in sails now increases top speed (in addition to acceleration) by up to 100%
Find fortune, foes, and friends for life in Captain & Company: the ultimate pirate MMORPG. Set sail with friends into epic naval battles with massive multiplayer crews, and pillage your way to becoming the wealthiest pirates on the high seas.
Make sure you join our Discord and claim your exclusive roles! You’ll have access to private channels only shared with other Captains and the devs o’ the Goldcoves themselves. Plus, if you have 25 or more ships, there’s a set of channels rumored to be hidden to all except the greatest of Admirals… conquer on, pirate!