2 BK FAQ

Shortlink for this page: tinyurl.com/squishBKFAQ

Introduction

Did you ever find yourself on one of my BK trips only to be left wondering
“Uhh why does she have so many rules? I know they are effective for us winning quickly... but why?”
“Did I get a trinket?”
“How much are they worth?”

This article should hopefully answer most of your queries.:)

BKs are a fairly recent obsession of mine... in relative terms. I started doing them possibly in May 2012. Since then, I've gotten Gold Longship, Baghlah, Junk and diamond MB (one and only) just from doing BK Compasses.

If you think you’ve seen parts of this guide before, you probably have. It was once the BK FAQ I linked to on the crew page, before the blog existed xD

Have a question not already answered? Leave a comment for me to add it!

Longship BKs

How many do we sail with?

We start BKing with full ship, which is 15. Type /w to see how many currently aboard.

Why do we need to hop till 8 left?

The short answer is, to spawn an easier BK.
The long answer, involves understanding of might rings and spawn difficulty.

The difficulty of the bots you fight is dependent on the number of people on the ship.

So we technically spawned a BK for 8, and then fighting it with 15.

Can we hop till 7 or 5 or something?

No. If the number is too low, the spawn will be too easy, and the BK will flee (refuse to engage).

What is DND, CAH?

Do Not Disturb (needs to be off so you can hear the whistle) and Call all Hands.

I can’t hear the whistle!

Turn DND off. ‘Nuff seid.

I can’t seem to hop off the ship!

When ships are out of port (when you can see the ship on the mini map), you will not be able to “leave the vessel” by clicking the mini-map or “leave the vessel”.
Instead, click “to home”.

Who are the BKs?

From left to right:
Madam Yu Jian | Widow Queen | Brynhild Skullsplitter | Barnabas the Pale | Gretchen Goldfang | Admiral Finius | Azarbad the Great | Vargas the Mad

Don't team on them until the end!!

Why do we need to kill BK last?

This is one that is highly debated.

Most recently, it has been added to the list of Rumors on the YPPedia, and marked as false.

This makes me a sad panda because I do believe that it does make a difference, and very noticeably too in the cases of brynhild, WQ and Barnabas.

The "minions" tend want to "avenge" their King, so they start to fight much harder and tend to become super hard to kill, doing full screen clears and instas to the humans.

This is especially true in the case of Barnabas the Pale.

I am going to ask for you to kill the BK last when on my trips, just for consistency’s sake. It isn't too much to ask to check your teaming after every kill.

I don’t think I got a trinket?

If you have a pirate badge or above, you got it.
There is no line of text that says “Ye received xxx”. The BK defeat speech is it.

Barnabas the Pale says, "Very well, I shall give each of yer dedicated hands one Ectoplasm in ransom for my release."

Which BKs are SF and which are Rumble?

Barnabas and Azarbad (Brigand King) are always SF.
Vargas (Barbarian King) is always Rumble
The rest can be either/or.

I need to leave soonish... how do I let you know?

Preferably by saying in a tell “Hey, this upcoming battle is my last” BEFORE the battle ends.
This is so I can plan around it, and thus faster battles for all.

How many of these do you have?

That’s not really relevant, but I usually do anywhere from 6-12 of them in a row depending on my schedule.

For reference, my highest record is 28 wins 3 losses in a day, and 22 wins straight. Yes, that takes a long time.

Sloop BKs

Why do we not team on sloop BKs?

They have 12...while we only have 7. We’re vastly outnumbered.

When they're maxed, they only have half a board. If we don't spread out and "waste" our resources on the same half-dead bot, then the others will have time to build "instas or semi instas".

By not teaming, we get to bring their numbers down efficiently to 6 or 7.
Otherwise, we'd only being able to knock out 3-4 at the beginning, leaving them with 8 or more still.

I also noticed that sloop BK spawns tend to stall more if you team in 3s on them.

The rest of this is more informational rather than FAQ-y.

Informational 

How many wins for each of the BK trophies again?

Wins	Trophy
1	Bronze
10	Silver
25	Gold

How many types of trinkets are there?

YPPedia page on BK trinkets
total of 49 different types of trinkets

How many colors do the trinkets come in?

Either 6 or 7 colors.

All BK trinkets come in Red, Orange, Green, Aqua, Blue, Violet.
The 7th color is Yellow, and only applies to Azarbad, Brynhild, Yu Jian (a.k.a. the new BKs)
This brings the total of unique trinkets to 312.

Wow that is a lot of trinkets!

Yes, and to get them all in your name is a giant pain in the behind. (Well, the Galene Doll kinda makes up for it :P)

To date, on Emerald, I think only Everclearboy and Shooshy have complete sets all inscribed with their name.

Delores is currently missing one, and I am currently missing two.

But I have no idea which colors I got!

Blue and aqua can be quite confusing, and some of the trinkets are really hard to tell apart.

Okay, how about you just match them to my trinkets here and see which ones you got :)
Squishat's YPPedia Page on Trinkets

What is the point of the trinkets?

You can either trade them for BK eggs and banners at the Trading Post, or you can collect the trinkets on their own.
And then of course you can sell the trinkets. Different rarities have different values.

Which trinket is the rarest?

I used to keep data, then it became too tedious. So I do list the rarest/second rarest first, and the most common ones last. But everything in between is “by feel”, and loosely corrected based on ECB's numbers.

Gretchen Goldfang – Lucky Rabbit’s Foot

Rarest				Most Common	Most Common
Lucky Rabbit’s Foot	Ivory Toothpick	Wooden Amulet	Salt Shaker	Golden Horseshoe	Stained Wishbone

Widow Queen – Arsenic Ring

Rarest	Rarest			Most Common	Most Common
Arsenic Ring (HAHA I typed “arse”)	Rose Goddess Perfume	Jeweled Brooch	Silk Handkerchief	Concealed Blade	Ruffled Garter

Barnabas the Pale – Music Box of Lamentations

Rarest				Most Common	Most Common
Music Box of Lamentations	Ectoplasm	Will o’ Wisp	Cursed Idol	Spectral Chain	Key to the Nether-sea

Admiral Finius – Baby Portrait of Admiral Finius

Rarest	Rarer			Most Common	Most Common	Most Common
Baby Portrait of Adm. Finius	Porcelain Cup	Fish Eye Lens Monocle	Royal Anchovy Tin	Prestigious Naval Medal	Self-Addressed Love Letter	Pearl Pocket Watch

Azarbad the Great – Exotic Confection

Rarest				Most Common	Most Common
Exotic Confection	Ornate Earring	Jeweled Dagger	Heart of Fire	Scented Beard Oil	Golden Oil Lamp

Vargas the Mad – Siren’s Comb

Rarest	Rarer			Most Common	Most Common
Siren’s Comb	Reading Pipe	Jigsaw Puzzle Piece	Scientific Tome	Grimoire Page	Yo-Yo

Madam Yu Jian – Cut Stone Box

Rarest				Most Common	Most Common
Cut Stone Box	Jade Comb	Hand Fan	Jeweled Finger Guard	Jade Carving	Lucky Coin Tailsman

Brynhild Skullsplitter – Mjolnir Amulet

Rarest				Most Common	Most Common
Mjolnir Amulet	Engraved Wristband	Solar Compass	Runestone	Wyrm Scale	Hoard Brooch

That moment when mistyping “BKs” to “BJs” every single time when writing this guide,

Squishat

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11 Peg's Xmas In July Event - A little Recap

As you may or may not have known, Pegasiswolf's annual Xmas in July 2013 event had just concluded yesterday.

What is it exactly?

It's basically a 24h non-stop pillage with lots of trivia and prizes for the bat-barnacle insane to win a parrot at the end.

Annually you say?

Yea, Peg is a lil cray cray (we all are) to do this every year. 

This year's 24h event was (in my opinion) a lot less hectic than last year's 72h pillage. Maybe that was because this year I only had to do some navving (Thanks Peg!) and didn't have to deal with people. 

Mg and I had a lot of fun (read: zomfg jobbers wai u so demanding!!) last year getting special santa hats and taking charge for three 4-hour sessions. (So that Peg could go get some sleep.) 

I do seem to recall that Peg always came back ahead of schedule anyway. :P 

Peg's first annual event was in 2011. 

Dem screenshots

The event ship's name this year was Prize Elf, and it was, very decked out.
I did a composite screenshot of the ship's top deck.

Now you can be jealous of my 1080P screen :P

I had to save it as a crappy jpeg file and lose some of the quality because of how large this file was. Sorry!

There were 150+ presents in total. Having run many box auctions and other events that have boxes, I totes understand what a pain it is to wrap them all and the costs involved.

Here are the other scenes below deck. Pretty rad!

Not very obvious with the color turned on, but if you look closely, there're Christmas garlands on the side of the wall next to the xmas tree.

Woah. I didn't even know you could buy those!

One of the secret trigger questions for a present was "Why is there a basket of apples right beyond the cannon?"

Btw, I pretty much just hit Print Screen on my keyboard to get this screencap :P

So, if you're wondering why I designed the blog the way it is (before I understood the importance of the responsive thing), it's because of my laptop's screen resolution.

Even the captain's quarters have their own Xmas elements!

Those cannons and drums are everywhereee.


At the very end, the ship reverted to its barebones state as I imagined Peg did a "reclaim all furniture" on it to give the remainder of the presents to a helper to give out.

How long was I there for? Oh.. about the first 10 hours... And then the last hour.

Did I actually do anything? Err no :P I didn't even station. Not even in battle :P

New BK Bug 

So because we actually got a BK expo, but it turned out to be a cutter!! Spawned for a fully-manned WF, we didn't get to do the BKs.



The same thing happened when we attempted to spawn BKs with compasses. I was a little disappointed as I did not get to nav WF BKs (which is really why I came in the first place heh.)

But yea, I then tried to spawn them on another WB and WF respectively, and the spawn seemed to work fine.

Sooo. I decided to run a test to determine whether it was the problem with the number of people on the ship or why it was only happening on the Prize Elf.

With the help of awesome crewbies (and their alts!), as well as other helpful piruts on Emerald...

It seems as if the problem seems to be that the BKs fail to spawn correctly after 60 pirates. Oh well.

I was secretly naving the Prize Elf while trying to job people on the test WF at the same time ahaha. Multitasking. That's what ypp is all about. Ha.

Perhaps it was all for the best as honestly, I wasn't sure the team could handle 75 v 159 BK battles.. even at max - 0

TL;DR

It actually doesn't really matter because... honestly, no one does large ship BKs. Which is sad. They'd be a lot of fun :) 

Some afterthoughts

• The people who stayed the entire 24 hours only got about 80k ish from the entire thing. 
• And this is WITH the double pay that came into effect halfway. Say what? Again proving that pillaging is in a sad state of affairs. 

• Because of the scoring system

Points will be given as follows:
2 pts. for each Incredible
1 pt. for each Excellent



Top combined OVERALL score (regardless of station(s)) will Win a:


Green /Tan PARROT FAMILIAR!!

• Someone who was only aboard for ~10 hours, but getting multiple excellents by station-hopping for the relevant DRs, actually scored more points than Emp who was able to keep incredible duty reports for the whole 24-hours. 



• Flaw in the system? Eh. Every event has its caveats. Like the Brigand Bash event last year, which I am pretty sure was intended to increase co-operative pillaging, but instead turned into a solo grindfest. 
• Having said that, I also personally try to think of every single possible caveat before I run the event. That way I have a Plan B for every situation. Perhaps if the increds had counted for 3 points instead, it would have been harder to rig the system. 
• It really was a lot for Peg to do all on her own. And although she had some helpers, it sure felt like she could have used some extra help in many instances, such as present giving, and dealing with "job me" tells. General ship management, especially as the hours wore on. 

Final Note

At the end of the day, thank you Pegasiswolf for running this behemoth of an event, dealing with a bajillion "Can we have another trivia??" questions, asking me to nav a fair few battles, and generally bravo for pulling it off. 

Were you on the ship?

What did you think of this event? Leave a comment :) 

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0 YPP Tip of the Day - What the Booty Really Means

Cubelets' Crew Cut is set to 20% Even. But what does that really mean?

On the Noticeboard, we'll sort as 80% Even.

Which means that 80% of the total loot goes to the jobbers, and 20% of the loot goes to the Naver, provided that there are no losses.

What is the difference between the Hold and the Booty?

In very simple terms, the PoE in the hold will be kept. The PoE in the booty can be lost.

Commodities (items) in both can be lost, but you lose only 10% of the items in the Hold, while 20% of the items in the booty. (More at the bottom)

Scenario:

1. Let's say that we've plundered a total of 11,222 PoE (100%) for that battle from the Brigands.
2. Half of the restocking cut (in this case 10%), will immediately go into the Hold of the ship.
3. The other half of the restocking cut (10%), will immediately go into the Booty.

So now we have 1,111 (10%) in the Hold, and 1,111 (10%) in the Booty.

We are left with:

11,222 - (11,222*0.2) = 9,000 PoE


All that remains is the Jobber cut (80%), it is divided Evenly between all the pirates aboard.

In this case we have 15 pirates aboard, so everyone gets a cut of:

9,000 / 15 = 600 PoE

Since you only get half of your cut immediately after the battle, everyone gets:

600 / 2 = 300 PoE per person after divide

The jobber cut that isn't divided (40%), is put into the booty.

300 *15 = 4,500 PoE

So after this battle, total in Booty should be:

1,111 + 4,500 = 5,611 PoE

Or exactly 50% of the total booty plundered.

That was way too tl;dr

These percentages only apply to 80% Even division.
10% of total received booty -> Hold
40% / no. of jobbers aboard -> what each jobber gets initially
50% of total received booty -> Booty



How much stuff do we lose if we lose a battle?

The Brigands take 10% of the items in the Hold (but not the PoE), and 20% of the PoE amount in the Booty as well as 20% of the items.

25% if the battle was PvP.

Here is Galene's Post for reference on the subject matter.

And then because I was writing this, I decided to send in a petition for some clarification.

In time, I will maybe do some more googling and experimenting to see exactly how JD affects the division.

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1 How to Select the Right Pillage (Tinni’s guide for the picky jobber)

At any given time, there may be lots of pillage offers on the voyage tab of the notice board (NB).  Sometimes, the voyage you’d like to apply for will be immediately apparent. (Ooooh, hearty! *job*). Other times, however,  it’s a case of picking the most appropriate out of the unfamiliar.

In this guide, the words bnavver, navigator and Officer-in-Charge (OiC) are synonymous and used interchangeably.

The variables that can factor into your decision making are outlined below.

How much weight each of them hold will vary depending on aspects such as your mood, how much PoE you plan to make, your stats, how you feel about the Pirates aboard and so on.

Drag to url bar to view larger

Variables When Choosing a Voyage

1) Jobber Cut & Booty Shares.

• The higher, the better. Jobber's delight > Even > everything else. Voyages on the NB sort according to this by default.

2) Vessel Types

• You probably will prefer certain vessel types
• May affect how easy or hard it is to get a specific station.
• In general, the fewer the number of stations (smaller ships), and the lower the jobber turnover (fewer leavers per battle), the more likely you are to be only working on an assigned station.

3) Pillage Settings: Difficulty level and range

The colors on the icons correspond to the arrows in the pillage difficulty, set by the OiC. This decides the might-ring color of the vessels that the ship will auto-engage.

More importantly, the might of opponents that are spawned for the ship will tend to fall within this range.

The suitability of the set difficulty can be based on the following factors:

a) Navver skill

b) Jobber skill

c) Proposed route / island that the ship is nearest to

All routes on the ocean have a set difficulty, with some routes consistently spawning harder opponents than others.

This, combined with the pillage difficulty setting and the stats of all the players on board, determine the might of your spawn. (Harder bots pay more)

The routes that are more difficult will show as darker dots on the “Ye Known World” screen.

This is an example of easy/difficult routes in comparison. Note that these dots will only show as brown once you have memmed them.

Their values are not absolute, but in comparison to each other.

Using the Red/Red setting on voyages as an example:

• Admiral - Wensleydale or Aimuari - Matariki at red/red is pointless
• Scrimshaw - Bowditch or Chachapoya - Anegada is fine for most
• Red routes (e.g. Osprey archipelago, darkest routes) is only for “elite” voyages

4) The Vessel Who command (/vwho <vessel name>, or clicking on the vessel name on the NB, as shown in the screenshot above)

•  Island ship is ported at (or nearest to) gives an idea of the route and its difficulty
• As with vessel type, you may have favourite routes
• Some people prefer jobbing onto ships that sail on less populous routes

• Number of people aboard gives information on:
• How close the ship is to leaving port
• The condition of the ship at sea
• undermanned may imply trouble, expect to limp for at least a few LPs
• overmanned is when jobbing numbers > station numbers, so some players will have the “privilege” of lazing. This can occasionally feel unfair, especially when they get a share of the booty anyway.

• Names of players aboard, and their stats
• If you like the players already jobbed onto a ship you’re more likely to have fun (and vice-versa)
• The stats of the players have a bearing on the might of opponents
• The combination of player numbers and their stats aboard have a bearing on the likely “vessel condition”

**(Clicking the underlined names in the /vwho list brings you to their pirate page)

5) The Who Command (/who <bnavver>, or clicking on the OiC's name on the NB)

• Sometimes, it may be hard to tell who the Bnaver is, as it may not be the face on the NB.
• The bracketed name when /vwho-ing identifies the person that last took the wheel in either dnav or bnav
• If this is different from the face on the NB, consider checking the Pirate Page of both

• Pirate page of the Bnavver

• Bnav stat and whether that corresponds with pillage settings and route difficulty
• All their other stats, to see how the OiC is as a jobber and as a reference as to how they'll treat their own jobbers.
• Trophies of the Bnavver can give an indication of experience levels

6) The Blurb

• The speech bubble next to the OiC's face on the notice board
• The Blurb can contain information about the voyage (e.g. BKs, IOs, Vikings, Forage or TH Exped ahead, Navver roulette) and can be seen when you mouseover the speech bubble
• Bonus points for being amusing
• Penalty points for claiming to be “elite” if the stats of jobbers / navvers are not
• Some are irritated by OiC’s advertising of their bnav stat on the blurb.

7) Brigands only or barbarians only VS  both (with or without PvP)

• Some believe payouts are better if you only do one type (either brigands or barbarians)
• Ships that are actually hunting for pvp will advertise via hearty lists. When the PvP setting  is shown on the Voyage tab, It makes no difference 99% of the time.

8) Crew

• The crew’s reputation and your own experiences jobbing with them should be a large influence on your choice
• If you have good experiences with one navver in the crew you’ll probably have a higher chance of a good experience with a different navver in the crew as compared to unfamiliars.
• The better crews have established training programmes and will try to ensure all OiCs meet minimum standards
• Trips that are advertised as "Officer Training Runs" will welcome competent puzzlers who do not mind not earning as much PoE as they otherwise would.
• Voyages with more than one crew member on board → more likely to be well-run
• Two voyages running simultaneously from the same crew and both struggling to load implies bad crew organization and cooperation → less likely for either trip to be well-run

Other Considerations

How many battles do you have time for?

If 2 or less (30 minutes and under) consider sending a /tell to the navigator stating "Only have 30 minutes" or "only can stay 2 battles (or even 1 battle), do you still want me?". This will cut down on your guilt and ensure your reputation is maintained.

How promptly does the OiC answer tells?

It is sometimes a good idea to ask questions to the OiC even before applying, such as

• How many people do you set sail at?
• Which route are you sailing?
• Can I bilge?

Needless to say, if the tells are ignored, it is likely that your concerns on board ship will be treated the same way.

What are the chances that a certain station is free?.

This is to ensure you are actually helping the voyage run smoothly, as opposed to be redundant or even detrimental (eg 2nd bilge on a sloop that has difficulty getting moves).It can be judged by vessel type, and the numbers and distribution of stats of pirates already on board. Easiest way, however, is to send a tell.

How quickly does the OiC respond to your jobbing application?

This... is a tricky question. It’s common courtesy to not apply to voyages that you are not prepared to job on, so length-to-response should not be part of the “selecting a pillage” process. However, don’t wait longer than a minute before assuming that your job application has been declined and then proceeding to another voyage

I don’t care about having fun, which are the voyages making the most poe?

Basically the pillages that make the most poe/hour are the ones with

• No losses and
• Highest difficulty

The more skilled the jobbers on the boat are, the higher the payout/person.

So the highest paying pillages generally

1) Have selective jobbing, or are invite only

2) Have either a few Ultimate swordfighters or rumblers, or all jobbers can fray well

3) Have the pillage settings set to the highest it can go (i.e. red-red),

4) Is charted for a high difficulty (“red”) route

However, if the ship as a whole isn’t up to the challenge, or even if there is one disconnect (on a sloop), you lose a battle. This results in immediately knocking down the poe/hour that could be generated.

Perhaps now you find it easier to choose the voyage that is for you!
Tinnitus

Related Resources:-
PDF Map of Emerald  - Shows all route difficulties.

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