Staff Enchant 2 (with a helpful warning)

The above photo shows the order of colors that I use when making the green "sixer" for Staff Enchant2.  It is highly advised to follow this (or similar) order strictly.

Finally, there is a problem that can occur.  You probably won't notice it if you only make one pirate, but it happened to me once (and hopefully never again).

There is a glitch in the game.  You want to make a green sixer.  If you make a red sixer or a blue sixer, the game congratulates you and it ends.   However, you DO NOT get credit for the quest--therefore you would not get the Burnt Staff if you made the mistake of returning to Madame Zigana.  If this happens to you then you need to go back and repeat the Staff Enchant2 potion (note: if you have successfully completely it, then you won't see it in your list of potions).

Special Note: since this post was written, I've observed instances where you can keep playing even after you make a red sixer or a blue sixer.  They may have fixed the problem. (cough- does any fix on this game ever last?)

There is a feature in my color line that helps to prevent this from happening.   Notice, in the photo above, that I am already up to fours on red on the left side (bad, very bad...)

What I do as a corrective action -- every time I get a red and blue (or blue and red) I put it on the right side now, so it won't add to the growth on the left side.   Of course, if I get a double red I will have to put it on the left side.

So how did this bad game end?

 

Even though I was aware of the problem, ironically, the game where I took these pictures was rather threatening for seeming to want to make a red sixer before making a green sixer.  Fortunately, what you see above was about as bad as it got, and soon after this I finished with the Sole Alligator, the green sixer.

Pebbles and Bam Bam

 

9/21/2012

What's Wrong With This Picture?

In my opinion, something is wrong with what happened, and you can see it in this picture:

For this run, Amoro shot cannon from wave 19 to wave 100.  He received two revenant rams.  Kitty then took his place and quickly got a revenant ram.  Amora took it from there to the end--no revenant ram, but that is OK.

laughing - no one should get a Greyhound ram when they are at 125.

Sailing - Order of Repairs

No captain should ever order you to repair.  However, you may want to do so voluntarily.

If two or more pirates are repairing, you should try to do Hull Patching (the last activity) first.

 

 

 

 

In an emergency repair situation you want to avoid having one pirate working other pirates sit there doing nothing, waiting for the last pirate to finish.  Of course, this can't be completely avoided--someone has to be the last pirate working on the last activity.  You just don't want that last activity to be Hull Patching.  Get Hull Patching, Bilge Pumping and Plank Sawing out of the way first so when that last pirate darts in to do the last thing, that last thing takes five seconds or less.    Doing Hammering last is advisable.  Sometimes Hull Bracing is the fastest, but that depends on the type of puzzle you have to solve.

Sinking only Skeleton Ships

I heard it said that if you only sank skeleton ships, you would never get a hunter coming after you.

We tried it.

Five skeleton ships after reaching 20 / 20 we still had no hunter warning.

C++ Runtime Error

We've noticed the same error being called two different things.  I call it the C++ error and what other pirates in guild call it, runtime error, is probably better.

As you can see at the top of the window, the pop-up warning you of the problem identifies it with both C++ and Runtime.

The rest of the window is transparent, showing what was behind the window before it appeared.

 

 

You have to click a second window to make this error go away (and you lose the game window too). 

 

Of course, this gets vexacious real quick when you are desperate to get back to a game of Cannon Defense.

Opinion - Did Sailing Become Harder?

The jury is still out for me on this question.

To some extent, the problem may have been that after playing an advanced pirate a long time, when I play a baby pirate, I overestimate what I can do.

Also this works in the other direction --sometimes we find that they temporarily changed a server and sailing is much easier there!

On 11/12/12 the game went down for two hours during the day.  Presumably they made changes and repairs to the game at this time.

Shortly after the game came back on line, I went sailing in my level 6 (armor) War Brig.  We were attacked by a hunter after we sank our first ship.  We received significant damage (yes, that's why we don't attack hunters with a bunch of red ships around us).

About two minutes later we were attacked by another hunter.

It now remains to see if any other pirates report similar events.

Later, while sailing with two guild pirates, the captain said she thought that the Hunter was shooting at us faster.  A guild pirate on cannon agreed with her.


Note: our guild is very adept at sailing.  Over half our active players have the revenant ram and know how to sail at the Edge.  It makes sense that they would need to respond by making sailing harder.

---
(written later)

One guild pirate, who sails a lot, made the comment that she thought the enemy were shooting faster.

A day or two later, it seemed to me that the sailing difficult dropped back down to what it had been before.

Opinion - Mastering Adversity

It would probably sound glib if we said "for every POTCO-caused problem our guild can develop a solution".  I know of no magic that can prevent DC (disconnect) events.  We can try to fix most problems though.  Teaming up with a second pirate can thwart some of the problems.

Tormenta (Cursed Caverns) - Enemy Hides the Walls (or even Floor)

solution 1- try running forward a considerable distance and then turn around and see if it made the enemy emerge.  You may find there are places that you run to, knowing that if you get there the enemy will most likely emerge.

solution 2 - in the area where this seems the most notorious, the Kiddy Pool and the Bridge, it seems that if you shoot the enemies, they don't think to do their wall hide tricks (hollar at me if this changes).

Tormenta (Cursed Caverns) - Bad Attune Wave Reception

solution- throw grenades, swing a sword, or shoot a pistol.

Beckett's Quarry (Near entrance to Catacombs) -- Enemies Hide in Walls

solution- this area doesn't have the poor attunement problem (yet).  Bring a friend who wants to level doll and have the friend attune all the redcoats before you begin to shoot them.  When they hide in the walls your friend will have easy kills and hopefully very good rep.

Beckett's Quarry (Star Intersection) -- Attunement Loss is Severe

The answer here--throwing knives can break an attunement; that's why it is not a good idea to level doll against enemies that throw knives.

problem- you can't keep an attunement on any enemies so you can't level doll here

solution- use this area to level your sword; a friend can keep an attunement on you and that seems to last.  Go to the Raider room area to level doll

(this list will continue to grow)

Opinion - Finishing off Grenades

This post is labeled "opinion" so that any pirate will be encouraged to reply post their own experience.

Physics finished off grenades at invasions.  More specifically, he had his best results on Port Royal Invasions throwing grenades on the beach next to the cave; he would stand next to the dig circle.  He had good results doing this when no other pirates were around--he got the rep from all the invading enemies.

Opinion - What is On Your Mind?

Reply to this with anything related to Online Pirates that you think could be of interest to our guild.

Opinion Pages

I'd like to try, as an experiment, opinion pages.

These won't be scientific.  Maybe there are five replies to a yes/no question with four saying yes and the fifth saying no -- with the fifth person putting in quite a bit of time to investigate and the four yes people were merely passing along what someone had told them.

Still, nonscientific discussions can lead our deciding what sort of research we would want to do in the future.

Tormenta - Survival Issues (cheating enemies, etc.)

Yes, they changed it.  It's been a while since the changes were made but I can remember a Tormenta that didn't have ghosts, cheating, by jumping into the walls far enough back that you couldn't kill them.

I can remember a Tormenta that didn't have loss of tuning signal as bad as the star intersection in Catacombs (the intersection leading to the small hill then the corridor with the Raider Room).

So how do we take advantage?

You know how most pirates hate leveling grenades?  The Kiddie Pool room of Cursed Caverns, Tormenta, may be one of the best places to do so when you have a moderate level on grenades.

If you can find a healer who wants to level doll, you can get a bunch of enemies attacking you.  Use grenades on the Spineskulls.  Move so you can slowly walk backwards as they tend to get closer and closer together if they have to keep moving forward to follow you.

There are two kinds of enemies in the Kiddy Pool room, Spineskull and Flotsam.  The Spineskull are good for leveling grenades.  You may want to use the Flotsam for leveling sword.

The Bridge (shown above) seems to be good for leveling gun.  For other weapons, it seems the enemies love to cheat, and disappear so you can't kill them.  So far, it seems that when shot with a gun they don't resort to such cheating.

Cover Me - A Leveling Game

A location is found with four or more enemies within range of a higher level pirate.

The higher level pirate attacks an enemy, for example, by throwing a knife.

As soon as the enemy runs to the high lelve pirate, a lower level pirate begins to attack the enemy.

The higher level pirate may choose to continue attacking intermittently to minimize the chance of the enemy going after the lower level pirate.

Locations in Catacombs, Padres

Locations in Cursed Caverns, Tormenta

The map below shows three locations:

A- Kiddy Pool (Kiddie Pool)
B- Thrall Room
C- Gold Room (Treasure Room)

We want to mention, in getting from the Kiddy Pool to the Gold Room, one goes over the Bridge and also passes three enemies (after the Bridge and before the Gold Room).

Silver Freeze for Amoro at Level 10

This was a surprise...


The goal is for the little to run away from Foul with one or more famed weapons.

The downside?  The little pirate spent a lot of time leveling up his throwing knives.  His twin sister helped by healing, but this ended up putting him three levels ahead of her -- they had wanted to stay about the same.

Traitor Ghost

It started back with Physics.  The traitor ghost followed him to Kudgel.

This raised the question--does the triator ghost fight Kudgel?

Several pirates and several attempts later, Parrot managed to South Idol part of the quest fast enough to get to Kudgel with about thirty seconds.  The Traitor ghost was observed to be fighting Kudgel on Parrot's screen, and on Valence' screen we saw the traitor ghost doing fighting motion (Valence couldn't see Kudgel).

Even better, we captured this photo: