Today I have another tale for you from Capt'n Doctor of the seven seas, a tale of excitement, adrenaline and betrayal.
So it started out like any other day, I logged on to start a Galley and waited for my crew to join, loading up on supplies as we were planning to defeat the Cursed Grog. Once they were in we set off to supply from the islands and forts nearby, alliance flag flying and lights left on to show our friendly nature. We’d been supplying for about half an hour by the time we pulled up to Plunder, so we were pretty stocked. On plunder was a Brig, “Perfect” I say to the rest of my crew then pull out my megaphone and shout over to them, “Hello can you hear me? You want to join an alliance?” I say. “Yeah sure, let’s do it” they reply almost immediately and join the alliance. Okay so there’s 2 ships, we’re pretty set now, I think to myself while the rest of my crew angle sails and drop them so we can get to Sharkbait in time. Within 2 seconds of the sails being dropped, the brig unloads 3 shots into us and leaves the alliance. Alright, if that’s how they’re going to play it we can do the same and begin firing on them while fixing. Turns out they had barely any materials so we sunk them quite quickly. “I guess we’ll have to go find another ship somewhere” one of my crewmates says and we leave in the direction of Wanderers as in the distance we can see another Galley. We decide at this point that we were going to have a new rule, if we get fired one even once, we’ll take them down. As we get closer, we can see a Brig sailing across towards them as well. “It’s the same guys” a crewmate says as he’s looking through the spyglass, “We’ll just have to try to warn the other Galley when we get there” I say. As we get closer we realise they’d formed an alliance and knew they were probably telling the Galley to attack us. Slowly we sail closer, being completely on guard for any rogue swimmers or powder kegs. Sails raised we drift in right next to the Galley, putting them in between us and the Brig, just in case, and start talking to them, “Careful for the Brig, they’re rogue, they’ll join an alliance and then fire on you, also if you fire on us we will fire back” I say to them, “Okay, thanks for the info” they say and turn towards the Brig, waiting to see what they’ll do. Out of nowhere, no sound que’s or anything, a coordinated attack happens, someone hops out of the water onto our Galley and the Brig fires 2 cannonballs right over the deck of the other Galley, hitting us. Fortunately they were both anchored so we lowered sails slightly and got the best firing angle possible onto them, as they’d just respawned they didn’t stand a chance. They went down quickly again and our attention turned to the Galley, wondering what they were going to do. I think their opinions were divided as 2 of them were trying to fire on us while the other 2 were trying to make friends. Down went the Galley. So by this point we’d been online for an hour wanting to do the Skellie ships and ended up taking down 3 ships instead. “I think it’s about time we do this solo” a crewmate suggests, “I think you might be right” I reply. At this point we’re about half full of supplies as a lot were used for these ships so we had to take it slow and steady at the Skellies. On our way over to Sharkbait we spot a Brig again, “That better not be the same guys” I say “Have they not learnt their lesson”. We all stare over the left side of the ship trying to make out the sail colour. Closer they come and we can finally make out the telltale sign of the Meg sails, confirming our suspicions of it being the same Brig. “Okay then, round 3 I guess” a crewmate says, while the 3 of them load up the cannons and get ready. They’re coming in fast. Too fast and smack straight into the side of our ship. Stupidly all 3 of them board our ship trying to kill us as fast as possible, what they didn’t know was that I had already climbed the rigging and had a powderkeg in hand. “Move out of the way” I shout to my crew and kamikaze into the middle of the 3 of their crew, hitting all 3 with the explosion and also damaging their ship. My crewmates started patching and left the area, by the time I spawned, the top of their mast was all that was left of their poor Brig. “Finally, lets go and fight the Skellies, we’ll just have to deal with the lack of supplies”. We were running out of time, less than an hour left until they despawned and it would be the final time that we could battle the drunkenness as we all had to go to bed after and the new Skeleton ships were coming the next day. Coming up to the area, we notice a sloop had already engaged the Skellies and were flying a ‘join alliance’ flag. We keep sailing over to them and as soon as we’re close we join them, one of their crew members jumps onto out ship, “Just a heads up, we’ve made a few enemies on the sea” I say to him to which he says that’s okay and in broken English tells us how they’re planning on sinking the Skellies, they have a chest of sorrows and want us to keep the ships occupied while they hop on board and drop the chest off. “Genius” I say and off we go to work. The first few waves go down pretty quickly, we have a system where the Galley takes all the damage and focus from the Skellies and the sloop goes in on clean up duty, collecting all the loot. Eventually the captain ship spawns and we rejoice in the fact that we’ve done it so quickly and without hassle when we see the one thing we were hoping not to see, the damn Brig that has a vendetta against us “We need to finish this quick” I shout over to the sloop “Okay” was their only response and we get to trying to sink the captain as fast as possible. However we weren’t quick enough. The Brig comes flying into the fight, wind behind them and slams straight into the sloop, “Why?” shouts our helpful little friend and all we hear from the Brig is a lot of Russian shouting, “They’re probably back for revenge again, they haven’t learnt their lesson” says one of my crew mates and we get to trying to take them out as fast as possible. We put a few holes in their bottom deck but not before we see our little friend go down, all the loot lost, “No bother” I say “We can go back for it in a second” but at that moment we get hit with a grog shot and we start taking water in a lot faster than before. The Brig is starting to go down at this point, so in a last ditch attempt cannonballs are hammered into them. Again we take them down, for the third or fourth time in the space of an hour and a half but unfortunately we also go down just after them and don’t manage to get the tons of loot left floating on the surface. Sadly, we ran out of time and the 21st was upon us. That was the end of the great battle for the Ancient Isles.
Again this game delivers stellar gameplay, every time you logon you create a different story and that I think is what gives its replayability factor. Thank you to my crew for just being great, thank you to the Sloop for joining us even though we had danger following us and thank you most of all to the Brig for making things interesting.
