Sailwind News

A new beta testing build is now available. You can play the beta if you want to test the upcoming features before they are officially released. Please note that the beta version might be less stable and more buggy than the regular version. You can use your existing save files in the beta version, however it is recommended to back them up just to be safe. You can find your save files in C:\Users\(username)\AppData\LocalLow\Raw Lion Workshop\Sailwind


New features to test:

- sanbuq customization: You can now customize the sails, masts and other custom elements on the sanbuq (the large Al'Ankh ship). Several new large sails are also available at the Gold Rock City shipyard. More sails and other customization options will be added later.

- wind shadow: Sails will now cast a "wind shadow" on other sails, meaning that a sail will not be able to catch any wind if there is another sail in front of it, blocking the wind. The strength of the shadow effect depends on the area of the sail as well as distance between the sails.

If you would like to share your feedback about the new features, the best place to do this is on the official Sailwind discord server, in the #beta-general channel. Bugs can be reported in the
#beta-bug-reports channel. Thank you!

- fixed a bug where the tutorial hints would not show up
- fixed a bug where the inventory UI would sometimes show up sideways while the game was loading
- the Gold Rock dock collision should now be slightly more reliable

- fixed a bug causing the shipyard UI to not display properly

Major New Features

- New economy system: you can now buy and sell trade goods directly at the Sailwind office. The prices and availability will change over time based on a simulated supply and demand system. You will also have access to some information about the prices of goods on other islands, allowing more planning and predictability with trading.

- Currencies: each region now uses its own regional currency, and there is also a universal "gold" currency (at the moment only used for purchasing ships). You can exchange currencies at the Sailwind office in capital cities and several other islands. The exchange rate will vary over time, and your transactions will affect it as well. (if you load a previous save, your "old" gold will be converted automatically, with some amount split evenly between the three regional currencies, and new gold for larger amounts)

- Missions: missions are now integrated with the new economy system, using the market prices of goods to determine mission rewards and destinations. In general, you can expect more variety, such as some rare very high reward missions. Also, trans-oceaninc missions will now generally pay significantly less money.

Other New Features
- improved lighting effects with ambient occlusion and lantern shadows (optional, can be toggled in the settings menu)
- the port mission UI now has separate tabs for local and world missions
- crates of tobacco can now be bought and sold as a trade good on the market
- improved the tutorial hints to be more helpful
- various small UI improvements

Balance Changes
- local missions can now have up to 5 goods (6 for capital cities), but the amount is limited by your reputation (max 3 goods at the lowest level)
- world missions can have up to 12 goods
- when starting a new game, the moon phase will now be approaching full moon, to ensure the first several nights are bright

Bug Fixes
- improved the stability of the boat physics, possibly reducing the frequency of random glitches and crashes
- fixed some bugs causing the tutorial hints to show incorrect information in some situations
- various other minor bug fixes

The beta version of the upcoming economy update (0.20.b1) is now available on the beta channel.


The full patch notes for the update will be available on full release. For now, here are the main new features:

- New economy system: you can now buy and sell trade goods directly at the Sailwind office. The prices and availability will change over time based on a simulated supply and demand system. You will also have access to some information about the prices of goods on other islands, allowing more planning and predictability with trading.

- Currencies: each region now uses its own regional currency, and there is also a universal "gold" currency (at the moment only used for purchasing ships). You can exchange currencies at the Sailwind office in capital cities and several other islands. The exchange rate will vary over time, and your transactions will affect it as well. (if you load a previous save, your "old" gold will be converted automatically, with some amount split evenly between the three regional currencies, and new gold for larger amounts)

- Missions: missions are now integrated with the new economy system, using the market prices of goods to determine mission rewards and destinations. In general, you can expect more variety, such as some rare very high reward missions. Also, trans-oceaninc missions will now generally pay significantly less money. The goal with the new mission system is to encourage the player to gradually transition to trade for making most of their money.


Beta testing and feedback
The new economy is a complicated, dynamic system, which still requires some balancing and fine tuning. Major game-breaking bugs are also possible. The goal of this beta release is to gather some feedback to allow for better balancing and bug fixing before the full official release of the update. If you'd like to help out with testing, here are the most important points to focus on:

- trading: does it feel fair, interesting and realistic? Can you make a reasonable amount of profit through trading skillfully? Is it too hard, or too easy?

- missions: especially when starting a new game, are the mission rewards good? Is there enough variety? Any abnormal behavior, such as no/very few missions availalbe?


The best place to share your feedback is the #beta-general channel on the Sailwind Community Discord:
https://discord.gg/u4C8RQG6X9