Tab o' War / How to play

How to play Tab o' War

Tab o' War is an idle pirate RPG that lives in a browser tab. Your ship sails and fights on its own; you crack open the loot, fit the best gear, promote your crew and buy bigger ships. Pin the tab and its title and icon keep showing the battle while you work in other tabs. It is free, there is no account, and your save stays in this browser.

Set sail

Your first minutes

The Ship's Orders bar under the top strip walks you through them, one order at a time:

  1. Watch: the crew is already at the guns. The foe's bar drains with no clicking needed.
  2. Crack a chest: when one bobs in the Plunder bar, click it to claim the loot.
  3. Equip: loot is gear. Click a piece in the Hold to fit it and your ship hits harder.
  4. Promote: gold buys muscle. Promote a hand in The Crew (the Master Gunner costs 25 gold).
  5. Pin this tab (see below).
  6. Upgrade the ship: save 600 gold and the shipwright launches your Brigantine, a bigger hull and broadside.

Pin the tab

Right-click the tab at the top of your browser and choose Pin. The crew only plunders while the tab is open: a gap of more than five minutes earns nothing, and closed time earns nothing at all. A pinned tab reopens with the browser, so the voyage picks up where it left off.

While you are in another tab, the tab title is the battle report: the foe and its hull percentage during a fight (or the voyage number between fights), your gold, and how many chests are waiting. The tab icon is redrawn with the fight too.

The voyage

The sea is eight acts of ten voyages each, eight encounters to a voyage, and every act ends with its own boss. Bosses change the whole page around them while you fight.

Gear

Your ship has nine gear slots: Cannons, Sails, Hull, Helm, Flag, Trinket, Cutlass, Spyglass and Shot Locker. Loot comes in rarity tiers. Right-click a piece in the Hold to lock it, which keeps it safe when you scuttle the rest for gold.

Your save

Progress saves automatically in this browser. The settings sheet (the ⚙ button) has Copy save and Paste save to move it to another browser, and keeps a backup you can restore if a paste goes wrong. Clearing site data starts a new voyage.

Set sail