I don't know how to play this game.

[TheClaireProject]

I like the look of this game. I do. Truly. But I cannot get farther than 3 or 4 squares away before I'm wiped out completely by some unstoppable killing machines. I can usually only afford one crew member (no matter what game mode or choices I make in starting a game), and I'm just entirely confused on...everything.

No one has anything on YouTube or ANYWHERE for version 0.9.0.5, so no information is useful to me that's been up on any wiki or...anything. I really wanna get into this game but it's annoying that I can't get any farther than 3 days without just losing. I'm usually immediately outnumbered or just outdamaged. I'm not sure if anyone else is having this problem or what but I'd love to know just exactly what I'm doing wrong, maybe some pointers or something?

[Otto Von Bismor]

If I start out fresh, I always start with the third option that gives you an extra pirate, and spend 30gold on Fast Learner for one of them.


L1 pirates should be easy enough to do with your startercrew and ship, and each plundered one gives you 50 gold with occasional extras from urns/chests.

Islands are almost always a good source of crab meat, coconuts/bananas/tobacco and grindstones for ranking up your weapons. However, they can be pretty hard depending on whats on them, as tribals can be nasty.

Keep doing L1 pirates and L1 islands until your crew is leveled up a bit and you have ~300 gold or so, then return to town and pick up another Fast Learner, Cleaning, Fishing, buy a Fishing rod and stock up on some rum. If you have money left over, Toilet Study or a combat skill like Parry can also be useful. Teach one guy cleaning, the other fishing. Food is now no longer an issue, poop much less of one, and the rum can take care of any lingering morale issues.

From there on just start doing harder pirates (I wouldn't suggest doing L4 pirates until you've expanded your crew a lot more) and islands.

[꧁• Meeuw •꧂]

Like Fishstick says; If you have trouble, take it slow. Grind your capt'n and crew a bit on L1, and try taking on 2 after that. Navigate around towns so you'll always be able to pick up food and elixers, just in case.

At the very start, it's quite handy to pick the second crewmate. Scavange the island for crabmeat, pearls (which can be sold), and if they're not present, get your guys on a boat and start roaming those Lvl.1 territories. Stick with islands if you're not sure what to do, they can be scouted and don't require blind commitment like pirate encounters do. Last tip on the scouting; know your enemies. Tribals tend to be strong, crabs and oysters are especially safe to engage. If you encounter a 300HP fishman straight of the bat, that's a known "bug". Just restart, or load, since 0.9 uses autosave.

Once you have some money, get back to the town. Buying a better weapon than the knife you usually start with will help, hands down. Fishstick already listed the items that are especially useful.

This should get you started. :)

[Otto Von Bismor]

Also, don't expand your crew too fast.
More crew means more food needs to be dealt with (fishing, cooking, or gold spent), more morale to deal with (either paying salary, using consumables, or using rum), and it can quickly get out of hand.

You don't need to outnumber the enemy crew if you outlevel/outgear them.

If you have some spare gold, consider buying at least one bandage for each crewmember to keep handy as well. Nothing sucks more than losing a crewmember because he's bleeding from a fight with fishermen 3 destinations ago.


A barrel for your ship (sold in goods stores) is also a good investment fairly early, so you don't have to litter the deck with food/rum - crew will go to the barrel to get what they need, and cooks will cook unprepared food thats placed in barrels.

[TheClaireProject]

It's funny, just after I posted this I started a game and haven't stopped.

But now I'm confused. I was told to go find a guy on some island and that island is NOWHERE TO BE FOUND IN ANY DIRECTION. >.< They keep saying "KILL HIM KILL HIM" and I'm all "Duuuuude you gave the wrong directions"

[knifebunny]

One important factor is that this game seems to heavily favor RNG (random number generator) and this formula means that there is a lot of aspects of the game that can be random.

By this I mean that the starting skills you have, to whats available in what shops on what islands, as well as what kind of encounters that you will face. Sometimes you can be very lucky on your starting island and have a few oysters which you can havest and start out with a lot of gold. Other times you will be lucky and have a good number of lvl 1 pirates near your starting area which are almost guaranteed kill, and extra gold. The early game can be difficult if you don't get lucky with some of these aspects, and I find that if I am having a particularly bad start, I would prefer to restart the game afresh than try to battle it out.

As far as stats go, early on you want stamina for extra HP (also, the regen helps a lot), strength so that you do more damage with your sword, and a bit of intellect to help you gain XP faster which means more TP to spend. Later on when you start getting pistols, you can invest in dexterity, luck and agi, but you really want to have the other stats at a good number first.

On another topic, and this relates to Oblivion_Freak1's post, it is very handy to jot down the names of locations that contain certain items. For example, early on you might find a vendor that will sell you flintlock pistols which you can't afford yet, but if you write down the name of the town, later on down the track when you want to buy one, you know exactly where to head.

With regard to the bounty missions, most of the time I have taken one I have already discovered the location on the map. If you don't see it yet, don't worry the town shoulld show up eventually (unless this is a known bug). The other thing that isn't explained is that once he is killed, you have to return back to the town that gave you the mission in order to retrieve your prize money.

It would be extremely valuable if the dev's would implement a feature whereby you can see the name of a location when you are at it, so that way when you exit you dont have to sail to another location and then enter the world map again to see the name of the location. I am sure this isn't too much out of the question.

I hope this information is helpful, there are a number of other tidbits floating around in my head that I could relay, but I can't think of a way to get it all out of there for now, so if you have any other curious questions, I will try my best to help out.

[maestro]

My crew's morale seems to go down a lot faster now. I could only do two islands before having to return to town. I deconstruct the floor, let the poop fall out, then reconstruct it, but doesn't seem to help much either. And the new starting gold.. ouch.

[Mr.ShyGuy]

Originally posted by Oblivion_Freak1:

It's funny, just after I posted this I started a game and haven't stopped.

But now I'm confused. I was told to go find a guy on some island and that island is NOWHERE TO BE FOUND IN ANY DIRECTION. >.< They keep saying "KILL HIM KILL HIM" and I'm all "Duuuuude you gave the wrong directions"

From what I learned of bountys,they'll always be on a island or town you've already been to. Be sure to have a high lvl because this guy is armed to the teeth and has A LOT of hp. He can two shot/three shot your low lvl crew with a ranged and melee attacks.(I learned that the hard way :P)