1.2 Installation

Letters of Marque is currently distributed as a free Steam playtest. Access is open to interested players, but the game does not yet have a public store-page download: first join the community Discord and obtain a Steam key, then activate that key on your Steam account.

1.2.1 Get a playtest key

Keys are issued by a bot in the server, so no one has to hand you one personally. The whole exchange takes about a minute.

1. Join the Letters of Marque Discord.
2. Read the #keys channel first. It carries the current instructions for obtaining a key, and it is the place any change to the procedure will appear.
3. In the #general channel, type /claim. A small claim window opens; choose Claim.
4. A pool selector appears next. Choose Playtest (Letters of Marque).
5. Send the message. The response is ephemeral — visible only to you and not to the rest of the server — and it contains your Steam key.
6. Keep the key private even so. A Steam product key can be activated only once, and the reply is not a permanent record you can rely on retrieving later; copy it somewhere before you close it.

1.2.2 Activate the key on Steam

1. Install the Steam client if necessary, then sign in to the Steam account on which you want to keep the game.
2. Open Steam’s Games menu and choose Activate a Product on Steam. You can also use Add a Game at the lower left of the client and choose the activation option.
3. Enter the key from Discord and follow Steam’s prompts.
4. Open your Steam Library, select Letters of Marque, and choose Install.

You do not have to use the desktop client for the redemption step. Signing in to your Steam account in a browser and using Steam’s web product-activation page adds the playtest to the same account; you then install from the client as usual. Either route reaches the same place, so use whichever is in front of you.

Steam’s own product-activation instructions are the authoritative reference if the client layout changes.

1.2.3 First launch

Launch the game from your Steam Library after the download finishes. The current build includes a small pre-launch process that detects your hardware and selects a rendering setup automatically. It is not a separate graphical launcher and normally adds no action for you to complete.

Because this is a live playtest, let Steam apply updates before troubleshooting an old build. If the game starts normally, leave the automatically selected rendering backend in place unless you have a specific graphics or performance problem.

1.2.4 Graphics and compatibility

The developer has not published a stable minimum-specification table for the current test build. Recent development notes also report unusually different results across graphics hardware, so a model name alone may not predict performance.

The game can use Vulkan or Direct3D 12, but neither backend works best on every tested system. The newest developer report identifies two remaining compatibility problems:

• Some AMD hardware does not render correctly with Vulkan.
• Intel hardware does not work with Direct3D 12 or with the SDFGI graphics setting enabled.

If the water is flat, white, or otherwise broken; the game fails to launch; or performance is far below what you expect, report your graphics-card model and the observed behavior in the Letters of Marque Discord. The developer asks players to report incompatible hardware so its detection can be corrected for future launches. If you override the selected backend while testing, change one setting at a time so you can identify which change helped.

1.2.5 After installation

Keep the Discord available while you play. It carries current test information, community sessions, and a direct route for feedback when a build changes. Then continue to Account, Server & Nation for the next part of setup.