We have a plan, savvy?

Yarrrrrr! I mean hello!!! As you may have guessed, today we’re going to talk about pirates in the world of Signum.

Our first pirate was Ramona the Tailwind. At first it was just a character from a mercenary guild, not a separate thematic faction, but even then we thought of developing the pirate theme further. Especially since Ramona herself was quite popular among the players.

Then we remembered about Orctober – a fandom phenomenon, when the month of October is dedicated to the orc race. At that time in Signum already existed green-skinned warriors – swamp orcs with their brutal style and orc-samurai in complex armour and with complex ideas about personal honor, but we wanted something fundamentally new, fresh, different from previous images. So we thought – why not combine orcs and pirates? Thus began to appear one of the most interesting and colorful factions in the world of Signum.

Naturally, everything started with ideas, concepts and sketches. Some variants were discarded, some were modified, and eventually we came up with a real orc-pirates team. But, as you realize, one original appearance is not enough for a fully playable faction.

In order to make playing as pirates different from playing as, say, Nephilims or Akkari, they needed their own specific traits. Our game designers were engaged in the development of these features. What they ended up with:

• the pirates are additionally armed with flintlock pistols, which means that they can sometimes use long-range attacks;
• each of the pirates individually is not a very strong fighter, but together they form a formidable force to be reckoned with;
• the main resource for orс-pirates is gold, for which they can strengthen their abilities, build buildings and perform other game actions. Accordingly, many actions provide the faction with additional income.

How does this work in the game? For example, minions bring gold to the faction if they survive an attack on an enemy. Gold is obtained after performing certain actions or killing characters.

After we decided on the appearance of the characters and developed mechanics for them, it was time to choose names. This turned out to be quite difficult. Surely many of you thought for a long time before creating a name in any game, and here we needed more than a dozen original names, and even with pirate flavor. Luckily, one of our employees has the necessary skills, so we had 10,000 different names, from which we already chose variants to our liking.

This is how Captain Gruktuk the Redbeard came about, for example.

What we ended up with can be safely called one of the most interesting factions in the history of Signum. And, like any other faction, they need someone to lead them into battle and lead to new brilliant victories – a player.