Currencies

Two currencies move the whole economy. Reals are the coin of everyday life — you earn them constantly and spend them on nearly everything. Doubloons are the scarcer hard currency, earned mostly by fighting and reserved for the purchases the game deliberately gates. Knowing which is which — and not wasting the scarce one — is one of the first economic habits a new captain should build.

Reals

Reals are the common currency, the money behind almost every transaction in port. You pay reals for cannons, repairs, modules, books, raw materials, and for ships bought at the auction; you receive reals when you sell goods, deliver cargo, or auction a hull of your own. If a price is quoted without saying otherwise, assume it’s in reals. Because they flow in and out of almost everything you do, reals are the currency you’ll spend most of your time earning and the one to keep a healthy balance of for day-to-day play.

Doubloons

Doubloons are the scarce, “hard” currency. You earn them chiefly through combat — sinking and capturing enemy ships, and from patrol-zone and event rewards — rather than through trade, and the game spends them on a deliberately short list of higher-value purchases: outpost permits, storage and warehouse expansions, and other premium unlocks (see Outposts & Warehouses). Think of doubloons as the currency that converts fighting into territory and infrastructure, where reals convert trading into working capital.

How the two relate

The two currencies aren’t fully interchangeable, and that’s by design — it’s what keeps doubloons meaningful. Combat rewards tend to arrive partly as doubloons, which is the game’s way of making sure fighters can afford the things doubloons buy, while traders swim in reals. A pure trader will accumulate reals far faster than doubloons; a pure fighter, the reverse. Both balances are held on your personal account, not pooled at the clan level, and both travel with you between ports.

A word on “marks”

With the money itself understood, the practical questions are how to earn it and how to multiply it. For the ways to bring in both currencies, see Making Money; for the buy-low/sell-high trade that turns reals into more reals, see Trading & Contracts.