Progression Paths

Progression Paths are the four parallel pillars that shape a Corsair Cove run: Notoriety, Empire, Seafaring, and Wealth. Every haven runs the same builder loop, but the pillar a player leans into determines which missions appear, which buildings unlock, which production chains matter, and which ships sail out of the harbour. Each pillar is fronted by its own fully-voiced captain. See also the Overview, Getting Started, and Golden Age of Piracy.

The Four Pillars

Each pillar is anchored to its own captain. The unlocks are how the haven changes shape as the player commits to it.

Notoriety

The Notoriety pillar leans into the theatrical side of piracy: the haven everyone has heard of. Its content is explicitly vice-driven, with gambling halls and brothels among the buildings on this track, turning social districts into income engines as much as morale anchors. The pillar's captain is feared rather than respected. That reputation cuts both ways: it attracts crew willing to throw in with the most infamous flag, but it pulls pirate hunters and Crown patrols in behind them, feeding back into naval combat.

Empire

The Empire pillar treats the haven as the seed of an independent pirate nation rather than a single fortified base. Its missions and buildings push toward political and territorial ambition: claiming ground, controlling waters, and turning a shipwrecked crew into a power the Crown has to negotiate with rather than simply hunt. It is the pirate answer to the closing of the Golden Age.

Seafaring

The Seafaring pillar is the path of the captain who would rather be at sea than on the island. Its content is built around ocean exploration and naval expeditions: better hulls, longer-range voyages, and missions that push the fleet past the edges of the charted archipelago. A Seafaring haven invests heavily in shipyards and provisioning chains so expeditions can stay out longer. The path is tightly coupled to naval combat and to the legendary creatures that live in deeper waters.

Wealth

The Wealth pillar runs the haven as a business. Its focus is gold, trade, and economic muscle: stacking production chains, moving goods through smuggling and trade routes, and converting raw output into hard currency. The captain on this path is the wealthy pirate lord whose plunder is measured in coin and contracts rather than burnt sails. A Wealth run still deals with pirate hunters and the Crown, but it tends to do so by buying its way out or outpacing them economically rather than leaning into open confrontation.

Deeds and Compass

Progress along the four pillars is tracked through a system the game calls Deeds and Compass. Deeds are achievement-style goals spread across the four piracy tracks, ranging from amassing wealth to building a fearsome, bloodthirsty reputation. Completing them feeds a Compass that opens four directions in a technology tree, each direction unlocking new ways to optimise the haven and new ships.

The tree does not lock the player into a single direction. From the demo build it is possible to work toward unlocking everything in one playthrough, though doing so demands a great deal of wealth and patience. Leaning hard into one pillar simply gets that branch first; it does not close off the others.

Pirate Archetypes

The four pillars are framed in public-facing terms as four pirate archetypes a player can choose to become. The mapping below shows how the archetypes line up against the pillars.

Empire and Seafaring are not framed as single-word archetypes in that public catalogue, but they sit on equal footing with Notoriety and Wealth as full progression options.

Captains

Each pillar is fronted by its own fully-voiced captain, and committing to a pillar is partly a story focus on that captain's arc. They are not the only captains in the game: other named captains are recruited over the course of a run, and one historical figure available to bring on board is Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. Recruitable historical captains like Blackbeard sit alongside the four pillar captains rather than as one of them; they expand the roster a player can deploy on naval combat without changing which pillar the haven is built around.

Unconfirmed Details

The four-pillar structure, the pillar themes, the pirate archetypes, and the existence of one fully-voiced captain per pillar are confirmed. The following details are not yet part of the public record:

• Pillar captain names

• Specific buildings per pillar

• Ship-tier specifics

• Mix-and-match flexibility

• Branching limits

• Unlock thresholds

• Mission catalogues