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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:26:30 GMT -6
BA.4 Making Money One of the most important aspects of this game is the ability to make money. We are pirates after all, are we not!? Well maybe some of us are simple traders.. but whatever. After you finish the beginning of the game you will be thrown into the ability to freeplay. Your job here will be to make money. Here are a few tips on doing so.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:26:50 GMT -6
BA.4.i Piracy It is a pirates life for me! Yo-ho-ho! Right? Well this is one obvious way to make some cash. In the beginning of the game the pirate's life may be a difficult one. Not too many people are going to be afraid of your lugger, and besides... you can't hit the broad side of a barn with your cannons. Well... We will get the hang of it sooner or later. The important thing is that you WILL pirate some ships dammit. When you do finally board and take that sloop and its cargo of leather, what will you do with it?
Capturing ships, their captains, their crews, and their goods.
First off it is important to note that ill-gotten goods have the stink of theft about them. Yes it might be dumb, but merchants can smell a rat from a mile away. They will only pay half for your booty after it has come from the hold of a merchant vessel. You can alleviate this by shoving it into a warehouse, either in the capital cities of a nation, Isla Tesoro, or your personal Gord, if you have it. Once its been properly stored for a little while (a week or so) and brought back aboard your ship, it will be good to sell again. If you hold onto the stuff for a month (why would you?) it will also be good to sell. What about the sloop? Well you can sell the sloop. If it wasn't part of a quest, generated or otherwise, then it will sell for its normal price. Repair it beforehand if you have the time, and then sell it for a pretty penny. If the ship you captured was generated by a quest of some sort... it will be worth half as much. Lame. It isn't worth repairing if this is the case, you will lose money on it.
I would just get yourself a warehouse at Port Royal, St. Christopher, or once you have your Gord, these are fairly centralized and therefore more convenient then say... Havana or Curacao or Isle Tesoro. Whenever you get plunder make a trip to one of your warehouses and unload. Yeah you won't get the money right away, but after a month or so you can go load your entire hold up with a product that is in demand where you go to sell it, and you will get full price for it. If you do this you will make millions more pesos in the course of a game over just dumping it for pennies as you get it.
Important note on selling ships:
Any ship generated from a quest (Easy Prey, businessman, bounty hunters, interceptors, main quests, ransom demands, punitive expeditions, etc) are sold for 15% - 40% of their normal selling value to shipyards. This is called by the game "Guaranteed battles". You will have to use common sense to determine all of these, but the general rule is that if the ship is guaranteed to be there because of some trigger in the game, it is going to not sell for much.
Ships that will sell for "full price" 70% + of their selling value are random encounters on the global. Trade caravans, random military ships, pirates, ships that are battling each other, patrols, etc.
Once you get more powerful, you will notice that people don't even want to fight you. Hell they may even want to join you once you board their vessel. This might be a good chance to replenish some of your losses if the crew is skilled enough, or they might not be worth it. Either way, if they surrender to your overwhelming force, then you have more options. You can take the enemy captain prisoner, or toss him over the side. Taking him captive gives you an option to either recruit him for yourself (if he is a pirate), or ransom him to a governor. You can also just let him go or kill him on the spot... but that will be covered more in the reputation portion. If you choose to ransom them, then know that pirates always get a paltry amount to anyone, as they just go to the gallows. Captains that belong to nations go for more, and if you ransom them to their own nation, they go for a great deal (Anywhere from 20 – 80k depending on rank). Their crew you can either toss overboard, let go, or enslave. We are pirates, so you can guess which one we are going to choose! If you do choose to enslave them, they go into your hold as a commodity. You can sell them to smugglers that you meet in taverns for like 350 – 450 per, to the mines at los Jeques for a paltry sum of 2 silver nuggets a head, or to other ships at sea for 230 - 450 per (but they may not be able to carry many). There are also generated quests in towns where noblemen will offer you like 4 doubloons a head for some amount of slaves (usually like 80 – 100), and also a slave trader quest line that will be covered in the walkthrough. I will go over smuggling in general shortly.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:27:01 GMT -6
BA.4.ii Trading Pretty straight-forward here. If you want the life of a trader then you can buy goods in one port where they export them, and then sell them in another where they are in high demand. An example of this is sugar from Martinique to Jamaica, or Vanilla from Portobello to Curacao. Even if it isn't in high demand going from an export to an import country can turn a profit. Later in the game you get the chance to trade in contraband goods, sometimes even outside of smuggling. The map mod helps with this, as you can easily see which ports deal in which goods at a glance.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:27:13 GMT -6
BA.4.iii Questing There are many opportunities in the game to make money via generated quests. These are generated from a variety of places during the game like the store, the shipyard, random nobles on the street, the church, the harbor master, and the governor. The people around town that will have quests or interesting things to say will look different than your average "dude in a brown or black suit". You'll understand after a few trips to town. The other guys will just be looking for a ride somewhere, usually way too little to bother.
First off you probably want to grab a "stolen ship" quest from each port you land in. They will give you some vague info on a stolen ship, and tell you to retrieve it. I wouldn't spend much time hunting this ship down, but instead continue on your business and whenever you see a orange sail ship on your map, go grab it, as these are the targets of those quests. There are no time limits to these, and they will offer you chests of doubloons for the return of the ships. Somewhere from 30k worth up to 90k, depending on your rank and the type of ship they ask you to return.
Beyond that you can see the store owners and shipyard for some easy "run around town" quests like "Your store, your money, and your life" or the return a missing tool to the shipyard. In the first, follow the instructions of the quest, then see the smugglers, follow them until you meet with the smuggler leader. At this point threaten him, and he will have his men attack you. Once you beat them, he will give you all his goods to let him go. This is usually like 20k plus a load of diamonds and rubies and such. Then the store owner will pay you like 15k for the mission. Pretty easy early money.
In the other shipyard quests, you just need to ask people around town until someone has information on the tramp that stole the item. Then you look around town for hobos, and ask them. Sometimes they tossed the item outside town, sometimes they will just give it to you.
Beyond that some of the quests nobles give you will be to hunt down captains. These are also not timed, and if they ask you to kill someone those ships will have the orange sails like the harbormaster missions. If they just want you to deliver a message then the ship will be green sailed.
Some people around town will often offer you tips on a ransom target. These can be a decent source of money. Sometimes the people carrying your target will just hand them to you. You can then go to the drop point and ask for either the amount of doubloons the original quest giver specified, or even more and they will give them to you in pesos. You can save before talking to the person and see what their threshold is. Be warned: These quests do have an expiration in terms of being able to find the person you can ransom them to. If you waste much time that person will have died under a variety of circumstances and you will be forced to sell your passenger to le francois for half the price (or a crappy tip on some ship carrying wood).
The highest paying quests are probably the "Hot Raid" quests received from random captains in port. Also the "eliminate the competition" quests the store owners sometimes give you. These quests can give you huge amounts of cargo, and sometimes even silver and gold. I have gotten 500,000 - 1 million pesos from a single one of these. When the cargo hold you are sent to sink has like 4000 copra.... it can be very profitable =P.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:27:27 GMT -6
BA.4.iv Treasure Hunting Another method of getting some much needed cash is to do a bit of treasure hunting. Pirate.Love.Treasure. So get to it! You can get a treasure map by savescumming a tavern until you see an extra pirate sitting at the tables (one will always be the smuggling guy) and talking to him. As long as you don't already have a treasure map then he will offer you the chance to buy one. It will cost anywhere from 80 – 300 doubloons. Most of these are genuine, though rarely you will run into a fake and lose your money. I personally haven't even had that happen yet, so it is fairly rare. Follow the instructions and go find that treasure. You can find amulets, wards, loads of weapons, gems, chests of "treasure" that sell for 80 – 90k to a banker, and chests of doubloons. Most of the time way more than you paid that shady dude at the bar for.
Another way to get a treasure map is to go through the jungles randomly until you see a damsel in distress. Sometimes there are people chasing her, trying to get at her cookies and all that, and sometimes she's alone. She will make you an offer, and sometimes that offer is to help track down her inheritance treasure. Lead the way to a cave and find the treasure and split it with her, and there you have it.
Also a lot of treasures contain parts of a treasure map. If you get two parts you have another treasure map, so in this way you can treasure hunt even more! Yay!
Important note: After you find a treasure you will be hunted by Gentlemen of Fortune. Either in the first town you come to on the island, or at sea in the form of a ship that runs you down. This is a one time attack triggered by finding treasure. Some people just can't keep their big mouths shut eh?
Level 1 treasures are generated buy buying or getting maps directly from people in the game.
Level 2 treasures are generated by finding 2 halves of a treasure map and combining them.
Level 2 treasures can sometimes generate special items like Ward 'Scorpion' and Naval Carbines.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:27:48 GMT -6
BA.4.v Exploring Exploring the world may provide opportunities for money. One source are floating barrels on the global map. These are an excellent source of early money. You can save before you encounter them in order to weed out the exploding barrels (yeah... some of them do just explode instead of having loot), or to find the ones that have a ton of goods floating near them, often times expensive contraband goods. There is also some trick involving waiting 2 days after you reload in order to get a shot at finding an "excellent" map among the barrels treasures (later in the game). I think that is really more of a waste of time though =P.
You can also land at beaches, here there may be individual items, or sometimes rarely chests of loot. These usually spawn at either end of the beach.
Wandering Indians in the jungles may offer you amazing deals on gold, silver, or pearls. Buy all you can from them and sell them to a usurer for a profit.
Another thing I'll put in this section , because it isn't enough to warrant its own. Bottles of rum. Hold on to any you come across, or buy any you see in town. You can sell them for 1k pesos to any lighthouse keeper. Some extra cash to be made there.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:28:02 GMT -6
BA.4.vi Gambling Ok, I know that you are probably just thinking "uh, do we really need to have gambling spelled out to us? So much that it needs its own heading?" Well first off. Rude. I do what I want. Secondly I put this here to essentially point out that while gambling can give you cash, savescum gambling is, in many ways, counter-productive. The game has a sort of anti-cheat in the form of making your chances of winning at gambling really low if you load a save right before you do it. The gamblers also will quickly refuse to play with you, and often won't play for much money. You will spend gross amounts of time trying to load and win, only to get trounced time and time again. On top of that if all you do is win, you will end up getting called a cheat and no longer be able to play on that island. That being said, if you are really hard up, you can always do just that. Your luck skill plays a part here, and once you get good luck you can win a lot more than you lose just by playing the odds. My advice here would be to save upon entering and take note of your money, gamble for a while, and if you lost your ♥♥♥ just load and go on your way. If you are desperate then spend a few nights or go to sea and come back to try again.
Governors will not gamble with you until you are famous enough. They will do high stakes gambling, and it increases your luck skill far more than gambling in a tavern.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:28:14 GMT -6
BA.4.vii Smuggling (super high profit section) Ok, now we get to the real fun. Smuggling is getting rid of all those super expensive contraband goods that you have been hoarding up in the warehouse or on ships. I'm going to go a step further and give a few tips on being a successful smuggler even into the late game. First off, smugglers will only deal with class 3 ships or smaller. This is a bummer later on, as you will likely want to be running around on at least a fast frigate, if not a line ship. Also the easiest way to get slaves is to scare the crap out of them with a ship that has like 800+ crew, as they will give up and you'll get batches of 400 – 500 slaves per ship. Unfortunately every time you swap ships to a smaller one and leave your class 1 in storage... you lose your entire crew. Annoying to say the least. So what is to be done? Well early in the game it is easy. You are probably running a class 3 ship at best and so you can take your goods to the smugglers whenever they start weighing you down. Dealing with smugglers often can get tiresome, however, and hurt your reputation with the nation you are selling the smuggled goods at. Not to mention most of the time you end up in a fight, and having to flee the harbor with a squadron of ships chasing you. So ideally you would like to do this as seldom as possible, with the most profit to be had. Option 2 – THE BEST OPTION. In my humble opinion. What I have done is after I own my own island (through the quest line flying the jolly roger), though you can do this with any port really, it just costs more money and eats into your profits. After I have my island I hunt down a couple really nice Pinnance ships with extra deadweight. These ships are class 3 and can get up to around 5000 deadweight. I put them in storage at my island. I then go around on my ship of the line, or my manowar, or whatever hulking beast I collect slaves on, and scare the CRAP out of the high seas. I bring all contraband goods back to my gord, and shove all the slaves onto the Pinnances, they will not mutiny in storage. Be sure to dump the cannons off those ships, they just take up weight. Once they are full (with a little room for food, medicine, and maximum crew), you can then take them out of storage and lead them (quickly....) to the closest port of port-au-prince. Make sure to save before midnight rolls around, because that is when ships can mutiny. If you wait until just after midnight to leave Isla Mona, you can make it before midnight rolls around again (as long as you have hook's mod). Once you have made it to port you can dump any remaining crew into the tavern (make sure you have plenty of time left in the day), they will stay there as long as midnight doesn't pass again. Sometimes they will stay an extra day, but best to just not worry about it. Then shove your monster ship into storage, this will only cost you like 10k pesos. After that you go see the smugglers, and set up a meeting. Go meet them, and sell off your nearly 10000 slaves. This will give you close to 4 million pesos. WOAH. You can expand your enterprise by adding more ships in port-au-prince to carry more slaves. You can also use the opportunity to sell any extra ropes, resin, and silk that you might have, though you will want to hold onto all of these things until you've upgraded all the ships in the game you care to upgrade. Note I didn't mention ironwood, and I did not just leave it out by accident. Ironwood can be sold elsewhere... for an insane amount. More on that later. After you've fled the authorities successfully you can return to port to claim your big ship and hire your old crew back. Then you just take the cargo ships back to your gord, and start again if you want. It won't take you but a few hours to get millions of pesos. Note: On Very Hard and Impossible difficulty, the largest ships that smugglers allow are class 4, not class 3. So you will have to settle for Fleuts or snow. Another tip when you are smuggling. After you sell your goods you will often be accosted by local soldiers. This is generated at the time of the sale and depends on stealth. You can try to bribe them with a charisma check, but that means giving them at least 20% of your profits from the sale. Regardless you may yet further be attacked by ships once you leave the bay. You can avoid these ships by resting for a few days on the shore before you get back on your ship. Guess they get bored waiting for you .
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:28:24 GMT -6
BA.4.viii Investing (Main Money Maker late game) The age old practice of having your money... make money. Banks across the Caribbean will let you invest funds and give you an interest rate that is directly proportionate to how much they know and like you. So once you've gained a little notoriety and relationship with a country you can go to their bank and dump your millions of pesos there alongside your thousands of doubloons. A good rate can give you 6% on pesos and 4% on doubloons, this is the best rate provided. Just keep an eye on your investments. Don't let the city where you have your money held in be plundered =P. It is a good idea to talk to people in every port you call, just to make sure a siege isn't underway that involves your money or your ships.
Investing is hands down the best way to make money late in the game. Having 20 million pesos making 6% interest every single month will pay for a huge squadron with interest alone.
Another form of investment can come in the form of a random noble asking you to help him out. He owes money to the bank and cannot yet make good on it. Worse, they are holding a priceless family heirloom and will sell it if he can't come up with at least the interest. He asks you to cover him and he will give you 100% return on investment. Score. Go to the bank and offer what you want (but best to offer the maximum amount) and take the heirloom to the noble. In three months return to the bank and get double your money back. I don't think this ever ends up cheating you out of money, at least it hasn't me yet. Its an amazing return on investment.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:28:36 GMT -6
BA.5 Fame and Reputation Fame and reputation in the game plays a somewhat minor role, but the most important factor is how it effects the loyalty of your crew. Any non-quest officers that have positive reputation will lose loyalty when you do something that gives you negative reputation. The opposite is true for the negative rep officers. Therefore depending on your play style you will want to keep an entire crew that are all of the same alignment. This part of the guide will help you to keep them happy.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:28:49 GMT -6
BA.5.i Reputation ranks From lowest to highest
Monster Bloody Killer Miscreant Villain Pirate Scoundral Rascal Swindler Adventurer Ordinary Sailor Captain Jolly Good Fellow Gentleman(Hidalgo) Honest Captain Hero Man of Honor Saint Hero
To the left are hero titles, to the right NPC matching titles.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:29:06 GMT -6
A.5.ii What effects Reputation(nobility) and how It is important to know what effects your reputation(nobility), as this will determine how it effects the loyalty of your officers. A higher authority (the bar under your hero's portrait not the stat) will mean a less drastic negative effect on officers, and a more pronounced positive one. This type of reputation is known as Nobility, and is separate from the reputation you have with different countries.
What lowers reputation (nobility):
Refusing to help people – This can be vagabonds in the jungle, or damsels in distress. If you tell them to bugger off, or let the men have their way with the poor girl, then you will get (understandably...) negative reputation. Also this applies to refusing to help the governor when he asks you to do something (save before you talk to him if you want the option of not doing what he asks), or giving up on quests you take from the harbormaster. Enslaving crews Throwing crews overboard – This is a large negative hit, and also a really good way to get loyalty among evil officers. Throwing captains overboard – same as above. Ransoming captives – Either captive captains, or through the ransom quests. Dueling people in bar fights (depends on dialogue) Whoring Having sex with anyone but your girlfriend, even if you don't have a girlfriend. This includes waitresses or damsels who are so impressed by you saving their cookies that they want to give you said cookies. Many different actions during the flying the jolly roger quest lines... if you couldn't guess that burning towns, killing children, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ women would give you negative reputation. (In fact as long as you are doing the FTJR DLC you will constantly lose nobility. This is supposed to end when you finish the FTJR quest Nemesis, but in the English version it does not. See below in the quirks section for how to fix this.) Smuggling Confessing sins to a priest and telling him you sink French boats. Drinking until drunk in taverns. Lying to Monks about getting their money back from robbers.
The easiest and fool proof way to raise your evil crew's loyalty is by taking a few ships and tossing the captains and enslaving or tossing the crew. Its actually just stupid easy. You will never have a problem with evil officers doing that, no matter how much good stuff you do on the side.
What raises reputation(nobility): helping people – take on tramps into your crew from the jungle, don't let those guys ♥♥♥♥ that poor damsel, that kind of thing. Generated quests – Quests for the church, the harbor master, the shipyard, the store, citizens on the street (except slaving and ransom missions), and the governor will all give you good rep. Even the assassination missions will be positive. Giving money to the church or beggers – If you are desperate you can always just hand money to people on the street for a good rep.... Letting captive captains go and setting crews free on lifeboats Consecrating your ship Lots of different storyline quests outside of flying the jolly roger blessing slaves and letting them go free Dueling people for honor – Sometimes a woman will approach you and say some guy is trying to force her into stuff, or a dude will talk to you about himself or his son that have accidentally gotten into a fight they can't win. If you follow these quests through then you will get positive rep. Letting ships go after you plunder them Loaning money to nobles. Refusing sex from waitresses and damsels(prudes....) Some fights in a tavern (depends on dialogue)
Unfortunately some of the most profitible things in the game are negative rep based. Like many of you out there, however, I like the idea of having at least one good guy play through. I don't like the idea of having no money. You can give some money to the church, seek out damsels, or just do a lot of quests to try and balance the side business of slavery. I mean... they were pirates after all... right? Also letting pirate captains go isn't much of a loss. Governors don't pay crap for those guys anyway.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:29:47 GMT -6
BA.5.iii – a note on fame Fame doesn't play a huge role in the game. The more famous you are has an impact on how people greet you, but beyond that does little else besides increase the number of sailors you can hire at taverns at one time. One thing it does, and I mentioned this in my investment section, is offer you better rates at banks. Later in the game there are a couple quests where you will need at least a little fame to get them, but more on that later.
How to increase fame do quests do generated quests, and do them well Throw the enemy crews overboard Release ships after you plunder them
How to lose fame Avoid combat at sea Do nothing. Fame decreases every 2 months on normal. Higher difficulties it will decrease faster.
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:30:03 GMT -6
BA.6 The Perils of Freeplay I mentioned this before back in the tips section, but I wanted to give it its own section just to drill this home. Some quests have a rank limit. Main quests. Important quests. Once you reach rank 15 these quests will be unavailable to you. Keep this in mind. Once you finish the Final Lesson and The Dutch Gambit quests, you can breathe easier in this regard. Until then though, be careful doing to much Freeplay if you want to participate in these quests (fully).
The other part of the equation has to do with having a big ship with a bunch of crew. You may feel compelled to freeplay until you are the biggest, baddest mofo sailing the seven seas. Throughout the entire main quest, all the way up to practically the very end, you will be forced to dump your ship into storage in favor of quest ships or just small ships that fit certain restrictions. It isn't the end of the world, but it can get really annoying if you have to dump 700 – 1500 crew every other quest because you were tooling around with a fleet of first line ships. My advice would be to go through the story and THEN freeplay, rather than the other way around. Again this isn't 100% vital, you can give up crew and get crew again, but not only are most of the best ships in the game along with the best officers given to you through the story, but also all the best items and wards. So if you really want to be the baddest mofo in the Caribbean, you'll need to do the quests anyway. Otherwise you'll just be some scrub that doesn't have a magic sword and a hot girlfriend that can out fight a ninja (or that is a pirate queen... whatever your preference!).
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Post by CSA FD on Jun 20, 2018 10:31:13 GMT -6
BA.7 Important People and Places There are many important people and places in the Caribbean. Places to buy amulets, to get your bounty paid off, or to upgade your ship. In this section I'm going to outline all the different places you can go and what you can do there.
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