Build 1.8: A Good Day to Die was published on the Invincible server at 3 p.m. PDT today and includes a month's worth of features and bug fixes.

The differences between 1.7.37.0 and 1.8.28.1 are numerous, but the major changes include the ability to move items between cargo holds all at once, the port battle schedule revision, new daily missions, and Intel 945/965 integrated chipset support. Also, fleets cannot attack each other if the difference between the strentgh of the groups is too great. This change is being implemented to decrease time-griefing.

The full release notes can be found here or below.

This is a new milestone build so contains about a month's worth of new features and bug fixes.

Release Notes for build 1.7.37.0 are here.

Main new features:

• Cargo Manager: Ever want to move everything from the hold of one ship to the hold of another and get bored dragging/dropping each item/stack? Now you can multi-select everything and move it all at once! As we enabled that ability, we added some other nifty features as well. Check it out by clicking a new button in any UI where items can be to bring up the Cargo Manager UI. 
• PvP Fleet Strength: We now calculate the strength of your group vs. the strength of the group you're attacking and we don't let you attack if the difference is too great. This is intended to decrease time-griefing. See below for more info.
• Port Battle Schedule Revision: Port Battles can now only be scheduled during certain hours on each server. Read more info here.
• New daily missions: In 1.7, we introduced repeatable missions for high level players. In this build, we've added some for mid-level players.
• Broadsheet Peddler: There is now a dude hanging out in Bridgetown and other highland towns who can direct you to missions you may have missed in your journeys. 
• Intel 945/965 integrated chipset support: Previously, if you tried to launch the game on hardware that had all the features the game needed except software vertex shading instead of hardware vertex shading, you'd get an error and the game would fail to launch. We've changed the game to support software vertex processing. Now when you launch the game, you are warned that performance may not be fantastic (these are still somewhat poor video cards for our needs). If it works sufficiently well for you, fantastic. If not, log a bug with details and we'll try to improve the performance in a future release.

Differences between 1.7.37.0 and 1.8.28.1 include but aren't limited to:

Ships / Outfitting:

• Tweaked fallback ship progression. Ships are generally available earlier now:
• • Buccaneer: Skuda (starter), Bermuda (9), Mediator (14), Corsair (17), Brig (21)
  • Cutthroat: Halifax (starter), Bermuda (9), Mediator (14), Corsair (17), Locust (21)
  • Freetrader: Skuda (starter), Ketch (9), Mediator (14), Curieuse (17), Brig (21)
  • Navy: La Belle (starter), Bermuda (9), Mediator (14), Curieuse (17), Brig (21)
  • Privateer: Halifax (starter), Bermuda (9), Corsair (17), Hermes (20)
• Capricieux: When switching ships, the name was code instead of text. Fixed.
• Defiant: Speed 15.6 -> 16.4.
• Defiant (Sleek): Acceleration 1.3 -> 1.13, Speed 16.25 -> 17.05
• Gallant: Speed 16.1 -> 17.2
• Mercy: Acceleration 1.18 -> 1.08, Speed 16.5 -> 17
• Tigre (Sleek): Speed 15.9 -> 16. OS Speed 61 -> 62.
• A couple dozen outfitting items were using fractional values for accuracy and defense stats. Adjusted all the values to be integers. In most cases, this didn't result in a change in the effective value provided by the item. A few items increased in effectiveness slightly.
• Tuned ammo:
• • Round Shot: Sail Damage 12.5%- 17.5% -> 11.5%-16%
  • Bronze Round Shot: Sail Damage 15%-20% -> 12.5%-18%
  • Explosive Round Shot: Sail Damage 17.5%-21% -> 15%-20%
  • Bar Shot: Sail Damage 57.5%-77.5% -> 54%-75%, Range 87.5% -> 85%
  • Chain Shot: Sail Damage 65%-92.5% -> 62.5%-90%, Range 70% -> 67.5%
  • Star Shot: Sail Damage 80%-107.5% -> 80%-105%
• "Weight" was used inconsistently in the UI, sometimes to mean stack weight, sometimes to mean unit weight. Clarified.
• Grand Turk gunpowders weighed more than others. Fixed.

Ship Combat / Skills:

• Any skill that consumed an item didn't actually consume the item during PvP. Fixed.
• If you targeted a ship that was already in the middle of a boarding combat, your Boarders skill would be lit as if it were a viable option even though it wasn't. Fixed that.
• Escort (Navy): This skill said it required you to stay close to your target to work. This isn't true, so it was removed from the description.
• Rapid Shot (Navy): Wasn't working against targets that were immune to stun. Fixed.
• Improvise Armor (Privateer): Reset timer 5 minutes -> 4 minutes
• Rebuilt Ship (Privateer): 5% Structure/Armor -> 7.5% Structure/Armor
• Take Command of Ship (Pirate): One of the requirements was code instead of text. Fixed.

Swashbuckling:

• Escort NPCs weren't working properly. Found and fixed a couple bugs in that code. They should be a bit more intelligent and effective now.
• St. Elmo's Fire wasn't draining enough morale to be worth your time to use it. Improved it.

Missions:

• Buccaneers aren't able to do Cutthroat Commendation Missions. So they now have their own.
• Business and Pleasure: After speaking to Wilham Dalton, the mission tells you to speak to Wilham Dalton instead of acknowledging you'd done that. Fixed.
• Business Trip, Waterlogged, and Winning Bid couldn't be completed after completing Showdown. We fixed this by changing the NPC you turn these in to among other things. The whole series should make a little more sense now.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: In ship combat, the flagship was running upwind, making the battle long and boring. Fixed. After ship combat, Marsh Harbour no longer has explosions. Also fixed some NPC placement and animations.
• Translation, Please: Fixed several places where the text made little sense.
• New daily missions: Check out Orleans: You'll now find additional daily missions for mid-level players.
• Daily missions: Several of the Orleans Dailies that were supposed to be available in 1.7 were unavailable for various reasons. Fixed.
• Daily missions: Increased the drop rate of "scrap" items for Orleans Dailies to 30%.
• Faction missions, which used to be able to be done only once every 24 hours, have been moved to the new system such that they reset at 11a GMT daily.
• Irish Eyes are Smiling: Didn't make clear that one objective is to protect the merchants. This is clearer now.
• Added missions to help direct you from the lower level towns to the mid-level towns. Previously, newer players tended to get stuck unsure where to proceed.
• No Time for Heroes: Became impossible to complete in 1.7. Fixed.
• Made it easier to find some Pillage missions - we didn't intend to hide them from you.
• Some Pillage missions, if the port changed hands, no longer made sense. Fixed.
• Still Beyond the Sea: If you cancelled this mission, you might not be able to re-take it. Fixed that.
• Signed in Blood: It wasn't possible to complete the mission. Fixed.
• Sinner Revealed: Some allied had no names and were members of the "Remap This String" faction. Fixed.
• In Bridgetown and other high level towns, you can now find the Broadsheet Peddler. He helps you find missions you may have missed.
• Corpi Hippocraticum: Fixed a group exploit with this mission. If you cancel and retake it, you can now complete it - that was broken before.
• Money in the Bank: Was directing you to "the other bar." You're in the bar. Fixed.
• Lost Boy: Made it more difficult to leave Kiefer Northlund behind (and fail the mission).
• Sonia Cabrero's Presentation: Destination line was code. Is now text.
• A Tight Corner: Exiting the mission put you in Port Royal instead Charlestown. Fixed.
• Fracture Point: Fixed the bug where defeating the whalebone ship in boarding combat didn't count.
• Musketeers Sans Muskets: Sometimes the friendly ship would sail toward the land instead of the exit. Changed the wind to make that less likely.

Economy:

• Added a Salvage Exchange to Orleans so you can easily turn in loot items found in the daily group missions.

Open Sea:

• Fleet Strength: We now calculate the strength of groups based on number of members, levels of ships, etc. If the player group you're planning to attack has a fleet strength 200 or more above yours, you're not allowed to attack. Fleet strength is shown on the Healthbar UI.
• Merchant Convoy (3) sometimes spawned with 4 ships. Now spawns with three as it should.
• Made some changes to improve performance a bit.

PvP / Port Contention:

• It was possible, in certain circumstances to join an ad hoc in a default ship when you shouldn't have been able to. Fixed that.
• Fixed a bug in exit point locations that prevented some players from reaching them.
• Port Battle Schedule Revision: Port Battles can now only be scheduled during peak population times. These times are set per server based on the population on that server and when they play.
• If you accepted a Port Battle Invite, sometimes the game would think you hadn't. Improved that.
• Fixed the bug where, if Pirates won the map, the underdog status wasn't set correctly and we had to do it by hand.

Art / Sound:

Avatars

• If you bought a Luxury Clothing Item, it still appeared in the Valid Items tab when it shouldn't. Fixed.
• In Maracaibo and towns that look like it, there was a solder floating near a porch. He now stands properly on the porch.
• Taught some other NPCs the meaning of prepositions like on vs. near.

Towns

• In the Grand Turk Caves, the boat to the Pirate Hideout implied it would take you to Town instead. Fixed.

Ships

• Defiant: Now has stern gunports.
• Limburg: Changed stern windows to gunports since there isn't enough space to add gunports on Flute.
• Myrmidon: Stern cannons now fit in the gunports.

Sound

• Added weather sounds to some rooms with "weather." Some apparently story rooms, for example, sounded like pleasant days before.
• Added sounds to several rooms that had none or very few.
• Added gull and fire SFX to a few rooms.

UI:

• Cargo Manager: There's a button in inventory UIs that brings up the Cargo Manager, which lets you select multiple items to move or delete at once.
• If moving an item from one container to another (e.g. warehouse to ship hold) fails, we now do a better job of notifying you of that.
• Improved the icons for Luxury Clothing Items.
• Help now remembers your scroll position when you use the Back button.

Stability / Performance:

• Made some improvements to our build process to help catch problems earlier, preventing them from becoming bugs that affect you.
• We've made changes to the way we build pigg files in an attempt to shrink our crazy patch sizes a bit.

Misc:

• If you hit the level cap on a trial account, it wasn't particularly obvious. We now notify you when that happens.
• Changed the way we filter some profanity to catch more of it.
• When NVIDIA acquired PhysX, the URL we supplied to people having PhysX problems broke. Fixed now.
• SOE added more / fixed more localized strings.