Perilous Pirate
Gold accumulator and ship raider - the deeper your purse and the closer the waterline, the deadlier you get.
Overview
The Pirate is the shard's gold-and-sea class. Its passives fatten every purse you pull off a monster, sharpen your lockpicking, and turn your cannons up once there is water under both of you. It fights with a blade at close quarters, and it rewards players who like being in the thick of a boarding scrap rather than plinking from range.
Like every class here, the Pirate is a layer over your own skill template, not a lock. You still build the character you want; picking Pirate leans the bonuses toward blades, boarding, gold and the running fight between ships that the sea is built around.
Passive Bonuses
These scale with your Pirate level and are always on against monsters (they switch off in PvP). At level 10 they are all maxed:
| Bonus | Per level | At level 10 |
|---|---|---|
| Gold dropped by mobs and treasure chests | +2% | +20% |
| Lockpicking success chance | +5% | +50% |
| Damage to monsters while on a ship | +5% | +50% |
| Damage taken | -1% | -10% |
Signature Procs
Every class has two proc attacks that can fire off your own hits and spell casts against monsters. The weaker one triggers at 0.5% per class level (5% at level 10); the stronger at 0.1% per level (1% at level 10). Both are PvM only.
- Avast (weaker): a ship model drops out of the sky onto the target and stuns it for 0.5 seconds per Pirate level - up to 5 seconds at level 10.
- X Marks the Spot (stronger): a treasure chest crashes down and deals damage equal to 5% of the gold you are carrying, per Pirate level, capped at 5,000. Carry a full purse and this hits like a truck; carry nothing and it does nothing.
Fork Abilities
At levels 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 you pick one of two abilities. The choice is permanent for that build, and each pick costs Doubloons (10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 as you climb).
| Level | Option A | Option B |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Gold Affinity - +1% damage per 1,000 gold carried (cap +25%) | Golden Shield - -1% damage taken per 1,000 gold carried (cap 25%) |
| 4 | Sailing Winds - +2% sailing speed per level at the helm | Heavy Ordinance - +2% cannon damage per level |
| 6 | Treasure Hoarder - +1% rare-item drop rate per level | Treasure Collector - +1% ultra-rare drop rate per level |
| 8 | Corsair - +2 Swordsmanship per level (up to your skill cap) | Buccaneer's Fury - active: +25% swing speed and +15% damage for 30s, 3-min cooldown |
| 10 | Dead Man's Chest - 0.5% per level chance on an Ultra-Rich-or-tougher kill to drop a bonus chest | Bribery - 10% chance to pay a hit's damage out of your gold instead of your health |
Gold is ammunition. Gold Affinity, Golden Shield, X Marks the Spot and Bribery all read the coins in your pack. A rich Pirate hits harder, tanks better and can literally buy off damage - so a fat purse is a build stat, not just savings.
How It Plays
PvM. This is a duelist that farms. You close, you trade blows, and your kills pay 20% more gold at the cap. On the water the ship-damage passive and the Heavy Ordinance / Sailing Winds forks turn you into a proper raider; on land you are a solid cutlass fighter who happens to pick locks and loot chests better than anyone. The ocean is lawless, so it is the Pirate's natural hunting range - no murder counts out there, and the Trade Pack haulers crossing it are slow, visible and worth real gold.
PvP. Class perks are built for hunting monsters. Your gold-scaled damage, damage reduction, ship bonus and procs all switch off against players, so in a player fight you are running on your raw skills and gear. Corsair's flat Swordsmanship is the exception that carries over. Play the Pirate for the farm and the sea, not the duel.
Coins & Leveling
The Pirate spends Doubloons. Every class earns XP worth 10% of the gold its kills drop, but only your active class banks it. The XP bar fills to a threshold and stops - it does not auto-level. To take the level you visit the Pirate Guildmaster and pay Doubloons equal to the target level times ten (10 up to 100, about 550 coins for the whole climb to 10). Fork abilities cost extra coins on top.
Coins drop for everyone off tougher monsters, so you will pull other classes' coins too - that is the trade economy working as intended. If you are short a class coin, Prism Coins act as a universal wildcard that can cover any class cost.
Not Locked In
Your first class pick is free and instant. Changing class afterward takes a 2-minute channel (hold still, take no damage, dismiss any class summons first) and there is a cooldown between swaps. Each class keeps its own level and fork picks, so grinding a second class never wipes your Pirate progress.
On top of that, one character can hold several skill builds through the Personality system - two build slots to start, up to five bought with gold or Ether Charged Powder, swapped with a 2-minute channel. The first time you activate a fresh slot it zeroes your skills to train up from scratch. So you are never stuck as one class or one skill set: a maxed Pirate and, say, a mage build can live on the same character.