How To Unlock Principle Points In Corsair Cove

Published Aug 4, 2026, 1:13 PM EDT Collin is a Guides Staff Writer at TheGamer who has been writing guides for nearly ten years. He is also a professional game/level designer. More importantly, he's still waiting for a new Ape Escape game to release. Corsair Cove has been released, so grab your cutlass, load the cannons, and get ready to manage a few hundred violent drunks with a love of treasure. This city builder takes players out of the metropolis and places them on a skull-shaped island where they need to build a massive haven for all manner of scoundrels. To help improve the life of your citizens, you'll need to unlock a variety of unique buildings, ships, and helpful passives that will improve your city. Tied to the Compass skill tree, players will need to unlock points across four unique paths if they really want to optimize their island and ensure they have access to all the key buildings and ships. How To Unlock Compass Principle Points Once you unlock the Compass by progressing through the story in the main game, you will gain access to the rather large skill tree that is broken up into four distinct paths. These are Notoriety (green), Empire (red), Seafaring (blue), and Wealth (purple). Each of these focuses on different aspects of the game, such as Wealth centering around gold, trade, and increasing our resources, while Seafaring focuses on exploration and your armada. To unlock Principle Points to obtain the various skills, buildings, and bonuses these sections provide, you'll need to complete the different Deeds assigned to their respective paths to victory. Deeds are essentially challenges and milestones you complete as you play the game. Each of the four sections has its own unique Deeds that tie into their respective playstyles. Completing a Deed will reward you with a single Principle Point tied to that specific skill tree. For example, if I complete the challenge to build ten Warehouses, I will be rewarded with a point for the Wealth tree because that's the section this challenge is found under. You can only use points you've unlocked for their respective skill tree. Meaning, I earn some points by completing Empire challenges; these cannot be used to unlock anything in the other three paths. As you finish Deeds, more will be unlocked that both slightly increase in difficulty and often tie into the various skills you've unlocked in their skill trees. There are 160 Deeds in total to complete, with 40 Deeds tied to each of the different victory paths you can follow. Keep in mind that you can complete these Deeds in any order, and there is no limit to how many Deeds you have active at once. This allows you to finish a multitude of challenges as you build up your island, explore the seas, and try to prop up your economy with more than just booze. You can also pin any challenges to your HUD by selecting the pin icon on any of the Deeds to keep track of them as you play! When it comes to which path to follow, if this is your first time playing Corsair Cave, I strongly suggest you don't limit yourself to a single path. All the different sections offer unique, often powerful structures that can make your life infinitely easier and save you space or resources when building. At minimum, you should try to unlock all the early connection point alternatives, such as the Mast, Zip Line, and Elevator. These will significantly help you manage your resources and the speed at which they can reach various sections of your island. All of them have their uses, and these should be your priority when you start. Finally, when it comes to unlocking different types of ships, you have two avenues on your skill tree. The first is just progressing normally as you would along the individual paths. As you use Principle Points, you will make progress toward unlocking specific ships along that skill tree. Once you reach the required amount of points spent, that ship type will be immediately unlocked for you to build. Several ships require progress along two paths, such as the Goldseeker, which needs points in both Wealth and Notoriety. Because of this, you will always want to ensure you're unlocking skills across all the paths so you gain access to some of the stronger ships in Corsair Cove.