Monday, August 2, 2021

That 40k a day in Pirate101 -- #Blaugust2021 Day 2

For the majority of Pirate101's life, it has had to fight tooth and nail for every added piece of content past (and including) Valencia Part 2. This beautiful game, which I love dearly, sits quietly in the long, long shadow of its popular sister, Wizard101.  It suffers from being so similar to Wizard101 that mainstream MMO players shy away from it, and yet so dissimilar from Wizard101 that Wizard101 players also tend to shy away from it. Only the true KingsIsle fans, MMORTS fans, RPG story hounds, and people that dig furry pirates will really fall head over heels for this game like I have.

One of the updates that was hard fought for was the daily quest system back in September 2017, and it has remained the same way it was since that fateful day . . . over 1,400 days later, you can still find Count Monterfulino of Valencia, Count Medvedov of Grizzleheim, Don Allejandro of Monquista, and Lady Heathcliffe of Marleybone standing aboard the "Party Barge" near Skull Island forever engaging in diplomacy and offering players one daily quest each.  

Don Allejandro must eat five rhubarb pies a day!

Each successful quest completion will reward the player with 10,000 gold, or 40,000 gold for the whole suite of four each day. Yes, if my calculator app is right, then doing your dailies for the past 1,400+ days you would have made a whopping 56 million gold and change by sinking 7,000 cutthroat ships, collecting 7,000 pages of lost Grizzleheim report pages, and stealing 5,600 pieces of rhubarb and 5,600 needles and pieces of thread from angry clockworks sailing about in Marleybone. It's a short 10-15 minutes of your life every day. Get to it! 

Sink all the ships! Get all the weird stuff!

Side note, one thing that will help you speed your dailies up is realizing that the little cutthroat ships in the Skull Island skyway also count toward task completion. You don't have to sail to the other end of Marleybone to knock that one out while doing the other daily quests. 

Also something you need to figure into that whole mess of 56 million gold is the fact that the current gold cap is 250,000 gold, so you would have needed to clear out all your gold a couple hundred times over to make it work for you with the most benefit.  That my friends is a lot of Aquilan gold piles. What's that?  Oh, it's a furniture item in Aquila that you buy for 200,000 gold with a resell value of 30,000 gold. That may seem like a bad rate of exchange, but honestly, what in the world are you going to do with all that gold? Heal companions at Miracle Mitch? (Embarrassing!) Refill your ship's boost a million times? (Sure. Why not?) Use the Transportaler for random porting back and forth? (mmm . . . if you say so.)  Decorate your 20th house? (I'll get around to it.) Refill your yum bottles till you can't no more? (I'm no lush!) Raise up the perfect Pet? (<--we have a winner!!)

Anyway, the daily updates also brought with it a faction vendor that sells you sparkler themed weapons if you've completed the daily quests a couple of times and unlocked him, and you also get exclusive badges above your head if you complete the daily quests 10 times, 100 times, and finally 500 times. After completing the dailies 10 times myself, you better believe my new stitch is the sparkler weapon and my new badge is the Fashion Assistant.

Looking good!  and yes . . . check out my new Nurse Quinn! LOL!

To be honest, I hate to even suggest changes to the Pirate101 daily system . . . making new quests is a big time sink, but we all know that it's the number one thing that would help burnout. Adding new things you can purchase at the vendor would be a big win. Especially if it's exclusive and locked beyond the high badge requirements. 

Personally I'd try to get Avery added as a quest giver on the Party Barge, but I'd make his quests all about side system engagement and cut the VO so it works more like Wizard101's Daily system: Hatch a pet, Play a mini-game, Use the team up kiosk, Visit your house, Use a doubloon, Enter the regatta, Enter ship PVP zone, Enter the PVP house, Enter the Parrrty Room, Enter the Smuggler's Arena, Visit a random skyway, and Defeat a badge-related unit (like troggies or water moles). Of course, tech to sense that a player has accomplished some of those might be too expensive . . . if that's the case, narrow that list down to just defeat badge-related units.

As I said in a previous post . . . I'd LOVE to see Bob Carrington and Captain Hande make their return as main villains that coincide with daily quests. What?  A necro can dream!

Ultimately it's really hard to make Daily Quests seem less grindy, but I have to say it's one of the things that's currently keeping me logged in and interested on my main character in Pirate101.

Happy dueling!

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