Pixel Piracy Tips and Tricks
Each entry below is one mechanic, what it costs you, and the patch it was last checked against. Filter by category or difficulty to narrow the list, and use the anchor beside any heading to link straight to a single tip.
Naval
#A cannon exchange needs a cannon, ammunition, and Cannon Mastery
It has existed at every level since launch rather than unlocking at level 5, but nothing fires without all three on at least one side. Buy the skill for 400 gold and 15 Training Points, and keep Bombs aboard as ammunition, where one bomb supplies five shots.
Verified on 1.2.32
Skills
#Ultimates only trigger as a last resort, so never stack two
Abilities like Boar Strike and Falcon Dance fire when a pirate is already low on health rather than on command. A pirate carrying two of them will only ever use one, which makes the second purchase money you have simply thrown away.
Verified on 1.2.32
Stats
#Agility gives 3 percent dodge a point, not the 5 you read
Patch 1.2.22 in March 2023 cut it, so a dodge-stacking build now needs almost twice the investment it used to. The rest of the stat is unchanged: 1 percent attack speed per point and 1 percent movement speed for every 10 points.
Verified on 1.2.32
Weapons
#A percentage bonus cannot flip a weapon ranking, so it does not
The claim that the fast Stiletto out-damages the Axe because Strength applies per swing fails on arithmetic, since a percentage scales both by the same proportion. Real numbers put the Stiletto at 3.33 DPS against 2.86, and neither is top tier next to the Falcon Blade's 4.71.
Verified on 1.2.32
#Ranged weapons do knock enemies back, contrary to the usual claim
It runs from 3 on a Flintlock Pistol up to 10 on a Giant Boulder. Build melee first anyway, because flat melee DPS is roughly 2.2 to 4.7 against 1.0 to 2.6 for ranged, and ranged accuracy leans on Dexterity that your early crew has not invested in.
Verified on 1.2.32
Food
#Put food on the deck, because barrels no longer store it
The crew eats whatever is lying on the ship without being told, and most fruits need no cook at all, so a bag of apples feeds everyone with nobody holding Cooking. Meat, fish, and stew do need one. Let the food run out and morale collapses before anyone starves.
Verified on 1.2.32
Health
#A bed is not a healing station, whatever it looks like
Health regeneration comes from Vitality and the Meditation skill rather than from sleeping. What a bed does is stop a pirate losing morale and hunger while they are in it, which is reason enough to buy them. For actual healing use Doctor Aura or Elixirs.
Verified on 1.2.32
Animals
#Every animal species carries a Training Point skill tree
Several of those skills buff the pirate carrying it. A crab's Protect halves damage taken, a cat's Cute Cat stops the host losing morale, a dog's Tag Team adds 2 Attack, and a parrot's Fly Me adds 20 percent movement speed. Cows need a Cow Bucket tile before they give milk.
Verified on 1.2.32
Ship
#A barrel adds 5 percent to plundered gold, and they stack
Barrels held food until an Enhanced Edition patch in April 2015 took that away, which is why older guides still tell you to fill one. What they do now is raise your plunder, and every additional barrel adds another 5 percent on top.
Verified on 1.2.32
Skills
#Merchant and Thief are skills you buy, not traits you hire
That means you can put them on whoever you already like rather than hunting a hire with the right roll. Merchant gives 100 percent extra sell value in shops, and Thief steals 5 gold per hit, which compounds on a pirate swinging a fast weapon.
Verified on 1.2.32
Achievements
#Charnel Voodoo takes a dose too, so buy one Arsenic more than you need
The option greys out if you are short by even one. Beat a Legendary Pirate first, buy Arsenic from a Witch Hut, sail to the purple Suicide Island, then pick Perform Mass Suicide. The sky turns red and you fight waves of skeletons, reported by the community as 15.
Verified on 1.2.32
Character Creation
#One character creation answer hands you an unbuyable weapon
Answer the question about your father with the brave captain option, nicknamed Curraaage, and you start with the Falcon Blade and 50 gold. It deals 8 damage with a knockback of 3 and no store sells it. The Horke the flatulent answer gives you a drunk crew member instead.
Verified on 1.2.32
Legendary Pirates
#Every Legendary Pirate you kill makes the rest of the map harder
Since patch 1.2.17 in February 2023, defeating one raises subsequent enemy difficulty by 50 percent, down from the 100 percent a brief earlier patch set. Your second Legendary is fought in a tougher world than your first, so the order you take the corners in matters.
Verified on 1.2.32
Skills
#First Mate saves the run and takes your gold down to 1000
When the Captain dies, a random crew member holding the skill takes over instead of the run ending, which makes it the most important purchase in the game. Two limits: your gold resets to 1000, and it does nothing if your ship is destroyed in a naval fight.
Verified on 1.2.32
Stats
#Vitality is no longer the automatic stat pick it once was
It feeds the Max HP formula of 15 plus 10 per level plus 4 per point, and patch 1.2.12 in February 2023 halved what a point of it actually contributes. Every build guide written before then oversells it by exactly that factor.
Verified on 1.2.32
Morale
#Paying salary restores morale to 100 percent instantly
Nothing else comes close, and low morale ends in mutiny with the pirate turning hostile and attacking you. Docking at a tavern is the next best lever and the crew walks there themselves. Among decorations only plants help, since pictures are purely cosmetic.
Verified on 1.2.32
Traits
#Traitor is the one negative trait worth walking away from
It raises the chance the pirate turns on you mid-battle. Careless can fall off the boat and drown, Old carries a 5 percent chance to die on every level up, Seasick bleeds health until fed, and Depressed takes 50 percent extra morale loss. Bully is only a nuisance.
Verified on 1.2.32
Naval
#Mounting cannons makes you sit through fights that were free before
The cannon phase only needs one side fully equipped, so kitting your ship out means exchanging fire with unarmed enemies that would otherwise have gone straight to boarding. Being shot at is survivable, since even the toughest enemies do not fire many shots.
Verified on 1.2.32
Saves
#No 2023 patch invalidated your saves, whatever the guides claim
The 64-bit move in 1.2.19 was a build target listed as one line in a content patch, and it broke nothing. Patch 1.2.11 specifically added backward compatibility for saves from before 1.2.10. The only save wipes this game ever had were in 2013 and 2014.
Verified on 1.2.32
Stats
#Any stat table older than February 2023 describes a different game
The revival retuned three things at once. Vitality was halved, Agility's dodge fell from 5 percent to 3 per point, and passive experience was changed. Most of what still circulates predates all of that, which makes it confidently wrong rather than merely dated.
Verified on 1.2.32
What to Read Next
- Crew Management. Morale, hunger, stats, traits, and every skill worth teaching.
- Combat and Boarding. Weapon numbers, the cannon phase, and what actually wins a boarding.
- Ship Building. Tiles, barrels, and what each piece of the hull does for you.
- World Exploration. Islands, animals, and the Legendary Pirates that reshape the map.
- Getting Started. Character creation, your first crew, and the opening hours.
- Patch History. What the 2023 revival changed and what it left alone.
- Achievements. All 31 on Steam, including the rarest one and how to set it up.