It's About Pirates Beginner Guide: Survive Your First Naval Runs

A roguelite about sailing, shooting, and occasionally ramming things is easy to start and hard to survive — which is exactly why a little preparation pays off before your first voyage. This It's About Pirates beginner guide focuses on what actually appears in recorded gameplay: the day-by-day loop, the upgrades that keep a crew alive, and the habits that turn a two-minute wipe into a long run. If you have watched a stream and wondered what to do first, this It's About Pirates beginner guide answers that without drowning you in spreadsheets.

Everything below comes from a single recorded gameplay session posted on YouTube, plus the game's Steam listing. That means the advice reflects what a player actually did on screen, not datamined stats or patch notes. Where the footage leaves something unclear, this guide says so instead of guessing — a beginner guide that invents numbers is worse than no guide at all.

What Kind of Game Is It's About Pirates?

It's About Pirates is a naval combat roguelite. You command a pirate ship, sail into escalating encounters, and try to survive as many days as possible while enemy vessels, sea creatures, and fortifications try to sink you. In the recorded session, the creator summed it up simply: you sail a ship and try to survive as long as you can, describing it as a pick-up-and-play game rather than a long story campaign.

The run structure is classic roguelite. Days pass one by one, each day throws a fresh encounter at you, and between days you spend the gold you earned on crew, weapons, and ship upgrades. When your ship goes down, that run ends; the official listing separately describes a ship-component collection expanded across adventures and realm quests, so the reset does not erase that broader collection.

As of November 9, 2026, the official Steam listing confirms that It's About Pirates released on November 6, 2026 on PC. The video's narrator was unsure whether the game had launched when recording; that uncertainty is pre-release context, so check Steam for live availability and pricing.

The Day Loop, Step by Step

The session followed a repeatable rhythm that maps cleanly onto a beginner's first hour. Here is the shape of it.

Two practical notes from the footage. First, the creator initially set weapons to auto-fire, which is a reasonable way to learn positioning while the guns handle themselves. Second, the day ends on its own schedule — you do not have to clear every enemy, and chasing one last kill is how a healthy ship ends up at the bottom.

Hiring appears to happen on a per-day basis, and the creator treated crew as close to mandatory every day, believing it helped with reloading and sailing. That is player experience rather than a confirmed stat, but it is a sensible instinct to test on your own runs.

Gold Priorities: A Beginner Spending Plan

The clearest lesson in the whole session is that money drives everything. The creator repeated it almost like a mantra: get the gold, get all of it, and put it back into the ship.

Treat that priority column as one captain's heuristic, not a solved meta. The important habit is simpler: never sail into a new day with a fat purse and an untouched shop.

One reminder the game itself surfaced during the session is worth repeating in any It's About Pirates beginner guide: if you buy a weapon, equip it. The footage literally flashed a prompt telling the player not to forget.

Weapons and Crew Worth Testing Early

The auto-generated captions are occasionally garbled, so treat these names as approximate. Still, the session makes a useful tour of the arsenal:

• Spread cannon — fires a cluster of projectiles, forgiving when your aim is not perfect.
• Spike ram — a description read on screen promised high damage and long range at the cost of a slow reload.
• Harpoon — a crew-operated weapon that the creator kept adding throughout the run.
• Flamethrower — short-range burn damage; it shredded clustered attackers.
• Sniper — long reload, heavy single-target hits.
• Mortar — indirect fire for when enemies will not line up.
• Siren barrel — lures enemies toward it, according to the on-screen text.
• Explosive barrel — detonates on impact.

Crew members appear to fill roles rather than act as faceless numbers — the creator hired a gunner, a healer-style "sawbones," and a musician at various points. Experiment with one specialist at a time so you can feel what each one actually changes.

Ramming deserves its own warning. The creator rammed constantly, loved it, and then wondered aloud whether ramming lowers your morale. That is speculation from the player, not a confirmed mechanic, but the tension between ram damage and morale loss is worth watching for in your own runs.

Five Mistakes That End Runs Early

1. Buying without equipping. A weapon sitting in your inventory deals zero damage. Check your loadout after every shop visit.
2. Ignoring reload speed. The creator called this out mid-fight after watching cannons sit idle. Faster reloads mean more damage per second without spending a single coin on raw attack.
3. Standing still. When things went badly, the fix was always motion — circling, figure-eights, serpentines, and boost. Idle ships get surrounded.
4. Skipping crew for pure firepower. Guns need hands. A full broadside of empty cannons is just expensive deck decoration.
5. Chasing the last kill. Several near-deaths in the session came from pushing for one more enemy instead of banking the day's gold.

What the Footage Suggests About Bosses

Toward the end of the run, the creator hit what they called a boss battle, and later seemed surprised to reach a final-feeling level. Sea creatures also escalated — an early shark the size of a sloop gave way to squids, stingrays, and other threats that hit considerably harder.

The takeaway for new players is structural: expect a multi-act run with a boss at the end of a stretch, and expect your early-game build to feel inadequate by the time you get there. Banking gold through the mid-run so you can afford a real power spike before the boss is a better plan than spending every coin on day two.

If you want more detail than a single session can provide, the official Steam listing for It's About Pirates is the place to check features, modes, and system requirements.

FAQ

Is It's About Pirates a roguelite?

Yes — the recorded session showed a day-based run structure with permadeath, mid-run purchases, and a restart from the beginning after the ship was sunk. That matches the roguelite label the creator used.

Does this It's About Pirates beginner guide cover co-op?

No co-op support is documented. The official Steam page lists It's About Pirates as Single-player and does not list co-op or multiplayer, so the creator's on-camera uncertainty should not override that listing.

How long does a single run last?

The footage does not include a reliable timer, so any number here would be invented. What is clear is the shape: multiple days, several encounters per day, act progression, and a boss fight that can end everything in seconds.

Where do I check price and availability?

As of November 9, 2026, the Steam store page listed a $11.75 base price with a 15% introductory discount to $9.98, marked as ending November 16. That is a dated snapshot, so check the It's About Pirates store page for the live price.