Game Setup

1. Set out the Game Board, Port Board, tokens, gems (red for marking crew Trauma and enemy wounds, purple for marking crew Strain) and dice. Place Player Discovery token and Enemy Discovery token on the first space of the Discovery Track. Set the length of the game you wish to play by placing the Elder One Discovery token on the 8th, 12th or 16th position on the Discovery Track.

2. Place the Enemy Agenda token on the first space of the Agenda track. Choose an Elder One board at random and place it face down in the slot along the game board.

3. Each player collects:

• One Ship Board and the matching ship miniature and coloured clip-on base.
• Three Crew Order tokens, two Navigation Order tokens and one Artillery Order token; place them in the Fresh Order area on the player's Ship Board.
• 40 coins.
• Two randomly selected Deckhand Crew Boards and a randomly selected Positive and Negative Trait card for each, and places the Traits in the Trait slots on the respective Crew Board.
• Two starter Improvement cards: one Cabins and one Dinghy. Locate these in the Improvement deck; the starter ones are the ones that don't have a cost printed on them. If there are fewer than four players, remove the unused starter Improvements from the deck.
• One starter Artillery Card selected at random. (Here too, the starter ones are the ones that don't have a printed cost on the card.)

4. Locate the Improvement Cards, Artillery Cards, Treasure Cards, Positive Trait cards, Negative Trait Cards and the remaining Crew Boards, shuffle them, and place them at the corresponding places along the Game Board. (The board has graphics along the short edges matching the edges of the back sides of the cards.)

Shuffle all the decks of cards, and the Crew Boards, that have marked places along the Game Board edge, and also the Denizen cards that have a marked place on the edge of the Port Board. Note that the Enemy Cards should initially only be the Act I Enemies, and that the Sea Event, Expedition and Denizen decks should only contain the non-numbered cards. (The numbered cards, marked by a number in a circle to the right of the card name, should be kept in a separate Story Deck.)

5. Sort the Map Tiles into groups by Act number, shuffle each of the groups, then make a stack with Act III tiles on the bottom, Act II tiles above them, and Act I tiles on top.

6. Separate the Enemy Cards based on what Act they belong to. There are Enemy Cards for Act I, Act II, Act III and ones without Act number. (The Act number is shown as a Roman numeral in a circle to the right of the card name.) Shuffle the Act I cards and place them next to the Game Board. Put aside the Act II and Act III cards for now, but keep the ones without Act numbers nearby, because they will be used when spawning enemy ships.

7. Go through the Sea Event Cards, Expedition Cards and Denizen Cards and separate numbered cards from unnumbered cards. The numbered ones have a number in a circle to the right of the card name. Shuffle the stacks of unnumbered cards and place them the Sea Event Cards and Expedition Cards at their appropriate places next to the Game Board, and the Denizen Cards next to the Port Board. Set aside all the numbered cards into a separate Story Deck.

8. Choose a starting player and give that player the starting player token. The starting player draws a Map Tile and places it in the marked area on the Game Board.

If you play with expansions, cards and Crew Boards from the expansions should be mixed in with the regular cards and boards as if they were a part of the core game. It is recommended that the number of Shellback Crew Boards (meaning those with a Crew member type other than "Deckhand") doesn't exceed the number of Deckhand Crew Boards. However, this is only a recommendation.