Toyay, IrishJohnGames celebrated four months of early access for its hit pirate simulator, Rise of Piracy, with a brand-new update.
Rise of Piracy patch 48 introduces new quality-of-life features, gameplay adjustments, and bug fixes to improve the naval strategy game’s campaign experience. One of the update’s most notable additions is a detailed diplomacy screen that lets players view relationships among the game’s major factions, providing more information to support strategic decision-making during campaigns.
Real-time strategy combat has also been expanded with new reload indicators that display the status of a ship’s cannons. Changing ammunition types now requires ships to reload before firing, adding another tactical consideration during naval engagements.
Rise of Piracy patch 48 introduces a new difficulty option that controls whether players receive bonus gold and renown when leveling up. The setting is enabled by default on Easy and Medium difficulties but disabled on Hard and above, and can be customized during a campaign.
Settlement management has also been expanded with a construction tab that allows players to develop conquered islands. The developer said the system will continue to evolve throughout the game’s Early Access period, with future updates planned to deepen island specialization and defensive options.
Additional improvements include new music and ambient audio, expanded campaign notifications, refinements to the RTS interface and controls, and a one-click option to purchase ships and immediately assign them to a defense fleet.
The update also rebalances campaign encounters and enemy fleet aggression, adds alerts for allied ships being sunk, and adjusts several campaign mechanics, including requiring ships to reload after switching cannon ammunition.
Alongside the new features, the update resolves dozens of bugs affecting campaign progression, ship pathfinding, combat, user interface behavior, flagship switching, building progression, and crashes in Rise of Piracy.
According to the developer, several long-standing issues dating back to before the game’s Early Access launch have been addressed, while additional fixes remain in development for future updates. Rise of Piracy is currently in Early Access for PC on Steam.
The developer aims for a major patch every 2-3 months as it nears its Early Access release on PC. For more information on this and other ship simulation titles, like Ships at Sea and Seafarer: The Ship Sim, be sure to check back to Simulation Daily for updates.
