Ahoy there, sea-worthy folks! We're here to gleefully announce that Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire will launch with ships! The ships are called Defiants and they come more customizeable than Barbie dolls.
This is a big reveal for PoE and Obsidian Entertainment, because it adds open-world exploration and discovery on all turfs. You can don the captain's hat and set sail on the seas using the ship as your base of operations. You can nearly customize your ship down to a figurine-like level, changing your sails, altering colors of your ship, improving cannon strength, and boosting your ship speed. Obsidian's crowdfunding needs to hit 3.5 million stretch goal to add more unlockables (and they recently have).
The oncoming ship additions have promoted a complete overhaul (pic below) and point-to-point travel has been altered to open travel, letting you land your ship on any island. There are scripted ship events you can trigger once you encounter them, and some of them involve combat!
A few stretch goals the company has outlined: 4 million will include new player ship types. 5 million will make Ydwin a companion, which is what a lot of the Pillars of Eternity community asked for. That's just a few of the additions the company will add if they hit their crowdfunding goals.