Why does my character have negative penalty on his stats?

Just began with Captain Peter Blood and at some point I realised all his stats have a permanent -3 penalty :( I don't know where this came from. I will have to start from a very old safe. Is this a technical issue?

Solution 1:

Okay so I finally discovered the reasons for penalty on stats.

1. Bad health

This doesn't mean your current health points but your sustained wounds. If the circle beneath your characters icon is flashing red, it means your character has wounds. Avoid too much close combat and rest to allow wounds to heal with time. Wine helps too. Dont drink too much in taverns a lot of times which may lead to you falling asleep, getting robbed and lose health.

2. Incompatible ship level

If your characters Navigation skill level is not high enough to match your current ship level, all the stats of your character will get a penalty. This includes the captain and the navigator. Navigation = Insight X .2 + Talent X .8 A ship of class 1 needs 95 Navigation

class 2: 80

class 3: 65

class 4: 40

class 5: 25

class 6: 1

In my case I started with Peter Blood with 6 Insight and 5 Talent so Navigation=21+12(from items)=33(class5)

But the first ship I got (not much choice at first), was a class 2. So my skills got deducted by 5-2=3. It also meant paying a hell lot of extra for crew salary and ship maintenance.

So we can choose to allot more Insight, Talent points for our character in the beginning of the game. Alternatively we can immediately buy or capture a simpler ship at sea.

Later on in the game, several NPCs throughout the map, will train you for a price, to raise your stat points.

Cursed Items

Some looted items found from slain people or chests are cursed to decrease your skills as well as capabilities. The items which decrease your capabilties will effect all stats which depend on it. There are blessed trinkets too!

Overweight

Sometimes you might have more items in your inventory than you can carry. You wont be able to run. While it is true you cannot take more items from fallen opponents or chests if your inventory is already full, but if you pick something just kept on the ground or anywhere, using the 'action' key, when 'Pick Up' is shown on the screen, it will get picked up regardless of your weight. Another situation is when you are looting pearls from pearl-diving Tartanes. Pearls are not stored in your ships' inventories but your own. And you can get pearls weighing more than double or triple your inventory weight.

Being overweight penalizes the character. So try to keep more officers to walk with you(max 3) with good carrying capacity if you are a hoarder and share items with them. When not in sailing-mode, go near an officer, face him till a Trade option shows, select it, and give him all that you wont be needing. But if you make them overweight, their stats and running will be penalized as well.