Alright, gave this a quick late-night spin, and here are a few first impressions...
Natives have been fixed, thank you! They're still tough combatants, but they're not the blood-hungry demigods they used to be. As in, it's actually possible to defeat them in battle, thus opening up a lot more of the islands to looting.
I personally still feel that shipbuilding blocks are just a bit on the expensive side, when you consider just how many of them you have to purchase in order to make any real customizations to your ship... Weighed against how much time/difficulty is involved in gaining wealth, it just seems a bit limiting. But I'll have to try a few more runs and have one last a bit longer before I say anything firm on this matter.
Until the early game gets tweaked so you have an easier time getting a character that will actually last for more than a few minutes, I think the worldgen questions are better off not being in the alpha versions, if only because it's currently more just an annoyance that slows down repeated testing. Unless something gameplay-significant has already been implemented that deals with them, I don't think they're currently helping anything. I remember sighing with relief last version when I realized I didn't have to wait through that anymore.
Cannons now cost a not-so-small fortune at around 1000gp each... I suppose this sort of makes sense, but it does also mean that it will take quite a long time before the player gets a single cannon, one stack of ammo and a cannoneer to man the thing. But considering the tactical advantage it provided last version, I don't really have that great of an issue with the price, other than that by the time you can afford it, you're already killing everything.
I think that's the main thing, there's no particularly easy way of getting your income going early on. You have to spend all your money hiring troops just so you can survive the occasional ocean encounter, but you also have to get them enough food so that you all don't starve to death. There are a number of items that make things easier for your economy (fishing pole, beds, cards), but those are all somewhat expensive and located in rare, randomized shops that normally mean you already have to have a veteran seafaring crew in order to make it that far.
Eh, I'm getting off the point, this is still just an alpha... I'm still getting a lot of that one weird advertisement soundfile, particularly when arriving at destinations and the text starts showing up to tell you you've arrived. Also ran into an oddity where the sailor suddenly stopped doing his job and didn't start in again until we'd made a couple stops. It only happened once though, so I have no idea what triggers it.
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Topic: Pixel Piracy Brought to you by the creators of Terraria (Read 139499 times)