Sail Forth News

Hi everyone, Update 1 is close to complete, and as this is a pretty big set of changes I'd like to try making a beta available for a couple weeks before the update goes out.

If you have the game on Steam and would like to opt-in to the beta, you can do so by right-clicking the game in your Library, selecting Properties > Betas, and choosing `public_preview` from the dropdown.

It is very important to note that if you do this your save file will become incompatible with the old version! The game will automatically create a backup of your original save on load, which can be found on Windows at

%appdata%\..\LocalLow\Festive Vector\Sail Forth\boat-game-old.save

If you want to return to playing the old version before the update is released, replace `boat-game.save` with `boat-game-old.save` Otherwise you can continue playing your save in the public preview branch until the update is fully released.

If you find a bug you can now report it directly from the game, using the 'Feedback' option found in the pause menu. This is helpful for me as it includes a copy of your save file, the log, and a screenshot which make it much easier for me to find and fix the bug.

Update 1 Changelog

Fleet Management - The Dock
- Boats can be stored at a dock, accessible from the fleet management menu whenever not in combat
- Unlimited boats can be stored at the dock along with their crew and loadout
- If your entire fleet sinks but you have docked boats, you can undock them to continue the fight
- If you get a new boat and have no room in the fleet it can be added to dock automatically

Fleet Management - Orders and AI
- The 'set order' functionality of previous demos has been restored and updated
- Fleet boats can be told to Escort, Hold Position, or Hold Fire
- Can also issue one of these commands to the entire fleet at once
- Greatly improved navigation AI
- Your fleet (and other AI boats) should be much more adept at avoiding collisions
- Your fleet will attempt to escape combat and return to your flagship if you are not close by

Progression Balancing
- Based on feedback many of the boats in the game have had their balance tweaked, in addition to a revised unlock progression
- Each new Shipshape Shop encountered will unlock a new boat of that chapter’s tier
- Larger ships are now unlocked later in the game and have had their prices updated to reflect this
- Removed boat selection from tutorial sequence to curate a more consistent intro experience

Content Updates
- Hostile locations such as forts have a chance to spawn new enemies each day
- Updated Croaker Bounty encounters which now scale in size and difficulty
- Introducing the Tekk Clan Speedboat: a fast and lightly armed engine-powered vessel
- Tekk Subs are now implemented as proper 'boats' in game terms, giving them better physics and AI
- Tekk Destroyer weapon slots increased to 4
- Updated visuals for Lightkeeper Flagship: Based on feedback the design of the ship has been revised with a more realistic and better looking sail rig
- Crew color customization: Your crew’s color scheme is now chosen separately from the sail colors

Tutorial Updates
- Updated tutorial system: The old tutorial system felt a bit heavy handed as it would frequently pause the game and force you to do something that you potentially already know how to do
- Tutorials now use a 'checklist' system that never pauses the game, and are much less intrusive
- New tutorial added for camera zoom controls

Other fixes and changes
- Many smaller bug fixes and tweaks, too many to enumerate here

Sail Forth now has an official Discord server! The goal with this is to provide a platform-agnostic place to discuss the game, report issues, and interact with the dev team.

I'll continue to monitor and reply to threads on the Steam Discussions board, however you'll likely get a faster response on Discord.

Join the server here: Sail Forth Discord

Sail Forth has been released but that doesn’t mean I’m done working on it! There are many things that didn’t make the cut for release, and I’ve got lots of new ideas as well from listening to community feedback and watching everyone play.

Now that the initial launch craziness has calmed down a bit, I’d like to share with you all a rough roadmap for the coming year, consisting of a series of free updates. It’s important to keep in mind that these things are very fluid and of course subject to change, so I’m going to be intentionally quite vague about the exact contents of later updates until they are ready. That said, I still want to share that there are cool things in the works!

The first update is going to be focused on adding and improving things I’ve consistently seen mentioned by members of the community. Subsequent updates will contain new features and content such as new types of encounters, enemies, and in general more things to do!

As always, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has played and engaged with the game, it truly means a lot to me to see people enjoying this thing I spent 6 years making!

- Features and improvements based on community feedback
- Store and retrieve boats from your fleet at the Dock
- Control your fleet’s behavior with orders
- Improved AI navigation that avoids collisions far more effectively
- Revised boat balancing and progression



A dangerous, but lucrative phenomena arises in the Deepblue!

A brand new way to explore the Deepblue!

A new danger looms over the Finefolk…

Hi everyone, this will likely be the final patch before the first big feature update! This has a small set of bug fixes and improvements to address some things I've seen mentioned here in addition to a couple things I noticed myself.

The feature update (v1.3.0) is nearly done, and I'll soon be sharing more details about it along with other planned major updates, so keep an eye out!



- Remove 2 non-existent photos that were making it impossible to complete the photos achievements
- Extra dialog hint to encourage exploring to the north while exploring Commo Cay
- Slightly increased time limit on final target course
- Don’t show stats on items in research tree that aren’t unlocked
- Fix some bounds calculations for target courses that allowed them to spawn partially in an adjacent area
- Updated Light Prism logic at Skull Shrines, made them more visually obvious and ensure the prism remains collectable if player leaves area without picking it up

Hi everyone, here is the latest patch! This is a bit of a small one as the main focus here was fixing a crash on Switch and the interest of keeping versions synced across all platforms some of the fixes I've made in the last couple days aren't present. Those should come along in 1.2.7 pretty quickly though!



Bug Fixes
- Switch/Low spec machines: Fix crashes and GPU stuttering in Pine Peaks locations
- Crew dialog adapts to crew members being stowed below deck mid-dialog, fixes possible soft locks in tutorial from stowing Goose or Toot
- Fix bug where the Moontide Moonflower event might not trigger if the player had done many Moontide quests in quick succession

Improvements
- World Map: Rumors window resizes to fit content, current location is selectable
- Further optimization to island flora rendering and generated meshes
- The first Shipshape Shop and Anglerwrangler Emporium are revealed on the map after being mentioned by Toot and Goose

As mentioned before, I've been working in parallel on the first feature update, which is getting close to being ready! In case design changes I won't be that specific about it but the goal with this update is to give you more control over fleet management. ːfrogagentː