So, you just bought Pixel Piracy and do not know how to accomplish anything? Need a few tips, hints or general advice? Worry not! Here I will aim at providing as much help as possible to anybody who is just starting their pirate career! I had problems myself, especially with some of the game’s functions, such as opening chests or looting ships, but now that all of that is cleared out of the way I can help you, or at least set you on the right course!
Plenty of images incoming!
Sudden explosions, fires, starvation and more! Ain’t it grand to be a pirate?
The Controls in Pixel Piracy are very simple. You have three action buttons (1, 2, and 3) and you scroll the map left and right using either the left and right arrows or A and D. Your Spacebar is used to interact with items, theoretically. In practice it only works when opening stores when at a town, and to open the overall Menu, to check on your crew, ship and other information.
At the bottom of the screen you have five buttons. The first, Crew Move button is the same as your Action 2 button (default is right mouse button). You orders your crew to move to a specific spot. The crew might ignore your order if their morale is low, or if they are fighting.
Your second button is the attack button. This may be used instead of the right mouse button to target a specific enemy, for your crew to attack, but it is also the only way to engage neutral ships, by click and dragging the button onto a friendly or neutral NPC. You can even use this to engage your own crew.
The third is the interaction button. This allows you to interact with many items you would not be able to interact with otherwise. The two main examples here are treasure chests and special items (coconut trees, tribal totems, etc.)
Then we have the two Ship buttons. Pillage makes the enemy ship explode and you collect a fraction of all the blocks their ship was made of. This means that if the enemy ship had three or four piles of fish on the deck you would not get all of them, only one or two. Capture makes you take over the enemy ship, but you abandon your old ship. This is useful when your ship can finally suffer damage (level 4 encounters and harder) or when you see a much nicer ship than your own. Remember to take any useful items off your ship before you capture your new ship or you will lose them.
Your game will always start by you selecting a number of options. The key choice for this guide is picking one of your three final options, whether you will have the Phoenix blade, additional crew member or +15 TP. All three options have their own strengths, but I would select either the weapon or the crew member. You can quickly earn all the TP you need through leveling up, and having those additional 15 points might not make much of a difference at first anyway. The phoenix blade will let you battle many early dangers of the game more easily, while the additional crew member, especially when properly equipped and leveled, can make a world of a difference during larger fights.
You very first step should be to build your ship. Initially there is no bad way of building your ship, but remember about one thing, if there is no guard railing, in the form of a hull block, then during combat your pirates or loot could fall out. Your first boat will be a simple “flatbed”, with a bit of food, decoration and hull. What next? Exploration! First of all, check the island you start on. If there are any Oysters try killing them for oyster shells and pearls. These two goods are worth a bit of coin which could allow you to purchase better weapons, hire more crew, or buy more skill books.
Once the starting island is empty start exploring local islands. Do not attempt to attack other ships until you level up your weapons and train you crew. After reaching level 10 with one or two crew members you are well on your way to start plundering the high seas!
Before we answer the question of leveling up let us talk quickly about making money. There are two good ways of earning money, exploring islands and looting ships.
Islands will have a random selection of hostile and neutral creatures. Some of them will be more dangerous than others, especially the further away you sail from the starting town.
Dogs are the simplest opponents you will face. They are hostile but usually do not do much damage and do not have much health. They can drop fangs which give experience.
Pirates and Tribals vary. They can be very easy (when they have less than 20 health) or very dangerous (above fifty health). You could meet very tough tribals and pirates very early into the game so be careful! As such, do not engage tribals unless you outnumber them or you know your crew is that much better trained and equipped than them.
Skeletons are usually tough. They have good damage, even if they do not have much health, but they can drop bone blades which are excellent weapons.
Wild boars are dangerous, so do not engage them too early into the game, unless you have quality weapons, experience and a sizable health pool.
Other creatures, such as Crabs, Hobos, Cats, Turtles, Parrots and Chickens should pose no threat to you, and they will only attack if you attack first. There is usually no reason to attack them, unless you are desperate for supplies or money.
Oysters can drops pearls and shells. Oysters do not fight back, so farming them is not a bad idea. Crates are also classified as creatures but they won’t fight back either. However, because they are creatures you could accidentally push them back with your attacks, which in turn means you could throw them into the water, by mistake.
On each island you should find a Chest. Chests are opened by approaching them with your captain and then pressing the orange interaction button. Chests can have a lot of gold and other items so when possible loot them! Take note, chests are not highlighted, so they could hide behind crates or under gibs (body parts).
Another thing islands will always have are “markers”. These may be coconut or banana trees, tribal statues or fireplaces, among others. When used they could bring about a positive event, drop something or do something “evil”. As a rule do NOT touch tribal statues, for me they always spawned high level tribals. In order to activate a “marker” walk up to it and use the orange interaction button (just like with chests).
Ships will have a crew that when killed could have a bit of loot. Ships may also have chests, like islands, and crates. When you kill off the crew and loot everything you can still plunder a ship. Order your whole crew to return to your ship and then press the Plunder button. This will make the enemy ship explode and you will obtain a fraction of everything that the ship was made of (walls, cannons, decorations, food, etc.). If you plunder a ship before you loot all the chests they will be lost forever! You will also get a bit of gold from a successful plunder but other times the items you find, like cannons, could be worth a pretty penny at a shop, unless you want to use them yourself.
There are currently no other stable ways of making an income. You can either island hop or plunder ships. Both can be very dangerous, but islands will not have cannons, unlike level 4 and higher pirate ships, so it may be much safer to plunder islands than ships, until you build yourself a true fortress, manned by only the fiercest pirates! Lastly, if you engage a Pirate Ship you will not be able to flee. In turn, if you sail to an island you could always ignore it and sail to the next one over.
Some skills can allow you to earn even more coin. There are two skills you can obtain very early into the game that will allow you to earn more coin both from plundering ships and chests. The Looter’s Bandana also increases the amount of gold you get from killing pirates so before attacking a Pirate ship you could equip your whole crew with these items, so that you get as much money from Pirate bodies as possible.
Your have five basic stats.
Strength – The higher it is the more bonus melee damage you do.
Vitality – Increases health regeneration and the amount of health you obtain on level up.
Intelligence – The higher it is the more TP you obtain on level-up.
Dexterity – The higher it is the more bonus ranged damage you do.
Agility – Appears to influence running speed and attack speed.
Luck – Higher critical hit chance.
Each pirate starts with random values for all of these. When hiring a pirate you can guess which stats will be his dominant ones, based on his past profession. A Mage, for example, will have very high intelligence, but nothing else.
The above stats increase when a character levels up. Upon each level up a few points are randomly distributed to the above stats, and a pirate will gain an additional health point. You also get TP. TP can be spent to increase the above stats or to lean new skills. More advanced skills cost more TP, so sometimes you might have to wait a few levels before you learn a new skill, especially if your pirate has low intelligence.
Some items increase the above stats upon use. Brown Beard will increase vitality by 3 points each time the pirate wearing it levels up.
Even without the additional TP spent and items used a pirate can become drastically better over the course of twenty levels. Getting there may be a chore, so how do you get levels quickly?
Most of your experience will be earned through sailing. With the Fast Learner skill your pirate will earn even more experience while sailing. Experience may also be earned from combat and performing different tasks, such as cleaning. If you want to level up your crew the best way to do so is to travel a lot. This might still be time consuming but it is much safer than fighting countless pirates, tribals and wildlife. You may also find items that give xp (wild boar tusks, feathers, wolf teeth) or level up your pirate insantly (whiskey and red wine). Pirates gain levels quickly at first, using Whiskey and Red Wine only becomes practical when leveling up your pirates becomes demanding (for me that stage was level 30).
While every pirate can learn any skill there are a few skills I consider “Combat”, “Utility” and “Leader” skills. This division is simple. Combat skills are used in combat, and as such they are useful to any pirate. Since you cannot, at least yet, divide your pirates into groups, such as “Boarders” and “Ship Crew” there is no reason why your Cook shouldn’t be a skilled sword-arm. EDIT: As of a recent update this is now possible. You can “check” a crew member to stay on your ship.
There are a number of Combat skills. The cheapest one you can obtain is Basic Parry. The further away you sail from your starting city the more different skills you can find, such as the Boar Strike, or Combat Evasion. Some combat skills are more useful than others. Basic Parry offers a 1% chance of parrying an attack, which is close to nothing. Leveling Basic Parry higher takes a lot of time and effort, which is why skills of this sort (another example would be Combat Focus) are best learned as early as possible so that they can reach some decent level in the long-term, and thus become useful.
Utility skills relate to the maintenance of the ship, in some way. Cleaning, Sailing, Ship Repair and Cooking are just a few examples. All of these skills can be given to your pirates. However, I would suggest giving only one such skill to each pirate. So, you would give a pirate cooking but not cooking and fishing. This is because the more utility skills a pirate has the more attention he will have to split between his different activities. Giving only one such skill to a pirate means he can focus on a specific task, whatever it might be.
Leader skills are those that appear to benefit the ship through the captain. I did not have a chance to see whether other pirates benefit from them (cumulative bonuses, for example) but seeing as the captain, for example, is the only one who loots chests it might very well be the case that he would be the only one benefiting from, for example, Map Reading skills. I might be wrong here, but certain skills simply seem to work with the Captain than any other pirates.
There are other skills that do not exactly belong to any of the above three categories. Fast Learner, Pooping Study and Fast Running are just a few examples. While they benefit a pirate in some way they do not relate purely to combat, utility or leadership. However, like in the case of Fast Learner, it is good to give them some of these skills.
Combat happens in real-time. Different weapons have different attack speeds, different reach, knockback and damage. In general, smaller weapons are faster, but weaker. Having a larger weapon lets you conclude a fight quicker, rather than struggle with a smaller weapon. What is the general rule of combat? The guy with the bigger weapon wins. And by bigger I do not mean size-wise, but damage-wise. If your enemy does one point of damage and you answer with ten the enemy has lost. All weapons can become deadly, and there are a number of ways to turn a dagger into a dangerous eye-poker.
Firstly, your strength and dexterity stats allow you to do more damage. Even just two points of additional damage make a meaningful difference during combat. Secondly, you can improve the quality of your weapon through grindstones.
Grindstones have a 40% chance of improving a weapon by one level. You need at least five grindstones to turn a level 1 weapon into a level 6 monstrosity. Higher weapon levels tend to have improved stats and sometimes they appear to have improved special abilities. While improving a weapon fully takes time it is well worth it. A weapon that previously did 2 points of damage could do 7. Combine that with higher strength and you can dish out over 10 points of damage without a problem, and very early into the game. While a single pirate doing 10 damage might not look like much if you manage to have a handful of such skilled and equipped pirates most dangers will be non-existent, which leads us to a different problem at hand.
As a Beginner you will mainly meet ships without cannons. Threat Level 1-3 ships are all “flatbeds” with a handful of crew. They will not have any advanced weaponry, and if you have, let us say, four or five crew members you should be able to take them out with ease. The same goes for islands. The islands closest to your starting point should be mildly easy, but the further away you go the more necessary it becomes to hire more crew members.
A Level 4 Pirate ship is, indeed, a very big threat. First of all, it will have a cannon, and somebody capable of manning it. You might laugh at cannons, seeing how their shots are more like mortars than straight-shot cannons but if your ship is a flatbed it will take only a few shots to sink you. Because of this you need: 1) A skilled and numerous crew, 2) Cannons of your own, 3) An improved ship (not a flatbed).
When boarding a level-4 ship for the first time the skills and equipment of your pirates will be tested thoroughly. It will not be easy, in fact unless you have leveled them highly you should expect some of your pirates to die. While fighting the pirates is one thing, one of the biggest threats to your own crew is the enemy cannon loader. If he has a bomb in his hand and you grapple onto the ship he might suicide bomb, taking anybody close to him to Davy Jones’ Locker. A possible tactic to evade this is to wait for the enemy to run out of ammunition, but if your ship is not sturdy enough you could sink before the enemy runs out of ammo. Alternatively you can try to knock out the enemy ship with your own cannons. Since the enemy pirates will usually use only a single cannon having two of your own could give you the advantage you need. This is expensive, both in terms of the cannon costs and training two pirates who will use said cannons.
The higher you go the tougher it will get, so as a rule try to explore every single island around, and hunt down threat 1-3 ships and only when you have built up your ship, trained your crew and equipped them should you move to the threat 4 ships.
One of the biggest problems you can face is not the enemy but how your own crew behaves. When your pirates land on an enemy ship or an island they will automatically engage any hostiles. However, they will not engage the closest hostile, instead they will pick a random target, and the enemy will do the same. This can lead to some very dangerous situations. Your whole crew could ignore the vast majority of the enemy force, which in turn charges at your captain, or your whole crew can be split into small groups all over a ship or island. The larger your crew, and the more enemies present, the harder it becomes to keep a hold on the situation.
To make matters worse, you cannot control the battle at all. You cannot order your crew to target a specific enemy or request specific pirates to retreat. Even your own captain, if not ordered to move somewhere constantly, will attempt to return to the battle when you want to keep him away from it.
Because of the above you should always keep a stock of healing items, be it Elixirs or food items (Coconuts and Bananas). They could save your crew when they are about to die, and certain items, such as Pheonix Rum, can bring back your pirate from certain death.
Considering how chaotic a battle can be press Spacebar often, to check the status of your crew, and heal those pirates who are in urgent need of saving. Once the battle is over you can safely collect the spoils of battle.
REMEMBER, if a pirate dies there is no guarantee you will get back his weapon. If you are certain a specific pirate will die take any and all items off of him, or they might be lost permanently.
We spoke of your early combat, exploration, and money earning. What is left? Morale and Hunger. Hunger when depleted will result in the death of your pirate. That is why you should ALWAYS keep a small reserve of food. Return to port when you are low on food and resupply. If things get bad use your consumables (coconuts and bananas, for example) to refill the hunger bar a bit. Hunger, unlike other pirates, could result in the death of your high level pirate.
Initially you will use Watermelons, to fill your ship’s hold. These might not be the cheapest but they will allow your crew to function in an orderly fashion. However, Watermelons can take up a lot of space, that is why you should try to buy barrels and stuff any food into them, so that you have more space in your cargo hold. Certain foods, like the Pot of Soup, can provide a lot of food, while taking up less space than the Watermelons, while also being cheaper in the cost-per-food sense. However, more advanced foods need a Cook to prepare them, otherwise they will not be eaten. Eventually you will have to hire a pirate to act as your ship’s cook. Like mentioned before, train a pirate in ONLY the cook skill (not counting combat skills) if you want for him to maximize his production. You can also give your cook the Chef Knife to further improve his efficiency.
Morale is a bit harder to control, at times. Morale drops on its own, over time. Certain skills drains Morale faster, such as Ship Repairs. You regain Morale by fighting (the longer the fight lasts the more morale will be recovered), using consumables (like Rum), having Rum in your Cargo (like Food) and sending your crew to a Tavern. When your pirates start to have a lower morale they might begin to ignore your orders. I am not sure what happens when their morale zeroes out however, as things were never that bad on my ship (starvation on the other hand was a problem).
You need to keep a vigilant watch on both your crew’s Hunger and Morale. Failure to do so could mean you will lose very experienced pirates.
There is no wrong way to build a ship, as far as I can tell. However, some design choices are more important than others. Flatbeds are simple ships, but initially they will allow you to explore local islands and attack enemy ships without a hassle. Once you have enough money/blocks you can expand your ship. As far as I could tell most people go “up”, and create a multiple-floor ship. You could go for a more classical look, and make them wider, but once engaging an enemy threat 4 ship, remember, you need a top deck. If you have only one layer of hull protecting you from the water (like flatbeds do) you could sink before your crew has the chance to take over the enemy ship.
When it comes to aesthetics, if you want to build a ladder make sure it is at least two squares wide. While I have seen ship designs that were one square wide I often find my pirates having problem with going below deck. You have to ensure that your lower decks are at least two squares tall.
Adding certain bits and pieces to your ship, like a sail, or wheel, will increase its speed. While pirates benefit from a longer sailing time you have to remember that you will slowly move further and further away from your home port, so having a faster ship will be useful, especially if you are low on food.
The basic cannons cannot have a roof over them. They have to be out in the open. They fire like mortars, so you could have a small wall to their side, but make sure that their shots are not blocked from above.
Not all items have a clear use just now. Paintings, swords (not training swords, those are used for practice) and tables do not appear to have any utility, but they could make your ship look better.
During the night time there is a very small chance that creatures will board your ship. There is no rule when that might happen, as I had the displeasure of suffering through a fish-man attack right after leaving my home port on day 1! Keep an eye open on your ship, and make sure that your ship has guard railings, so that your crew does not fall out during combat.
There are a few more topics I would ant to touch upon in Pixel Piracy, but some thing you will have to learn on your own. Let me just add a few last tips, which are also summaries of what I said so far:
1) One Utility skill per pirate – If they have too many Utility skills (Cooking, Fishing, Cleaning) they will have to split their time, which means less work done on any specific task.
2) Two weapons are better than one – IF a Pirate has a melee weapon and a ranged weapon he will have two attacks, not just one. Even if your are using only a rock for your ranged combat it’s still a few points of extra damage, every few seconds. Nothing to scoff at!
3) Sail to gain xp – The more sailing the more experience your pirates earn. You will tend to get more experience from sailing than combat!
4) Islands before ships – Raid all the islands you can before you proceed onto ships. Easier loot, sometimes no threat at all, and you can always escape or move on if you don’t like it.
5)Remember about the Utility button! – The Orange exclamation mark at the bottom of the screen is used to open chests. That is how you get the good loot! Do not forget about it!
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