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Forums » List all forums » Forum: Tips & Tricks, Questions & Answers » Thread: Cursed Island questions |
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Thread Status: Normal Total posts in this thread: 20 |
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Lylax
Joined: Sep 7, 2007 Posts: 137 Status: Offline |
Well, so far I've led two expeditions into the Cursed Islands. Both got there, grabbed some loot and were then sunk on the way out. They say third time's the charm, but I'd like a little support... is there any advice you can give to help a CI run go smoothly? Also, your opinions on Thralling would be of interest, and what differences Thralling / Non Thralling makes to how you'd run the trip. ---------------------------------------- Drink up, me Hearties, Yo-Ho! I go by Lylax on Midnight, and Lylax on Ice. |
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Aenor
Joined: Aug 16, 2005 Posts: 2578 Status: Offline |
At least two GM or better sailors/riggers. If you're generating at least 3 tokens per turn, you should never take more than a couple of shots of damage getting in or getting out. Unless you're attacking the same CI map as others at the same time, in which case the board can quickly fill up with enemy vessels. As much as it sucks for your jobbers, if you don't want to risk your ship you can just turn around and go back home, but if I ever did that I'd give them all a small amount of Poe for their time. If you're having trouble staying afloat, don't even think about thralling. ---------------------------------------- Mat on the Viridian Ocean Thank you to everyone who loves Blacksmithing! |
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Lylax
Joined: Sep 7, 2007 Posts: 137 Status: Offline |
That may have been an issue with the second trip; we were about halfway to the island when we saw a Junk on the way out. In part due to my cockup on a whirlpool we got swamped with half a dozen ships and blasted to kingdom come. ---------------------------------------- Drink up, me Hearties, Yo-Ho! I go by Lylax on Midnight, and Lylax on Ice. |
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sweetnessc
Joined: Nov 10, 2004 Posts: 15063 Status: Offline |
Don't do thralling until you can get in and out safely - your puzzlers will be more tired, and it will be harder. Never enter the island with more than 20% damage - if you take damage, back off to the next zone to repair then do another run in. You want to run around where the other ships are, not through it. First priority is avoiding the CI ships and rafts, second priority is avoiding the fog. Understand where the zone boundaries are, so you can cross the zones. Plan your route out on your way in. Never, ever, ever follow another player ship around the board - you'll get swamped by all the CI ships they just managed to avoid. Have at least one good puzzler (GM or higher) on each station. If you want more tips, check out the advice thread on our flag's forums at http://tyr.simplecodes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=375 (you might have to register to read it, damn spambots). ---------------------------------------- Sweetiepiepi, nav of Tyr's Own and Warrior Kitten Pomfret: Because I am a Fruitcake. And because I can. Sublime is shame. ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by sweetnessc at Jul 21, 2010 9:19:18 AM] |
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BobJanova
Joined: Oct 16, 2007 Posts: 3591 Status: Offline |
This is really more for TTQA. But yeah, never enter the island damaged (otherwise the bilge you get before carp is down and indicators are sparkly will kill you), and never ever follow another ship (the ships that were chasing it will be right there to murder you as you follow up behind). If your jobbers are up to scratch (I usually go for Ren+) and you aren't damaged on entry you should have no difficulty escaping by using the edge of the board, unless you get really, really unlucky (like one in 50 trips unlucky) and have ships in your way near the start. ---------------------------------------- Bobjanova on Viridian and Malachite Shops and stalls with fair and profitable wages for all: Jubilee, Napi, Fintan, Lima, Chelydra, Drogeo I SELL LIMITED EDITION SHIPS (Jubilee Is., Viridian) |
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nunny_45
Joined: Apr 14, 2005 Posts: 4813 Status: Offline |
Hug the walls generaly works and only consider thralling if you have a strong crew. If you dont thrall then even a basic crew will work if the person bnaving is half decent. ---------------------------------------- Nunny Avatar by Nunny ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by nunny_45 at Jul 21, 2010 8:55:32 PM] |
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xelto
Joined: Mar 18, 2007 Posts: 2503 Status: Offline |
Until you've gotten a few successful runs under your belt, don't worry about thralling. Job three sails, two carps, one bilge. Post on the notice board blurb that you're not thralling. You'll probably miss the top-rank CI jobbers (most of them expect to thrall), but you'll avoid pissing them off and having them mute you this way. Try to get renowned or higher (I started off caring about GM+). Try to avoid sloops and cutters. Remember that they tend to go where you were, so try to keep moving. They also will not follow you too far-- the board is split into several zones, and they'll stay in or near their zone. Avoiding ships is more important than avoiding fog, but try not to stay in the fog if you can avoid it. If you get into an overrun fray, try to move the ship away from the fog, and get one sailor to dismiss and station AFTER it's obvious that the fray is won, UNLESS you have a sloop/cutter nearby-- in that case, pay more attention to moving the ship (dodging their fire) then to the fight, and trust your players to get you out of it. If you don't, you'll win the fight, but be shot up in the process. ---------------------------------------- Gurndigarn on Hunter Ocean Hunter Parlay! Where you don't have to leave your house to go to the playground! |
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hiohjiggyoh
Joined: Dec 29, 2005 Posts: 88 Status: Offline |
Stay to the edge, avoid rafts, have excellent carpers and sailors/riggers. Thralling really isn't necessary. It's best to go in, learn a map, and then reuse it until it dusts. That way you know how to get in and out of it efficiently. This is what my boyfriend does and he has never sunk. ---------------------------------------- Dinosaur of the Sage Ocean, Admiral Island. Fleet Officer of Kiss of Death. Member of One Step Beyond. Dinosaur of the Viridian Ocean, Lima Island. Officer of Dark Vengeance. Member of Forgotten. Sage is my home from beginning to end. <3 |
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false_dmitri
Joined: Feb 18, 2007 Posts: 2134 Status: Offline |
With the exception of times where you're in reach of the island entrance and in serious danger of sinking if you try to run away. Sailors struggling, lots of defending ships boxing you in, too many boarders shutting down your stations, etc. At least you get a chance at a clean start by ducking into the island. Otherwise, do what Sweetie said. :)
Or you'll run straight into them when they pause, probably getting you both sunk. A couple other things that help are practicing whirlpools until you don't even have to think about them (Game Gardens bnav is good for this). The backwards ones are much easier when you can do the forward ones intuitively. And enter the board with guns loaded and a few spare cannonballs aboard. Shooting down a raft here and there can occasionally mean the difference between escape and sinking. ---------------------------------------- Back in computer limbo |
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xelto
Joined: Mar 18, 2007 Posts: 2503 Status: Offline |
But don't camp out on guns. It's far better to see most of the map from the navigation view than from the limited gun view. You'll usually never need them, but those few times you do you'll be glad you came prepared. ---------------------------------------- Gurndigarn on Hunter Ocean Hunter Parlay! Where you don't have to leave your house to go to the playground! |
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Setsusa
Joined: Dec 29, 2007 Posts: 882 Status: Offline |
Am I one of the few CI navvers that goes through the middle of the board, virtually ignore the effects of the fog, and nav through sloops, without getting sunk? Meh. Don't drive literally into a sloop, but most of the time they aren't aggro'd at you on the way in, on the way out you need to be more careful with them, and that's when it's better to stick to the edges. ---------------------------------------- On vent, Jesee says:
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Skeleton0123
Joined: Jul 2, 2006 Posts: 1532 Status: Offline |
One important thing: For thralling, stay at the whole right of the board. That zone is sloop/cutter free and only has rafts. You can't sink there at all! (unless you get overrun and lose a fray but that would be mayor lolz) And I don't plan routes, don't especially dodge cutters/sloops and etc. It's easy to get through them. Just focus on winds and whirlpools, use those to the max. Thralling is a good thing by the way, but it loses quality when your number of staff increases. If you go with a full sloop you need to be lucky not to lose too many thralls in the 3rd sf, usually they go down like nuts there. If you go with a sloop of 5 your thralls seem to last longer. Ps: sloops of 4 - 5 -6 work equally well as a sloop of 7 if your stationers are ren-GM+ . In fact I find it a lot more fun to do it with only 5 or 6 people, since thralling takes less long and the frays are a bunch smaller aswell. (have done 50 CC's before with only 5 elites with reaching quite far into frays) ---------------------------------------- Claimed to be a very whiney person. |
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kgarrett1969
Joined: Apr 22, 2005 Posts: 954 Status: Offline |
I'm in your camp thralling. My only comment is that there is an art to defending thralls in both Rumble and SF. You just have to train yourself to find the Cultists attacking tralls. Color of the feather on the spear is the inner targeting dot and the spear shaft is the outer part of the dot. I have several of my best hearties trained in proper cultist targeting. I typically lose no more than 1 or 2 thralls going into the 3rd SF which means I have a very high success rate getting to and Beating the second Vargas Fray typcially with SFers in the Master to Leg range. To the OP everyone has given you some good advise and you should follow it. Don't Thrall until you can consistently move across the board safely both directions. That is into and exiting from the isle. You can get to the isle by going up any part of the board but it does help to make sure you go up the side that the Isle is on. Take time to scout out a new board when you first enter to find features that may help or hinder you. I know many pirates don't like to here it but jobbing skilled pirates on station makes a huge difference to the success. Jobbers that don't stay on station or are performing badly put you and your ship at risk of sinking. As you find pirates that you can trust to keep the ships safety as the top priority hearty them for future trips. Once you can consistently escape with loot you may want to try to thrall. I've found that thralls help you stay on the island longer and push up your booty. My theory is that the longer you are on the island the less chances you are taking to sink. If you do two trips with thralls and get to and beat 2nd Vargas you are going to have just as many chests and better quality ones than the non-thralling doing 3 or 4 trips. Good luck and have fun in CI. ---------------------------------------- Hawkings Captain & Tactitian of Odin's Demise King of Morrowind Citizen of Viridian Apollo wrote, "Hawkings has changed my life. ;)" |
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sweetnessc
Joined: Nov 10, 2004 Posts: 15063 Status: Offline |
I would suggest you not try anything fancy until you understand how to get in and out of Cursed Isles. It's a very straightforward and quite easy environment once you understand 'the rules', but the 'price' of each lesson is a sloop. Take full stations, have at least one strong puzzler on each station, run in and out. When you try thralling, there are two main ways I've seen it done. Some people keep moving to avoid the rafts, but most people pick a safe spot on the board where the rafts have to enter from a specific place where they can be shot to meter how quickly you take on boarders. Do it in the bottom zone of the board. Often there is a line of rocks just off the safe zone, if you go nose-in to the rocks, you'll be able to shoot any rafts that come off either side. You need to shoot them when they're 2 spaces away from your ship to prevent boarding. The first boarders will be EOs (unless you hit the bug) which can't be enthralled, so try to only let 1 raft hit the first time. After that, the boarders should be enthrallable zombies. For those who know what they're doing, I'd suggest a three man CI, they're quite fun and the scaling of the gauntlet fights is dreamy. Just fire the bot when you hit the island.
Have you tried it with the same people and with no special targeting? We do nothing special on the teaming other than picking full screens to retarget, and typically lose no more than 1 or 2 thralls (though we do coordinate Vargas attacks with Skype). I'm wondering how much time gets taken up by trying to find the 'right' cultists rather than fighting and if the trade-off is a wash? ---------------------------------------- Sweetiepiepi, nav of Tyr's Own and Warrior Kitten Pomfret: Because I am a Fruitcake. And because I can. Sublime is shame. |
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Skeleton0123
Joined: Jul 2, 2006 Posts: 1532 Status: Offline |
Yea it is my opinion too that targeting the Cultists that are on your thralls doesn't work well. I think you managed to lose so little just because your sf'rs were all master+. To tell you: 2 Ci's ago we were left with 10 vs 1 Cultist. The 1 Cultist played "invincible" mode and killed 2 thralls before it finally decided to die. What I noticed from it too is that they regularly switch opponent, even before a kill has been made. So if you targeted a Cultist that's on your zombie, chances are that it swapped on a human about 30 secs later. Oh btw for thralling: Check your ship before using the manoeuvre to make sure you have atleast 2 "normal" zombies aboard, since it can produce 2 thralls. Else you might get 1 thrall and a few EO's kicked off, but I find this a slight waste of the manoeuvre. ---------------------------------------- Claimed to be a very whiney person. |
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xelto
Joined: Mar 18, 2007 Posts: 2503 Status: Offline |
If you can have a few EOs kicked off, it might actually be worth it. I think this one got missed, though: while thralling, if you don't have any boarders, each raft will come with an enlightened one, and maybe a zombie. If you have an enlightened one on board already, though, they're all zombies*, one at a time. Therefore, try to collect one, and only one, raft on a turn if you don't have boarders. If you have boarders already, try to limit them to two zombies at a time when possible, since that's the most you can thrall. And make sure the zombies have gone to battle-ready before using the token. * There are some disagreements about this detail. However, even if this isn't the way it always happens, any other way is extremely rare. I've never seen it, and I'm a regular CI runner. ---------------------------------------- Gurndigarn on Hunter Ocean Hunter Parlay! Where you don't have to leave your house to go to the playground! |
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kgarrett1969
Joined: Apr 22, 2005 Posts: 954 Status: Offline |
Yes, I have and all too often I lose 2 or 3 in the 2nd SF doing so. Perhaps our success rate is somewhat a by product of improving how we play the fray puzzle. Mostly we target when the puzzle first starts and once we've knocked out the first wave we just keep teaming. It is not as crutial as somethings I do in CI but it does help. And I too cooridinate on TS so that we aren't all looking for thralls to defend but so when someone says ThrallX is in trouble someone can swith to defence or a thrall just abandon me and I just dropped on Cutist Y someone come help. Looking for a team is alway a good thing and I've gotten very good at figuring out a cultist that is on a thrall. As I said initially it is a subtle art that can help. It isn't the end all beat all to a thrall trip but it is one way it can improve your trip. ---------------------------------------- Hawkings Captain & Tactitian of Odin's Demise King of Morrowind Citizen of Viridian Apollo wrote, "Hawkings has changed my life. ;)" |
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false_dmitri
Joined: Feb 18, 2007 Posts: 2134 Status: Offline |
Targeting attackers can't hurt any, unless everyone piles on and dilutes the attack. There isn't much else the humans can do to protect thralls. Kicking Enlightened Ones off with a token is not optimal unless the ship is struggling due to sabotage etc. or already has all its thralls. Even 3 or more Enlightened Ones added to the starting fray usually isn't a serious problem for a crew capable of reaching Vargas. ---------------------------------------- Back in computer limbo |
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sweetnessc
Joined: Nov 10, 2004 Posts: 15063 Status: Offline |
It's been confirmed by Hermes that there are outside weird cases where that happens, but it's not really supposed to.
Chewing this one over, I'm guessing it's optimal for mid-high range puzzlers. At the very highest end, they could probably send an insta in the time they go searching, and at the lowest end, teaming consistently is probably more important than on who, since the bots will change so much. I usually ask people to target the bots with the fullest screens, on the dual theories that they're the most dangerous opponents (since they have the most ammunition), and that they're easiest to take out, improving your fight odds. But at the mid, mid-high end, I can see it being worth the effort to find the bots targeting thralls. By the by, on rumble, we assign one person to check the thralls and see if anyone needs defending so that everybody else can just concentrate on rumbling.
There's another way that it hurts (or at least, that it isn't cost-free). Having seven people searching through the left hand side for the thralls that are getting attacked, then searching through the right-hand side to find the cultists that are attacking them, then perhaps double-checking that somebody else has teamed up on the same cultists as you and confirming that the cultist is still attacking a thrall by the time you're ready to go, is a lot of time and attention that isn't directed to quickly building kill attacks. I think the optimizing probably comes down to what you could've done with that time swordfighting straight up. If you likely would've killed a bot in that time, it wouldn't be worth the trade-off. If you couldn't have killed a bot in that time, it would be. So I'd rather see my Ults and Legs just going straight up hard killing stuff off, and assign my weakest swordfighter to dig through the targeting and sword patterns to find out who we should target next.
Yeah, you don't really want to waste your tokens kicking off EOs until you're done thralling unless you're getting into a scary situation. And you definitely don't want to kick off your last EO, because then it'll take at least three turns before you have any zombies aboard that can be enthralled (assuming first turn you take EO boarders only, second turn you take zombie boarders that aren't battle ready, third turn they go battle ready). But if all of the EOs are sabotaging the same station and it's causing you problems, it might be worth the cost of the token. At that point I'd probably give up on thralling and run down though, just because people are getting tired. ---------------------------------------- Sweetiepiepi, nav of Tyr's Own and Warrior Kitten Pomfret: Because I am a Fruitcake. And because I can. Sublime is shame. ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by sweetnessc at Jul 27, 2010 10:41:03 AM] |
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Skeleton0123
Joined: Jul 2, 2006 Posts: 1532 Status: Offline |
In my experience you can take-over a zombie even before it is battle-ready? ---------------------------------------- Claimed to be a very whiney person. |
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