Be a Pirate! Armory Purchases: Towers and Gem Levels

What Do You Buy in the Armory?

Be a Pirate! Armory purchases add towers to your arsenal. Those choices matter because every wave brings threats across both land and water, putting pressure on your tower selection and placement. Keep tower ownership, Gem Levels, and mid-battle upgrades separate when planning your next goal.

The game features 12 towers, including direct attackers, elemental options, and a structure that strengthens nearby towers. Two achievements track your Armory collection:

• Arms Dealer — Buy your first tower in the Armory.
• Full Arsenal — Own every tower in the Armory.

Choose additions that address a weakness in your defenses. If marching enemies are manageable but Crown Sloops keep slipping through, focus your planning on covering the river.

Official page: Be a Pirate! (store.steampowered.com)

Tower Options and Their Roles

Several towers give your arsenal distinctly different tools:

Image: Steam / Noble Rogues

Tower	Defining feature
Cannon	Straightforward cannon fire
Voodoo Cauldron	Poison-based attacks
Heliograph Battery	Beam-focused attacks
The Commodore's Flag	Increases the damage of surrounding towers

Elemental matchups matter. Enemies have resistances and weaknesses across Physical, Fire, Ice, Electric, and Poison damage, so a tower's damage type belongs in the purchase decision alongside its role.

Match your attacking options to the enemies causing trouble. Against a resistant boss, change the damage type you bring to the fight rather than relying entirely on additional towers using the same element.

For The Commodore's Flag, plan its position around nearby attackers so its damage boost supports your defenses.

Gem Levels and Tower Upgrade Milestones

Gem Levels have their own achievement progression. Raising one tower and developing the entire collection are separate goals:

Image: Steam / Noble Rogues

• Polish the Brass — Raise a tower's Gem Level.
• Gem-Studded — Raise a tower to Gem Level 10.
• Polished to Perfection — Raise a tower to Gem Level 20.
• Master Armorer — Raise every tower to Gem Level 20.

Two more achievements connect gems with activities outside tower upgrades: Buried Treasure requires bringing gems home from a raid, while Money Changer requires trading doubloons for gems. Plunder! marks your first completed raid, and Raiding Party requires completing 100 raids.

During battles, Doubloons fund a different set of improvements. Each tower has four upgrade tracks: Offense, Range, a tower-specific Specialty, and a unique Signature ability that changes its combat behavior.

Use the problem on the map to guide those purchases. Consider Range when coverage is the issue, and weigh offensive upgrades against adding another attacker when enemies survive your existing defenses.

The Fully Rigged achievement requires buying all 20 battle upgrades for a single tower. Keep that objective distinct from reaching Gem Level 20.

Build Around Land Routes and the River

Your collection needs to work with the map. Building changes the routes that land enemies follow, while the river remains a fixed route for Crown Sloops. Elevation also affects tower placement and results.

Image: Steam / Noble Rogues

Plan coverage for both approaches before concentrating your spending in one area. A stronger land defense still leaves you exposed if the water route receives too little attention.

Bridges add another wrinkle: they let land units cross the water, but Crown Sloops pass underneath unaffected. Use a bridge to shape land movement while preserving a separate plan for incoming vessels.

If you're pursuing Every Gun Aboard, win a battle with eight different kinds of tower built. Choose placements that give those different towers useful coverage while meeting the achievement's variety requirement.

Other tower challenges place specific limits on your battlefield setup:

• Old Faithful — From Map 6 onward, win using only one kind of attacking tower. Palisades, bridges, and the Commodore's Flag do not count toward that restriction.
• Skeleton Crew — From Map 8 onward, win on Deckhand or Captain with no more than 10 attacking towers built.
• No Walls, No Problem — From Map 8 onward, win without building a single palisade.
• The Long Way Round — Stretch the enemies' march to three times its starting length.