[Pirates] Solo template for pirate hunting

[Stashy]

Raiding pirate ships out on the High Seas seems like a great lot of fun, so I've started to research into making a template for capturing and killing them! I've run into a brick wall though in trying to find information. I've seen ABC archers mentioned here and there, and I know my friend can solo them with his mage/tamer, but beyond that, I just can't seem to find much!

So I have come to you, wonderful stratics readers, in search of vast amounts of knowledge. What templates work for you? I would love something that would work for a new account (700 skill points), and doesn't require a multi-million gold suit of armor! Archery definitely sounds interesting, as I don't have any form of archer yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT - I'd like to wedge fishing in there if at all possible, too! Kill two birds with one stone.

 

[Hell's Ironworks]

Been using my 1998 pure dexxer for a year now and works fine for me!

Archery
Swords
parry
tact
anat
healing

Use your bow to kill the mob, i use comp bow with armor ignore special attack, then board and whack away at the pirate. Never disarm them , they are nasty wrestlers! DOnt have time for a big essay this morning but ill gladly show you the ropes if you play chessy!

 

[Lorddog]

what method for the inial boat confrontation?
do you cannon them into submition first? it seems the keep moving like crazy and it seemed to me that you need 1 person to stear boat and another to handle the cannon.

lorddog

 

[Hell's Ironworks]

Aye you have to scuttle it first.

I position myself right in the center of the 4 aft cannons, that way you can sail the boat with mouse, and never have to move or go out of ¨sailing mode¨ while being able to operate 4 cannons. Note that you can only do this with Garg or Orc ship. I prefer Garg ships to fight Pirates since it has more HP.

For the approach i use the mini map, and try to come in broadside, fire 2 cannons, then sail out of range and reload, rinse and repeat. Some folks like to fire all 4 but the longer you are there , the more you get hit. And i hate crawling back to shore for repairs.

Once you have scuttled the ship, try to align your ship's hold with the other ship, with your Bow facing opposite directions

<----Hold.......
.......Hold---->

This way, even if he turns while scuttled, his cannons wont be able to hit you.

Once you're in position, go out of sail mode and pick off any foe left with your bow, then board and whack on the capt!

 

[Stashy]

Great advice! I think I might try a dexxer. Sounds effective as well as simple!

 

[Hell's Ironworks]

Glad i could help!

And like i said, if you play chessy, ill be glad to show you. I just moved there and trying to assemble a lil crew.

 

[Banner]

Thanks Hell for the info. I have one ? I have a Britt ship how well do they fair and hold up in battle??

 

[Hell's Ironworks]

havent owned one yet but im pretty sure id find it to big and slow for pirating purposes.

Might be fun with a big crew or if it had levels and you could use it as a house. But not for soloing.

My personnal favs are Garg ship for pirates and Orc ship for merchants.

 

[Zannette]

Do you think Pure Sampire would work as well and just skip the Archery part?

Thank you,
Z

 

[Hell's Ironworks]

Never had a sampire but you need some kind of ranged attack. if its not archery it as to be something wether its fukya darts, spells, pots, or random objects

Or you could just fire grapeshots until they're all dead , but this would be expensive and not that effective...

 

[vexyvixen]

I solo pirate ships and merchant ships all of the time. My character is a tamer/mage. I use my little row boat to help block the pirate ship in and as my dragon is focused on killing the orcs, I use my cannons to scuttle the pirate's ship. Once the pirate's ship is scuttled then I hop on board and use my dragon and magery to get the pirate's health low enough to bind up. It always works out, but sometimes I get scuttled, but no big deal finding shore to fix my boat.

 

[startle]

I solo pirate ships and merchant ships all of the time. My character is a tamer/mage. I use my little row boat to help block the pirate ship in and as my dragon is focused on killing the orcs, I use my cannons to scuttle the pirate's ship. Once the pirate's ship is scuttled then I hop on board and use my dragon and magery to get the pirate's health low enough to bind up. It always works out, but sometimes I get scuttled, but no big deal finding shore to fix my boat.

Thread is a bit over a year old, but still relevant... So, I'm guessing that you're using your GD's "breath" to do the "distance" killing?

 

[The Mule]

I used to solo pirate ships with a RP char with no fancy armor or weapons. Wasnt even full 70s resists. Template was

120 Mace
100 Parry
100 Anat
100 Tactics
100 Heal
100 Fishing
100 Focus

I would stand in the middle of the ship so that I could control 4 cannons, 2 on either side. Id use heavy grape shot which woul kill off the nasties on deck while scuttling the ship. Once it was skuttled Id move in from the rear and fire the front cannon at the remaining orcs until only the boss was left. From there the boss wasnt hard. Just needed to be fast on heals and resist the temptation to disarm as they were near impossible after.

So all these fancy templates with GD or RC or whatever you have will work... But I think it was a lot more fun and challenging to try it pre-AOS style and win.

 

[vexyvixen]

Thread is a bit over a year old, but still relevant... So, I'm guessing that you're using your GD's "breath" to do the "distance" killing?

Sorry, I didn't see your question until just now. Well, once the orcs are all killed I scuttle the Pirate's boat then get on the Pirate's ship and use the Greater Dragon to kill the Pirate. I redline the Pirate, then tell my Greater to All stop and All stay, then I bind up the Pirate using the binding rope. I hope this helps.

 

[startle]

So your GD does all the killing then?

 

[Aragoni]

120 Fishing
120 Magery
100 Eval Int
80 Meditation
100 Mining
100 Hiding
120 Spellweaving


720 Cap /20 Points on Jewelry
My Hybrid

 

[PixelPoint]

Does repond slayer work on Pirates?

 

[Adol]

Basically, any template at all will work; the mobs aboard are not any harder than the Orks you find elsewhere in Trammel. If you find them too large a group to handle, the solution is to load your cannon with Heavy Grapeshot and aim into the middle of the ship so the crew take damage as well. You will often have killed most of the crew this way by the time it's crippled enough to board.

Ideally you want the Orc ship already as you can arm 4 cannon at once from the spot just behind the mast. If you don't have it, the Tokuno is fine, take 1 cannon on each side. Make sure you have macros set up to Say the sailing ("Forward Left" etc) commands and map them to the Numpad or anywhere else you like. Now sail up to the pirate you want to fight, and ram into his rear side. They used to turn around endlessly but they seem a little more placid now. Fire two cannon into his back, then immediately if it starts moving use the macros to keep your ship jammed against his hold so he can't turn around. Fire cannon into him until he's crippled.

If you have difficulty with that, approach from the side, fire cannon, "Come About", fire the other sides cannon, then immediately move the ship about a screen away from them and re-arm. If somehow they randomly shuffle towards you, just keep out of range until the cannon is armed again and repeat. They don't fire their own cannon in any meaningful way (if they did every fight would end up equal) but randomly, so normally you can get away with anywhere from never being hit to maybe 4 times at worst, as if you dash in and out he's unlikely to fire the cannon lined up with you in time.

Once they aren't moving, make sure you're at the rear again as the cannon keep firing until all the crew are gone. Now you can board their ship. Melee based? Jump across and kill the spell casting orcs first. Get into trouble? Quickly click your own rope and teleport back to your own ship; if you got the spellcasters you're now safe except for the pirate captains arrows, but you should be able to heal through that. Tamer? Hide under a dragon and let it clear the deck. Archer? Shoot the casters again.

The pirate is a complete wuss; once you've got aggro on him, he has insane hit point regen but does virtually no damage. I like to take smaller pets to train on him once I have aggro, indeed I'll even lure him towards the chests so I can loot them at the same time as bringing his health down and the blue beetle I'm loading with his stuff is also biting him too. Once he's below 7% hit points or so, he's available to be roped; even a GD won't kill him before the rope works, and you can bind him even when he's being damaged. Just stay near him so he doesn't get out of range.

 

[Aislin*SP]

Adol - is there any chance you could make a video of your 4 cannon, back and forth attack? I'm a horrible visualizer.

 

[popps]

Did anyone make a rough estimate, in terms of efficiency, whether the resources gained as loot surpass by a considerable margin the cost for the fight in terms of repairs then needed to one's own ship and of the ammunitions lost during the fight ?

Since I imagine that the fight against a pirate ship is tougher than against a merchant ship, the cost of repairs and ammunitions spent is higher then versus a merchant ship. Does the loot worth obtained from a pirate ship, justify this extra fighting cost as versus a merchant ship ?

Or, in the end, is it just more practical to do else in the game and then get whatever resources come from loot via regular resources gathering or even buying them rather than from hunting pirate or merchant ships ?

Bottom line is, aside from the fun of a few boat fights just for the fun of it, is the "farming" or pirate/merchant ships loot worth the trouble and time it takes as compared to other ways of collecting it ?

 

[Adol]

Adol - is there any chance you could make a video of your 4 cannon, back and forth attack? I'm a horrible visualizer.

I'll work on one today for you.

Regarding ammunition, you'll use about 14 of each item to stop either a merchant or pirate ship; you'll gain around 8-10 back from the pirate ship, none from a merchant. The loot is financially worth it for the merchant but not the pirate, however you capture pirates for Orc ship parts which as few people bother doing it now you could probably sell once complete for a pretty penny. I'll try and show that in the video too.

 

[Adol]

The video should be live soon. I make a lot of mistakes in it, so it's not the perfect tutorial... it's also 1 hour 11 minutes long, and that's edited to show only some of the journey there and back again to catch 2 pirates. You'll thus see how inefficient then it is to fight them, unless you get an Orc ship part. Which I don't on one of the quests. I didn't find a merchantman during my tutorial, but the loot is indeed much better.
However, I set out to do it the most difficult way, with the Tokuno ship and my roleplay Fisherman, so I'm using only 1 cannon at a time and a weak template with no shield and just a cutlass. You wouldn't however do it much quicker except perhaps on the final pirate fight with any other template, and even then you'll see how from the damage floating up how fast and hard I'm hitting him that they just aren't very exciting or short fights.
Still, you'll also see I take no damage at all either time from the pirates. One gets stuck when I ram him from behind, and one illustrates the dive in, fire and dive out tactic. If you were using the orc ship, you'd dive in, fire twice, and dive out again. I mess up the first bit of looting due to video recording lag, and my beetle accidentally getting killed (rare that happens, you see him survive the second time) and at some points I wander about for a while without apparent reason... and not every time is showing how you can't access cannon, it's genuine mindless meandering!

But all the same, I hope this proves useful. I type throughout most of it so it's probably worth watching fully, if you have the time! First pirate fight is 23 minutes in, second at 48 minutes if not!