Rogue Waters: Complete Guide & Tips

A complete guide and gameplay tips & tricks for Rogue Waters.

Rogue Waters: Complete Guide & Tips

Rogue Waters is a turn-based tactical roguelite where you command a squad on randomized raids. Each raid grants experience and currencies (blueprints and glass) used for permanent upgrades. Death isn’t permanent—units are immortal, though specialists can take temporary HP-reducing wounds.

Combat has two phases: ship-to-ship cannon fire, then close-quarters melee aboard vessels. Melee emphasizes positioning—pushing enemies into walls or each other causes bonus damage.

The game is forgiving, making it ideal for short, casual sessions. Still, it’s no pushover—especially early on, where defeat is likely until you upgrade your ship.

Your Ship

Your ship carries up to 6 cannons and 6 modules. Cannons are used to attack enemy ships, while modules provide buffs and debuffs during hand-to-hand combat.

Some cannons and modules can be added before the raid begins. The types that are available, and the number that can be mounted, are expanded by purchasing upgrades with blueprints.

During the raid, you will receive additional cannons and modules as combat rewards, event rewards, or by purchasing them at stores. These can be mounted between encounters.

Cannons

Ship cannon battles happen in three rounds. In each round you spend “command points” to fire your guns. Your CPs start at two but can be increased to 5 through upgrades. Enemy ships have a set of cannons and a number of command points that vary based on ship type and strength.

There are eight types of cannons. Within a type, there are multiple grades, with higher grades doing additional damage.

• Cannonbreakers can only fire at cannons. You want one or two of these to prevent the enemy from wrecking your stuff.
• Decksweepers can only fire at crew. Less useful than other options, because you’re usually focused on destroying the canons and modules first.
• Glass cannons are powerful but will be destroyed with one hit. These are generally good, so long as you have enough CPs to counter incoming fire. Enemy ships with multiple heavy cannons can be a problem.
• Heavy cannons hit hard, but can’t fire in the first round and require 2 CPs per shot. Not recommended, though their high durability means you can often ignore attacks aimed at them.
• Mortars are powerful but can only fire in the third round. The slot is generally better used for something else.
• Shipwreckers can only fire at modules, and require two CPs to fire, but hit hard. You should always have one of these.
• Swivel guns are weak and can’t fire in the first round, but don’t require any CPs, making them a great way to finish something off. Only worthwhile if you don’t have enough CPs to fire better guns.
• Volley guns can hit hard or miss completely, and seem to do the latter with alarming frequency. They are too unreliable to recommend.

Eventually, your starting lineup should be:

• Cannonbreaker II (1-4 vs cannon)
• Shipwrecker II (4-6 vs module, 2 CP)
• Light Cannon II (1-3 vs any)
• Glass Cannon II (2-4 vs any)

With 5 CP you can fire every cannon.

Modules

Modules can affect all units, all friendly units, or all friendly units of a specific type. They often come with tradeoffs, e.g. more HP but less armor. Your module selection will be based on your playstyle.

A simple setup uses Rum Supply (regen+1), Sturdy Deck (movement+1), and Veteran’s Crest, all of which are available early. The latter gives Preparation Master II, so that when a mate uses the Prepare skill it gets non-ablative armor+2 for 1 turn. This makes them much better roadblocks.

Recommended Upgrades

Blueprints: upgrade cannon Command Points first. Destroying enemy modules while preventing them from destroying yours is extremely important. Next is starting cannon capacity, followed by the first couple of Cannon upgrades (you want the Shipwrecker). Pick up Rum Supply I and Sturdy Deck I; these are useful for most of the game. Once you have the basics, save up for the next Command Point tier (4K blueprints).

Glass: save up for Specialist’s Cabins. Things get easier when you’re not trying to win fights with mates.

Your Crew

The main character in the story, Captain Cutter, is always part of your team, and fully heals between raids. You can hire up to 20 “specialists”, from 7 different classes, and bring up to 5 with you on raids. You can also have up to 6 “mates” on your ship.

Mates are initially the only units you have to work with, but eventually become cannon fodder (often literally). With the right set of ship modules they can be very effective, but most battles will be fought by specialists.

Captain Cutter and specialists start at level 1, and can improve to level 10. With each level up they can choose a new skill from three skill trees. Specialists have 3 trees with 4 abilities in each, so at max level they will be able to have 10 out of the 12 abilities.

Specialist Classes

There are seven classes, not all of which are available immediately.

• Backstabber: when an enemy unit is shoved into a Backstabber, the enemy takes additional damage, and the Backstabber takes none from the collision. Its strikes can weaken enemy attacks.
• Cleaver (available in Act II): has a wide swing that can hit multiple opponents in an arc.
• Cook: strikes without pushing. Upgraded strikes do heavy damage and strip armor, but to some extent you’re just spending points to match what other units can do with pushing impacts. Good for striking units standing in hazards like fire, since it doesn’t push the enemy out, and doesn’t result in the Cook walking in after.
• Grappler (available after 1st story mission): pushes enemies without doing damage. Direct damage is only done by throwing enemies into obstacles. The advantage is that the enemy can be thrown in any direction, e.g. toward Backstabbers or hazards.
• Musketeer (available after 2nd story mission): has a powerful long-range attack, but requires a turn to set up, which means it can be disrupted if the enemy breaks line of sight or the Musketeer gets pushed. It can only attack every other turn, effectively halving its DPS against unarmored units.
• Sea Witch (Cursed Swap): switches position with enemy, potentially stripping some armor. Good for dealing with groups of Flintlocks, as it puts one shooter in with your melee units, and the Sea Witch near the other shooters.
• Spearmaiden (available after 1st story mission): strikes two units in a line, pushing both, or strikes a single unit from one square away. Very effective, especially if you use other units to move enemies into a line.

Secondary Skill Trees

Each specialist has two additional skill trees, chosen at random. Some secondary skills are only available to specific specialists, e.g. Blessed Swap is only available to Sea Witches, and Sharpshooter is only available to Musketeers. Others, like Believer and Combat Medic, are available to multiple classes.

• Armorer: adds ability that boosts armor for one turn, and an ability that does damage equal to armor. Does not passively boost armor.
• Arsonist: adds ability to create fire squares (replacing existing hazard). Boosts movement+1 and damage+1.
• Assassin: adds instant kill abilities that ignore armor. Frequently useful. Boosts HP+1 and movement+1.
• Believer: adds Steal Strength, which boosts damage for duration of fights. Boosts HP+1, movement+1.
• Blessed Swap: allows swapping with an ally, providing them with buffs. Boosts armor+1.
• Bouncer: special melee attack weakens target’s offense. Boosts HP+1, armor+1, and adds regen+1.
• Brawler: adds Kick skill that pushes an enemy away without ending the turn. Boosts HP+1 and movement+1.
• Bruiser: adds Bash attack that stuns target. Boosts HP+2 and damage+1.
• Combat Medic: adds single-use ability that heals a nearby unit. Higher levels cure bleeding, blight, and stunned. Limited usefulness. Boosts HP+2.
• Cutthroat: adds a weak melee attack that doesn’t end turn. Boosts HP+1, movement+1, and damage+1.
• Defender: adds ability to push two units away. Boosts armor+1, penalizes movement-1, and provides Disengage.
• Escapist: adds limited ability to jump two squares. Boosts HP+2 and armor+1.
• Fencer: adds Retaliate ability. Boosts HP+2 and armor+1.
• Heavy Arm: adds ranged javelin attack. Boosts HP+4, but last skill penalizes movement-1.
• Hunter: adds Blighted Javelin ranged attack. Boosts HP+1 and movement+1.
• Infester: adds ranged Infester skill, which causes dying enemies to blight adjacent units. Boosts regen+1 and confers blight immunity.
• Nimble: adds Side Step, which moves to an adjacent square. Boosts movement+1, and adds movement-based regen.
• Noble: adds a single-use ranged attack that weakens the enemy. Limited value. Boosts movement+1.
• Reaver: adds melee Bite attack that heals self. Boots HP+5, though the final boost has a regen-1 penalty.
• Sabruer: adds Round Attack, which strikes all adjacent enemies. Boosts HP+2, and adds a damage bonus when only one unit is adjacent.
• Savage: adds melee attack that causes bleeding. Boosts damage+1 and regen+2 in certain circumstances.
• Sentinel: adds Sword Sweep, which is like the core Cleaver skill but does a push with no damage. Boosts HP+1, movement+1, and adds Disengage.
• Sentry: adds Brace, an alternative form of Prepare that provides non-ablative armor and push immunity. Boosts HP+1, regen+1, and provides AoE regen+2.
• Sharpshooter: ranged attack that hits all enemies in a line. Useful alternative ranged attack for Musketeer. Boosts HP+1 and movement+1, and gives damage+1 when nothing is adjacent.
• Slime Collector: adds ability to create blight squares (replacing existing hazard) and infect attackers. Boosts regen+1.
• Strongman: Flex to gain damage+1. Boosts regen+1, and HP+4 at the expense of damage-1.
• Sturdy: no new abilities. Boosts HP+5 (but movement-1), regen+2, armor+1.
• Tar Smearer: adds ability to create tar squares (replacing existing hazard). Boosts HP+2 and armor+1.
• Trick Shot: adds Blinding Shot, which stuns without causing damage. Boosts regen+1.
• Veteran: adds an improved form of Prepare with non-ablative temporary armor. Boosts armor+1 and regen+1.
• Virulent: adds a melee blight attack; max level does 2 damage and 2 blight. Boosts HP+1 and movement+1.
• Warmonger: adds ability to cure adjacent allies of bleeding, blight, and stunned. Boosts HP+1, movement+1, and armor+1.

Captain Cutter and the specialists can each carry up to two items. These provide small boosts or add abilities for that unit. They’re rarely important, but occasionally fun (looking at you, Dead Man’s Chest).

Wounds

Whenever a mate or specialist is reduced to 0 HP, by cannon fire or attacks from an enemy unit, it drops out of action for that encounter and receives one “wound”. Wounds reduce the unit’s maximum hit points. When maximum HP hits 0, the unit will not be available. For mates and Captain Cutter this resets at the end of the raid, but for specialists it carries over. Wounds can be cured at shrines, through certain events, or by leaving the specialist at the base while out on a raid.

Crew Build Suggestions

Some skill combinations are more effective than others. Which you prefer will depend on your playstyle.

Captain Cutter has three unique branching skill trees: Swashbuckler, Commander, and Supernatural. As with specialists, he can only choose 10 abilities. My recommendations:

• Swashbuckler: Retaliate I, Cutlass Swing II, Heirloom Pistol I. Gives him a 2-point swing, and retaliates whenever enemies attack. The pistol is lower priority.
• Commander: Get Yourself Together I. Provides a small amount of healing to a nearby unit. Occasionally useful, but less so than you might expect.
• Supernatural: Shiv’s Presence I-IV, Mermaid Call I. The former makes Captain Cutter very resilient. Mermaid Call, which pushes a unit one square, is incredibly useful; I think I used it to shove units into hazards or a line at least once in every fight.

Some combinations that I found particularly useful:

• Spearmaiden / Heavy Arm / Fencer. The two-square strike is frequently useful, and Heavy Arm opens up some ranged options. The Fencer retaliation isn’t that important, but HP+2 armor+1 is pretty good. Skip the bottom half of Heavy Arm.
• Cleaver / Sturdy / Reaver. Cleavers are awesome, Sturdy and Reaver create a tank that can heal by eating opponents. At level 10, if you take full Cleaver and Reaver, you have a unit with 13 HP and regen+2. (I skipped the bottom half of Sturdy because of the movement penalty; if you’re okay with that, you can have 12 HP, regen+3, and armor+1.)
• Backstabber / Escapist / Assassin. I didn’t find the Backstabber ability that useful, so I skipped the bottom half of that tree. The real gem is Assassin, which lets you instantly kill anything with 1 or 2 HP, regardless of armor. It doesn’t end your turn, so you can move, assassinate, use the Escapist skill to move again, and perform a regular attack.
• Musketeer / Cutthroat / Sharpshooter. While Musketeer can do high single-target damage, it’s unreliable and only attacks every other turn. Sharpshooter, on the other hand, does 3 base damage, +1 for Focus, +1 for Strong (from Cutthroat), meaning you can hit a line of enemies for 5 damage each. It’s basically a Kraken strike that you can do every turn. Don’t bother getting a Musketeer without Sharpshooter. The Cutthroat Knife skill isn’t all that important, but the boosts to HP, movement, and damage are great.
• Cursed Swap / Believer / Blessed Swap. I bring this unit exclusively for “extort” actions. You want Cursed Swap II in case you need to swap on two consecutive turns. Believer doesn’t really matter, but it gives HP+1 and movement+1. Blessed Swap is helpful for maps where you don’t have clear lines of sight. (See notes on extort actions later in the guide.)

Other units that weren’t bad:

• Cook / Sentry / Reaver. Sentry provides some nice health / regen upgrades, and the Reaver Bite pairs well with the basic Cook attack since it doesn’t push.
• Grappler / Sturdy / Brawler. Very tough grappler, with additional options for pushing units around.

I liked Cook and Grappler less than the other options. My standard crew was Captain Cutter, Spearmaiden, Cleaver, and Backstabber, replacing the latter with Musketeer (Sharpshooter) when it looked like I could line up enemies and snipe them, or on long maps with ranged units or Powder Barrels lurking near the back. (Enemy Seagulls seemed to prefer attacking Musketeers, so be careful if you see a lot of those.)

Raids

The story advances as a series of “raids”, where you start with a basic ship configuration, and fight your way across the map to the fortress at the end. You’ll be given three choices, one of which is a “story” raid. The story raids advance the story through three acts, after which it becomes a boss fight with a selectable difficulty level.

Raid rewards include experience, blueprints, and glass. Higher difficulty settings provide a bonus to these. At the end of the raid, cannons and modules are converted to blueprints, and gold and items are converted to glass. If you choose to abandon a raid, perhaps to avoid getting your specialists wounded in a hopeless attempt, you will retain whatever rewards you have earned to that point.

Higher difficulty levels are initially unavailable. Defeating the boss unlocks them gradually.

The difficulty level makes things harder in various ways. For example, enemy units gain more HP and armor, but also get entirely new abilities, such as armor stripping or an explosive death. These can change certain enemies from largely irrelevant to dangerous threats.

Encounters

There are seven kinds of encounter.

• Arsenal (cannon icon). Store where you can buy cannons.
• Bazaar (chest icon). Store where you can buy items.
• Dockworks (ship’s wheel icon). Store where you can buy modules.
• Secluded Shrine (heart icon). Shrines of the Drowned Goddess.
• Event (question mark icon). Multiple-choice encounter. (See the Events section in this guide.)
• Story Event (scroll icon). Special events that only happen in story missions.
• Combat (crossed swords). Color (green/blue/purple) indicates difficulty, outline indicates normal encounter, elite encounter, or fortress.

Winning a combat encounter will yield gold and either an item, module, or cannon. The rewards can be seen before combat by hovering your mouse over the map icon, or holding down the left Alt key. This also shows the type of ship, which affects the number and type of cannons and modules you’ll be facing.

Store encounters always have four options:

1. Buy {cannon, item, module}, from a list of 5 items with increasing cost.
2. Repair ship. Fix fractures in cannons and modules, for 50 gold per fracture.
3. Extortion. Fight to steal one of two high-level items.
4. Sail away.

Shrine encounters have three options:

1. Random crewperson heals 1 wound.
2. Gain 3 Abyssal Ether.
3. Gain random common item.

You’ll generally want to fill up on Abyssal Ether, though if you have wounded specialists this can be a nice way to heal them without having to leave them behind to rest. This will also heal wounded mates, which is rarely useful, so the healing option is best used near the start of the raid.

There will always be store encounters before the fortress fight, so save some gold to repair your stuff. Also, fortress encounters give you a way to add fire hazards, usually for a payment of 200 gold. In story missions the process is a bit more wordy, but the result is the same.

Extortion

This is actually more like armed robbery than extortion. To steal an item from a store, you have to get one unit from the starting zone to the exit zone, while being attacked by a large number of enemy units that are bolstered by multiple modules. It doesn’t matter which unit gets there. You also have the option of wiping out the enemy forces.

The easy way to do this is with a Sea Witch. You need the first two skills in the Cursed Swap tree (the swap skill and Disengage) to get started. Improving Cursed Swap and getting additional movement will make things easier.

The basic plan is to put your Sea Witch and a few mates into the starting area, and then swap your sea witch with an enemy unit near the exit. If the line of sight is blocked, you may need to move and then swap, which leaves your Sea Witch vulnerable for a turn. Your mates mitigate this by tying up enemies (with Engage) and by simply providing additional targets for them to attack.

An advanced version, useful when navigating L-shaped maps, is to move a mate out, use Blessed Swap to swap with the mate, and then Cursed Swap to get near the exit zone. Disengage can be crucial to prevent your Sea Witch from getting tied down. Having Cursed Swap II allows you to swap every turn, which is nice if you can’t get all the way to the exit.

You can swap modules around before and after the fight to boost your mates defensive abilities, but that’s not really necessary.

Ship Combat Tips

The cannon fight is essential. If you’re losing modules and crew, and leaving theirs intact, the shipboard fight that follows will be much harder. In the early game, an enemy ship with armor+1 can wreck your crew. The most important ship upgrade you can get is increased Command Points, which determine how many times you can fire in each of the three rounds.

As the human player, your biggest advantage is that you get to shoot first, and you get to see what the enemy is targeting. The first thing you want to do is reduce incoming fire. Once you have 5 CPs and some nice starting guns, you should be able to wipe out the enemy cannons before they do much (or any) damage. Early on, and later on at higher difficulties, this will not be possible. Focus fire on the enemy cannons that are damaging things that matter.

• Modules that aren’t destroyed will function normally and be fully restored at the end of combat. So any shot that won’t outright destroy a module can be ignored.
• Attacks on mates can be ignored once you’re out of the early game. Excess damage doesn’t spill over, so every “kill shot” just adds one wound to one mate.
• Attacks on specialists that don’t kill them can usually be ignored. Either they start with reduced health, or that specific specialist stays sidelined for that encounter. Non-fatal damage heals at the end of combat.
• Destroyed modules/cannons are unusable for that encounter, and start the next encounter with a fracture (max HP reduced). If their max HP is reduced to zero, they can’t be used until repaired at a store (50 gold). Keep an eye out for attacks on your Glass Cannons.

Next, you need to destroy enemy modules. A simple strategy is to fire a Shipwrecker cannon at one module in each of the three turns, and use the remaining shots to attack cannons. A basic Shipwrecker II will destroy most modules in one shot. Use a secondary cannon to finish off the module if it’s not needed elsewhere and you have a lot of modules to wreck. The priority order for module destruction looks something like this:

1. +armor (Armor Stands, Glass Figurehead)
2. -crew size (Bolstered Railing)
3. retaliation (Inspiring Banner)
4. +damage (Practice Dummies)
5. +HP (Fortified Cabins)
6. +regen (Rum Supply)
7. +movement / -disengage (Sturdy Deck, Quickfoot Banner)

Things to consider not destroying:

• Reinforced Glass Weapons: increases damage but drops HP, making the enemy more dangerous but easier to kill. Destroy this if they have lots of Seagulls.
• Blighted Goddess Figurehead: blights both sides. Your specialists likely have more HP, and you can use Prepare to heal 1 HP, so this generally hurts them more than you (at least until Alchemists start healing enemies).
• Driftwood Figurehead: gives +5 movement and blights all enemy units. Destroy this if they have high-damage units like the Sea Wolf, or you’ll be overrun before the blight does its job.
• Cursed Banner: gives a damage bonus to units as they get wounded, but armor-1 makes them easier to kill before they have a chance to act. Risky if the enemy has Retaliation.
• Sacred Figurehead: gives regen+5 but armor-1. The armor reduction makes it easier to kill units in a single turn, but the regen counters blight/bleeding/burning effects.

Finally, once you’ve destroyed all the modules you want or can, you can shoot at the crew. If you score a couple of cannons early, it’s possible to completely destroy the enemy’s crew before the skirmish phase. You can eliminate or at least weaken tough enemies, making the skirmish easier. Be sure to destroy any +HP modules before attacking crew, as the HP reduction takes effect immediately, and leave the -HP modules in place until the very end.

Skirmish Combat Tips

Skirmish combat has no randomness, at least in terms of the outcomes of your actions. You can undo moves back to the start of the turn, so you can replay moves multiple times to try to improve the result.

When a unit is attacked, it takes damage equal to the strength of the attack, minus the current armor value. It’s possible for armor to go negative, in which case the target takes additional damage. Some attacks and effects ignore armor.

Some attacks and abilities push a unit a certain distance. If, while traveling, it encounters an obstacle, it takes 1 point of impact damage, ignoring armor, and redirects diagonally. If there is no diagonal move available, it takes an additional point of impact damage. Thus, a 1-point attack with a 1-point push on a unit against the ship’s railing will do 3 points of damage.

Overkill damage increases the “fear” meter. The size of the fear meter varies depending on the encounter, but when it fills up, the enemy surrenders.

You’ll always be outnumbered, so one approach (once you get some decent specialists) is to position enemies such that you can hit multiple enemies with AoE strikes, ideally bouncing them off walls and each other, leaving them standing in hazards. Try not to end your turn with your back to a wall or something spiky. A solid strategy is to focus on eliminating as many enemies as you can in the first round, before they have a chance to move, and then work from there.

Try to keep your units near each other for mutual support, but remember that leaving them directly adjacent allows an enemy with a push skill to bounce them off of each other. If you’re on a wide map with enemies spread apart, put three specialists at one end and a mate at the other, and have the mate do nothing but Prepare to gain armor. Let the specialists do the killing while the mate distracts the enemies and soaks up damage. When the mate dies, you can bring in a 4th specialist.

Details

Enemies with armor can be a bit of a pain, especially early on. Things that ignore armor:

• Impact damage, from being pushed into something or being in the way of something being pushed.
• Starting the turn standing on fire does 2 damage.
• Blight, a damage-over-time effect, does 1 damage per stack. Cured by specific skills.
• Bleeding, which causes damage every time a unit does anything, does 1 damage per stack. Can be cured by having the unit Prepare, or by using certain healing skills.
• Bomb explosions do damage based on difficulty.
• Certain special attacks from abilities or items.

Regeneration and damage-over-time effects fire at the start of the turn, in this order:

1. Regeneration heals HP.
2. Burning damages HP.
3. Blight damages HP.

For example, a unit with 2 out of 3 HP and 1 regen that is standing in fire will survive, because the +1 HP healing happens before the -2 HP fire damage.

Bombs explode at the end of the player turn. Tar squares next to fire squares will glow before bursting into flames. A unit standing on a glowing tar patch will receive the tar effects in the current turn, and then burning damage at the start of the next turn.

Assorted tips and reminders:

• You can throw bombs back, but it damages the unit that throws it.
• Fire only hurts if you start the turn standing in it. You can step on it to attack something without damage so long as your attack advances you off of it.
• Unlike fire, you gain a blight stack if your movement stops in a blighted square, even if you then step back out. Every time you do this, you get another stack.
• Hazards don’t affect you if you just walk across them.
• Retaliation works for every attack. Especially good against units with multiple weak attacks (e.g. Stingray), but you’ll want armor or push immunity to mitigate damage.
• The armor from the basic Prepare skill is ablative, i.e. incoming attacks remove it. Armor from other sources, notably the improved form of Prepare, is not.
• Units do not have a “zone of control”. The “engaged” status applies if a unit is standing next to an enemy unit, but so long as you start separated you can run right past enemies.
• If things are going sour, you can always abandon the raid and keep what you’ve earned up to that point.

Monsters

As the game progresses, you get access to three sea monsters. The Kraken swats a line of enemies, the Mermaid pushes them away from a central point, and the Snail drops a temporary spike hazard that things can be pushed into.

Sea monster attacks spend Abyssal Ether. You start with three points and can have up to 6. The most common way to get more is at a Shrine, though some other events will grant it.

Kraken attacks are the most obvious. If you can get the enemy to stand in a nice line, you can crush them to a pulp. Mermaid attacks are most useful in cramped quarters, because they can cause a lot of impact damage. Snail boulders are useful in a smaller set of circumstances. Each attack can only be used once per encounter.

It’s always good to go into the fortress fight with enough Abyssal Ether for a Kraken strike, as you’ll be facing a large number of enemies.

Events

This is a list of events that you may encounter. Some events are entirely fixed, others have some randomness. Some are simple, others have branching events. These were gathered through observation. The list may be incomplete. I’m listing them here so that, when you have a choice between encounters, you can choose the most useful.

Things that affect a “random crewperson” can be a mate, specialist, or Captain Cutter. If you have 5 specialists and 6 mates aboard, an event that causes a crewperson to gain 1 wound has a 50% chance of affecting a mate.