So, despite my insistence that Puzzle Pirates is dead, it seems to be hippity-hoppity, going along well. In fact, there has been a surge of forum activity recently, from a few posts a day to possibly even several threads popping up daily. On the seas, someone actually had the audacity to fill up a grand frigate ship. I should point out, here, that a grand frigate houses a maximum of 159 pirates, and it would be a safe bet that the population is about 1000 pirates online. Note that the grand frigate was not the only ship filling up, as individual pillages and other sea adventures also took up a decent amount of population, as did the friday/sunday poker nights.
There are two (fairly) monthly updates that Puzzle Pirates has been churning out these past months. One of them is the seal of piracy, a monthly trophy (think achievement) for doing certain piratey things. For October, it was laughably simple: defeat skeletons and defeat zombies. Skeletons are essentially swordfighters, with the added bonus of being absurdly expert at it, sending sprinkles and strikes that defy a player’s board. Zombies are similar, though since the system for rumble provides for more leeway than swordfighting, the most they can really do is send up several rows of sprinkles or a condemning strike to the bottom of your screen. The latter is actually quite unfortunate, but there are ways to dig out of that kind of situation; skellies’ insta-kills, on the other hand, can be completely unavoidable.
Given that I am a fair swordsman, having improved my skills since the past, yet fail to the more refined veterans of the current time, skellies are a fun challenge, especially with the extra 1000 pieces of eight (abbr. PoE) and a potential for a hunting map upon victory. The only unfortunate thing about surviving skellies and zombies is the trinkets; you get a skull and a zombie hand, respectively, and when you kill these things on a common basis, my lord, they fill up your inventory like spam in an email.
The other monthly ware is the limited-edition ships, as I have mentioned in previous blogs. This month, there is the ancient sloop and the ghostly war frigate; sometimes limited editions overlap, as their debuts do. Nothing to scream about, unless you’re an avid ship collector/aficionado. I may invest in some myself.
Since my last posting, I have bought a fanchuan. A fanchuan, as per the game, is essentially a light Eastern junk, a ship most notable for its fan-like sails. It is probably the perfect light ship of the light ships, as it requires only 12 crew to fully man the ship; I generally sail alone, with four computer swabbies in tow. With four large cannons, it easily outguns the dhow, with four medium cannons, the merchant brig, whose medium cannons shouldn’t be their priority in the first place, and the cutter, whose eight light cannons can only fire once a side per turn anyway. I would say that it is about par with a longship, whose cannon capacity allows it to fire two light cannons per turn, which is equivalent to one large cannonball damage.
During my solo, which began with one-league back-and-forths at Lima Island in Viridian Ocean, to the long sail to distant Dragon’s Nest of the same archipelago, to more back-and-forths there, I have yielded quite a bounty. I have found several expeditions from my enemies, including a few foraging trips, a few brigand king hunts (of which I was only able to do and complete one), and… no, wait, I think that was it.
I found a sea monster hunting map, which was quite a steal from those ships, as they can sell for quite a lot to the right buyer; sea monster hunting maps provide for large ships to crush the living daylights out of oversized fish and nautical creatures for the potential for great loot. Generally, my map pays multiple folds for my pillage, and their hunts pay multiple folds for the map, so it’s a win-win.
I’ve also been able to win the elusive kraken’s blood from a persistent dhow, a commodity that is only (and rarely) found upon pillaging; it’s mostly used as a black dye for items. They payed handsomely for the stock required to pillage, as well as the fanchuan itself.
Recently, I’ve done a bit of… gambling. I think it’s borderline addiction (which, fortunately, is not leeching in to my real life). Nonetheless, I’ve seemed to have been able to compensate for recent losses in said gambling, as the Texas Hold’em poker game in the game has benefitted me. I should REALLY stop going to those tables. Fortunately, I still have a veritable amount of PoE to work with.
That’s my post, anyway. If you want to see me in-game, the name is Explosives (why not?), of the Viridian Ocean. Ta-ta, sail safe, and don’t drown.