Getting started

Tutorial#

It is a new voyage of its own: start it with the Tutorial button on the title screen.

The voyage#

Fly your freighter across five acts, one region at a time. Each act is a chart of waypoints: sail toward the exit, where the region's boss waits. Every passage costs crystal (fuel) and provisions, and the pressure front creeps closer.

Lit waypoints — ports, mageholds, refineries — show from anywhere. Dark sky must be scouted with the Lookout, though some dark waypoints carry a penciled clue (smoke, sails, lights), and ports add more. A gold star is a prize under guard: an elite ship, and a fitting, a fine gun or a hoard for whoever beats her.

Each region's chart runs four or five lanes deep: lanes fork and cross, so you choose which way to fly. Lit places are fewer than dark sky, but one always lies within a few passages of wherever you are.

Click a waypoint to set your course: it is ringed in red, the passage is marked in, and its cost is shown beside it; Set sail (or Enter) goes. A parcel in a contract's color marks the port it is bound for, and the chart panel lists every contract aboard. After Undock you can still go back ashore, until you set sail.

Supercharge (on the course card, or S) pushes the Drive for one passage: the front does not move at all. It costs 1 crystal for every 10 t the ship weighs, on top of the passage. You get one an act at Drive 1–2, two at Drive 3–4 and three from Drive 5, never two in three passages, not while Overweight and not running dark. The push may strain the Drive: the next fight then starts with a Drive bar damaged, unless you reach a dock or stop to make repairs first. The dashed line on the chart shows where the front will be after the passage you have chosen.

Make repairs (on the flight deck or the chart, or R) keeps the ship where she is for a passage and puts the whole crew to work on the hull. It costs the passage's meals and extra rations (1 for each point mended, at most 1 for every two who eat), and silver for the timber and tar: the dock's price for the hull mended, 5% less for each point of Repair skill among the crew aboard, down to half price. The front comes on as if you had flown the passage. One stop mends the damage, up to half the hull's maximum, and you pay only for the points mended. The Clockwork Deck chief, Tar & Oakum, Tinker Crabs, Hull Beetles, a stone mage or a Shaper each mend a point or two for no silver. Away from towns, something may come across a ship lying still. A Drive strained by a supercharge is eased too. Once at each waypoint.

At each Harbor between acts, the shipyard offers one free reward: reinforced hull planking (+4 maximum hull), supplies, or a pouch of silver.

Every voyage has a seed—chosen randomly unless you enter one on the New Voyage screen. Using the same seed with the same ship, layout, captain, and difficulty generates the exact same map, crew, and encounters. Seeded voyages count toward the Captain's Record like any other run.

The front#

The pressure front (the Collector's sweep in the Low Lanes, the Hush everywhere else) comes on from the left of the chart every passage. Waypoints behind it are under the front, and they are deadly: nearly every arrival there is a fight, whether you have been there before or not (now and then the front throws up something else: a ship caught in it, castaways, a checkpoint, a squall, a guide who knows its lanes), with the front's own hazards in it (the Collector's long guns firing from the haze, or Hush pulses that strip wards and silence rooms) and the Hearth burning low. A waypoint the front rolls over with you on it catches you.

The longer you stay in, the worse it gets: from the second passage in a row the ships are elite, and on the third the front's pursuer runs you down, a ship far beyond your weight. Charge the Drive and break away. Spoils in the front are thin.

A few places become hideouts once the front has passed over them: a fog-bound cove, a leadglass grotto, a refuge with a lamp still burning. No fight waits there, the count of passages in the front starts again, and once the crew can make camp: patch the ship with their own hands, rest, or take what the place has to offer. Something always happens while you are there.

Safe anchorages are found the same way: an anchorage is only there once the front has passed over it (until then the waypoint is open sky, a wreck, a crystal outcrop or a storm cell, like any other). No fight waits there and the crew get a night at rest, but unlike a hideout it does not set the count of passages in the front back: the count stays as it is.

They say the front uncovers things it passes over, if you are brave or foolish enough to go back for them.

Battle basics#

Space pauses. Battles start paused so you can plan.

Each weapon in the weapons bar has two parts. The power bar on top (the Flow pips, ON/OFF): click it to give the gun its Flow or take it away. The big weapon button below it: click it, then an enemy room, to fire there. 1–9 select weapons, in the order of the weapons bar. Right-click a weapon to power it down. A gun that is charged and waiting for a target pulses red.

Click system icons (bottom left) to route Flow; right-click to remove. Ships carry a bar or two less Flow than their systems could use, so what to power is a choice in every fight. Gold shows where your Flow is: in the strip above the icons, Flow not yet given to anything; in a system's column, the bars it powers. Empty ticks are room for Flow, red bars are damaged, and a Flow surge's bars are brighter. Each fight opens with your Flow set as you left it at the end of the last.

Crystal can buy you a moment: a Flow surge (crystal crystal) lends +flow Flow for times and, if the Ward Loom works, raises a Greater Ward for wardTimes that refills every ward layer, bounces most enemy fire back and blocks heavy artillery. It is ready again after cds, when the bonus Flow runs out. Wind shield (shield crystal) restores one ward layer at once if the Ward Loom works. Both work while paused.

Click crew (or drag a box) to select them; click a room to send them there. Crew repair, fight fires and man stations in the room they stand in.

Zoom and look around: the mouse wheel (or a pinch) zooms toward the pointer. Zoomed in, drag empty sky or the enemy ship, or hold the middle button, to pan; a drag that starts on your own ship draws a selection box, so you can pick up a group of crew even while others are chosen (Shift-drag adds to them). While aiming, a drag from anywhere pans, and only a click aims. On a touch screen one finger pans and a tap clicks. + − zoom, 0 fits both ships again, F centres on the enemy ship, or use the small control above the bottom bar. Each battle opens on the whole fight. Between passages, the flight deck zooms and pans the same way (hover a room to name it), and so does a delve.

The flight deck shows your systems, guns and constructs and the Flow each has (bottom left; on a phone, behind the Flow button). Set it there before a fight, the same way as in one: the next fight opens with your Flow as you last left it.

The Flow panel shows numbers you can check: the Flow in use, of the Flow you have, and the Flow that is free. Every system shows the Flow it has, and it always adds up. Flow you take out of a system goes to your free Flow, and Flow you give comes out of it. Nothing else changes. The Keel takes 1 Flow, whatever its level.

Events#

A tagged option needs someone particular aboard, and names who answers it. Grayed options say who could ("Needs a stone mage"): recruit that crewmate and choices like it open up. The small chips show what an option costs and what it gives or takes: silver, supplies, items, crew, healing, heat and standing. A dashed chip happens only on some outcomes.

The menu and saving#

The menu button (three lines, top-right corner, on every screen but the title) or Esc opens the menu: Resume, Options, How to Play, Save and return to main menu and Abandon voyage. A battle or a delve waits while it is open. Quit the game from the main menu.

The voyage saves itself: after every choice (an event, a purchase, a refit, a crew change, a passage sailed, a fight won), on every new screen, every half minute and when the window closes or loses focus. A small Saved tick shows under the menu button. Continue on the title picks the voyage up again.

Abandon voyage ends the voyage as a loss: it goes into the Records like any other, and the crew who fell on the way go up on the memorial wall. Names: click a crewmate's name on the crew sheet (or the pencil) to rename them, the captain too; name the ship on the New voyage screen, or later by clicking her name on the ship sheet.

Music#

Show the music player in Options puts a small player under the menu button: what is playing, and back, pause, next and loop (, and .). The Music panel of the menu has the same buttons, and there you can choose an area and a track.

Song switch triggers on: the game changes the music for a fight, the front, a delve, a boss and the menus, and an area you choose only takes the place of the travel music. Off: the game never changes the music by itself, except that the title music gives way to travel music when a voyage starts.