Dangerous Waters - 0.1.1 (Release 1)

Pirates for Sailwind. Guns you buy, carry, nail and fire; a pirate who sizes you up, chases you, fires back, boards you and takes her cut; damage, splinters, and a captain's manual to go with it. And the Old Chronian ships refitted to face her: fighting tops, a net under the bowsprit, copper below the water, lids on the ports, davits astern.

The manual (DW_Manual.pdf, in this zip) is the full guide. This page is the short version.

Requirements

• Sailwind
• BepInEx 5 (installed by Thunderstore Mod Manager / r2modman)
• The Old Chronian ship mod. The pirate is built from its Caelanor. Without it there is no pirate.
• Recommended: Configuration Manager (press F1 in game for the settings).

Optional, each adds one thing to the Old Chronian refit (chapter XII):

• Dinghies (Thunderstore, Pr0SkyNesis) - the Aelasyl's stern davits and the boat in them.
• Old Chronian Fixes (Discord, with Old Chronian) - gives the Caelanor her bilge pump; with it the Aelasyl gets the same pump.
• Shipyard Expansion (Discord) - the copper sheathing wears its copper, matching the brig's; without it, a plain copper of its own.

Old Chronian itself is a Discord mod, not on Thunderstore, so a mod manager cannot fetch it for you: install it by hand first.

If you have the old separate Caelanor Mast Platforms mod (2.6.2), delete it: the one in this zip replaces it, and BepInEx skips the old one anyway.

Also in the folder: Caelanor Hatch Walk Collider Fix (CaelanorHatchFix.dll, by Dixiecapt). The Caelanor's cabin hatch has an invisible walk collider twice the length of the opening, which blocks the companionway even with the hatch open; this slims it to the hatch itself. If you already have it installed elsewhere, keep one copy.

Install

Unzip into BepInEx\plugins\. You should get:

BepInEx\plugins\DangerousWaters\DangerousWaters.dll
BepInEx\plugins\DangerousWaters\CaelanorMastPlatforms.dll   (the Old Chronian refit)
BepInEx\plugins\DangerousWaters\CaelanorHatchFix.dll        (the Caelanor's cabin hatch, see below)
BepInEx\plugins\DangerousWaters\dwpirates
BepInEx\plugins\DangerousWaters\dwpirates.manifest
BepInEx\plugins\DangerousWaters\Sounds\
... and a few text files beside them.

The folder must be named DangerousWaters. Start the game once. The settings file BepInEx\config\com.roy.dangerouswaters.cfg is written on the first run. Press F1 for the settings: about forty of them. Tick "Advanced settings" at the top of F1 only if you want the two hundred tuning and diagnostic keys too.

A save that has DW guns or shot aboard depends on this mod. Uninstall it and those items are gone from the save. This is true of any Sailwind mod that adds items or ships: if a save stops loading after you remove a mod, put the mod back, take its items off your ship, then remove it again, or use Save Cleaner where the mod supports it.

Also in this zip: DW_Manual.pdf, the play-tester checklist (Word and Markdown), Snap DW Log.bat (copies the game's log for a bug report) and the three region maps.

Just the guns and the refit, no pirates

Press F1, open General, and untick Enable pirate encounters. No pirate is ever raised after that. Everything else stays: the guns and the merchants, the Old Chronian refit, the gun port lids, the ship sounds. Tick it again whenever you want the fights back. (If you want neither guns nor pirates, the refit on its own is the separate Old Chronian Refit download.)

Where to start

Buy guns, powder and shot from the Cannon Merchant at Gold Rock City, Dragon Cliffs, Fort Aestrin or Fort Chronos (and a black-market Smasher at Eleann Island). Then sail out past the patrol reach of the nearest port. The manual's charts (chapter IV) show where the dangerous waters begin.

The Old Chronian refit

Take the Caelanor or the Aelasyl into any shipyard. New in the list, bought and fitted like her own parts:

Gun port lids are bought now, not standard. A save from the beta loads with no lids until you buy them. Fitted, they open with the gun when she runs out and shut when she stows; click a lid to open or shut the whole side.

Climbing: every rope lights when you look at it. A horizontal line (a ratline, a rung) clicks you up; a vertical line (a topmast shroud, a stay) clicks you down. The leaning futtock ropes click up on the Caelanor and down on the Aelasyl. The net under the bowsprit is a place to stand: jump in from the bow rail and walk out to the point.

The keys

The keys lost their Ctrl in hotfix 1 (Ctrl makes you crouch). If you ran beta 1, your settings are moved to the new keys on the first start unless you had changed them yourself.

A sealed crate of shot is cargo. Break it open aboard and the crew can serve from it.

Guns recoil. An empty gun stands Unready, hauled back so she can be loaded; a loaded gun stands Ready, run out. Fire her and she kicks back to Unready; load her and her crew run her out again. The Smasher's upper carriage and barrel slide on her slide while the slide and pivot pin stay put. Leave room behind your guns. The orders (Alt+K, J, L) work anywhere aboard, the hold included.

Gun weights were calibrated to match Sailwind's ship weights: aboard, a Swivel counts as 25.5 kg, a Falcon 127.5, a Smasher or Long Gun 170, a Great Gun 255. The shop still shows the real iron (and prices by it). Spread your guns fore and aft. A gun can stand on a raised platform, as the pirate's stern Smasher does: nail a table down, set the gun on it with room to roll back, and nail her.

Planned for release 2

Not in this release, and on the list for the next: gun wear (brass against iron), grape and chain shot for every gun, and a second, larger pirate.

Reporting bugs (please!)

Send BepInEx\LogOutput.log from the session (or use Snap DW Log.bat), with what ship you were in, where you were, and what the pirate was doing. The log is detailed on purpose; the answer is nearly always in it.

Discord: the Sailwind modding channels. Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/dixiecapt

Credits

By Dixiecapt, with Claude Fable (Anthropic) drafting the code and the manual to his direction. Pirate hull: Old Chronian's Caelanor, with permission; the refit is fitted to the Old Chronian ships with permission. Port lid mechanism after Le Requin 1750, with permission. Code guidance: LilithMotherOfAll. Davits and boat: the Dinghies mod's own, when present; copper material: Shipyard Expansion's, when present; the frigate's pump: Old Chronian Fixes' Caelanor pump, when present - none of them bundled. Swivel gun after "Naval 0.75 swivel gun" by lvpublic (Cults, CC0). Gun reports include BBC Sound Effects recordings (sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk, (c) BBC). Ship ambience: HMS Rose recordings, King Collection: Watercraft Sound Effects Library. Full credits in the manual, chapter XIII.

Dangerous Waters (c) 2026 Dixiecapt. Free to download and play. Seek permission to alter. You may share the link; you may not repackage, sell, or re-upload the mod or its assets. Third-party assets remain under their own licenses.