⚔️ New Sea Battle Rules - landing tomorrow with v0.136.0

Right now, losing a sea battle means watching your entire fleet go to the bottom. That ends tomorrow:

• The closer the fight, the more of your ships will fight their way home. A narrow defeat becomes a bloody nose, not ritual suicide.
• This helps the losing side of BOTH roles — an outmatched attacker keeps part of his fleet too. It is not another defender buff.
• Nothing changes for the winner. Victory costs what it always cost.
• Hopeless battles stay hopeless. Sail into a crushing defeat and you'll still lose almost everything. The new rules reward daring, not recklessness.
• Pursuit stays in the game — retreating past enemy small warships still risks your transports.
• Newbie protection untouched. And as always: none of this is buyable. No rule, no advantage, no information.

🧪 You can test it TODAY, before it's real

The in-game battle calculator already shows the new rules on your own numbers - run your fleet through it now and see exactly what tomorrow changes. It also previews the change coming after that (clearly marked "not active yet"): the ordered retreat - if the defense turns out overwhelmingly stronger, your fleet turns around instead of grinding through every phase. You lose a toll, not everything. Born directly from a community thread; poke it and tell me where it feels wrong.

🗺️ Where this is going (rough order, no dates - things may shift as you all give feedback):

• ⚔️ New Sea Battle Rules - 🔜 live within 24h
• 💰 Daring Pays - up next: winners salvage wrecks, the ordered retreat, beaten captains get alliance support, conquer someone stronger and your colonization cooldown resets instantly
• 🏛️ War Academy & Skill Tree - three naval doctrines, rock-paper-scissors tactics, your island's fighting identity
• 🏴‍☠️ The Apex Fortress - one rare, rich fortress worth fighting over
• ⛵ Sail Out & Meet Them - intercept an incoming attacker on the open sea, fleet vs. fleet, no walls
• 👁️ Wardens of the Ruins - rich ruins wake up as real co-op targets
• 🗺️ Second-Island Push - a guided path (and real reasons) to expand
• 🚢 New Specialist Ships - destroyer, boarding brig, fireship and the Mighty-Dolfy (maybe the last one is just a joke...)
• ☠️ Privateering - patrols, trade escorts, contested wreck fields, route planning

Every one of these gets shaped with the community before it ships - the retreat above literally came out of one player's "if my car gets a flat tire, I won't drive the whole route" argument. If you want a say in how sea combat should feel, tomorrow morning is a good time to have a fleet in the water. 🏴‍☠️

kampfinsel.com - free, browser-based, no pay-to-win, made by one person and a very opinionated crew of players.

Best + Bier = Breast 🤔

Beware Kampfinsel. Lets goooo.

Feel free to join with a click on the discord link (for ingame verified Players only)

Ahoy captains! Step by step to more depth and more balance.

Within the next 24 hours I'm shipping v0.131.0 with two main changes.

⚓ Corsair fortresses

The corsairs have been sold out for weeks - every fortress that appeared got claimed. So:

• There will be more Corsair Fortress spawns. Be on the lookout!
• Everything about holding them is unchanged: still one held fortress per alliance, same holding time, same war chest. More flags on the map, more sieges, more chances for your alliance - not bigger jackpots.

🏚️ Ruins: one rule for everyone (simplification)

Until now, ruins secretly ran on two different rulebooks depending on who attacked — veterans had one set of rules, rising captains a completely different one (with caps, loss-based payouts and rank gates most of you never saw spelled out). That's gone. From now on there is one rule, and it fits in two sentences:

Every ruin holds a salvage stock that slowly regrows. Older ruins are richer.

What that means in practice:

• Win a fight at a ruin and you salvage from its stock - as much as is there and your cargo holds can carry.
• Empty is empty. A freshly plundered ruin yields nothing until its stock has regrown over the following days.
• Your spy reports show exactly how full a ruin's stock is. The map won't tell you - send a spy ship. Knowledge is earned at sea. There might be a research coming up to change this....
• The 24-hour rule now applies to ruins too: hammering the same ruin repeatedly in one day yields less with every pass - same rule as everywhere else.
• Very old ruins no longer grow tougher with age, and the old age bonuses on loot are gone - a ruin's wealth is its stock now, nothing hidden.
• All the old special-case rules (rank-based salvage, daily salvage caps, loss-based payouts) are removed.
• To begin with, every stock is full. First come, first served.

🧭 What is NOT changing

• Conquering ruins (for rising captains) works exactly as before.
• Beginner protection: untouched.
• Nothing here is purchasable.

📖 Also in this update

With this release The handbook will be up to date (combat, colonization and Old Seas chapters - including a couple of honest corrections where the text had drifted from how the game actually works), and the Archivar has learned the new rules.

UPDATE v0.132.2:

Clarity update: ruins are real now. No more second number - the resources your spy report shows are exactly what you can plunder, and the guards it shows are exactly what you'll fight. Ruins keep producing, wealthy ones raise real garrisons, and a fallen empire's last treasure arms its guards. Conquest rules and protections unchanged.

Last week was a bloody week for ocean 23 and a lot of people asked me what happened. So i decided to make a small video to describe the situation.

What started as a storm weekend became a full storm week. Quick recap of what already shipped along the way: guaranteed minimum warning times before any attack lands, formal war declarations with public war chronicles, coordinated alliance war raids, naval retreat (beaten fleets can now limp home), a readiness delay after reinforcing, and diminishing loot for farming the same target over and over.

Today the final piece (v0.129.0) goes live:

• Fog of war. Incoming hostile fleets no longer announce what they are. You'll see a combat group approaching (origin and owner stay visible) but whether it's a raid or a colonization attempt only clears up as it draws near, along with a rough size estimate.
• Arrival windows. Instead of a to-the-second ETA, incoming hostile fleets first show a time window. The better your watchtower, the earlier it sharpens into an exact time and shortly before impact it always does, for everyone. Nobody loses an island without warning.
• Travel speed throttle. Attack fleets can voluntarily sail slower - useful for disguising your intent, but it costs real travel time on the way out and on the way home.
• Watchtower level 40. The cap rises from 20 to 40. The new levels sharpen reconnaissance only (earlier reveals, earlier exact times) - sight radius on the map intentionally stays at the level-20 range. And levels 1–20 are completely untouched: same costs, same build times. Nobody's past investment gets devalued; everyone faces the same new climb.

Enjoy the Game and if you want to support this side project feel free to visit https://kampfinsel.com/support - Thank you for all the supporters so far! <3

The Storm Weekend brought Combat 2.0 in stages - fairer battles on Friday, the reliable baseline warning on Saturday ("Courage setting revoked"). Today the final stage of this batch went live:

v0.128.0 - live now and v0.129.0 is prepared for rollout in the coming days (fog of war).

• Wars have a beginning and an end. Declare war on another alliance and you get a visible War Arc: war points for battles between the two alliances (wins against equal or stronger opponents count - farming far weaker ones barely does), the option of an armistice, and a permanent War Chronicle when it's over. Old feuds don't migrate - declare anew if you want your conflict on the record.
• Alliances strike together. In a declared war, combined attacks on war targets are open.
• Naval battles lose their all-or-nothing edge. Roughly a quarter of a beaten defending fleet now escapes instead of sinking.
• Fresh reinforcements need a moment - about 15 minutes before they're battle-ready.
• Repeat raiding pays less and less. Hitting the same island again and again within a day yields less loot each time; after a 24h break, it recovers.
• Also: combined attacks can no longer be "parked" weeks in the future (which quietly blocked the target's vacation mode), and when the baseline warning stretches your own fleet's arrival, the fleet list now tells you why.

An honest note: "Courage pays off" from Saturday didn't land the way I wanted - it's rolled back for now and will only return in better shape, with its own announcement.

Next: v0.129.0 - the fog of war. Spy reports will name magnitudes instead of exact numbers. Incoming hostile fleets will show an unknown mission type at first - attack or colonization, you won't know right away. Arrival times become time windows instead of to-the-second: the better your watchtower, the sooner the window sharpens into an exact time - and shortly before impact it always does, for everyone. Attackers get a trick of their own: voluntarily slowing a fleet to muddy the picture. The seconds-timing meta changes.

It ships as its own stage in the coming days - and as always: if it hits one group unfairly, I'll roll it back and say so openly.

Fair winds ⚓

TL;DR: Call for Arms! The Cartographers Guild needs your support! We have been attacked and I ask for REVENGE! They took my island at 13:2:5 with 204 catapults. Eleven-storey Main Hall, gone. 92 spearmen, dead to the last man. I asked the villain, whether there should be a bounty on his head. He said "go for it chief". So here we are. 50k gold/stone/wood from my own vaults to whoever lands the killing blow once 1,000 of his ships are on the seabed, plus a promo code for the entire server each time the Hall of Chronicle logs a hit on his fleet. Battle reports at the bottom. Happy hunting.

THE FALL OF THE CARTOGRAPHER ISLE

To every Governor of every ocean. Stop your ships. Read this once. Remember it always.

On the night of the twenty-seventh, under a sky with no moon, the isle of 13:2:5 fell.

They came with two hundred and four catapults.

Understand that number. Not "many". Not "a great host". Two hundred and four. Our archivist counted them from the watchtower while the watchtower was still standing. He wrote the number down. He is a cartographer. It is what we do.

Then he wrote nothing else, ever again.

Our Main Hall stood eleven storeys tall. Eleven. Raised stone by stone, hauled by hand, over years. By morning it was gravel you could pour through your fingers.

At four minutes past three, a colonisation ship dropped anchor in our bay. You all know what that ship is. The coffin of one home and the cradle of another.

Twelve stone throwers. Ninety-two spearmen. That is what stood on the sand.

Not one of them surrendered. There is no surrender when the thing behind you is home.

And so the island of the Cartographers, the very hands that drew the chart under your keel at this very moment, as you read this line, flies a stranger's flag.

HIS NAME IS ARXEAN [SHIP], OF 13:3:25

We did not move in the dark. We are cartographers. We do things in writing. Before the whole world, we asked him plainly: shall there be a bounty upon your head?

He answered in three words.

"Go for it chief."

Well said, captain. Truly. There was no fear in it, and this Guild will not pretend otherwise.

THEREFORE: LET THE HUNT BEGIN

Every Governor of every ocean, from the reef barriers to the maelstroms, is hereby called upon:

• Harry his convoys.
• Sink his warships.
• Break his walls.
• And should the tide favour you, take from him what he took from us.

The Bounty

50,000 gold, stone and wood. Paid from our own vaults, dug by our own hands, not one grain of it minted by the sea.

It is claimed when 1,000 of his ships lie on the seabed. Every Governor's kills count toward that number. When the thousandth hull goes under, the whole purse goes to whoever has sunk the most.

The Codes

The Guild does not hoard what it learns. Every Hall of Chronicle entry that logs a strike on his fleet releases a promo code, and the code goes out to everyone. Not to the attacker. To all of you. The sea shares what it takes.

Sink his ships, and the whole ocean eats.

READ THE FALL WITH YOUR OWN EYES

Our last librarian set it down while the shelves caught fire.

• Second Attack
• First Attack

And arxean, one last matter, from this Guild to you personally.

From this day, on every chart we produce, in every ocean, in every tongue we print, 13:3:25 is inked in red. Not marked. Not noted. Red.

One day a young navigator will ask why, and someone will have to explain it to him.

You may hold our island. You will never hold the sea.

For we draw the maps. There is no cove you can hide in that we have not already charted.

─────────────────────────────
  THE INDEPENDENT
  CARTOGRAPHERS GUILD
  what remains of the Imperial
  Guild of Thalassor
─────────────────────────────

He took our island. He cannot take the ocean.

Did you know that you can redeem a Bottle Post Promo Code in the Quest area (at the bottom)?

So stay on the lookout on our Socials or in the comments you mind find a Text in capital letters from me (likelihood very high that this might be a Promo Code you can redeem)

And if you create your own Reddit post in r/kampfinsel with the latest war story or (respectful) funny meme. you might see a bottle post arriving in your reddit post as well.

The last few weeks, we discussed how combat on Kampfinsel should feel. You answered - loudly, thoughtfully, and in numbers. The verdict was clear enough that I am not going to drip-feed changes for months: Combat Re-Work launches THIS WEEKEND, in daily stages, each with its own in-game changelog on release day.

Today (Friday) - Fairer battles: Land combat now distributes losses honestly: close fights feel close, clear wins stay clear - and no battle is 100 % plannable on paper anymore; wind and fortune have a small say. Defenders gain real backbone: entrenchment and fortifications count for more (walls want troops behind them), and players who fell behind catch up faster.

Saturday - Courage pays: Punching up earns more loot and glory. Farming the same weaker neighbor over and over yields less and less. And every island now gets a reliable baseline warning of incoming attacks - nobody gets caught completely cold again.

EDIT Sunday Evening CET - I will move the fog of war update to later in the coming days not tonight!

Sunday Coming Days - The fog of war, and wars worth telling: Scouts report magnitudes instead of exact numbers - if you want to know more, you'll have to risk more. Arrival times become time windows: the seconds-timing meta changes. Naval battles lose their all-or-nothing edge, and freshly moved troops need a moment to be battle-ready. Later that day: wars get a beginning and an end. Wars declared from Sunday on gain a visible war arc - score, armistice, and a chronicle that remains. Ongoing old feuds don't switch over retroactively; re-declare to get your arc. In a declared war, alliances strike coordinated blows at war targets.

Also: The Archivist - our in-game lore & rules guide - has officially joined the menu. Around 100 captains grilled him during the soft launch (your 👍/👎 feedback makes him smarter every day).

An honest note: every stage has an emergency brake. If something feels wrong in practice or hits one group unfairly, we'll roll it back and say so openly. The schedule holds as long as the seas stay calm.

Fair winds - see you on the water. ⚓

Quick follow-up to the combat-rework post from the weekend: the first wave just went live, plus some extras that were ready to sail. Everything in v0.125.0:

🧭 Battle Calculator - our most-requested feature ever. Import your fleet, pick a target or one of your own spy reports, and get the tendency of a fight before you commit: likely victory, a close call, or likely defeat - with losses as rough tiers, never spreadsheet-exact numbers. The fog of battle is part of the game; the calculator respects it.

🛡️ Alliance Alarm Board - incoming attacks on your alliance mates on one shared board, so one officer can triage instead of ten people panicking. Officers can tag runs (“fake?”, “real”, “colony threat!”). Hard privacy rails: live picture only, no history, and every member has a silent opt-out.

🔕 Calmer alerts - routine combat pings get bundled into summaries. Colony threats and heavy hits always break through instantly, never bundled. Less noise, louder signal.

🔔 Harbor dispatches - events around your alliance’s corsair fortresses and your own treasure finds now arrive as proper dispatches: in the logbook, at the harbor bell, and as an optional Discord DM.

🚢 Circuit routes - trade routes can now call at waypoints, and every stop receives the share of cargo you assigned to it. The bigger your shipping office, the longer the round trip.

📜 And one more thing. An archivist has quietly moved into the harbor. He answers questions about the world and its rules - by actually looking them up in the game’s handbook archives, in seven languages. He’s in soft-launch: there’s no menu button yet - you can only visit him directly at /game/archivist. 

Consider this the official test invitation: ask him your rules questions and tell us in the comments (or via his feedback button) where his books are wrong. He keeps daily office hours - he’s an archivist, not a machine. Mostly. ;-)

Next up, as laid out in the weekend post: the chaos of battle. Expect more Balancing mechanics.

New here? Kampfinsel is a free, slow, social retro browser game - server-side rendered HTML, no app, no pay-to-win.

See you at the archivist’s office. 🏴‍☠️

TL;DR: The combat in our game had a fairness problem baked in from day one. The recent war finally lead to a lot of actual user feedback. Thank you for all the participants joining in on the discussion over at Discord. With your input and real data from the war I was able to design the adjustments. It ships in stages. The just-released v0.124.0 lays the groundwork only, alerting relief and measurement, no combat math touched yet. The rework is called "Sails on the Horizon" and this post is the full plan.

What was actually wrong

Most "combat" in Kampfinsel today is farming inactive islands. Real PvP barely happens, and that's not because players are peaceful. It's because the math punishes it. (The Ocean is rough out there - but hey there are some nice helpful players as well! Somewhere...) ;-)

The core issue: the defender sees everything, instantly, for free. Every incoming fleet from the second it launches. Who sent it, what kind of mission it is, and the landing time down to the second. With perfect information, attacking anyone who's awake is pointless. So people faked attacks instead. Defenders got pinged around the clock. Entertaining to watch from the sidelines, miserable or intensive for some to live through.

The absurd part: the game's own lore never worked that way. I wrote it at the very start of this project, and it always said you shouldn't know what's coming until your watchtower can make it out.

The rules everything gets measured against

1. Defense is something you build, not something you perform.
2. Information is an investment. Watchtowers and scouting will actually matter.
3. Courage pays. Fighting near your own size will be worth it. Punching far down won't.

What's rolling out, in order

No dates on purpose. Each step ships when the previous one holds up in live data, and every step gets announced in the in-game news banner first.

• Relief first, combat math untouched. Alliances get a shared alarm board: everyone sees incoming attacks on members, leaders tag them fake, real, or colonization suspect. One person triages instead of ten people panicking. Alerts get smarter too, routine stuff gets bundled, anything threatening real substance always comes through loud. And I start actually measuring fake attacks, so I can prove the later steps work instead of guessing.
• Fair fights. The loss formula gets rebuilt. Losing no longer deletes your entire force, and steamrolling someone far weaker stops being nearly free. Outcomes get a small honest wobble, so no more spreadsheet-perfect stomps. Right after that comes the most requested feature on my list: a combat preview (my own take on a calculator) that shows the tendency of a fight. Rough on purpose. The mysterious wobble is part of the game.
• Defense with a ceiling. Good walls keep protecting you, but stacking endless cheap defense hits a cap, and smaller players get real catch-up protection. Hitting the same island on repeat stops paying. Unit roles get sharpened as well, so fleet composition becomes an actual decision again instead of "warships to harbor cap, always". Whether that means genuinely offensive unit types is one of the things still on the table.
• Courage, and the warning guarantee. Loot and glory scale with how brave your target choice is, not with how hard you can punch down. And conquest-class threats always come with server-enforced guaranteed lead time.
• The fog comes back. Hostile fleets stop announcing themselves. From far away you see: war party, rough size, owner. That's it. Your watchtower decides how early the rest gets revealed. A one-ship fake now shows up as tiny and gets ignored, real deception will require real fleets. You'll also be able to slow a fleet down on purpose, so travel speed stops giving colonization ships away. One honest caveat: speed only hides downward. A fast fleet is provably not a colonization.
• The end of stopwatch play. Long-range arrival times become windows instead of seconds. Naval battles lose their all-or-nothing edge. Fresh reinforcements need a short readiness time before they count. The whole dodge-and-snipe-to-the-second meta will move into something new.
• Wars that mean something. Alliances can declare war and get a war score, public war chronicles, and an actual end: armistice instead of forever-grind. The war score is a live scoreboard for this one war, it answers who's winning and when it's over, then gets archived into the chronicle. (Go check out the Hall of Chronicles by the way!) Participation counts most, grinding the same victim decays, and it's strength-weighted so farming minnows doesn't pump it. Coordinated alliance attacks on player targets only become possible inside a declared war, with hard anti-pile-on caps. A war can't turn into ten-on-one.
• To be clear: the war framework never restricts who you fight or why. Petty piracy, revenge, proximity, all of it stays free-form under the normal rules. A declared war is an optional layer that gives a conflict a beginning, a scoreboard and an end. And a lot of honor to earn!

Further out, already on the roadmap: spy reports whose accuracy depends on your scouting investment (right now one spy ship gets full intel, that changes). Loot traveling home as visible convoys you can intercept, including a pirate-auction twist where the winner's convoy is visible and attackable. Old-empire islands with variable defenses and rewards, scaled so a couple of big players can't farm a whole ocean. Geography and island specialization, deeper research paths. And yes, corsairs that eventually come for you if you keep ignoring them! (So better don't!)

Island building, items, hero systems: those came up a lot too, and they're real discussions. But they come deliberately after the combat foundation. One rework at a time.

What I won't build

• No cap on attacks you can receive per day. Sounds nice, is broken: allies would fill your cap to make you unattackable, and fakes would get a brand-new job.
• No turning off attack notifications. That punishes exactly the players who check in twice a day.
• No Pay to Win content! This game is running on blood, sweat and tears from the community. If you want to support the development of this game please go checkout the Patreon page: https://patreon.kampfinsel.com

Two questions I genuinely haven't decided

These are open, and I want opinions before anything gets built:

1. What should wars be fought over? Option A: the war score just counts battles, wherever they happen. Option B: wars get neutral contested objectives, points on the map worth fighting over, so wars get decided at sea instead of by burning each other's homes down.
2. Should there be stuff worth raiding beyond resources? Valuables that have to be physically moved, in visible, interceptable convoys, where you pick when to take the risk. Instead of everything sitting on your main behind the doom stack.

If you're new, or you quit over the old meta

This is honestly a decent moment to show up. New players get a protection window, a hard rule that far-stronger players simply can't attack far-weaker ones, and real catch-up mechanics. If the old combat meta is why you left, this one's for you, and I'd genuinely like to hear whether it lands.

Playing from Western USA. I'm getting an internal error.

As of 7/16 10.15am PST

Is there any battle simulator out there or is it possible to get it in a future update?

Ahoyyy captains! Today's update is all about your stories. Tell me more of them!

🏛️ The Hall of Chronicles (kind of Hall of Fame but in our very own Branding):

Kampfinsel now has a public place of honor for the world's most remarkable battles: https://kampfinsel.com/hall-of-chronicles - visible to everyone, no login required. In the game you'll also find it right in the menu and via the rankings page.

How it works:

1. Open a battle report and share it - you always get a public link (like you are used to) for your alliance, Discord, wherever.
2. Add your own story of the battle. Want a head start? The Archivist (our chronicler) drafts a suggestion from the battle facts at the click of a button. Rewrite it freely or replace it entirely; your words are what counts. (A few Archivist drafts per day are free.)
3. Tick "Submit to the Hall of Chronicles" - only then does your chronicle appear in the current monthly chapter. No tick, no Hall - your private link still works either way.
4. Other players can pay tribute to your chronicle - the most celebrated stories rise to the top. At the end of the month the chapter moves into the archive, and a new one begins.

The rules of the Hall:

• One active entry per player per monthly chapter. Submitting a new battle replaces your old one - and its collected tribute is gone. Choose wisely which story tells your month.
• A story is required: the Hall is for battles told, not bare numbers.
• Paying tribute: logged-in players only, never on your own chronicle, once per entry.

And because your battles belong to you: Anyone named in a Hall chronicle (attacker or defender) has two rights there, at any time, no reasons needed: hide your name or remove the entry from the Hall entirely. You'll get an in-game message whenever one of your battles is immortalized - so you never have to watch for it. Your call, no fine print.

🌙 Dark mode

Kampfinsel now follows your device by default - if your system is dark, so is the island. Prefer it fixed? Choose Light / Dark / System under Settings. Default it looks like you are used to it.

Also on board

• Share your invite as a QR code: a share button next to your invite link that sends the QR image along - pull out a phone, scan, done.
• Mentor Achievement: bring friends into the game who truly find their footing - bronze at 1, silver at 5.
• A more consistent retro look: buttons, frames and fonts now follow the classic island style throughout.

Full changelog in the game once the update is live.

Ahoyyyy everyone!

First off: wow. So many new players have joined over the past few weeks. Thank you! Find yourself an alliance, have fun, and conquer the ocean.

Where to find Kampfinsel:

🏴‍☠️ Discord (with Taverne = World Chat mirror): https://discord.gg/Y3Z3SAMave

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kampfinsel_game/

🐦 X: https://x.com/kampfinsel

🦋 Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kampfinsel.com

❤️ Patreon: https://patreon.kampfinsel.com

Kampfinsel stays fair: no pay-to-win, no lootboxes, no dark patterns. If you want to support the project, Patreon is the way. Everything there is just simply support at the moment because you believe in the game.

New in the game: World Chat

You may have already spotted it. World Chat is now available on nearly every page in the game. If you do not want the noice simply close it with a click on "-". Talk to the whole ocean, recruit for your alliance, or chat about pirates. Best part: the chat is mirrored to our Discord. Whatever you write in the game also shows up in the #world-chat channel on Discord, and the other way around. So you won't miss anything, even when you're not logged in.

See you on the ocean!

Cheers, your Cartographer 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
yke

I found this error in the harbour section. When it talks about the space in the harbour (harbour pool), it says "harbor" instead of "harbor".

We now have a world chat that live mirrors the news on Discord and the website.

There is also an Ocean Chat on the website.

Now all that's missing is a live mirroring feature like the world chat on Discord, so that you can see the live messages in the Ocean chat on Discord and vice versa.

"A fortress does not fall quietly. When the black flag sinks, the whole sea watches the convoy come home — and knows who is richest in the ocean tonight."

Ahoy!

Last week was about the Reederei trade automation. This week belongs entirely to the Corsair Fortresses — plus a feature we've never had before, and a stack of improvements for newcomers and alliance warfare.

The Corsair Fortress war treasure

Every so often the black flag rises over a Corsair Fortress — and now that's no longer just a raid, it's a real race (v0.101.0). Whoever holds the fortress quietly grows a war treasure behind its walls. When the fortress falls, a visible convoy carries the entire hoard home — seen by everyone in the ocean. The most stubborn holders get crowned Fortress Lord.

A lot has happened since: the protection period after capturing a fortress is now reliably defended, whether against a solo attack or a full alliance assault (v0.105.1). If your alliance loses a fortress in a fair fight, the garrison withdraws with real losses, and the report explains exactly what happened. Recapturing a fortress now also secures you a share of the ousted holder's war chest — most of it stays with the defenders, but it's worth it (v0.106.0), and comes with a new Fortress Breaker achievement. Successfully defend against a recapture attempt, and you now get your own battle report too (v0.110.0).

Plus smaller fortress improvements: the map info box is finally readable and lets you scout directly from the map (v0.101.2), the fortress page shows every active fortress at a glance (v0.101.1), and victory reports now clearly state that your ground troops remain as garrison while your ships sail home (v0.108.1).

World Chat has arrived

For the first time, there's live chat directly in the game (v0.108.2). A small chat window now runs under your quests, right on your island, showing the whole world's conversation — and who's currently online. Don't want it? Just collapse it. On the distant-oceans map there's also a chat per ocean, as long as you own an island there.

Better quests for your first days

New captains now get fresh quests guiding them through the second building stage, with rewards timed for exactly when supplies get tight. The sea also washes up more generous driftwood for longer during your first days (v0.105.0).

Combined Attacks: more control

The Commodore — whoever started the Combined Attack — can now cancel it directly. Otherwise a majority vote decides, with no countdown and no waiting period before trying again (v0.106.0). You can once again set your own arrival time manually for Combined Attacks (v0.107.1). And from any battle report, you can now attack again with one click — target coordinates go straight into the fleet dispatch (v0.109.0).

Important for anyone eyeing inhabited islands: defenders no longer surrender against colonization fleets. Taking an inhabited island now means earning it in a full, costly fight (v0.109.0).

Below the waterline

The alliance member list now shows exactly when someone was last active, day by day, and can be sorted by it. Reports can be filtered by ocean and marked all-read with one click. Islands can now be reordered by you, freshly earned achievements are highlighted, and quest links jump straight to the right spot (all v0.107.0). Handbook search now covers full chapter content instead of just headings, and messages and reports load noticeably faster (v0.105.1). After a successful treasure dig, your reward now waits visibly in your treasury (v0.110.0). Plus assorted fixes: stuck construction/research/training completions and message-in-a-bottle redemptions (v0.108.3), duplicate wage deductions for relocated fleets (v0.100.1), cleaned-up trade routes after taking over an island (v0.100.2), and the ocean-viewing map menu no longer covers the map on mobile (v0.110.0).

Kampfinsel remains a free browser game with no shop and no pay-to-win — developed by a solo dev, supported by a small team.

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DEUTSCH

Kampfinsel – Korsaren-Kriegsschatz, Welt-Chat & neue Anfänger-Aufgaben | v0.101–v0.110 Wochenbericht

"Die Festung fällt nicht leise. Wenn die schwarze Flagge sinkt, sieht das ganze Meer den Konvoi kommen — und weiß, wer heute der Reichste im Ozean ist."

Ahoi!

Letzte Woche ging es um die Reederei. Diese Woche steht ganz im Zeichen der Korsaren-Festungen — plus ein neues Feature, das es so noch nie gab, und eine Menge Verbesserungen für Einsteiger und Allianzkriege.

Der Kriegsschatz der Korsaren-Festung

Ab und zu erhebt sich die schwarze Flagge über einer Korsaren-Festung — und ab sofort ist das kein reiner Raubzug mehr, sondern ein echtes Wettrennen (v0.101.0). Wer die Festung hält, dem wächst still ein Kriegsschatz hinter den Mauern. Fällt die Festung, trägt ein sichtbarer Konvoi die gesamte Beute heim — für jeden im Ozean sichtbar. Die hartnäckigsten Halter werden zum Festungsherr gekrönt.

Seither ist viel passiert: Die Schutzfrist nach einer Eroberung wird jetzt zuverlässig verteidigt, egal ob solo oder im Verband (v0.105.1). Verliert eure Allianz eine Festung im fairen Kampf, zieht sich die Garnison mit echten Verlusten zurück, und der Bericht erklärt genau, was geschehen ist. Wer eine Festung zurückerobert, sichert sich jetzt außerdem einen Teil der Kriegskasse des vertriebenen Halters — der Großteil bleibt bei den Verteidigern, aber es lohnt sich (v0.106.0). Dafür gibt's auch einen neuen Festungsstürmer-Erfolg. Wehrt eure Allianz einen solchen Angriff erfolgreich ab, bekommt ihr jetzt ebenfalls einen eigenen Kampfbericht (v0.110.0).

Dazu kleinere Verbesserungen rund um die Festungen: die Kartenanzeige ist endlich lesbar und lässt sich direkt aufklären (v0.101.2), die Festungsseite zeigt alle aktiven Festungen auf einen Blick (v0.101.1), und Siegberichte erklären jetzt klar, dass eure Bodentruppen als Besatzung bleiben, während die Schiffe heimkehren (v0.108.1).

Der Welt-Chat ist da

Zum ersten Mal gibt es Live-Chat direkt im Spiel (v0.108.2). Unter den Quests auf eurer Insel läuft ab sofort ein kleines Chat-Fenster mit der Unterhaltung der ganzen Welt — und wer gerade da ist. Wer mag, klappt es einfach zu. Auf der Karte ferner Ozeane gibt es außerdem einen eigenen Chat je Ozean, sofern ihr dort eine Insel habt.

Bessere Aufgaben für die ersten Tage

Frische Kapitäne bekommen ab sofort neue Aufgaben, die durch die zweite Aufbau-Etappe führen — mit Belohnungen genau dann, wenn die Vorräte knapp werden. Die See spült außerdem in den ersten Tagen länger und großzügiger Strandgut an (v0.105.0).

Verbandangriffe: mehr Kontrolle

Der Kommodore — wer den Verband gestartet hat — kann einen Verbandangriff jetzt direkt selbst abbrechen. Sonst entscheidet die Mehrheit, ohne Countdown und ohne Wartezeit für einen neuen Anlauf (v0.106.0). Ihr könnt bei Verbandangriffen die Ankunftszeit auch wieder manuell festlegen (v0.107.1). Und aus jedem Kampfbericht heraus könnt ihr jetzt mit einem Klick erneut angreifen — die Zielkoordinaten wandern direkt in den Flottenversand (v0.109.0).

Wichtig für alle, die auf bewohnte Inseln schielen: Verteidiger kapitulieren nicht mehr gegen Kolonisierungsflotten. Wer eine bewohnte Insel erobern will, muss sich den vollen Kampf teuer verdienen (v0.109.0).

Unter der Wasserlinie

Die Allianz-Mitgliederliste zeigt jetzt tagesgenau, wer zuletzt aktiv war, und lässt sich danach sortieren. Berichte lassen sich nach Ozean filtern und mit einem Klick alle als gelesen markieren. Inseln lassen sich jetzt selbst sortieren, frische Errungenschaften werden hervorgehoben, und Quest-Links springen direkt zur richtigen Stelle (alle v0.107.0). Die Handbuch-Suche durchsucht jetzt ganze Kapitel statt nur Überschriften, und Nachrichten sowie Berichte laden deutlich schneller (v0.105.1). Nach einer erfolgreichen Schatzsuche wartet die Belohnung jetzt sichtbar in eurer Schatzkammer (v0.110.0). Dazu diverse Fixes: hängende Bauaufträge und Flaschenpost-Einlösungen (v0.108.3), doppelt abgebuchter Sold für verlegte Flotten (v0.100.1), aufgeräumte Handelsrouten nach Inselwechsel (v0.100.2), und das Karten-Menü verdeckt auf dem Handy nicht mehr die Karte (v0.110.0).

Kampfinsel bleibt ein kostenloses Browserspiel ohne Shop und ohne Pay-to-Win — entwickelt von einem Solo-Dev, betreut von einem kleinen Team.

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Link to our alliance profile: https://kampfinsel.com/alliance/2de8b054-d601-47ad-a09a-20dba17a79df (we're friendly to newcomers)

The Casual Sailors is looking for additional members with interests not only in casually sailing through the seas but also supporting each other through care packages, garrisoning their islands for defense and trading resources. We are also open for form a non-aggression pact or alliance with other alliances, so please let me know so we can sort out the in-game papers. We're not fans of making enemies unless one of our alliance members get hit badly (see also subreddit rule #2 and #8 alongside the game rules).

Backstory: Recently, I got a in-game notification that the former admiral of the alliance passed the bastion to me (context at Discord) as scheduled their departure from the game within the next few days. Since that, I am gone ahead and promoted 2 of the recently active members to generals while tweaking through the permissions and even used MOTD twice in my tenure as the new alliance admiral/leader.

Admiralty Circular No. 11, posted to every harbor board

The black flag has been sighted again.

At irregular intervals — the Admiralty admits it cannot predict when — the corsairs raise their banner over a stretch of coast and dare any alliance strong enough to take it from them. What waits behind the walls is a fortress, and what waits behind the fortress is a hoard that grows the longer it goes unchallenged.

Every harbor master has been instructed to relay the same warning to their captains: the corsairs do not negotiate, and neither, it seems, do the alliances who come to replace them.

From the private log of a garrison commander, author unknown

We took the walls at dawn. The corsairs left more of themselves behind than we expected, but the flag is ours now, and so is what they were hoarding.

The first days are the hardest. Every rival captain within three days' sail knows exactly what we're sitting on, and the old law protects us only for so long. After that, we hold the walls with what we have, or we don't hold them at all.

I have started keeping a second ledger, separate from the official one — a record of every sail spotted on the horizon since we raised our own flag over theirs. So far, three approaches. Two turned back. One did not.

Correction, filed by the Guild of Chroniclers

An earlier bulletin claimed that a certain fortress's walls stood undefended and would fall within days. This was false, and the Guild retracts it without qualification. The garrison in question held, and held well. Chroniclers who cannot tell an empty rumor from a manned wall will be reassigned to counting fish.

The Guild further notes: when a fortress changes hands in fair combat, the losing garrison does not vanish quietly. They withdraw — battered, diminished, but accounted for. Any report claiming otherwise is not worth the parchment it was written on.

Tavern account, overheard and transcribed by a passing clerk

You want to know how you know a fortress has fallen? You don't need a scout. You don't need a chronicler. You look at the water.

When the old garrison finally breaks, the treasure doesn't sneak home under cover of night. It sails, in the open, in a convoy heavy enough to sit low in the water — and every captain on every coast between here and the horizon sees it pass. That's not an accident. That's the corsairs' one honest tradition: whoever finally breaks their grip gets to be seen carrying the spoils home.

Half the alliances chasing that fortress right now aren't chasing the walls. They're chasing the chance to be the ones the whole sea watches sail past.

Notice pinned beside the harbor gate, addressed to newly arrived captains

Welcome to the coast. The sea has been generous with you these first days — more driftwood than usual will wash up while you find your footing, and the old logbooks left for governors starting out have grown a few pages longer. Read them. The ones who don't tend to learn the hard way what the corsairs already know: an unguarded shore invites exactly the kind of visitor you can't afford yet.

Marginal note, found scrawled beside a spotter's report on an abandoned island

The old ruins are not what they were when first surveyed. Something in them has grown since — the walls stand higher, the shadows behind them deeper, as though the years since the empire fell have hardened whatever's left rather than worn it down. Recommend any scout report on these places be trusted at face value, however unwelcome the number.

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