Message in a Bottle Second Edition
PAGES
- Front Page - Message from the Editor
Page 2 - Global Event Gossip
Page 3 - Cannons and Corrinades
Page 4 - Articles of Avonmora: Treasure Hunting & Meet The Crew
Page 5 - Historical Lookback
Page 6 - Special Bulletin: Fantasy Draft VIII
NOTATION: Real Life always take precedence. As such, when we could not make contact with our guest writer, we reached out to another to write up an article on Treasure Hunting. When the original writer returned, both writers had completed and submitted an article for Treasure Hunting. As such, MIAB will post both pieces.
Treasure Hunting by Guest Contributor William Pitt
William Pitt wrote:Pirates Glory Mechanics: Treasure Hunting
In Pirates Glory there are multiple streams of income available for those willing to explore.
In the last release we spoke about Rapid Ranking.
In this release we will explore the ins and outs of Treasure Hunting.
This feature is one of the ways to earn millions without using ships, casting voodoo or investing gold.
As it relates to treasure hunting, there are two types of treasures – NPC and Player. The latter while being the most profitable is extremely high risk.
The very first step in treasure hunting, regardless of whose treasure you’re going after, is to explore the region. Visit the various regions in the port of your choice and familiarise yourself with the area. The turn cost to achieve 100% exploration is a lot, but it is a one-time investment that quickly pays off by increasing your natural success chance.
Your next step is getting to know the amount of treasure buried in the port. The locals know everything. Simply ask the port locals until your port max is no longer increasing. The port max will never pass 25% of the largest player treasure in the port, thus finding the port with the highest port max will give the best opportunity to unearth massive player or NPC treasure. Asking the locals will also increase your NPC max (which will never pass 6.25% of the largest treasure buried).
NPC Treasure: With an NPC max of about 2-4 mill you can prepare for the hunt and invest roughly 40-50 turns before digging for the treasure.
There will be one of 3 outcomes:
1. Find a player chest with 1 gold coin.
2. Find the NPC treasure.
3. Or you find nothing.
Player Treasure: If your aim is to steal a portion of CDV’s stash, good luck.
Discuss with the head explorer and the quartermaster to improve your chances and player max.
Even when your chance of success is extremely high, the main factor is the amount of turns you have invested. To find large well protected treasures you need to have invested more turns than the victim. To uncover a stash worth the effort you would need to invest thousands of turns.
Tips: Each time you find an NPC treasure, your NPC chances are reduced.
Each time you fail to find a player treasure your OVERALL chances are increased for the next time. If you find a player treasure, your NPC/Player chance are both reset to 50% .
If you found your swag and want to repeat the process, all you have to do is decide which treasure you'll be going for this time. If you are aiming for player treasure, try your hand at finding more NPC treasure until the player chances are high. Then invest a large amount of turns (2000+) and try ye luck. On the other hand, if you want to reset your NPC chances, invest a small amount of turns until you uncover a chest with 1 gc and your chances are reset...Good luck and happy hunting!
Treasure Hunting by Guest Contributor The Prattling Hag
Meliva wrote:Come sit down if you got nothing better to do, and listen to this old sea hag prattle. Today I'll be ranting about treasure hunting.
Now, as some of you may be aware, and some may not, I'm a bit notorious when it comes to digging up other player's precious booty. Currently ranked 2nd, only below Trix.
In total, I've dug up around roughly 568 Million shiny gold coins. A pretty penny to be sure. However before you youngsters go rushing out with shovels eager to make some coin, a word of warning to ya from this old sea hag.
Treasure hunting other player's treasure, is not a cost effective use of turns. I would say it's better then wasting them working at the docks, but that ain't saying much.
I've sank, in total, over 130,000 turns in just the turns prepared. Add in exploration, and talking to the locals, probably bump that up to 150K turns spent.
So around 3800 coins per turn invested. So quite a bit better then working at the docks for a max of 40 coins at absolute best, but treasure hunting is a gamble, and you would earn more plundering most likely.
Much of my treasure hunting was done as a simple merchant who mostly didn't plunder or cast voodoo, so rather then waste turns working at the docks, I saught glory getting precious booty from other players.
Now, I won't be sharing all my secrets, I love to prattle but not that much. I will share a few tips though.
First, fully explore a port before you try any hunts. My early days I didn't and it was a mistake. Fully exploring it can get you to a 80% sucess rate. Not bad.
Second. If you hit that 20% fail, your success rate goes up. This is based on how many turns you spent preparing. This can boost it up to 100%!
Sadly even I don't know the exact numbers. But i learned that 3000 turns wasted will boost it from 80-100. So I spent a few hunts at 3K. This normally got me either a decent haul, or boosted it to 100% for my next try.
With 100% success rate, I tend to go crazy. Higher the booty in the port, higher I go. Largest I ever went in a single hunt so far was a whopping 18K turns.
Only got 47M sadly. A sad haul for such an investment. But still better then working at the docks!
I reckon I chewed all your ears off enough for one prattling session. From time to time come back, and I'll prattle on more about other topics in issues to come.
Meet the Crew - Stan Rogers
Stan Rogers wrote:I have held actually 3 crowns. The first in British Indian Ocean. It was a nowhere nation in which revealed to me what a crown 'looks like"
It's never been a personal goal to be King but it has happened on occasion through circumstance.
I have spent a lot of time in Spain defending it from many forms of attack.
Attacks that have been game changing with regard to exploitation of the rules.
Rules such as "rightful king" was enacted to help prevent national treasury robbery.
The exploitation was used with limited success against a few small nations hence the change.
I can't talk about Spain however without mentioning the guild Spanish Ayes.
A guild Vane started and then passed on to a newb (me) to 'manage. while he went off grid.
The guild adopted itself to the Spanish nation and to become a member, you had to change your nationality to Spain.
Most guilds at this time were multi-national.
There were lots more guild wars back then and it sure made for some strange politic. Who were you loyal to in the event
of a nation war and your guild mates were part of the warring nation?
Back then a 60 att SoTL was rare mainly because of the cost involved.
There was not the money making opportunities available that there is now.
That guild has undergone some changes since that time and is now being managed by Wiliam Pitt
as the New Providence Seafarers. The old hands mainly sit in an advisory role.
I left Spain after 5 years to explore other parts of the game. After visiting my homeland, I set sail again to Tokelau to explore
what made this thriving nation tick upon an invite from Sir Henry himself.
I do enjoy the smaller band of experienced council and I can devote more time to personal development and less time
worrying about the next invasion or national takeover attempt.
The Fantasy Draft-
I was honored to be chosen as captain in the first fantasy draft. It was fun but a lot of work. I even got complaints from other captains that I was
stealing their choice's. I blamed it in the guy ahead of me...lol. It was rife with corruption, purchased votes and smear campaigns.
Actually, that stripped a lot of the fun out of it as votes could be changed and some voted multiple times but the potential was there for a fun forum competition.
The next 2 or 3 drafts were also corrupted but Shadow was trying to implement rules to clean it up and was making headway.
Each one after about IV became better with tighter rules mainly the vote process but the bribery continued with each one until VII
where one small infraction caused a rather large disruption in the game itself.
Thsi one I must say seemed the be the fairest so far although rather slow in the execution.
Overall I think it be successful.
Were I to start over again, my career path would be to build enough ships to run trade and earn enough to support a hideout.
Build a mansion, marina and academy and then decide what game style I would pursue and start the academy techs to advance that path.
Part II
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As mentioned, I would like to see some emphasis of game development go back to its roots, the thing that brought me here and kept me here.
The excitement of ship battles and the challenge of turning a defeat into a win for the next battle.
Unfortunately, when enough battles happen, one can almost predict the outcome before it happens. Traits throws a random element into the battle
but it falls short in adding the needed excitement that has grown stale.
Another short coming is the nature of port battles is mainly tilted towards gold coin and choice voodoo and the winner is the one with the most.
If ships were able to bombard ports and ports were able to sink ships, this would open up a whole new battle tactic and excitement that has went missing for me.
Bigger ships means more cannons applied and greater port damage per volley.
Independents (non-port holding nations) could band together and lay seige to any port they choose without having a ton of GC to make overthrow possible.
Of course Ports would also need defence cannons and forts.
This would be fun in my opinion and perhaps spur different ship attribute allocations for port attacks as compared to ship to ship attacks.
I am sure hte result would result in more overall battles between guilds and nations and perhaps capture that old excitement that brought me here to begin with.~ Stan
