Pirate101's Sinbad Adventures Continue!

Two years ago, Pirate101 gave us an interesting story update that was completely unexpected and quite frankly made me incredibly excited. As I said back then, "Playing through this quest this morning pretty much solidified in my mind how much I love and have missed playing Pirate101. It's such a great game." Fast forward to five days ago, KingsIsle announced a new update to the Sinbad story line, and I was equally excited! 

Last night I logged on fresh without reading any patch notes and gave it a spin. Albano was there just waiting for me with a yellow exclamation mark, beckoning me on to further adventure!

Albano giving us the deets!

Albano lets you know he's tracked down Sinbad's ship, the Chimera, in the Ravaged Valley of Mooshu. Apparently all the characters you met in Sinbad Part 1 have chumped out and all that's left is Albano. 

Once you get to The Ravaged Valley, Sinbad joins your crew as a new level 71 Privateer Companion! There's no promotions for this companion, but he does come equipped with repel boarders, valor's shield, and a heal, so not the worst, not the best. It's a new companion! That alone gives you a lot of power, right?

New companion, what?!

Eventually you find The Chimera floating above a burning Mooshu tower and head-in in search of Sinbad. What you find inside are a bunch of Yakooza, Ninja Pigs, Goat Monks, and terrifying Tengu wizards! They're pretty tough!

Bring it, Miniboss Man!

Don't let the tower's outside appearances fool you, this isn't a three-story romp and you're done. It's much larger on the inside. Actually, in a way this tower feels a bit like a mini/more-manageable version of the Tower of Moo Manchu with only seven levels instead of 10.

Since I was doing this solo, and I'm a bit rusty on the game, I opted to use some crowns to get henchmen to help me fight my way up. Regardless, I died on floor six when I got a bit lazy on my first run through. On my second time through, I made it to the top floor and the final battle with the terrifying Kharonchi Khan, a fierce tiger warrior from Rajah that uses three clawed rakes as his weapon of choice. His stats were incredibly intimidating! I need a companion fit like this.

Riposte 5, Flanking 5, and Sneaky Sneaky? It's like the designers are trying to kill me or something!

After defeating Kharonchi, Sinbad goes on to weasel his way out of being the bad guy and reveals the true bad guy of the story, a warlord out of Rajah named General Klaw. There's a pretty big hint here that there might be a new windstone . . . to somewhere . . . perhaps Rajah . . . in our future. 

Did you say "Stone"?! As in . . . Windstone?!

As it turns out Sinbad's crew mutinied and now Klaw has the Belt of the Champions, which also means he has a head start on obtaining the infamous Eye of the Liger! In the end, Sinbad actually joins your crew as well! So, it's a pretty great one-two punch of new companions here for finishing this second quest.

Sure! Welcome aboard, Sinbad . . . would you like some pet hunting companion orders?

Here's to hoping we get another game update sooner rather than later! I really enjoy these new game updates for Pirate101 that have been happening! It's still such a great game. Now I just need to find some time to fight this new Dreadnaught I've heard is out there in Cool Ranch. Hmmm.

If you're looking to get into Pirate101, the Steam release is just a few days away! Wishlist the game and get ready to sail!

Happy Dueling!

Checking out Pirate101's New Daily Dungeon

A couple weeks back I jumped back in to Pirate101 to check it out since, you know, THERE'S A NEW UPDATE TO THE GAME! Kind of crazy that the KingsIsle team has managed to pull off a couple of new updates for this game, right? Who woulda thunk it. There was definitely a time that I didn't think it would ever happen, but . . . things change when you're under new management.  There you go Negative Nellies -- games under Gamigo's parent company CAN AND DO receive updates! Take that!

THE MOO!

So, Pirate101's newest update is a rotating daily quest given by one Reginald P. Jowlsley. He's a Marleybonian Bulldog full of spit and vinegar. 

I like the cut of his jib

Each time you finish one of Reginald's quests, he'll drop a "Royal Key" on you. This key can then be used to enter a dungeon. 

Ominous Dungeon Portal is Ominous

Solo, I found the fight I encountered to be pretty difficult, but when I was with a group of four, it was cake.  Well, it might have just been that my group mates were a bit OP.

Hilariously Cute Boss Insect

It was kind of funny. One of my groupmates had me on their friends' lists and had no idea who I was. Oh, you know, I just used to be the CM four years ago . . . now I'm just a guy who used to know things, a has been, and some chump wannabe coming back to see what's up with the new update. hehe. I actually like the anonymity. Before I would log on and get swarmed with questions (most of which I could never answer). Now I log on and I'm a complete rando.  I like it.  

Supposedly there's some cool weapons and gear that drop for the instance, but I mostly got vendor trash loot and a MEGA TON of gold.  That's one thing about Pirate101. They always overload you with gold. Gold is absolutely not a problem you need to worry about. Someone should put a big magical gambling well somewhere in the game where you can toss in 250,000 gold in exchange for a chance at something legendary.

Here's to future updates to Pirate101 and more fun in a fantastic game that's dear to my heart!

Happy Dueling!

Miracle Mitch and the Smuggler's Arena Two-Box -- #Blaugust2021 Day 7

Pirate101 is running the best member benefit this weekend! Free Miracle Mitch heals for the win! 

Gimme those free heals, Mitch!

If you aren't a Pirate101 player, you may not know what that means. Typically in Pirate101, once a companion is knocked out in battle, they get injured. To heal them, your companions need to take a little bit of a breather, which gets longer the higher level your companions are. At level 70, a companion that gets injured will take several hours to heal unless you visit Miracle Mitch and pay his exorbitant gold prices to heal your companions, but this weekend Miracle Mitch services are absolutely free for subscribed players.

This means, I can go absolutely crazy and immediately heal up my companions . . . so I can go absolutely crazy once again!

For me this crazy meant giving the Smuggler's Arena some well-deserved attention. It's something I've avoided doing in Pirate101 for years. By the end of the Smuggler's Arena, you're most likely going to have some companions on bed rest, which is a bit intimidating.

A few details for those that may not know about the arena . . . you pick up the Smuggler's Arena from the Crown Shop for 7500 Crowns and place it down in your player housing. This then opens up an arena where you fight waves of enemies with only a micro-breather between each. You don't earn gold in the Smuggler's Arena, instead you earn Scrip, the currency used for buying black market goods.

The view of my smuggler's arena from inside my ship's cabin

So, because it was a free Miracle Mitch weekend, it felt like the perfect excuse to play the Smuggler's Arena back-to-back using my two-box accounts: Friendly Thomas the Witchdoctor and Bad Pedro Pace the Privateer.

My first run through I made it pretty deep and earned the first badge for surviving to round 5: The Arena Ace. Eventually my health sputtered out, and I couldn't go any deeper, and I ended up with several KO'd companions and 300+ Scrip for my efforts.

After this, I rearranged my skills a bit so my privateer had more heals at the front of his powers and things went a lot better on the second attempt. I also did a bit of research and found a great thread on the Pirate101 forums that had some excellent tips, and most importantly the key tip was that you can use your mojo potion to heal during that one-second breather in between fights or when Scriptop is yammering away about your next competitor.

Scriptop's yammering . . . quick! hit that mojo potion button!

That tip and rearranging my healing powers was all I needed to earn my second badge for making it all the way through to the end of the arena. Yes! I am now a club champ and earned the 500 scrip reward for making all the way through to the end.

Is it just me, or are those rewards super tiny and hard to read? That could use some love, devs...

I don't think there's any strategy I could add that wasn't already said in that link that I shared. That last battle of the Smuggler's Arena is absolutely brutal with tough enemies well over your level. The musketeers you fight against are relentless with the bombs they drop on you, and that can really mess you up. I guess that's the one tip I could add . . . if you're really stuck with bombs around you, pets and summons do a good job of being sacrificial lambs to take the bombs out. lol.

I hate bombs . . .

There's a badge for completing the smuggler's arena 10 times . . . I think I could probably swing that. There's also badges for completing the arena 25, 50, and 100 times. I don't know if I could swing that, but if I did, I'm sure by the end I'd have that arena down to a science and definitely have all the scrip I needed to buy all the goodies in the black market I ever wanted.

If you haven't given the Smuggler's Arena a go yet, this weekend may be the perfect opportunity.

Happy Dueling!

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!

Re-imagining the Regatta in Pirate101

There's an interesting ship dungeon in Pirate101 that's a little off the beaten path. It's a one-of-a-kind in game, and that makes it naturally more interesting than the dozens of other dungeons you can find in Pirate101.

As it turns out, two-boxing the Regatta is not too difficult!

As the Pirate's Regatta was one of two remaining quests in my quest log for Pirate101, I decided to duo it with my two box account to see how it'd go. The end result was that I was able to finish the event without much mishap! Well, a few of my companions got knocked out on that final fight, but it wasn't too bad.  

After the hour and a half that it took me to complete the event, I had a lot more scrip than I started with, but I'm pretty sure I'd need to run the regatta at least a dozen or more times to really get what I want from the Black Market shop where you buy exclusive rewards with said scrip.

I decided to take it to Twitter to see if there was a consensus and while I didn't get a ton of responses, I did get a response from @Telekneticissue that kind of summed up some of the suspicions I had while playing through the event.

I remember there was a little discussion about it on ye' old Pirate101 forums as well, and a quick search led me to mixed feelings about the Regatta, so I started thinking . . . if I was asked as a Designer to improve the Regatta, what would I suggest? 

It's a tough one to answer because the event is tuned to bringing a full party of 4, but can be done with as little as 2 . . . maybe even as little as 1, but I'm sure the time to complete the event escalates the fewer people that are involved.  In addition, you can't really adjust quest requirements based on the number of players that enter an instance together, so you want to ensure it's a fun challenge for all party sizes.

So, taking all that in stride, I think the real problem of the Regatta is player population, time decay, and motivation. To further explain it:

1- Player population in Pirate101 just isn't what it used to be, point blank. There are plenty of people that still play, but you can see it when you run around and play in the game . . . it's a bit barren these days.  

2- It's been five to six years since the content has released with no new update to the Scrip rewards a person can earn. 

3- When a person can get 4 players together who all want to earn Scrip, their time is probably better spent at the Smuggler's Arena where the scrip rewards are infinitely better, but the difficulty is ramped up. There's less risk in the regatta, but also fewer rewards.

To counter act all that, I'd suggest the following changes:

1- Place new Scrip rewards in the Black Market to freshen the motivation. It's been long enough that if players are going to be excited about the Black Market again, new rewards should be added. Maybe take some of the Boss rewards from around the Spiral and make new alternate versions of them with effect glows and a high price tag.  Or maybe pick one piece of ship equipment and make it more interesting -- I'd love to see ship cannons have more importance IMHO. Yes, there are probably a handful of people sitting on a glut of unused Scrip, but I'm sure it's not the majority of players.

2- Instead of increasing the difficulty of the Regatta, I'd simply suggest removing the first two waves of ships and bosses, so that there are only 3 waves total to defeat. This makes the Regatta more digestible and short, which leads me to . . .

3- Make the Regatta an event that can be turned on and off, so that it is cycled in and out of the game. This would give it more increased focus when it was active, and because it would now be limited time, the rewards could also be slightly increased.

4- Create a second Regatta event out of the first two waves you removed from the original Regatta and then add a tower boss as the final wave of the event. This then gives you a second, unique event you can turn on and off between the original regatta. 

5- For bonus points, make a third Regatta where the tower boss from the second Regatta is seasonal themed -- a giant Christmas tree, a sized up turkey platter, a giant cupig, etc. Turn this version of the Regatta on during holidays.

6- Make the Regatta entrance appear in Avery's Court so that it's in a location with more foot traffic . . . probably up by the Muskateer's Roost. It's so out of the way currently, that it's easy to forget the Regatta is even there.

So, that's a lot to ask for. If you could only choose one of the six suggestions, I'd take a look at numbers 2 and 3 above.  A little goes a long way, and that's my hot take on the Regatta on this fine Sunday morning! Of course, what people really want is not changes to the Regatta, but more story content . . . so . . . 

Thanks for reading and Happy Dueling!

Pirate101: Sidequests Fini

And thus it happened, on 22 July . . . it was a rather time consuming task from Ludovico Muratori in Valencia Part 2, where you had to travel to all the different libraries in the spiral--gathering over due books and then returning them to their proper place in Valencia--but it was my last side quest, earning me the final sidequest badge, the Callabrian Completionist. Tada!

I'm wearing that one for awhile for sure!

The fancy quest finder tool in the quest log gave me its message "Try Again Later," and I was done.  All that's left in my quest log now is the Corsair's Challenge Nautical Quest and the Tower of Moo Manchu, and I gotta say . . . it feels pretty good to join the army of people who have already done this in Pirate101. Now I can log on and gather my daily quests to earn my 40k gold in peace and move on to new challenges!

That's all she wrote . . .

I even decided to treat myself by buying the S. M. Arson companion since I was whining about wishing I had chosen mutiny for the Dead Mike companion.  A Dead Mike clone will do nicely! 

So now the question becomes . . . what next?  Well, I've got a short list of things I still want to do in Pirate101.

1- Level all my under-leveled companions to 70.  That shouldn't be too tough.  I can get an easy 4 companion tomes a day with just logging on and doing the daily quests, plus collecting tomes and experience from the Brawling task.  That should happen pretty quick in fact.

2- Get the perfect pet.  I do like my skeletorous pet that I'm using currently on Thomas, but a Stingaloon. Dimetorsaur Phantasm, or a Grimtooth Reaper could be fun.  I still need to figure out what the perfect talents would be.

3- Get some moo gear.  You know what I'm talking about . . . the Nefarious Staff or the Imperial Boots . . . stuff like that.

4- Get enough scrip to buy something awesome like the Witchdoctor banner or smuggler's garb.

5- Move on to leveling my Buccaneer.

6- I also want to say that discovering Christmas in July was an absolute joy this morning. I'm not sure if I've played through the Krampus event yet. Getting the Krampus staff would be pretty great!

I really should do this event . . .

Anyway . . . thank you for following along with my Pirate101 side quest journey if you've been reading along.  It was pretty great to really devote some time to Pirate101.  There was so much left to do and it really did feel like the perfect time to jump in again and play.

Happy Dueling!

Pirate101: I need more Bob in my life

I've been continuing to spend an hour or two here and there playing through all the side content in Pirate101. Call it the adventures of following Control+Shift+Q . . . that magical hotkey just targets you to the next "nearest" side quest and GO! Unfortunately the definition of "nearest" leaves a little to be desired. Because of that, I've been traveling to Skull Island and back over again.

Also managed to complete my dailies with the help of Captain Avery while I was at it

One of my favorite forays of the last week involved completing the "Bob's Your Uncle" quest to promote my Origin Story Companion, which for me is Lucky Jack Russell because I chose that my parents died in a shipwreck.  If I had it to do all over again, I probably would have chosen mutiny because Dead Mike makes me laugh and he's undead.

Give 'em the boot, Lucky Jack Russell!

This quest is pretty epic. You get a nice bit of lore about your parents and specifically your mother Jenny as you run into a pirate named Bob Carrington who happens to be . . . your uncle.

Love that Bob Carrington ... the moustache, the feathered hat, the obvious signs of ultimate betrayal . . .

By the end of this quest you've gone back and forth across Skull Island fighting legitimately difficult mobs (I had several on bed rest when I was done), being double crossed by your uncle, and defeating your mom's old nemesis, one Captain Hande. This is a high value companion promotion quest and honestly I can't believe I sat on it as long as I did.

That fully promoted Lucky Jack Russell is lookin' FINE!

Hey KingsIsle!  If you're listening . . . I'm excited for this new Sinbad stuff, no lie, but can you also find a way to bring back Bob Carrington and Captain Hande? This whole pirate triangle of betrayal is just too good. I need more Bob in my life. Maybe tie them in to the daily quests somehow? Thank you for your time!

Anyway, the amount of content I never completed in Pirate101 is a little staggering to be honest, but I seem to be whittling through it pretty good. It is funny though, every time I think I've shortened my list a bit, I run into another yellow exclamation mark.  I don't mind though. It's nice to have content to complete that I set off to the side back in the day.

Currently I'm going back and forth between temples in the Subata skyway in Mooshu. I'm starting to run into a problem though because control shift Q pointed me toward the Tower of Moo Manchu. That one's always given me a bit of a problem because of the difficulty.

Also, I dropped in on RRRRZZZZ while he was streaming last week and said hello. He's such an interesting and genuine streamer who simply loves Pirate101. The deep south accent and conversations about favorite fast food chicken is pretty entertaining as well. Joining in on one of his Tower of Moo Manchu runs on stream might be a good opportunity for me to temporarily get that out of my quest log. ;)  I wouldn't mind getting some of the great loot from the tower as well. 

Happy Dueling!

Pirate101's Wonder Woman -- It's Zeena Time!

 So, I know last post I said I was most likely headed to Mooshu for side quest fun, but I got sucked into Aquila instead and . . . so there I stayed. I ended up doing the promotion quest for Buffalo Bill and a bunch of random skyway missions involving vulture pirates. 

Buffalo Bill . . . ever waxing about Wyatt and stroking his magnificent beard.

There's one quest in particular there that has an abysmal drop rate, but nothing as awful as the original white buffalo quest in Cool Ranch . . . that was the stuff of community manager nightmares. I finished it up in 30 minutes or so and earned a bunch of gold and scrip while I was at it.  Not bad. It was a bit sad to see the skyways so barren in Aquila.

I also helped a band of cyclops bros, made offerings to all the statues of the gods around Aquila, defeated Grohl and his foo fighting band in Nevermind Cave, contacted students and poets for Chiron the Centaur, defeated a highly conflicted ettin, and gathered up every last missing eagle for Zeke. 

Thank you to a great band for standing so closely together in perfect aoe formation

While these were all great quests and profitable toward my seemingly neverending goal to level all my companions to level 70, the most memorable of the bunch had to have been the one where you obtain Zeena the Warrior Princess as a companion.

You know, there's a lot of min-maxers out there in Pirate101 who will purposely avoid side quests that grant companions until they are max level for the sole purpose that many of them come in at a higher level than your pirate, but I can't say that was my motivation for waiting. Mine was just pure laziness, and honestly, I'd rather just have the companion and play with it than wait until its power is prime. 

Of course, this isn't my first time doing the Zeena quest . . . I ran through it on the Pirate101 development servers so that I could make her Rogue's Gallery spotlight back in June of 2017. Sam Johnson (aka Blind Mew) wrote up some pretty awesome backstory to make her more than just an obscure headnod to Princess Diana of Themyscira or Xena: Warrior Princess.

(Much like there might be a conflict between the Atlanteans and the Amazons in the DC Universe at times) Zeena finds herself embroiled in conflict between the Bird-like race of amazons in Pirate101 and the Centaurs of Aquila. In resolving the conflict, you'll be running into the statue of Ares and the raven sisters, aka the Fates who have lost their shears.

In the process you get a wake up call as the player when the Statue of Ares tells you he's a big fan because all the war and trouble you've started in the main storyline, and good ol' Ares is really the one who's caused the misunderstandings (as the character of Ares would similarly do in the Xena: Warrior Princess series) because WAR GOOD! So you fix things up between the Amazons and Centaurs, and Zeena joins your crew to learn a thing or two about controlling her temper. 

Welcome aboard, Zeena! What's one more mouth to feed, eh?

I'm enjoying having Zeena as a part of my crew. She has a pretty great Rain of Fire ability that sets a nice pattern of fire on the battlefield that's great for damaging approaching enemies or those already upon you, and since she's coming in at level 72, I can see why the min-maxers like having her on their team.

As for me, I'll keep hitting these side quests! Hopefully I can clear out my log and then start looking at doing the daily quests more often. 

Happy Dueling!

Pirate101 Marleybone Bounties — Developers Behind Bars

The quest to clear Friendly Thomas's quest log has concluded in Marleybone. *insert personal fan-fare music* Eventually I wrapped up every last Rolling Stone Zeke quest item and captured every last developer-gone-rogue to finish out my MB side quests. 

Nice lyrics, Zeke . . .

Developer gone rogue?  Oh yeah, lemme tell you . . . there's an interesting chain of side quests where you help Mann the Bounty Hunter with tracking down a bunch of criminals that need to be locked up -- criminals that have a very interesting bunch of names attached to them.

Safely behind bars . . . whew . . .

First you capture ol' Lymie Stone, then move on to Merciless Meagan Quinn. Third is Professor Chadwick and then finally Grumpy Jeff Haskell. Right around Meagan Quinn I started putting it together. 

• Mann the Bounty Hunter =  Mike Mann (the old Pirate101 Art Lead)
• Lymie Stone = Mike Stone (the old Pirate101 Associate Producer)
• Merceliss Meagan Quinn = Meagan Quinn (an old Pirate101 Associate Game Designer)
• Professor Chadwick = This has to be Chad Brown (an old Pirate101 Game Designer) . . . although I suppose it could also be Chad La Guardia.
• Grumpy Jeff Haskell = Jeff Haskell (an old Pirate101 Senior Game Designer)

In fact, in the very back of my mind I think I remember . . . yeah . . . that group of designers sat one row away from the Marketing Department, and I even think I remember when Jeff Haskell got the news that he was in the game. There was a lot of laughter and smug grins. 😆

And who wouldn't be smug knowing they were the one stealing all the toys . . .

All these developers have long since left the KingsIsle fold. The only one I've really kept up with on his career path is Chad Brown, who, as fortune would have it, is working on DCUO right now, which is a game you know I absolutely adore. Chad is pretty amazing himself. He used to play a Ranger in a lunch time D&D game ran by Sam Johnson (Creative Design Lead for KingsIsle). He's a super nice person and a really great world builder. Playing D&D with the old devs were good times! 

Now that I've rounded all those scoundrels up, I've earned my "Civilian Baliff" badge, and I'm ready for my next job. As fate would have it, my next closest quest can be found in Mooshu!  So that's where you'll find me for a bit. I'm sure I'll be uncovering long lost secrets and memories as I go along.

I'm definitely still having fun revisiting Pirate101.

Happy Dueling!

Pirate101 and my 2021 Quest to Clear the 2012 Quests

I've been logging on Pirate101 for an hour here, an hour there, and just trying my best to start clearing out this amazing backlog of side quests. It's honestly ridiculous how many I've just skipped and left to gather dust over time. 30+ pages of side quests . . . I'm not even kidding.

I decided to start my quest cleaning project in Marleybone. I did a few odd jobs here and there, then eventually landed on what felt like an extreme epic side quest.  After a bit of research, I realized I was actually on the companion promotion quest for Ratbeard. (Yeah, I never finished that.)

Look at this adorable little good boy!

It's an entertaining quest that involves the retelling of A Christmas Carol, but with a Pirate101 twist. For the player, this is an epic 32-step quest that has you hopping back and forth between Marleybone, Mooshu, and Skull Island . . . with no shortage of travel and stop offs in between, including a series of back to back epic ninja pig fights. 

No one expects Ninja Pigs . . . let alone expects them to be a part of the Christmas Carol Story

I remember players complaining about this particular quest's length on the Pirate101 messageboards back in the day, and I think the response was basically . . . so you complain when we give you more content to play?! I get it though, it's a bit of quest exhaustion when what you really want as the player is not the experience, but the reward . . . a powered-up Ratbeard companion.

It's actually a very charming quest where you try to spook ol' Ebeneezer with ghosts of the past, present, and future, but ultimately it's a letter from his father expressing regret and forgiveness that changes his heart. For Ratbeard, he too experiences forgiveness from the ghost of Lasko, part of his old crew that he just outright poisoned and killed back in Skull Island. It's a nice character redemption bit of story -- perfect for a companion quest.

Lasko for the win.

As for my secondary quests to 1- improve the gear on Friendly Thomas and Bad Pedro Pace and 2- level that literal army of companions, things are going pretty good! I've been enjoying logging on and claiming all the work orders for brawling experience.  I wish there was a claim all button for companion orders.  There isn't one, right? Please tell me I'm forgetting some magical way of claiming all these companion orders at once. Please?

Last time I posted about Pirate101, my old buddy Angela Shadowgarden reminded me that probably the easiest gear upgrade I could get right away was claiming the Hoodoo bundle items I had sitting in my gift box. It's not a bad set of items, and actually looks pretty cool on Thomas. I also switched things up with my wand and equipped the Haywire Technomancer Set (replacing Phule's wand).  I'm pretty sure I'll be missing that extra range soon.

Not a bad Witchdoctor setup

So all in all things are going pretty chill in Pirate101.  It's great to be back and just enjoying the ride.  Two boxing is a little frustrating, but I'm making it work. It's really strange how zone times between the two accounts differ so greatly. Ahh well.

Happy Dueling!

Pirate101 -- taking inventory and talking options

Ever since the new update to Pirate101, I've been really feeling the pull to play more, so to those ends I've been taking a bit of inventory on where I last left my heroes. 

- Friendly Thomas, my witchdoctor (also my main character), has a huge inventory of side quests sitting in his quest log, and I'd love to clear a few of those out . . . especially the ones that give companion training points! He has an absolutely enormous crew of companions . .  most not max level. Thomas himself is max level, but I'm not fully happy with his gear situation.

Friendly Thomas

- Wicked Faith, my musketeer, is still sitting in Cool Ranch . . . right where Vanessa Mythdust and myself left off after a bout of Pirate101 Twitch Streaming that happened, oh, four or five years ago?  I love her name and playing up a musketeer would be awesome.

Wicked Faith

- Reckless Leo Jenkins, my swashbuckler, is still being reckless and low level. Also, love his name . . . totally worthy of leveling at some point.

Reckless Leo Jenkins

- Sly Kai, my buccaneer, is still hanging out in Mooshu at level 50 with his pink sombrero. He's pretty amazing . . . I should try to push him out of Marleybone and into Aquila. 

Sly Kai

- And finally, Bad Pedro Pace, my Privateer on the second account. The best thing about this is that he could easily heal any of those alts as a second box account. So let's talk Bad Pedro Pace!

Ding 70! Bad Pedro Pace

Recently I was tweeting about how I finished up the final boss fight in Florenza with Bad Pedro. Afterwards, Bad Pedro found himself in pretty much the exact same situation that Friendly Thomas found himself back in 2018 -- about 3 quests away from hitting max level. That kind of settled it for me . . . out of all the things I could do, the thing I most want to do is get Pedro to max level. 

Can I just take a moment to say how great turn-based games like Pirate101 are for blogging? Playing and writing at the same time is totally the way to go. I've finished up all his quests and dinged all while typing this blogpost! Try to do that while playing DCUO!

So now that I'm level 70, I can do the new Sinbad quests, and with any luck I can get the gear sorted out between Bad Pedro Pace and Friendly Thomas at the same time.

Anyway, just have to say how weirdly familiar it all feels to sit at my desk and play Pirate101. This game was absolutely my life for a period of time, you know? It seriously makes me itch to do some livestreaming again. 

Happy Dueling!

Sinbad and the return of Pirate101!

Pirate101 . . . it's the game that got me into the gaming industry back in 2012 with a simple phone call from Fred Howard to tell me . . . you've interviewed for enough positions at KingsIsle, and we have the perfect role for you: Community Manager for Pirate101. BAM! So much changed for me in that moment!

We did great things for that game and launching Pirate101 was an amazing amount of work that I'm incredibly proud of. Ultimately, it didn't get quite as much fanfare as Wizard101, but the game is solid. While I'm not a part of KingsIsle anymore, I STILL love Pirate101, and how do I know I still love it?  Because today I logged in and played the first new quest update they've had in (insert titanic-64-years-meme-picture here). If there was ever a time to return to revisit your pirates, now is the time!

~~Spoilers below!!~~

When I logged in, Gandry himself directed me to Avery's Court to see a crew of stranded pirates.

Albano straight up calling me the "Second Best" Pirate in the Spiral

Albano, Ratty Piper, and Toombs were there to represent the WWE . . . I mean Sinbad the pirate. As the story goes, Sinbad and his crew were ambushed by the Crushers and they stole the Belt of Champions for the title of Best Pirate in the Spiral. 

While on the hunt for the Crusher's hideout you stumble into Poffo, a mean shark wrestler who wanted to throw down against my Fin Dorsal companion.

Shark Week has never been this good

After another battle with some vulture pirates you eventually stumble into a cat named Fliehr (an homage to Ric Flair most certainly . . . you see the theme by now lol) who also wants to throw down with you. Lucky Jack Russel was all about that dog vs. cat life and made quick work of him.

Time to get nicked, Ric

Finally you arrive at the best pun of the entire new quest line . . . the Crush-tacian himself who's all about the Crushamania!

Hulk Hogan never posed so perfectly

The Crush-tacian was perfectly fine with handing over the belt, but that wasn't the real worry. The real worry was a call from Sinbad up ahead to victory! Apparently you and Albano were just serving as a distraction while Sinbad made away with the Belt. At which point he abandons his crew and the Crush-tacian's gang and all of a sudden you have to survive a 3 faction rumble where you're enemy number one!

Hoooo boy . . . that's a lot of enemies . . .

That fight made me wish I had run it with 3 other pirates on my team instead of solo!  I didn't mind shelling out Crowns to hire some henchmen to finish it off . . . and yes, I needed those henchmen to finish it off.  I was totally unprepared for that.

Plucky Portia Marozzo the Swashbuckler Henchman to the rescue!

Rowdy Ratty Piper was surprisingly tough, but at the end, I was standing as the victor of the brawl and poor Albano was feeling a bit abandoned by Sinbad. Albano let on that the belt is great for stroking egos, but the belt has a different purpose all together, and that's to find, as he calls it, "a fabulous treasure, greatest in the Spiral." Even better, Albano will help you get it . . . "it" being . . . The Eye of the Liger!

Consider my interest piqued!

Playing through this quest this morning pretty much solidified in my mind how much I love and have missed playing Pirate101. It's such a great game. While I was online, RZ, a streamer and mega fan of Pirate101, invited me to drop by his stream and say hello.  I may just have to do that.

Happy Dueling!

Four Privateer Henchmen Walk Into a World of Dreams

Last night I decided it was time to level Friendly Thomas for real this time, not like last time on the Test Realm.  I pretty much followed the same path, but it went much faster this time for some reason.

So DING 70! FOR REAL!

Take that crab boy!

What I didn't personally do on the Test Realm was the new Old Scratch promotion quest, which is also the introduction to the new Skeleton Key bosses. I haven't seen the latest KI Live yet, so the promotion quest was essentially brand new to me.

So I sauntered up to Old Scratch and asked him what that big yellow question mark above his head was all about, and MAN he was really laying the mumbo jumbo down thick!

Settle down, my dude! We got this!

So, as I gathered, there was an "other side" where Evil Old Scratch was working up some evil mojo that would certainly be the doom for a very confused Good Old Scratch. Madame Vadima knew what was up though.  She let us know all about this crazy, alternate dimension we'd never heard of before . . . the world of dreams!  Sounds awesome until you hear about those "Nightmare Doors" on an "Isle of Bones."

Always loved this place . . . nice choice Pirate101 Devs.

No one was around and not knowing what I was in for, I decided . . . what the heck . . . let's give this a whirl.  I jumped in the fight and soon discovered that this looked to be a multiplayer affair. GULP!

Wow . . . the levels on these enemies! YIKES!

Nightmare Old Scratch was no joke as he had a spell that pretty much damaged everything on the board at the start of every round.  My companions were quickly taken out, and I knew I faced certain defeat soon, so what did I do?  I did what every decent human being with a supply of Crowns would do and ordered up a whole team of those level 70 Privateer henchmen!

My own "world of dreams" team!

An old trick of Old Scratch's was to summon up a whole bunch of evil lackeys to fight us, so, lo' and behold, there was nothing better than using Blast of Discord on them round after round thanks to my amazing team of Privateers!

The betrayal! Gasp!

Between that, the bombs, the heals, and everything else a whole team of level 70 Privateers provide, I was able to pull out a win for Team Friendly and, most importantly, my good bud Ol' Scratch, who now has a shiny new promotion look! Woot!

Nice hook upgrade -- looks like you could give someone a good "scratch" with that . . .

I suppose now I just need to level my Privateer and do it all over again because, DANG, that new Old Scratch ability . . . WOW!  That's awesome!

Is this real life?

Happy dueling!