New Game Interface

Welcome to "Pirates and Traders". "Pirates and Traders" is a role-playing adventure in which you sail the Carribean sea during the golden age of piracy. Your object is to amass a personal fortune and retire from life at sea, but how you do so is entirely up to you. You can sail from port to port, trading goods and build your fortune peacefully. Or you can turn pirate and rob, pillage, and burn. The choice is up to you.

Before you start, however, you need to create your pirate. If you would like to jump directly to the action, press the "Quick Start" button. This will build you a good default pirate straight away. Otherwise, read on below.

Pirate Name

This is the name of your pirate as it is used in the game. The expected format in the game is firstname surname; if more than two names are used, everything after the first name will be treated as a surname.

Your pirate will always start the game at age 20. As your character grows older, he will initially gain skills, until he reaches a certain age, after which your aptitude and skills may deteriorate.

Gender

This represents the gender of your pirate. The choice of gender may be important for some story lines, but it is otherwise irrelevant. It is assumed that the player - if female - is disguised to appear as a male, as was the case for the vast majority of female pirates in history.

Nationality

This is your starting nationality. You will always start the game outside one of their ports, and with a letter of marque (license to privateer) for that nation. The different nationalities are:

• British
• Dutch
• French
• Spanish

The Spanish start the game at war with all other nationalities. The British and the Dutch start the game as allies.

Attributes

The attributes of your character are the base determiner of what your character is good at. They affect skill checks, and also determine what skills your character can learn. You have a total of 10 points to distribute among your attributes (9 if you are playing on Swashbuckler). The human norm for each attribute is 3, but you as the player can modify your attributes as you like. Note that low attributes strictly limit the skills you can pick. It is recommended to play with a minimum attribute of 3 for at least the first few games.

Background

Here you can select your pirate background. The background sets some basic starting skills of your pirate and sets up a little background storytelling which helps define your character.

In the free version of the game, you may select between an Adventurer (good opportunities to build charm, cunning, and fighting skills but little sailing experience) or a Sailor (good Sailing skills). The default quick start pirate is a sailor.

Ship Name

This is the name of your pirate ship.

Ship Type

This allows you to select which ship you will start the game in. It also determines your starting gold.

• Sloop: The Sloop is a fast, versatile ship with 16 guns and a relatively large crew. This is the best choice if you want to pursue a career as a pirate.
• Barque: The Barque is a slow 8-gun ship with a moderately large cargo capacity. This ship is well suited to a career of trading.

You will always start the game with a half complement of crew, full cannons, and food for 5 months of sailing. The worth of your starting ship will also determine how much gold you start with. The cheaper your ship, the more gold you will begin the game with.

Pirate Flag

Here you can select your pirate flag. The flag is used in your status screen and the high score table, but otherwise has little practical effect on the game.

Difficulty

Select the difficulty level of the game. The difficulty level affects how skilled the enemy captains are, as well as what proportion of the gold you earn during the game is added to your treasure hoard.

• Apprentice: This is the easiest level. In this level, non-player characters never improve their skills, which means that you will only rarely encounter skilled opponents. You are also less likely to encounter warships and pirates when performing a search action and you will generally find it easier and cheaper to escape from a trial with your life. Your share of the treasure collected during the game is 20% of the total booty, but your score modifier is also set at 50%.
• Buccaneer: This is the standard game level. In this level, non-player characters improve their skills, but only at half of the level of the player character. Your share of the treasure during the game is 10% of the total booty.
• Swashbuckler: This is the hardest game level. In this level, non-player characters are as advanced in their skills as the player character. This means that you will often meet characters who are your equal, if not better, in their skills than your own character. You will also find that it is significantly more expensive to bribe and escape a trial. Your share of the treasure during the game is only 5% of the total booty, but your score modifier is set at 200%.

Game Settings

Auto save settings

This setting allow you to specify when the game should save your progress. There are currently four options: every year (whenever the game year ticks over), every month, every day (effectively any time that you perform any action), or never. These options are provided for convenience; you can still manually save the game whenever you want using the save option under the MENU button.

Fountain of Youth

The Fountain of Youth option allows you to void the effects of aging in the game. Your captain will never lose skill points from old age, and can thus continue playing for as long as you feel like it (if you die in a trial or get sunk, you can always go back to an earlier save game).

However, games played using the Fountain of Youth option do NOT appear in the high score list.

True Pirate

True Pirate is the "ironman" mode of the game. In this game mode, your progress is continually saved during play. Death or retirement - for whatever cause - is final. True Pirate mode has its own high score table.