Post by omphale on Jan 22, 2010 4:06:24 GMT -8
CI Tips n Tricks (non-bnav):
Always -
1. Have fun!
2. If you're jobbing from the board, make sure ye have weapons equipped. Some find weapons make little or no difference to NPP fights, but many navvers I know who job out CIs expect mates to have and use weapons. It's best to be prepared.
3. Keep your station, and dismiss all challenges. This is mainly for fairness with the booty division. The more jobs a pirate does on ship, the more chances they have to win stuff. In order to remain the most equal, no one should fight 1v1, and all pirates should do the same job going in as well as on the way out (unless all are aware of the plan and agree to it beforehand).
4. Team. Same rules as ever, especially to avoid groups of 4 or more in Swordfighting.
5. Forage :
My two cents is that dismissing *is* the better option in a stuck situation. Of the times I have held out hope (in the beginning before I knew better), I probably got the piece I needed only 20% of the time. Not good odds. Better odds to get a few more bone boxes or jars on a new board than maybe get that one chest from the original one.
Turn ants to the nearest side as soon as they come on the board, and work around monkeys whenever possible. Watch the forage meter. If there's a monkey below a bone box and the meter is on its last banana, you may want to dismiss and start a new puzzle instead of activating the animation and working the single-wide. In the time it would take to finish all that, you could be spawning more or bigger chests on a new board.
THRALLING
1. Learn to token anywhere *but* a thralling CI...in flotillas and blockades, in Atlantis, or with crew mates and/or on jobbing CI trips with no thrall expectations. Being under pressure to produce tokens in a thralling CI is not the ideal learning environment.
(How-to's are located on each duty station on a ship. Click on 'How to Play', and the category which explains tokening is "Blockades & Maneuvers".)
2. If at all possible, type e or z in vessel chat when you dismiss challenges, so the navver can determine when it's best to use the CI tokens.
3. Watch the meter. The OIC will enable the meter by requesting flower/cookie tokens, and it will appear on the lower right of your screen. It only takes two CI tokens from each station to make a gold, thrall-making bnav token. If the meter for your station is full (yellow for sail/rig, blue for bilge, red for carp), do your best to hold back tokens until the cookie meter is reset. What I mean is, continue to play your puzzle, but don't do the move that will make the token until the cookie meter has free space to count it. (But keep an eye on your puzzle's star meter - it's a bummer to hold back a token and lose it anyway because your puzzle refreshed.)
Note: A ton of tokens looks cool on the DR, but if you're not making them at the right time, thralling will take much longer than ideal, and it may cause otherwise avoidable frays... and if you fray, everyone is losing their board which may have had token builds on it, and you're killing the zombies that could've been made into thralls-- all of which makes the thralling process even lengthier.
4. Not that any of our mates would intentionally do this, but, just for the record: ... A pirate should never stat-save in CI. Meaning, never rely solely on your partner for tokening. Even if they're capable. Chances are, they're sacrificing some portion of performance in order to token well. It's only fair that you do the same. There's a difference between low/no token output and stat-saving, and, trust me, people know the difference and will be paying attention. (The exception to this is, of course, if all pirates are aware from the start that one duty-focused and one token-focused mate for each station is what the OIC prefers. Then, it's a choice the tokener makes whether that's acceptable to them to stay and participate.)
5. Are we there yet? Don't ask how many more thralls. In a thralling CI, there's normally 2 mates on each duty station, plus the navver. That's 7 mates. You can check how many thralls there are on the ship under the Ahoy! tab. Unless otherwise told, you'll know you're done thralling when there are 7 thralls aboard.
When the thralling is done, the only real need for flower/cookie tokens is to help kick off extra boarders before ye reach the island. At the full-thrall point, if the navver has a token available, focus on duty performance rather than tokening. This is especially helpful to the ship if it's damaged- to get it down so exiting the board later will be less harrowing, or if you're sail/rig - to get to the island as quickly as possible.
6. Watch thralls in rumble. If there's only one dot on them, it's widely acceptable to continue to keep an eye on them as you stay targeted on attack. (Or you may choose to protect as you insta-build, and switch to enemy target before you break it.) When a thrall's puzzle reaches half-full, or if there's more than one dot on them, then it's really time to protect them. Keep checking back as you protect! If the thrall is no longer being attacked and its board has recovered to less than half, stop protecting. Target an enemy and help your mates beat 'em up.
7. Watch thralls in swordfights. Above all, teaming is most important, but, when it's possible, try to team on enemies that are attacking thralls. Try to keep teams in groups of less than 4, even on Homs. The thralls move around, so keep checking the teaming.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I know most of our mates know all this, but I thought it might be good to have it posted for new mates, or for mates new to subscribership.
(The things about tokening, especially, I wish someone would've told me early on, so I'm passing it along.)
~ Om
Always -
1. Have fun!
2. If you're jobbing from the board, make sure ye have weapons equipped. Some find weapons make little or no difference to NPP fights, but many navvers I know who job out CIs expect mates to have and use weapons. It's best to be prepared.
3. Keep your station, and dismiss all challenges. This is mainly for fairness with the booty division. The more jobs a pirate does on ship, the more chances they have to win stuff. In order to remain the most equal, no one should fight 1v1, and all pirates should do the same job going in as well as on the way out (unless all are aware of the plan and agree to it beforehand).
4. Team. Same rules as ever, especially to avoid groups of 4 or more in Swordfighting.
5. Forage :
- You should be ready to forage as soon as the fray ends. You can manually dismiss the Rumble or SF game right as it ends, then click the loot pile to start the forage puzzle, and gain a few extra seconds than if you had let it start automatically.
- If you do end up with a forage board of stuck chests, you can dismiss the game and start again. This may be the better option than waiting for one of the special pieces to spawn.
My two cents is that dismissing *is* the better option in a stuck situation. Of the times I have held out hope (in the beginning before I knew better), I probably got the piece I needed only 20% of the time. Not good odds. Better odds to get a few more bone boxes or jars on a new board than maybe get that one chest from the original one.
- Monkey and Ant special pieces can be particularlly frustrating in CI since they have such long animation times. They can rob you of valuable seconds.
Turn ants to the nearest side as soon as they come on the board, and work around monkeys whenever possible. Watch the forage meter. If there's a monkey below a bone box and the meter is on its last banana, you may want to dismiss and start a new puzzle instead of activating the animation and working the single-wide. In the time it would take to finish all that, you could be spawning more or bigger chests on a new board.
THRALLING
1. Learn to token anywhere *but* a thralling CI...in flotillas and blockades, in Atlantis, or with crew mates and/or on jobbing CI trips with no thrall expectations. Being under pressure to produce tokens in a thralling CI is not the ideal learning environment.
(How-to's are located on each duty station on a ship. Click on 'How to Play', and the category which explains tokening is "Blockades & Maneuvers".)
2. If at all possible, type e or z in vessel chat when you dismiss challenges, so the navver can determine when it's best to use the CI tokens.
3. Watch the meter. The OIC will enable the meter by requesting flower/cookie tokens, and it will appear on the lower right of your screen. It only takes two CI tokens from each station to make a gold, thrall-making bnav token. If the meter for your station is full (yellow for sail/rig, blue for bilge, red for carp), do your best to hold back tokens until the cookie meter is reset. What I mean is, continue to play your puzzle, but don't do the move that will make the token until the cookie meter has free space to count it. (But keep an eye on your puzzle's star meter - it's a bummer to hold back a token and lose it anyway because your puzzle refreshed.)
Note: A ton of tokens looks cool on the DR, but if you're not making them at the right time, thralling will take much longer than ideal, and it may cause otherwise avoidable frays... and if you fray, everyone is losing their board which may have had token builds on it, and you're killing the zombies that could've been made into thralls-- all of which makes the thralling process even lengthier.
4. Not that any of our mates would intentionally do this, but, just for the record: ... A pirate should never stat-save in CI. Meaning, never rely solely on your partner for tokening. Even if they're capable. Chances are, they're sacrificing some portion of performance in order to token well. It's only fair that you do the same. There's a difference between low/no token output and stat-saving, and, trust me, people know the difference and will be paying attention. (The exception to this is, of course, if all pirates are aware from the start that one duty-focused and one token-focused mate for each station is what the OIC prefers. Then, it's a choice the tokener makes whether that's acceptable to them to stay and participate.)
5. Are we there yet? Don't ask how many more thralls. In a thralling CI, there's normally 2 mates on each duty station, plus the navver. That's 7 mates. You can check how many thralls there are on the ship under the Ahoy! tab. Unless otherwise told, you'll know you're done thralling when there are 7 thralls aboard.
When the thralling is done, the only real need for flower/cookie tokens is to help kick off extra boarders before ye reach the island. At the full-thrall point, if the navver has a token available, focus on duty performance rather than tokening. This is especially helpful to the ship if it's damaged- to get it down so exiting the board later will be less harrowing, or if you're sail/rig - to get to the island as quickly as possible.
6. Watch thralls in rumble. If there's only one dot on them, it's widely acceptable to continue to keep an eye on them as you stay targeted on attack. (Or you may choose to protect as you insta-build, and switch to enemy target before you break it.) When a thrall's puzzle reaches half-full, or if there's more than one dot on them, then it's really time to protect them. Keep checking back as you protect! If the thrall is no longer being attacked and its board has recovered to less than half, stop protecting. Target an enemy and help your mates beat 'em up.
7. Watch thralls in swordfights. Above all, teaming is most important, but, when it's possible, try to team on enemies that are attacking thralls. Try to keep teams in groups of less than 4, even on Homs. The thralls move around, so keep checking the teaming.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I know most of our mates know all this, but I thought it might be good to have it posted for new mates, or for mates new to subscribership.
(The things about tokening, especially, I wish someone would've told me early on, so I'm passing it along.)
~ Om
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