Chaos and turmoil continue to escalate across the Indian Ocean with the emboldened Phoenix's Talon forces taking on the Dragon's Claw. Update 3.1 arrives as a new phase of the Season 3 story begins, bringing along with it plenty of content updates and bug fixes.

Highlights

Episode 3: Calm Before The Storm, starting Week 5

• Reward - Imperial Jade
• Bounty: "The Serpent's Wrath"
• First time rewards: 1 x Commander Zhang's Chest, 10000 x Silver
• Chance to obtain from Phoenix's Talon Strongbox - Epic Major Furniture "Cannonball Carving Station".
  • Hitting a weakpoint applies Taunting Charge on the target.
  • Increases "Taunt" duration by 15%.
  • Reduces Reload time of Piercing weapons by 5%.
• Bounty: "Flames of the Phoenix"
• First Time rewards: 6 x Upgrade Kits, 1 x Phoenix's Talon Chest, 13000 Silver
• "Flicker of Destiny" contract reward: Blueprint of Epic Ballista "Bane of Ten Suns".
• Unrelenting Drill: Fires a drill-bolt that travels in a straight path, piercing multiple targets. Drill-bolts deal additional 50% to subsequent targets after hitting the first target.
• Long Draw: This weapon can be charged for up to 420% increased damage and 900m increased range
• Piercing III: Adds 30% of damage as Piercing Damage. Increases damage to weakpoints by 100%.

Events & Giveaways

• "Talk like a Pirate Day" giveaway: available from September 17th to September 24th. You may redeem your free gifts from Ubisoft Connect!

  • Precision Drilling Bit x7
  • Rubber x7
  • Torsion Spring x7
  • Sky Barrage (Firework) x1
  • Cannon Smoker (Emblem) x1
  • Hephaestus's Tears (Sail Pattern) x1

• More fireworks, emotes, and ship vanities are also available in the Store, be sure to check it out!

  • Talk like a pirate firework 1: "Arrgh"
  • Talk like a pirate firework 2: "Crossed Swords"
  • Talk like a pirate emblem: "Thick Skull"
  • Midnight Sail Colour: "Skyclad"
  • Midnight Hull Colour: "Moon Shadow"

• To celebrate "Talk like a Pirate Day", a Double Infamy event will take place from September 19th (06:00 UTC) to September 23rd (06:00 UTC).

Gameplay Updates

Season 3 Extension

• In-game calendar for Season 3 has been extended by a week so as to reflect the Season's end date on the 19th of November, 6:00am UTC.

Map Filter

Dev note: In Patch 2.2, we introduced changes to make World Events accessible on a fixed schedule. We have since been closely observing player feedback, and while the scheduling changes were generally well-received, we also noted that the community felt that the map was getting increasingly cluttered, making it difficult to locate relevant content.

In Patch 3.1, we're making some visual tweaks to the World Event markers to reduce the space occupied, as well as making some changes to the default visibility of World Events on the map. Only the closest active World Event of each type will be shown on the map border. You may choose to adjust this behaviour through the Customize User Interface section in the settings menu to suit your preferences.

• Updated visuals of World Event markers on the map.
• Added 3 new settings to customize the display of World Events on the map.
  • World Event Edge Clamp (On/Off).
  • World event status (All/Active only):
    • All: Shows all World Events including those that will start soon.
    • Active Only: Shows World Events that are currently active
  • World event range (All/Closest only):
    • All: Shows all World Events including multiple instances of the same type.
    • Closest Only: Limits showing the closest World Event per type.
• Curate World Events that are displayed on the map through filtering by relevance (by player progression).
• World Events far above your current ship rank or Infamy level will not be displayed.
• Accepting a bounty or directly encountering a world event in the Open World will enable the display of the World Event on the map.
• The following behaviour remains unchanged:
  • Seasonal World Events, Ghost Ships, Elite Warships, Sea Monsters, and Merchant Convoys will continue to be shown on the map when they are available.

Helm Empire Management

• Players can now add funding to manufactories that are actively generating Pieces of Eight to increase the length of production. The cost will be proportionate to the remainder of the amount of time added on. Players may start funding at a minimum of an additional ten minutes.
  • Example: After a Manufactory is active for 6 minutes, players cannot add funds to this Manufactory because the minimum add-on funding starts at 10 minutes.
  • Example: A manufactory has been active for 57 minutes. Players will now have the option to add funds to extend production by 50 minutes. Any add-on production time is rounded down to the nearest ten minutes.
• Players can perform supply runs on manufactories with less than 15 minutes of funding time remaining. The cost of the supply run is scaled proportionally to the funding time remaining.
• Changed territory collection of Pieces of Eight to deduct (tax) from the collected amount rather than deducting from players' existing amount of Pieces of Eight.
• Added faction icon and name to manufactory tooltip.

Manufactory Defense - Reduced Penalties

• Upon failing the Manufactory Defense, the Manufactory production downtime is now 1 hour, regardless of Manufactory level.

Weapons

• Repair mortars now affect the player that fired it if they are within the area of effect
• Updated the description of the Battle Junk's Perk: "Provoke"
  • Old: Weapon-hits within 200m range apply Taunt charges. Applying "Taunt" with this ship makes target vulnerable to 50% increased weakpoint damage from all sources.
  • New: Damage dealt within 200m range apply Taunt charges. Applying "Taunt" with this ship makes target vulnerable to 50% increased weakpoint damage from all sources.

Sea Monsters

• Players can now have a chance to encounter the Shadowbeast while sailing around the open world.

Dev Note: We are introducing more dynamism to the open world through chance encounters which include sea monsters and ghost ships to enrich the sense of wonder while sailing out at sea. We acknowledge that these may impact the difficulty of world events should they overlap, and we are actively monitoring community feedback to adjust the rules for triggering these events to achieve a good balance.

Inventory Management

• Added stack quantity and splitting/merging stacks in ship customization.
• Multiple copies of the same weapon, armour, and furniture are now stacked in the Ship Customization screen.

Bounties

• Updated bounties to display location hints in the map.

Job Board

• Improved base Job Board rewards
• Increased bonus rewards provided by the Helm Upgrades "Sainte-Anne's Favour" and "Telok Penjarah's Favour".

Improved Merchant Convoy Rewards

• Increased drop rates, quantity and added new drops in Merchant Convoy rewards.
• More materials that are used for ship upgrades will be available e.g. Roselle Cloth, Wood Pitch, Lacquer, Dry Casting Sand, and more.
• Improved visibility on rewards available in the World Event tooltip.

Recommended Activities

• Added manufactories to the list of rewards shown for Helm Empire Opportunities on Recommended Activities.

Seasonal Calendar - UI improvements

• Improved visuals to now highlight current week.
• Updated icons of featured rewards to be displayed in the collapsed view.
• Increased smoothness while side scrolling through the weeks.

Improvements and Bug Fixes

Sea Monsters

• Fixed an issue with the Shadowbeast and the Elder Shadowbeast were applying the "Stormstruck" status effect at a lower-than-intended rate.

Text and Voice Chat

Dev note: We've identified an issue where the "Chat service has encountered an error. Please try again later" info message was displayed in the text chat window in unintended situations. We've addressed this case and added a new info message when the game reconnects to the chat service. Improving the stability of text and voice chat continues to be a priority for our team in the updates to come.

• Added message feedback upon the successful reconnection to the voice chat service.
• Fixed an issue where the "NIGHTINGALE- FFFF831D" error message "Chat service has encountered an error. Please try again later" is displayed in certain scenarios.
• Fixed an issue where the "NIGHTINGALE- 12C" error codes are displayed in text chat while the service was available in certain scenarios.
• Fixed an issue where chat text input extends past the text box.

Contracts

• Fixed an issue where target ships were not spawning in the contract "Curtain Call".
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to abandon "Argent Refrain", "Sable Refrain", "Peste Control" repeatable contracts.
• Fixed an issue where "Defender's Overture" contract was listed in the journal under the Coast of Africa region when the objective takes places in East Indies.
• Fixed an issue where bounties were failed in cases where World Events had automatically started for players while they were progressing in the Seasonal Story.
• Fixed an issue where the item submission feedback was missing if the player had insufficient items.
• Fixed an issue where placeholder text is observed in the objective of the contract "Life after Death" after completing the first step of contract.
• Fixed an issue where the icon on the contract item "Nei Wen's Journal" was not displayed in the contract "Engulfing Storm".

Perks

• Fixed an issue where the perk icon was not being displayed for allies when the Hulk's "Ironwill" is active.
• Fixed an issue where the incorrect icon was displayed when the Cutter's "Unsparing" perk was triggered.

Equipment & Resources

• Fixed an issue where players were unable to locate "Machinist Station Mines" blueprint despite owning it.
• Fixed an issue where "Black Prince" armour mitigated more damage than intended.

Smuggler Pass

• Fixed an issue where the map fades to a black screen after switching from the Smuggler Pass.
• Fixed an issue where the preview of the bundle items does not load after the player accesses the Store from "Buy Premium Pass" widget.
• Corrected the description for the amount of Gold reward obtainable from Premium Smuggler's Pass (no changes were made to the obtainable amount of Gold).

Audio

• Rebalanced volume levels of several weapons, battle soundtracks, crew attacks and contract cutscenes.

Stability Improvement

• Fixed a crash that occurs when players change furniture.
• Fixed a crash that occurs when players returned to Smuggler Pass tab from the Currency tab.
• Fixed various other crashes.

UI/UX

• Fixed an issue where fast travel was accidentally triggered when player is panning the map with the mouse.
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to scroll UI after moving items from Cargo to Warehouse.
• Fixed an issue where Grilled Lestari meat was not available on the "Grilled Food" action wheel shortcut.
• Fixed an issue where players can see a bounty marked on the map before unlocking the bounty board.
• Fixed a description in the Codex for "Teuling's Special Steak" and where to obtain the recipe.
• Fixed an issue where the World map and Helm overview map appears as a black screen when quickly switching between Helm overview map, World map, Smuggler Pass or Seasonal Calendar tabs.
• Fixed an issue with outdated Helm icons in preview images on Leaderboard.
• Fixed an issue where the icon of the weathervane item from the "Onwards to the End" vanity set did not match the item.
• Fixed an issue where multiple manufactory names are truncated on the Helm Empire Overview in various localizations.
• Fixed an issue where the 'Disembark' button overlaps with Action Wheel change page button when in close proximity with other players near Dens or Outposts for Arabic & Russian languages.
• Fixed various localization issues.
• [PS5] Fixed an issue where the open world activity card is unavailable.

Benchmarking

• Disabled benchmarking tool due to technical issues until further notice.