Captain’s Blog: A good day to die?

I updated my weekly blog over at the Pirates of the Burning Sea Vault with a riveting tale of adventure on the open seas of the Caribbean. I tell the tale of how my level 8 Pirate captain bested a level 17 Frenchman by using tactics and pure Pirate luck. I have also included a few tips and strategies that some of you may find useful if you happen across a higher level player or any other player for that matter in PvP. I hope you enjoy ‘A good day to die?’

Read on for the full adventure!


Ahoy there readers! Welcome to Captain Keen’s Blog. I’ve spoken enough on general topics and it’s time to share an adventure I had on the open sea. This past week I have spent a good majority of my time searching out opportunities to engage in player versus player combat. At heart I sail for the glory of battle and the scurvy seadogs they call NPCs just don’t cut it! To avoid burnout I have been indulging myself in Pirates of the Burning Sea Open Beta for only an hour or so a day. Due to the nature of PotBS I can turn an hour of sailing into quite a productive afternoon.

This particular character I have been working on is only level 8. He’s a Pirate Captain who uses Dirty Fighting. I have been focusing on offensive sailing skills with a hint of defense and my point allocation in Dirty Fighting has been towards AoE grenade abilities. Since I am purely offensive I know that I must play to my strengths. I’m a low level in comparison to many other ships sailing these waters so it would do me good to find a quick sturdy vessel capable of moving in to deliver a blow and getting out before I’m splintered apart by their irons. The obvious choice at level 8 is a Bermuda Sloop. Capable of moving at speeds of up to 15.50 with fast turn rate it shouldn’t be hard to out maneuver the over confident larger vessels. With 4 swivels and 8 top deck cannons at a reload speed of 17s I can take great advantage of whipping my crew to increase fire rate. Finding a ship like this is quite simple; they are everywhere.

Now on to the adventure! With my Bermuda Sloop armed to the teeth and my crew ready to set sail I opened my map and found a nice area of contention around Tortuga. This offered me the perfect opportunity to test my abilities. Since I am only level 8 and the ships in these waters can be often 4x my level I need a place to fall back in case I become surrounded. Moving my ship into position I lowered my sails and awaited an opponent that I felt I could best. (TIP: Do not color your ship or sails unless you wish to stand out like a sore thumb. Blend in with the ships around you and the element of surprise will be yours.) After about 10 minutes of waiting I finally spotted what I felt was a decent target. A level 17 Frenchman in what appeared to be a rather large vessel. I can’t recall the exact name but it might have been some form of Cerberus. I know from experience that these ships are slower but can pack one hell of a punch if I let them. The perfect opportunity to test my ship’s speed.

Raising my sails to full speed I shot like a bullet right towards my unknowing prey. The Frenchman had just left port and his sails were still down. It took him almost until I was on top of him to raise his sails and I was almost sure he might have stepped afk. I engaged in combat. Upon entering combat I was met with the message “There is a storm!” and it began to rain and the sky was black. I immediately positioned myself up wind so that it if my opponent wanted to get anywhere near me he would have to fight the wind to get me. Also, this gives me the speed advantage when bearing down on him. I waited to see his first move. Like most he raised his sails and began sailing towards me, probably laughing that a level 8 was going to engage him. I enabled my crew whipping and my defensive stance as well as my increased chance to resist a boarding party.

It was a good day to die I told myself. I raised my sails and loaded bar shot into my cannons. (The obvious advantage to destroying his sails is that I am faster naturally and with his sails ripped apart he won’t be able to do much more than sit there.) I began sailing right for him in a head on collision course. When I get into acceptable range I turned sharply exposing my port side to his bow. I opened fire with great results. Expecting the standard response I waited for him to begin turning to return fire. He did. I immediately began sailing at an angle and was able to catch his bow again with another bar shot. I repeated this process a few times and his sails were down to about 60%. The entire time while fighting I knew that I could not let him get too close or else I would lose my ability to out maneuver him. One shot from his guns could be the fatal blow it takes to slow me down.

About five minutes into the fight now he finally caught on that I wasn’t going to let him get a shot off on me. He made the smart move of sailing right for me probably with the intention either trying to board me or catch me off guard. I had his sail down to about 30% by this time and he was struggling to catch me. I made the stupid mistake of getting too close and he got a shot off on me from his stern. I took substantial damage to my ship hull and my crew and sails took significant damage as well. I decided to play it safe for the remainder of the time and I immediately used a repair kit and put some distance between us. His swivels were still capable of hitting me but I shrugged those hits off. I completely destroyed his sails leaving him a sitting duck. I loaded my canister shot and lowered his crew ratio to an acceptable boarding ratio and went in for the kill.

I brought my Bermuda Sloop (I named her The Mean Keen) up against the bow of his vessel and begun the boarding process. His crew was demoralized and in bad shape while mine was completely full. Boarding combat is tricky. I had no idea how good he was at it nor did I know what fighting style he would employ on me or whether or not I could even beat him. Perhaps I should have sunk him since I had him, but I wanted to try. I engaged in swashbuckling combat with his crew and immediately fired off my AoE skills. His crew took substantial damage and this allowed for my boarding party to have the upper hand. I fired a pistol shot directly at his captain dealing a good chunk of damage and finished him off with a finishing move (I’m glad they beefed these up in the recent patch). His captain was down but his crew was fighting on giving him the chance to respawn. I hit them with another AoE attack thus finishing them off completely. I called in reinforcements that arrived right when his Captain respawned. He was all by himself… right where I wanted him.

I went in for the kill, or rather let me crew surround him and finish him off. They deserved the glory of turning this French seadog into a pincushion. I had won the battle. A level 8 had taken down a level 17. His ship was maimed in the attack and his pride has to be hurting. It was a good day to die, but I denied Davy Jones’ Locker the chance. Perhaps, another day. For now I’ll take my victory and log out.

Until Next time,
Captain Keen of The Mean Keen

  • So that sounds cool, all that time and fun combat. But what happened in the end?

    By boarding the ship and killing the captain and crew, are you now the proud owner of a Level 17 ship?

    Does he ‘lose’ his ship?

  • I did not take his ship. I believe I could have but I’m not really interested in using his ship. It was too slow for my liking.

    His cargo was sufficient payment. 😀

  • I haven’t played PotBS yet, but I’ve been following this and other blogs that talk about it. Naval combat has always been one of my favorite things to do on a computer (ever since the old Sub Commander and Das Boot games). That’s probably why I like Eve so much. According to the blogs, the naval combat is the best part of PotBS.

    I was randomly surfing the web and discovered that the next installment of the Total War series, Empire: Total War, will include 3-d naval combat for the first time in a Total War title and is set in the same time period as PotBS.

    I figured that anyone playing PotBS might be interrested in this, even though TW isn’t an MMO. If you’re familiar with the TW series, you know that combat in TW is a very immersive experience. I can’t wait to see what they do with naval combat, as I’m sure it’ll be spectacular. I can smell the smoke of cannonfire and hear the hiss of passing shells already.

    Link to the Wiki where I saw it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_War_%28video_game_series%29

  • The strategy portion is turn-based like Risk. When you start combat it changes to real time strategy 3d. Although not shown here, the land combat has 3-d terrain with destructable buildings, 3-d foliage, fire, smoke, fog, night-time fights, etc..

    If you like wargames with solid history and epic scope, and you have a few days to play a single campaign, then TW is the best out there. For example, when you look at the screen shot above, understand that all those guys actually move around and perform their jobs. They will load the cannon and yank the lanyard to fire, and the musket guys will to the same. It’s amazing to see a land battle with 20 thousand individually rendered 3d soldiers fighting away with semi-ragdoll physics when they die.

  • One of the things TW is famous for is how smooth the graphics engine runs. There’s nothing else around to my knowledge that has that kind of eye candy with such low system requirements. I’m using a Radeon x1600 Pro with 512 MB memory and 2 gig of system RAM. I can run Medieval 2:TW at nearly max settings and still get over 25 frames per second. Since the x1600 is about a year and a half old, I’d say that the system requirements aren’t too bad. Last time I looked at the TW web site (long time ago), there was a playable demo that walked you through part of the tutorial. Not a bad way to see if you can run it or not.