Pirate101: Cool Ranch Blues Dispersed!

I was preparing to write a blog post for today in which I lamented how much more difficult going into Cool Ranch is than the rest of the game.  I started up the other night in CR and kept getting beaten, hand's down, by the side quest mobs I was trying to fight.  I would lose my whole team and only have killed one of them.  It was very frustrating.  I ended up quitting for the night and watching a movie instead, wondering if I had finally hit a wall in this game and would be unable to continue without going back to the previous area and grinding out an extra level or two (which would take several hours and severely test my patients).

When I logged in the next evening, a thought occurred to me: what level are these mobs that I'm fighting?  I got into combat and looked.  They were lvl 22-23.  I was level 17.  Of course I was getting destroyed!  I went back to the main story quest and started down that path and discovered that the first mobs I faced were lvl 13.  So, there was the problem.

I would recommend focusing on the main quest line when you first get to Cool Ranch.  I was level 17 when I started it and in 3-3.5 hours had gotten to level 20.  The quest line gives a ton of xp and is fairly quick.  I'll follow it a little while longer until I get to at least lvl 21 before even trying the side quests.

Moral of the story: pay attention to the mobs you're fighting.  If the battle seems wildly out of balance, there may be a good reason!

Pirate101: Best First Mate lvl 8-?

The only member of your crew with whom you can guarantee attendance to each battle is your first mate.  Your first mate is the crew member that you move to the top of your crew roster and will be marked as such when you do.  Being first mate equals 100% chance to show up in battle.  So, who is the best choice?  I currently have a lvl 17 Buccaneer and I have by no means tested every companion in the game (I haven't bought a single one from the crown shop, though I probably will once I reach top level), but at this point, I can't imagine that there is a consistently better companion than Bonnie Anne. 

Bonnie Anne is one of the first companions you get, after the one you get for choosing your own class, and she also get the first promotion quest.  After that quest, which happens when she turns level 8, you should make her your first mate.  You have her set up right, though.  I gave her Double Tap, which means she will fire on another enemy after she kills the one she was targeting and Burst Fire (I think that's what it's called), which says that with every successful hit, she has the possibility to take another shot as her epic abilities.  With this set-up, I've seen her shoot an enemy, Burst Fire, Burst Fire, mob dies, Double Tap onto another enemy, Burst Fire, Burst Fire, Burst Fire, next mob dies.  That was one turn!

I don't know if she is working as intended, but she is may more powerful that any other companion I've seen and, in some ways, more powerful than my Pirate!  That's why she's my first mate.  If later on I find a replacement, I'll post it here!

Pirate101: Subclass Points and How to Spend Them

Alexander Hexforge posted a link in the comments to a guide that kezrik had set up over on Pirate 101 Central, an official fan site for Pirate 101.  Thanks for the link, Alexander!  I found it most enlightening!

Here are the broad strokes of what's posted over there:
Throughout the course of the game, through leveling and the Prospector Zeke side quests, you will be able to obtain 20 Practice points to spend on abilities from other classes.  At that link, kezrik has shown the sequences which you have to use to get each type of ability.  It's a great guide and very useful.

For my Buccaneer, I think I have chosen the right path.  I will continue to go down the Witchdoctor path and collect all of the +power effects and +resist talents.  Juju is one of the best buffs I've seen in the game so far as it boosts each characters main damage type all at once, so if you have 1 str based, 1 agi based and 1 will based, one buff will raise each member's main trait.  What a time saver!  After I have gotten everything out of the Witchdoctor class, I'll have to chose between using the remaining points for dodge in the swashbuckler tree or getting the healing from Privateer.  Likely, I'll go with dodge so that my focus remains damage output, mitigation and avoidance instead of throwing healing in there.  Although, if the +Power effects also affect healing, that might not be a bad idea to double up there.

Well, I still have some time to figure it all out!

Pirate101: Balancing your Combat

Last night I fell victim to my own desires. That sounds weirder than I meant it to. What I mean to say is, right when I was on the cusp of being forced to buy a crown ship to progress (or buy gold to buy a ship in game), I saw that I had finally gotten the quest chain that leads to your next free boat, a Monquistan Skiff, if I remember correctly. I was lvl 16 and got the quest from Hooktail in Puerto Mico after completing the main quest line through Monquista and back to Skull Island. I quickly completed the quest, having to kill some wharf rat ships, which I was having difficulty with until I got help on the last few from a friendly player (thanks Crazy Mary!), and got my new ship. Now, I thought, I can go back and complete all those ship combat quests that I couldn't do before because my ship was too weak!

The new ship you get is lvl 14 and, after making sure the ship was as well-equipped as I could make it, I headed out to the the open skies. I started with a few quests around Puerto Mico and, now that I had a better ship, was able to easily destroy the lvl 9 and 10 ships there. Then, I headed off to Monquista to finish all of the side quests I had given up in frustration before. These ships were lvl 12-14 (I think), so should be right on par with my new ship. Here's what I learned: if you want to do ship based only battles and you don't handily outclass the ships you're fighting against (or have someone else there helping you), it will talk a while. Your ship's health will drop so low after each battle that you might as well have done hand-to-hand combat by the time you slink off to regenerate. I was so focused on only doing ship combat that I ended up wasting a lot of time. The ships I was fighting were very close together, so often, when I was 25% into the battle another 1 or 2 enemy ships would join and start blasting me. Since I had given myself the arbitrary "failure" condition of being boarded, when this happened I would run away. This, I can see now, was foolish.

At least at this point in the game, the enemy ships will board you as soon as they can and engage you in hand-to-hand. Now, while I do struggle a bit with ship battles at the moment, hand-to-hand combat tends to be a blowout. This is especially true when I have already out-leveled the side quests, which is the case here. So, instead of quickly destroying the boats from the deck and getting better rewards and completing the quest goals, I would run away to regenerate without having accomplished anything.

Hopefully, my experience will help anyone else who has a mental block against boarding/being boarded. It's not that bad, seriously, and in this case, it would have meant more progress for me.

Episode 2 of Talkin' the Plank now live!

You can find the latest episode of Talkin' the Plank here.  I have a special guest this week and have upped the production value from the last episode.  There are a few more improvements I'd like to make, but in the mean time, I have to stay on top of the latest in Pirate 101!  Enjoy!

Pirate101 Subclass: Spending Practice Points

As I mentioned on this blog, I play a buccaneer in Pirate 101.  As soon as I got my first Practice point (the points that allow you to train abilities from other class trainers on your pirate, the first being awarded at level 8), I ran to the Privateer trainer and immediately got the ability to heal myself.  This seemed like a good idea at the time, but after a while, I started to wonder if, perhaps, there might be a better option.  I decided to see what I could find out, as I haven't read much discussion on this particular topic. 

After having looked at all 4 other classes and what abilities I could get with my 4 ability points (2 from leveling up and 2 from completing Prospector Zeke quests), I bought the first 4 abilities from the Witchdoctor class trainer (besides bonus to Staffy weapons).  The thought process was that I could turn what was essentially a paladin (healing tank) into a dark/death knight (black magic/poison tank).  Now, I'm only level 15 (going on 16), but this seems to work a lot better.  The Privateer ability that I had been using the most, an multi-target bomb drop, was replaced by a multi-target magic spell, the healing ability was replaced by a drain-style self heal, and the buffs I never used were replaced by direct damage spells and a debuff.  For my play style and level, this seems to be working out a lot better.  What I always hated about the healing spell was that it didn't heal for a whole lot, since as a buccaneer I don't have very high Will, and I didn't like wasting a turn with one of my heavy hitters in order to heal a companion.  This way, I can just heal myself while doing damage and the battle is over faster, so I don't take as much damage anyway.

It may be different at higher levels, but I don't see any downside to using the Witchdoctor skills.  Also, I couldn't see much advantage in subbing swashbuckler or musketeer.  If anyone has any compelling reason or awesome strategy that involves Bucc/Musk or Bucc/Swash, let me know!

Pirate101: Monquista

So my pirate is currently lvl 14 and I'm working my way through Monquista.  I have finally reached a point in the game when my attention is divided and I'm not sure what I should be doing.  In Skull Island, I did every side quest I could find, but not that I've moved on to Monquista, I feel compelled to focus on the main story and come back for the side quests when I'm higher level and can just mow through them.

Part of this thought process has to do with my pirate's ship.  I'm currently using "my parent's" skiff, and, though I have all the best gear for it that gold can buy, a level 7 ship doesn't do very well against lvl 10-12 ships and I end up in hand-to-hand combat, which is fine, but I also like just blowing ships out of the air and not having to get into the nitty gritty.  At first I though the reason I was having trouble was because my Nautical Lvl was too low and that raising it would help with combat.  I don't think it does.  I think your nautical level effects what you can equip, but your ship stays the same level it was when you bought it.  In the case of the skiff, that's 7.  I could grind out some gold (or just buy it) but neither of those sounds like great options, given the fact that (I think) you are awarded a new Monquistan ship at the completion of that quest line.  If that's the case, I think I may just rush to the finish and then complete all the side quests in Monquista that I didn't do already once I can complete them with greater ease.

Well, I guess I figured out what I'm going to do.  Thanks for the help, blog!

Episode 1 Revised

I finally completed the new intro and outro for the Talkin' the Plank Podcast, so I went back and edited them into the initial episode for solidarity.

The new episode, which should be out Thursday, will feature a very special guest and, time allowing, a few more effects and bumpers.  Until then, enjoy Episode 1's new production value!

Pirate101: Crew Management vs Judge System

I received an email from Stephen of the Pieces of Eight Radio podcast, which can be found here asking what I thought about Pirate 101's strategy system versus the Judge system from Final Fantasy Tactics (Advance).  I ended up writing a lengthy email containing my thoughts on the issue and figured I would include it here, since I speant so much time writing it already!  It rambles a little bit, but there is some good stuff in there

Here it is:

As far as the Judge system goes, it may be too complicated to adapt in that form to an MMO. In FFTA (I only played a dozen or so hours of FFT. Tough to go back to that one if you played and got used to hundreds of hours of the mobile versions!) I would often sit for a few minutes and carefully choose exactly which team member I wanted for even trivial battles because you'd have to consider the rules that have been placed on combat, what weapons you currently had equipped, what class all of your characters were and making sure you had a good balance as well as making sure you had the characters in there with abilities you were trying to train up. In a single player turn based strategy game, you have all the time in the world to decide what you'll do each turn as well as to prepare for each fight. Obviously, the situation changes when you turn that game play into an MMO. In certain ways, you have to "dumb down" the strategy, at least on the surface. In order to show the players what they need to know, you need a sort of visual shorthand. Whereas in FFT they would tell the player directly "No Ranged Attacks" or "No Magic Attacks", in Pirate, they tell you indirectly by just not having any ranged characters show up or any magic characters show up. The result is similar, but requires less planning as other players wait for you to pick through 30 crew members :-)

In MMO's, it has been my experience that most of the strategy takes place before you even leave your house, so to speak: you set your equipment up with the right enchantments/gems, make sure all the right stats are boosted, arrange your ability bar, go to trainers, get a pack full of potions, etc . . . Then , when you go out to fight, it's just a button mash if it's solo grinding or maybe a complicated dance routine if you're with a raid fighting a big boss battle. In Pirate 101, and the same could be said of Wizard 101, you at least have 30 to make decisions based on what has just occurred in the fight. It doesn't seem like a lot, but unless you got up to make sandwiches while all the battle animations took place, you're thinking what your next moves will be.

Granted: I am only lvl 14 in the game, didn't play in Alpha or Beta, so I haven't experienced anything at a higher level, so it may get more complicated further down the road. My opinion is solely based on what I've experienced up to Monquista. That being said, I haven't had any issues with the time limit. You only have, at most, 4 chess pieces to manage and, at least at this level, most of the abilities my crew has are reactionary, so it's more about hoping they get attacked in the right way :-) Your pirate is the most complicated, but also what you have spent the most time updating and what you are the most used to since they are in every single battle.

So, I haven't run into any issues with the time limit yet, but I do understand why they did it. I hate waiting for everyone else to decide what to do for another 15 seconds (especially if there is only 1 mob left. What's to decide?) and I can't imagine what it would be like if they increased that. Companion management is a huge part of the game strategy and I would like to see a bit more depth there (I like equipping everyone's gear. The more the merrier!), but other that a bit more out-of-combat depth, I don't see too many ways they could add more depth, but here are a few that don't require much explaination: terrain and direction. I think it's fun to flank an enemy, though I hate when it's done to me, but having what direction a character is facing when attacked matter is a good way to go. Also, multi-level playing fields or characters being having to move slower through snow, or fighting better on pavement could add a lot more depth to combat. The more stuff like this you add, the more time you need to really think things out. There's no easy answer and I think they've done a fine job coming up with a solution. The nice thing about MMO's is that if they think of something better, they can always add it later!

Pirate101 Quest XP Suggestion

There have been a lot of complaints on the Pirate 101 forums that it doesn't feel as though we level fast enough and that the quests don't give enough experience points.  The answer from the developers is that most of the xp you get is from the main story quest line and they aren't lying.  You will never level faster than when you just focus on the main quest.  However it can still feel like you aren't making any progress.

An example of this was, while playing last night, I had just completed every quest line I could find in the Skull Island Skyway and was finally set to move on to the next world of Monquista.  I looked in the quest log at the two quests I had left to do.  One was a side quest to go to the capitol of Monquista and see about a religious figure and rewarded 10xp.  The other was the main story quest to go to the same place and rewarded 350xp.  I look down at my xp bar and see that, being lvl 13, I am around 200xp away from getting lvl 14.  I think, "great.  I'll go turn in those two quests and take a break when I level up."  An hour later, I still hadn't received that 350xp.  This is because the game tells you what you will receive when you complete the quest line, but there may be 30 checkpoints and requirements between where you are now and when you get that sweet, sweet experience dump.  In this case, it said to go to the capitol and see the king about your prisoner, then, after going through that, they send you to a prison island to deliver the prisoner.  Next you have to free the prisoner and fight the guards.  Then you have to go to a third location and check in with the resistance.  Then you have to go see the deposed queen.  It is only when you have spoken with the deposed queen that you see any quest experience at all.

Here's my suggestion: split that xp up over a few more points.  You don't have to get xp at every single stop on the way, but who would object to 100xp for speaking to the king, 100xp for freeing the prisoner, and 150xp for talking with the deposed queen?  That way, you feel as though you are making progress, though the end result is the same.  It's curious that they designed it the way they did, in a way where most quest turn in's don't result in xp gain since they are just steps towards an end goal.  Since most of what keeps players playing an MMO is psychological, you would think they would turn the methadone of xp to a steady slow drip instead of sporadic bursts after long dry spells.