Prevent aging?

[Кукушка]

Hey there
Is there a way to prevent aging? Play with the same character for virtually forever? Is it possible?
Thanks

[simwitch1]

Yup, just don;t return to port and divide the plunder. While it doesn't prevent ageing it does allow you to play for a very very long time with the same character.

[Ulysses]

Originally posted by simwitch1:

Yup, just don;t return to port and divide the plunder. While it doesn't prevent ageing it does allow you to play for a very very long time with the same character.

what does divide and plunder even do?

[simwitch1]

Divide the plunder is simply sharing the gold with the crew, once you've taken your % share. On the Pirates! community page, you can read the manual which gives lots of info about the game,. Worth reading if you're new to the game

[Ulysses]

Originally posted by simwitch1:

Divide the plunder is simply sharing the gold with the crew, once you've taken your % share. On the Pirates! community page, you can read the manual which gives lots of info about the game,. Worth reading if you're new to the game

but isnt all that doing is just getting a % of your gold?

[simwitch1]

Yes, which builds up your wealth points.

[Orphaliman]

I divide the plunder when the crew isn't happy. They get unhappy because they dont want to be at sea forever and probably die. So if you arent making money, or if you're spending money, or if you taking on too many men per gold coin the crew starts to get unhappy. Now what I usually do is reset the men and restart my adventure after dividing the plunder. The most effective way to do this is to attack towns to reduce your numbers and gain a bunch of gold. Then you start selling off all your goods and ships until you have your favorite ship left. Then you divide the plunder with the remaining men. You'll notice as your numbers get low that the men get happy again, because their share goes up.


Eventually, you divide the plunder and take a percentage that you never lose (keep until you retire). If you gave a lot of gold ou to your men when you divide the plunder it's far easier to get men to sign up again. but if you stiffed everyone you're gonna have to make a name for yourself again.

[CobaltNova]

It has been a while since I checked so take my comment with a grain of salt.

EDIT/TLDR: Dividing the plunder costs you time, you can avoid doing it if you maintain ~500 GOLD for each CREW you currently have. Be careful because this means that a 20 year voyage can go from VERY HAPPY to MUTINOUS if you spend too much gold.

As I recall you start in your early 20s and roughly every 10 years you suffer an aging penalty. This penalty is effectively a '-1' to a bunch of hidden statistics. The most noticeable of these being your dueling quickness and dancing 'forgiveness' (the ability for a late/wrong dancing move to still pass or become a 'flourish').

This is offset by the difficulty (I believe it is a +1 for each level easier than normal, and I think harder difficulties instead accelerate the penalties) and whether you have the medical items (+1 for each of the 2 for a max of +2, or a delay of a couple decades).

If you have a good grasp on the mechanics, dancing is manageable even into the 50s but swordplay becomes a pain even with the best swords and pistols once you hit your 60s. Despite this, your character is functionally immortal as long as you don't divide the plunder (at some point, the game will force retire you (difficulty dependent?) when you divide the plunder, but it can't force this unless you choose the option)

EDIT2: You can maintain a good performance for ~40 game years if you get all beneficial items. This puts a soft cap at roughly 60 game years before things get so hard they stop being fun. You can't really avoid this, but you can avoid wasting time by NEVER dividing the plunder until you retire. You also should avoid unnecessary port visits because each port visit costs a GUARANTEED WEEK even if you do nothing (this is why ships seem to 'teleport' when you visit a port)

To avoid mutiny you need the crew to be 'neutral' or better (0+ score, the straight line face on the morale icon) or they will eventually mutiny. The key to this is that the morale is actually always as 'mutinous' (-2 I believe on a 5 point scale) but has a positive (+) modifier based on how many months you have been at sea.

The counter to the mutinous status is your GOLD. Your difficulty decides how the plunder will be divided (apprentice gives you more gold, the higher difficulties give you less) and the crew decides their morale on what share they would get if you divided the plunder immediately.

The crew morale basically is: H = T + G - 2
H = happiness
T = decaying grace period (something like +3 I think on most difficulties, decaying over several months)
G = gold score

Where G is something like: G = ((Total Gold - Captain Share)/Crew Count)/Gold Expected

So if the difficulty set Gold Expected is something like 100 gold (I think it gets worse on hard difficulties):
100 Gold per Crew -> +1
500 Gold per Crew -> +5

This means that you can have a permanently Very Happy crew as long as you have 7 times the Expected Gold per crew member. In practice, this means that you can run a full crew frigate (~300 crew) for somewhere between 200-300 thousand gold.