Boat Abilities

Boat abilities are active powers your ship fires from its ability hotbar — broadside bursts, defensive windows, crew heals, enemy-fouling shots, and sea hazards. Unlike the Ocean talent actives (which key off your character), these belong to the ship and are earned as deeds you find and install.

Ability deeds

An ability deed is a droppable item carrying one ability. They ride in the hatch (hold) of NPC pirate ships — alongside upgrade deeds and crew-member deeds — which stays locked until you clear the deck of its crew. Board the ship, kill the crew, and plunder the hatch. Ability drops are tier-weighted (a Lesser is a common find; a Greater is a real haul). Each deed is tinted by its rarity, and the rarity rolls the deed's cooldown — see below.

To install, stand on a ship you own and double-click the deed (or use the boat menu's install cursor, or the Dockmaster's FIT ABILITY button on a docked ship). The ability then appears on your ship's hotbar. Ability deeds also store in the Ocean Coffer alongside crew and upgrade deeds.

The boat menu's ABILITIES tab lays out all six slots (3 Lesser · 2 Regular · 1 Greater). Each filled slot shows the ability's icon framed in its rarity colour (green Uncommon, blue Rare, purple Epic, gold Legendary), its rolled cooldown, and a REMOVE button that pops the deed back into your pack — hover the slot for the full effect text. Each empty slot offers INSTALL. The per-tier cooldown rolls also appear in the STATS tab, folded in next to every other ship stat (see below).

You can open this menu off the water, too: the Dockmaster's INSPECT button opens it for a docked ship, and double-clicking a loaded ship deed opens it from your pack — both fully editable in dry-dock, and both showing the same rolls and stats you'd see afloat (no need to launch first to read your hull). Ships are launched from a Dockmaster ("Add a Boat from pack → LAUNCH"), not by double-clicking the deed.

Slots and tiers

Every ability is one of three tiers, and your ship has a fixed set of slots per tier:

Tier	Slots	Base cooldown
Lesser	3	60s
Regular	2	120s
Greater	1	240s

That's six slots total — the same six on your hotbar. With far more abilities to find than slots to fill, a fully-kitted ship has to choose its character: offense, defense, stealth, speed, crew-sustain, or board-control. Installing an ability into a full tier ejects the oldest ability of that tier back to your pack (with its roll intact) — a lossless swap.

Shared cooldowns

Cooldowns are shared per tier. Firing any Lesser ability puts all three Lesser slots on cooldown; firing a Regular locks both Regular slots; the Greater is its own. So you rotate one ability per tier per cycle rather than dumping everything at once.

The cooldown roll

Each deed rolls its own cooldown within its tier's range, fixed when it drops. Rarer deeds roll toward the fast end, so a finely-rolled deed is the sought-after find:

Tier	Cooldown range
Lesser	45–75s
Regular	90–150s
Greater	210–270s

When you fire an ability, it sets its tier's shared cooldown to that deed's rolled value — so the faster your installed deed, the sooner the whole tier is back.

Hull tuning

Each hull also rolls a small ±10% ability-cooldown modifier that multiplies the cooldown of every installed ability — on top of the deed's own roll. A top-roll hull shaves a little more off everything: a top-rolled Lesser (45s) on a best-roll hull fires again at about 41s. The roll is fixed for that hull and carries across dry-dock; a different hull rolls differently. The Dockmaster's INSPECT view shows a ship's hull tuning. (This is the only thing that adjusts ability cooldowns — there is no crew or upgrade that lowers them.)

The ability catalog

Any ability that says "target a tile" fires only the broadside that bears on the tile you click — the side facing it. Cannons on the off beam never fire over your own hull. (If only one side has guns, or the bearing side is empty, the fuller side fires instead.)

Burst damage follows a simple ladder: every Lesser burst out-damages a single broadside, every Regular out-damages every Lesser, and every Greater out-damages every Regular — the longer the tier's cooldown, the harder it hits. Each volley fires your whole bearing broadside, so bigger hulls (more guns per side) scale every burst up naturally.

Lesser

Ability	Effect
Crushing Shot	Target a tile: 2 heavy volleys from the bearing broadside at 1.5× hull power.
Quick Tack	+60% forward speed for 12s — a real burst of pace. Shows in your buff bar while active.
Brace Lines	Incoming hull damage −25% for 20s.
Bilge Patch	Instantly repair 12% of max hull.
Depth Charges	Drop two rows of visible barrels in your wake — a large ship lays 2×4, a medium 2×3, a small 2×2. Any hull passing over one — including your own — takes 100/125/150 hull damage by the layer's ship size. Charges arm after a short delay so you can clear your own drop.

Regular

Ability	Effect
Aimed Salvo	Target a tile: 3 volleys from the bearing broadside at 1.5× hull power.
Honed Powder	+25% to every normal broadside for 60s.
Pike Wall	Enemy boarding chance against you −75% for 45s.
Spirit Rounds	3 volleys at 1.2× power that ignore the enemy's hull damage reduction.
Chain Shot	3 volleys at 1.2× power that slow the struck hull −25% for 15s.
Smoke Rounds	6 volleys that foul the struck hull's aim (−50% accuracy) for 15s.
Venomous Rounds	6 volleys that poison crew and players struck — including the enemy deck crew chipped by the splash.
Fouling Line	Draw a line on open water (like the cannon rake): it lays a continuous, perfectly straight fouling rope along it — the line snaps to a clean north–south or east–west run, and cannot be laid on land (docks, shore, or any non-water tile reject the whole cast). The first hull to drive into the rope consumes that section and is slowed to 20% of its current speed for 15s — the slow bites the instant you cross it (even at full speed mid-sail) and your hull recovers full speed on its own when the 15s runs out. The snared crew see a slow icon in their buff bar. Snares any ship that runs into it, including your own, so mind your own trap. Single-use per rope.
Cheat the Locker	Haul one random fallen crew member back from Davy Jones' Locker at 75% life, ignoring the usual 5-minute revive wait on their bones. Their level, XP, and rolls come back intact. (If no crew are down, nothing happens — but the ability still goes on cooldown.)

Greater

Ability	Effect
Tempest's Wrath	Target a tile: 6 volleys from the bearing broadside at 1.5× power — the flagship cannonade.
Hammerfall	3 volleys from the bearing broadside at 2.5× power — the hardest single blow.
Truestrike Barrage	6 volleys at +25% power that ignore the enemy's hull reduction.
Boarders' Fury	Your installed crew deal +50% damage to hostiles on your deck for 60s.
Mutton Feast	Heal each crew 15% of max HP every 10s for 2 minutes.
Ghosting	Hide from all spyglasses for 90s — you cannot fire while hidden.
Bulwark	Incoming hull damage −90% for 12s — the apex defensive window.
Hullbreaker Rounds	4 volleys at 1.75× power that leave the struck hull taking +25% damage for 30s.
Sargasso Bloom	Target the water: bloom a seaweed field that slows any ship crossing it.
Fire Storm	Draw a line anywhere — including straight across an enemy's deck (unlike Fouling Line, it does not need open water): it lays a persistent wall of sea-fire. Any ship that touches the fire catches alight for 20 hull damage per second — a flat 20/s whether one fire tile or ten overlap the hull. The flame clings to the hull and keeps burning for 20 seconds after you sail clear, so you can't just gun it out of the field to escape. The field itself lasts 45s and never blocks movement. Burns any hull, your own included.

Fire abilities from the ship hotbar while aboard a ship you command — it opens automatically the moment you board (no need to open the boat menu and click HOTBAR; [boathotbar still toggles it manually), and hides when you step off onto land. You can bind each slot to a key: the [boatbar1 … [boatbar6 macros in Options → Macros fire that slot's ability without the hotbar focused — the same way the talent hotbar slots bind. See Naval Combat for cannons, crews, docking, and the Dockmaster.