Mercenary Update

Enter the Crimson Company, a hardened band of Mercenaries who've become disgruntled with the status-quo of Imperial Marine life. These Imperial troopers have seen some things and they’re looking to make their own fortunes at sea. In fact, they’re taking on new clients, like ye!

To celebrate the arrival of the Crimson Company, we're hosting a Spicy Weekend! Expect to see the oceans become a little more seasoned! That's right, hit the seas and have a much higher chance at finding some Allspicy goodness to make your Mercenaries happy. Keep an eye out, brigands may now also start carrying rum spice, giving pirates a chance to plunder it. Happy hunting!

We're very excited to be releasing the mercenaries to all the player oceans today. These have been in development for a while and we think players will have a lot of fun with them. We hope it will give players the ability to play gameplay they previously couldnt because of the ocean population or because of their rank. Mercenaries can replace regular swabbies on a vessel and are better in multiple ways.

• They perform better at duty puzzles than regular swabbies.
• They can perform some actions that regular swabbies cannot, such as DNav and defending in SMH.
• In addition to performing better in SF/Rumble they will team with the rest of the crew.
• They can be hired in higher numbers and don't always leave when jobbing pirates board the vessel.
• There are many things they still don't do like treasure hauling, generating tokens or participating in most expeditions.

Because of these benefits the skilled swabbies come with their own cost.

• They still consume rum/grog/swill like any other pirate but in addition they also consume a new commodity called rum spice.
• The amount of rum spice in the hold determines the total number of mercenaries you can hire (5 rum spice /per -- so if you have 54 in the hold you can hire up to 10).
• They also take a percentage of chests earned which is currently equal to the percentage of mercenaries. Players will get to keep the first of each chest but won't get their next chest until the mercenaries take their cut (which could be a while on large/empty boats and when getting chests one at a time like in TH).
• They take a regular pirate booty split in blockades and count towards influence. They refuse to job for crews that are not paying enough.
• They take a percentage of booty pillaged or awarded in a flotilla, this will not be based on the crew shares and will instead be a flat cut. They also contribute a flat rate to the restocking cut.

As mentioned earlier the mercenaries will consume the new commodity. This commodity is called rum spice and it is made from a commodity called allspice. Allspice drops from pillaging -- harder enemies will net more allspice. Rum spice is made in apothecaries and has no other ingredients than allspice. One allspice turns into 20 rum spice, so that's quite a difference in quantity.

The mercenaries change touches a lot of existing mechanics. While we tried to test every scenario we expect there to be some room for rebalancing as we learn how it impacts the game. We may have to disable the feature in different circumstances if they are being exploited or used to harass other players. For example, we have disabled blockades this weekend so that this feature does not impact island ownership until we can see how they fit in. We do expect this to change certain aspects of the game that people already like -- but hopefully only in ways that players and the community enjoy.