Yeah that’s right I hit level 50 in Pirates of the Burning Sea and it only took me 32 seconds. No really, you can do it too. Just log in to your beta account and create a new character. You’ll find one million dubloons and an auction house packed full of lagging players. Oh, and you might find the auctioneer too if you wait for his graphic to load. If I wasn’t subtle enough let me be frank. It’s a laggy mess right now. If you’re able to actually make it to the store before your computer lashes out at you with an error or twelve then you’re probably home free. Before I go in to any more details on my experiences as an uber level 50 I want to help some of you who might be clueless about how to level to 50.
You first need to go to the auctioneer in the store. Then you need to search under your port for “adventure”. That should bring up a book about Swashbuckling Adventure something or another. You then want to purchase 49 of those at 100 each. Then you want to open your inventory and use each of them. It shouldn’t take you more than a minute to read all 49 and ding yourself 50. Now that you’re 50 it’s time to buy a ship and outfitting and here’s where things can get a little confusing. Depending on your class you’ll be able to use anywhere from small to colossal ships. Naval Officers are the ones who will be using colossal ships and the rest of you probably will want to give the Huge ships a try.
Since I hadn’t played a Naval Officer yet (being that I played a Pirate most of the beta) I decided to pick up the biggest ship I could possible find – The ‘Invincible’ 112 Gun. After comparing ‘The Invincible’ to the ‘Prince’ I decided to go with the Invincible because it has heavier guns. *shrug* If I’m going big I might as well go biggest. If you can’t use colossal ships then check out one of the expensive Pommern Frigates or the Pirate Frigate. The exact names escape me but if you sort by cost FLS prices them all fairly high. Head out of your port to the nearest contended area and have fun. This will be the last time for you to experience uberness without any risk.
It’s very interesting that FLS would reveal so much to anyone and everyone right before release. Since the ‘end-game’ of PotBS focuses heavily on port contention and PvP it could be said that right now players have the opportunity to see if they will like the end-game. I have mixed feelings right now. On one hand I have this bummed out feeling that the game itself is somewhat ‘spoiled’ for me now that I’ve played the biggest best ships but on the other it’s clear that the game is no different at level 1 than from 50. The only noticeable difference is that I have more cannons on my bigger slower ships.
This afternoon was a mixed bag of feelings for me. I took my slow 112 gun ship out of port and it took me nearly 20 minutes to reach a contended area. Along the way I was jumped by low level ships that did nothing but add on to the time it took to get there. When I finally found someone who was in a contended area they ran from me. Being that I was in the slowest ship known to the sailing age man I could not keep up. I even whipped the snot out of my crew to get the 20% speed increase on open sea and it was laughable compared to the other ships speed. I finally after an hour or so found a group and went into contended waters again. We found a lone player and jumped him. Once in the scenario it took me several minutes to even bring my garbage barge into range to fire my 56 on-one-side-guns. However, once I actually was able to open fire I nearly obliterated half of the enemies hull in one volley. Ridiculous damage but at a ridiculous cost.
I floated around for another 30 minutes before logging out. During my brief level 50 PvP jaunt I learned something. People are afraid to engage in a fair fight. No really, they are absolutely horrified to go against you 1v1, 2v2, 3v3; they only want to outnumber you. The result? It takes forever to find an opponent and engage them in combat. That’s really a bad thing considering how over crowded the servers currently are and how many servers will be in release. There will be 12 North American servers and 6 Euro servers at launch. Spread out these numbers and minus those not actually purchasing the game and my problem of finding a fight will be compounded to the 11th degree of suck.
I suppose if given enough time server communities will develop and societies will form and defend ports as well as being more proactive when it comes contending other ports. When the servers actually have an economy there might be more incentive to fight. At this point it’s really up in the air. My feelings on today’s fight were largely impacted by the suckfest of a ship I had. I’m going to play a Privateer later and get myself a faster ship so that I can out run the cowards.
Hopefully the early look at all the PotBS has to offer won’t come back to bite FLS in the aft.
Any PvP fight in any game anywhere is unfair. Why would you risk everything on a 50/50 chance? Fighting to win means fighting to overwhelm.
Sub Tzu wrote:
“If you outnumber the enemy ten to one, surround them.
If you outnumber them five to one, attack them.
If you outnumber them two to one, divide them.
If you are equal, then find an advantageous battle.
If you are fewer, defend against them.
If you are much weaker, evade them.
Small forces are not powerful. However, large forces cannot catch them.”
Voluntarily fighting an even battle is one of the most foolish things you can do in war.
But these are practically free ships and the purpose of this “end of beta be uber” event is to try stuff out. People go to contended areas and then run away if they see a fair fight. There really is absolutely no ‘fun’ to be had in PotBS in lopsided fights. That’s just how this game is built. If you are going 2v1 then the 2 will almost (99%) always win against the 1. However, a 1v1 or 2v2 can be a lot of fun and the outcome is not always decided.
Seems foolish that anyone would stick to Chinese military strategies when you lose more from running and win(learn) more from losing.
Well, I saw very few fair fights in DAoC or EQ2 PvP. I think expecting to find them in PotBS, WAR, or any other game that emphasizes PvP, is unrealistic. You don’t engage in PvP to lose, especially in a game like PotBS where, according to Tobold, PvP is almost always too high a risk to make economic sense.
The loser will lose A LOT. It makes sense to run unless you are sure to win.
If 2v1 is really a 99% win for the two, then I think you can expect to see plenty of fleets of two ganking any lone ship they come across 🙂
Absolutely. The only problem with that goes back to what I’ve been saying. They’ll just run away and you’ll never catch them. It’s incredibly difficult to find an opponent who wants to engage in combat and not someone who is looking for a free kill.
@Keen: is there no equivalent of the E-O “tackler” mechanic then?
I thought there were specialised shot-types that damaged a ship’s sails? Is it not possible to fit out a fast, highly evasive, ship in a group with this damage type, and use it to cripple target ships, so that the main, slow, damage dealers can close to range?
@ Michael: Absolutely, that’s the only real way to stop someone from running away once you have them engaged in a scenario. Someone, preferably the fastest of the group, has to chain shot the enemies sails to keep them from running. The downside is that rarely will a fast ship be fast enough to catch the enemy vessel unless you happened upon a lone 112gun slow ship.
The biggest problem occurs in the open sea where there really is no way of stopping your opponent from running because you can’t fire weapons. The open sea is merely your ship on the Caribbean map and battles must be ‘engaged’ by pressing the spacebar close enough to an enemy. And when I say close I mean almost touching the enemy. On the open sea it’s very easy to see an opponent and turn tail before they even get close enough to catch you. At that point it’s a matter of hiding in a port and you’re invulnerable.