What's Next: Land, Blast, & Roadmap
What a wild adventure ye scallywags have had!
Ahoy mateys! In just a few short months, Captain & Company has grown from an initial combat alpha into the largest game ecosystem on Blast L2, complete with fully cross-platform co-op PvP gameplay, on-chain crafting, and positively skeletal PFPs.
But pull out yer spyglass and peer with us into the near future, Season 2 ho!
Seasonal Airdrop Rewards
Captain & Company is a seasonal live service game, and each season runs an ongoing airdrop program. For Season 1, this airdrop program used a system named Pirate Power which multiplied a non-tradeable currency called Doubloons, which you earned simply for holding any synced assets or nuggies in your account, as well for playing and successfully extracting.
These Doubloons, at the end of the season, are entirely consumed and exchanged for chances to win fractions of land, termed “land crystals,” explained more below.
In addition to our native Season 1 airdrop rewards, as part of our migration to Blast, we have also operated a Blast Gold campaign on behalf of Blast, via our points currency mBLAST, which, largely similar to Doubloons, is also generated by holding synced and unlisted assets in your account, playing, or staking on https://kap.gg/blast.
The end of Season 1 does not change the ongoing distribution of mBLAST, Blast Gold, or Blast Points. These are different systems that run in parallel. Blast Gold distributions will continue, and mBLAST is currently unchanged.
When Season 2 launches, we’ll be massively consolidating our existing points system into something that’s substantially easier to understand, largely by combining concepts from both the Pirate Power / Doubloons system and the Pirate Tier / mBLAST systems, but those details will come later.
FAQ
The most important things to know are that:
Season 1 participants who held Doubloons will be receiving their land crystal airdrop in the next few weeks
mBLAST farmers will continue to farm mBLAST, including through Season 2, all the way until Blast themselves discontinue their points campaign
Doubloon emissions will be paused until Season 2 begins
Land
As with all great MMOs, Captain & Company will have land! This ultra-rare, extremely limited supply asset will be responsible for a number of very important long-term features for social and economic gameplay.
Land itself will take the form of islands, one released per season, each of which will be subdivided into a playable grid of map tiles. Those map tiles are each “zoned” for a type of tile improvement (“building”) that the owner of the tile can choose to craft on top of it. Specifically, these may include but are not limited to:
Crafting stations. Certain assets will require users to craft them using a crafting station. The owner of the crafting station may take a fee for crafts completed.
Repair shipyards. Repairs will be done via the local island’s shipyard that you’re on, and the owner of that shipyard may take a fee on repairs.
Player-owned housing. Ranging across various sizes, a limited number of players will be able to own in-game hideouts. Note: This feature in particular is extremely complex, and will take a substantial amount of time.
Resource nodes. Certain tiles can become resource nodes, which emit resources (like lumber and ore) over time.
Land is a very complex feature and will not be immediately playable in Season 2, however, the initial distribution of Season 1’s island land tiles will be finalized using the land crystals system described below.
Land Crystals (The Airdrop)
Because Captain & Company has a player-run economy, we’ll continue to drive towards decisions that put power in the hands of the players — and this includes decisions that attempt to involve all players in some form in land gameplay.
That’s where land crystals come in. Land crystals have a few important characteristics:
They represent fractional amounts of land
In certain sums, they can be combined to craft playable a land tile
Each season’s land crystals are specific to that season’s island, and can only be redeemed for a land tile on that island, and only earned during that season
Each season has a specific named island associated with it, with its own land tiles and player owners. Over the course of each season, 100% of that season’s land crystals will be dropped or otherwise assigned to players — and no more of that season’s specific island crystals will ever be issued.
In essence, this means that each season players will compete to earn land crystals, which, at the end of each season, will become tradeable and redeemable for that season’s land tiles. Because land will be fractionally earnable, this will allow all players to participate in the pursuit of glory, but only the truly brave will be able to collect enough (either through their direct efforts or trading with others) to craft a playable land tile.
As with all crafted assets inside of Captain & Company, land tiles themselves will also have bonding curves applied to their crafting cost. This importantly rewards early actors and preserves asset values for long-term holders, as well as allows for dynamic adjustment if an influx of players dramatically raises demand. Any specific season’s island land tiles can be crafted at any point after the season finishes, but note that all land crystals associated with those specific season’s island land tiles will have been already distributed and will likely need to be collected (purchased) from other players.
That means that regarding where we are now at the end of Season 1, 100% of the first island’s land crystals will be airdropped pro rata to all Doubloons holders.
These will be the only land crystals associated with Season 1’s island that will ever be dropped. These Season 1 land crystals will be untradeable until we get closer to land crafting that will open later this year, but each of your ownership stakes are secured.
Blast Gold
Blast Gold, part of the ongoing Blast L2 launch campaign, is a separate system that runs in parallel to Doubloons, land crystals, and other Captain & Company-specific seasonal rewards. Players will continue to farm mBLAST (Blast Gold) throughout the inter-season period, Season 2, and beyond, up until Blast discontinues their launch campaign.
The method by which players earn mBLAST, however, will change at the start of Season 2. The systems will be disclosed more as we get closer, but, in short, the changes will revolve around:
Adjusting gameplay-earned mBLAST to be granted via quests & objectives
Adjusting staking-earned mBLAST to be granted largely through LP positions
Adjusting NFT holding-earned mBLAST to include more asset types, by value
The net is that all Blast farmers can continue exactly as they have been, Blast Gold will continue to be dropped as long as Blast’s own mainnet launch campaign continues, and Season 2 will bring new exciting ways to earn mBLAST (Blast Gold).
The Blast Migration
As part of our ongoing commitment to the Blast ecosystem, we’ll be migrating all Captain & Company NFT assets into Blast.
This will take some time — infrastructure on Blast is still quite nascent, and some things will have to be built by us in-house that were not previously anticipated. Nonetheless, you should expect a complete migration of Blast assets to happen roughly around the same time as Season 2 launches in the next few weeks.
Importantly, as a consequence of the migration, we’ll also be moving towards off-chain crafting temporarily until gas fees on Blast come down considerably. This is because we are also dramatically increasing the number gameplay mechanics associated with crafting, and do not want to drive undue friction to players.
We remain excited about the potential of Blast L2 to grow into one of the most formidable ecosystems in the space, and are very honored to hold the position of the largest Blast Points-distributing game on the entire chain.
What’s Next? Season 2 Roadmap!
Season 2 will be arriving in a few short weeks, and we’ll be sharing more behind-the-scenes updates for all ye daring scallywags in the #dev-updates channel in our Discord. Suffice to say, there are some super exciting components here that players have been asking about for some time, as well as some new ones that may come as a pleasant surprise!
Adventure Mode
PvE! Seriously, actual PvE — it’s not quite Elden Ring yet, but it’s a whole lot less stressful than the paragraph below this one (good luck, PvPers). Players will be able to enter an instanced map with a number of NPC ships for them to bombard at their leisure. Additionally, the very center of the adventure mode map will be an open PvP zone, for the daring individuals who still want to feel that spicy kick and settle the score publicly.
Deathmatch Mode
PvP is going back to 1v1 mode, and, with it, MMR will be changing as well to become substantially more challenging. Deathmatch mode will pit two players against each other and end when one player is victorious. MMR will also reward players more for defeating players at-or-above their own rank, which will serve as a natural tapering of the ability for players to climb to the maximum ranks.
As a consequence of this, expect us to be dedicating more rewards towards MMR ranking than we have in the recent past.
Combat Updates
New weapon types! Specifics will be disclosed (or leaked in #dev-updates in Discord) soon, but suffice to say that it won’t just be the same singular boring cannon anymore. Captain & Company is an expansive game universe, and anything can be a weapon if you dream hard enough!
UI Overhaul
Both the in-game UI and the Shipyard are getting a facelift! You’ll have access to a substantially more streamlined experience (especially crafting & inventory management functions), as well as the addition of completely new functions like quests & objectives, the new points system, and an in-game inventory. Huzzah!
Crafting & Loot
Crafting will be moving off-chain as we migrate to Blast, and more loot types will be introduced during the season. For now, crafting will take place on the new webpage UI we’ll be rolling out, but, as alluded to above in the land section, we’ll be looking to move crafting “onshore” as soon as possible. For now, just be aware that you’ll be “bridging” assets you want to craft/play with into & out of the game environment, until Blast becomes a low-to-zero fee chain.
Rentals
We know rentals are annoying, for a lot of reasons, on both the player & owner sides. We’re going to be making a number of adjustments, the first of which is a switch to time-based (7-day or 30-day) rentals. Later, we’ll be reintroducing the in-game quickrent option as well. For now it’ll be replaced with a hyperlink to allow players to rent outside the game. Rentals are an important part of the player-run economy, and we want to make sure all parties feel excited about a fair system to harvest yield or get in some Captain gameplay hours without needing to shell out for a complete ship.
Shards
As part of our interaction with Shards, we’ll be looking to support guilds and player cooperatives as they compete for huge prize pools. Stay tuned as this feature will be released super soon (possibly before Season 2 even starts) for initial testing!
That’s a Wrap!
We can’t wait to take all ye pirates into the wonderful new world of the Season 2 Goldcoves that we’ve prepared. We’ll be releasing a more exact season launch date as we get closer to that time (in a few weeks)! Between the Blast migration and the launch of our Skellie PFPs, there’s been a ton of new technical overhead we’ve had to integrate very quickly, so we very much appreciate your patience as our cabin crew below deck finish putting together the final touches here.
We’ll be setting sail super soon, pirates!
Make sure you join our Discord and claim your NFT roles! You’ll have access to private channels only shared with other holders and the devs o’ Captain & Company 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!