It s About Pirates Loot Guide: How to Collect Ship Parts and Build Upgrades

Loot is the engine of every run in It's About Pirates. Runs feed weapons and items into your build, while the 150+ ship parts are a separate collection discovered across adventures and expanded by quests in different pirate realms. This It's About Pirates loot guide pulls together what the developer's own press kit says about collecting and upgrading, so you can plan a build instead of guessing. Because the game blends survivor-style wave clearing with roguelike build crafting, an It's About Pirates loot guide is really a guide to the decisions you make between fights.

What Loot Actually Does in It's About Pirates

The pitch is short: command your ship in an action-packed pirate roguelike, blast through relentless waves of enemies, collect loot, and upgrade your vessel for naval battles. The developer, Elderwoof Games, describes the core loop as combining deadly weapons, powerful items, and a fearless captain into unique builds that can survive the high seas.

That means loot in It's About Pirates is not cosmetic filler. It is the raw material for three interlocking systems:

• Weapons — flamethrowers, harpoons, mortars, and a wider arsenal of deadly upgrades.
• Items — over 140 items that the press kit says are there specifically to shape your build.
• Captains and factions — 10 captains and 6 factions, with the factions each carrying unique abilities.

If you treat every pickup as a small, isolated upgrade, you will end up with a ship that does a bit of everything and finishes nothing. The press kit's wording — "strategically combine" — is the tell.

The Numbers Behind the Loot Pool

These figures come straight from the Elderwoof Games press kit rather than from any in-game telemetry, so treat them as content counts, not live statistics.

Source: Elderwoof Games press kit for It's About Pirates, captured 2026-11-09. These are content counts published by the developer, not player or sales figures.

The 140-plus items and 150-plus parts are the two numbers that matter most for planning. One pool feeds your build inside a run; the other feeds the long-term collection on your ship. Keeping those separate is the single biggest mental shift a new player has to make.

The Run Loop: Waves, Loot, Upgrades

The rhythm the press kit describes is straightforward. You steer through storms of cannonballs, face mythical sea monsters, and time your attacks for maximum impact. Between those threats, loot accumulates, and you convert it into upgrades.

A few details from the feature list change how you should approach that loop:

1. Aiming is your choice. It's About Pirates supports both automatic and manual aiming. Automatic aiming frees your attention for positioning and dodging; manual aiming hands you control over timing. Try both early and pick the one that matches how you actually play, because weapon value shifts depending on which you use.
2. Enemy pressure escalates. The press kit explicitly warns that increasingly challenging enemies will stand in your way, so a build that clears the opening waves comfortably is not proof it will hold.
3. Endless mode is the stress test. Once you have a build you like, Endless mode is where the concept gets pushed until it breaks. The leaderboard gives that pushing a scoreboard.

Ship Parts and the Long Collection

Beyond the loot you grab mid-run, It's About Pirates has a second layer: vessel customization built on more than 150 unique parts discovered throughout your adventures. Completing quests across different pirate realms expands that collection of ship components, and collecting loot also unlocks new ship skins.

The press kit does not publish drop rates, part rarities, or exactly which quests award which components — so no guide can honestly hand you a farming route yet. What it does confirm is the direction of travel: quests feed parts, parts feed customization, and loot feeds skins.

That has a practical consequence for anyone reading an It's About Pirates loot guide looking for a shortcut. If you skip quests because they slow down your wave clearing, you are cutting off the pipeline that grows your parts collection. The two activities are meant to run alongside each other, not compete.

Building Around Weapons and Items

The press kit's build advice boils down to combining weapons and items rather than stacking one type. With over 140 items in the pool and weapons ranging from close-range flamethrowers to arcing mortars, the shape of a build depends on what the run hands you.

A reasonable way to think about it, based on the systems the developer describes:

• Decide what your ship is for. A mortar-heavy setup and a harpoon-heavy setup want different support items. Committing early beats hedging.
• Read faction abilities as build modifiers. Six factions with unique abilities means six different starting assumptions about what your weapons should be doing.
• Treat captains as the third variable. With 10 captains listed, the captain you pick is a build decision, not a difficulty setting.

This It's About Pirates loot guide can't rank specific items, because the press kit doesn't publish stats for them. What it can tell you is that the game is designed around combinations, so evaluating a pickup means asking what it does with your existing kit, not how strong it is alone.

Practical Priorities

Where this It's About Pirates loot guide has to be honest is at the edges: without a published item list or drop table, priorities have to come from the design as described rather than from a spreadsheet.

A workable order of operations looks like this:

1. Pick an aiming mode in your first few runs and stop switching.
2. Commit to a weapon family before your build gets expensive to redirect.
3. Complete quests across realms when they are available — they expand your part collection.
4. Test finished builds in Endless mode before assuming they are strong.
5. Watch the leaderboard for ideas about what survives deep runs.

For anything beyond that — exact item stats, part locations, quest rewards — the reliable source is the game itself. You can follow builds and updates through the It's About Pirates store page on Steam, and the developer's Elderwoof Games press kit carries the official feature summary quoted throughout this article.

FAQ

What is the core loot loop in It's About Pirates? You clear waves of enemies, collect the loot they leave behind, and convert it into weapons and items that shape a build. The press kit summarizes it as blasting through waves, collecting loot, and upgrading your ship for naval battles.

How many items and ship parts are there? The developer's press kit lists over 140 items to shape your build and over 150 unique ship parts to discover across your adventures, plus 10 captains and 6 factions with unique abilities. Those counts reflect the press kit as captured on 2026-11-09.

Is progression permanent or per-run? The press kit describes two layers. Items and weapons feed the build inside a run, while ship parts are discovered across adventures and expanded by completing quests in different pirate realms. Collecting loot also unlocks new ship skins.

What is the most important takeaway from this It's About Pirates loot guide? Combine rather than collect. The developer frames the game around strategically combining weapons and items into builds, so the value of any pickup depends on what it does alongside the rest of your ship — not on how it looks in isolation.