Pirate101 Producer's Letters

My Pirate Friends,

With the leaves swirling around the skyways and the colder winds approaching, I wanted to sail by to chat a bit about what’s happened so far since the sun was hot and high in the sky.

Our September update brought quite a few new systems and quality of life improvements. As I said before, our goal is to grow the game WIDER, and with that we wanted to give you more things to do on a daily basis; like side systems, repeatable content, and things to make Pirate life easier and better, for those just starting out all the way up to the most experienced scallywags in the skyway!

Team Up Ledger. We’ve been listening, and this has been at or near the top of the community’s wish list for some time now. For this most recent update it was at the top of ours as well! Now it’s easier to band together to defeat the bad guys, progress through the Spiral, and, of course, accumulate tons of shiny treasure! See the ledger near the docks in Skull Island to Team Up!

New Stuff. We celebrated Halloween and our Fifth birthday with a ton of new and cool stuff:

1. What’s a birthday or a holiday without a party? We introduced our Party Room to the Crown Shop, which has two pretty cool features: first, it automatically changes as the season changes, and second, you enter through your house but can mingle with Pirates on the same realm as you once you’re in. Oh, there are also some group chests with some pretty sweet loot in there too, so bring your friends to party!
2. Embrace your wild side and don the Giraffe and Unicorn wigs.
3. Show your class pride and get your class specific rowboats!
4. Max level? Feeling left out when looking at some things in the Crown Shop? We’ve updated all the CCG packs to add a level 70 tier of gear and weapons, and added new level 70 Crown Shop gear.
5. Let’s talk riding around in style. There’s the Cloudstrider Pegasus mount, the Day of the Dead horse mount, the Gloomthorn vine mount, and one of my favorites, the Birthday Balloon mount!
6. The infamous birthday present boxes had even better loot specifically for our fifth birthday. It was a special year, and we wanted it to be especially rewarding.

And, of Course... No discussion of the update would be complete without the Auto Companion and Ship PVP features, both of which we’re going to take to the next level. That’s right, we’ve got improvements in the works! Here’s what you’ll find coming very soon:

Companions on automatic play will get a little smarter. They’re more likely to use abilities like buffs and heals. They’ll also be better about avoiding traps and proximity based opponent abilities. You can also ask them to skip their turn if you’d rather they just hold formation. Things overall should be a little more ship shape without you at the helm in combats.

For ship PVP, we’re into the next phase. In practice ship PVP, we’ve added temporary leaderboards so you can know your current standings… and who you should go after. We’re bringing everyone to a single realm to PVP (but returning you to the same realm you were at previously when you leave the zone). Also, you now have a reason to get out of safe harbor – that’s right, there’s a turret in the middle of the zone with some sweet treasure – including two new ship powers! Battle stations!

Now the winter holidays are upon us. We’ve got all the typical festivities as expected, but there’s more this year!

1. Gingerbread raiders have invaded the Spiral skyways. Defeat enemy ships in the Skull Island, Westminster, and Calabria Skyways to ferret them out, and crumble some cookies for a chance at cool loot and some new brag-worthy badges.
2. If you were missing our little snowman that stuck around all spring and you’re dying to continue to “Stay Frosty,” there are more snowmen to hunt down throughout the Spiral.
3. Monquista City, Barkley Square in Marleybone, and Florenza in Valencia are a little more festive now (including present boxes!).
4. As always, we’ll be celebrating 12 days of the Spiral, you’ll find that there are new ways to deck out your Pirate to celebrate this wonderful (if cold…) time of year. Winter is indeed coming.