It's About Pirates Difficulty Levels: How the Challenge Scales at Sea

What the Steam Listing Actually Says About It's About Pirates Difficulty Levels

It's About Pirates launched on Steam on November 6, 2026, and the first thing many new captains look for is a difficulty slider. It's About Pirates difficulty levels behave differently than a simple menu toggle: the official store page, saved on 2026-11-09, describes a survivors-like built around escalating enemy waves, deep build crafting, and an Endless mode where the only cap is your own skill. Understanding that structure matters, because how you read It's About Pirates difficulty levels will change the captain, faction, and aiming scheme you pick before your first wave.

Here is the documented starting point. Update #1, posted on November 7, 2026, added difficulty levels: each adventure can now be played on Easy, Normal, or Hard. The same patch explains the Easy trade-offs — more gold, less damage taken, and faster kills — and says the leaderboard multiplier is reduced to keep the boards fair. The official It's About Pirates Steam page still describes a curve of "increasingly challenging enemies" and lists Endless mode as a place to "test your skill."

So if you are hunting for a difficulty menu, the post-launch changelog is where it now lives: Easy, Normal, and Hard are selectable per adventure. The rest of this guide covers both that selector and the in-run levers that shape how hard a voyage feels.

How the Challenge Ramps Inside a Run

The Steam description frames a run as a series of fights that get harder as your ship gets stronger. You blast through "relentless waves of enemies," collect loot, and upgrade your vessel between fights. Three details in the listing explain why the pressure climbs:

• 30 adventures. The feature list promises 30 adventures to sail through, so the campaign is a sequence of encounters rather than a single endless arena.
• Escalating opposition. The About section says increasingly challenging enemies will stand in your way, and mentions storms of cannonballs and mythical sea monsters as part of the threat mix.
• Upgrade pressure. You are expected to turn your ship into "an unstoppable fortress" with flamethrowers, harpoons, mortars, and other upgrades, which implies the waves outpace a stock vessel.

Read together, those points describe an in-run curve that compounds on top of the difficulty tier you choose. If your build stalls, the next adventure gets rougher; if your build compounds, you keep pace.

Endless Mode Remains the Endurance Test

The single most difficulty-relevant line on the store page is short: "Test your skill in Endless mode." With Easy, Normal, and Hard now selectable per adventure, Endless remains a separate endurance test rather than a substitute for the difficulty menu. There is no described cap, no stated wave limit, and no promised ceiling in the store text saved on 2026-11-09.

Endless mode is also tied to the leaderboard feature. Steam lists Leaderboards among the game's features, and the developer's own feature list invites players to "compete on the leaderboard and claim your place among the top pirates." That combination gives skilled captains a measurable way to compare runs, which a fixed difficulty label could never do.

One caveat: the listing does not publish Endless mode's specific scaling rules, enemy modifiers, or reward structure. Any claim about exact Endless wave behavior would go beyond what the source supports.

Self-Imposed Difficulty: Aiming, Captains, and Factions

Even with a difficulty selector in place, the listing names several systems that change how demanding a run feels. The table below separates what the store page states from the interpretation a player would reasonably draw.

The aiming toggle deserves emphasis because it is separate from the Easy/Normal/Hard tier. Manual aiming asks for more precision during a fight, so it can raise execution demands even on an easier difficulty. Note that the store page does not state whether you can switch aiming modes mid-run.

Captain and faction selection is the second lever. With 10 captains and 6 factions, the listing implies meaningful variety, though it does not detail individual abilities, so treat specific captain rankings as community territory rather than confirmed data.

What Else the Listing Confirms: A Dated Snapshot

Because release-window details shift quickly, everything in this table reflects the Steam page as saved on 2026-11-09 and should be read as a dated observation, not a live figure.

Two takeaways for difficulty-minded buyers. First, the review sample is small — 34 reviews at 67% positive is a thin base, so it says little about long-term balance. Second, the developers recommend a controller, which is worth knowing before you judge the game's precision demands on mouse and keyboard.

Practical Tips for Judging the Challenge Before You Buy

• Watch the trailers and screenshots. The store page hosts a trailer and a gallery; enemy density is easier to judge visually than from text.
• Start with automatic aiming if you want to learn wave patterns and build synergies first, then switch to manual once the systems click.
• Treat Endless mode as the benchmark. It is the mode the developer explicitly ties to skill testing and leaderboard competition.
• Ask the community. Captain tier lists and faction rankings are player experience, not official data — the store page does not rank them.
• Check back on the store page for patch notes and announcements rather than relying on any snapshot, including this one.

FAQ

Are there selectable difficulty settings in It's About Pirates? Yes. Update #1, posted November 7, 2026, added Easy, Normal, and Hard choices for every adventure. The store page still emphasizes escalating enemies, build crafting, and Endless mode for skill testing; check the announcement feed for later changes.

Is Endless mode basically the hard mode? Not exactly. Endless mode is a separate endurance test, while Hard is one of the three selectable difficulty levels added in Update #1. The developer's feature list frames Endless as the place to "test your skill" and pairs it with leaderboard competition; the listing does not publish Endless mode's exact scaling rules.

Do It's About Pirates difficulty levels change with different captains? The listing confirms 10 distinct captains and 6 factions with unique abilities, so your starting toolkit will differ from run to run. Specific captain-by-captain power rankings are community reports rather than documented facts.

Does aiming mode affect how hard the game feels? The store page lists "Automatic or manual aiming" as a feature, and manual aiming naturally demands more precision. This is interpretation rather than a stated difficulty setting — the page does not describe aiming as a difficulty option.

What is the best way to track changes to It's About Pirates difficulty levels? Follow the official Steam page's news and announcements feed. The developers posted updates through early November 2026, and balance changes to a newly released roguelike are common — but any future change must be verified at the source rather than assumed.