Pirate101 Producer's Letters

 
 

December 2018 Producer's Letter


My Pirate Friends,

The winds grow colder these days, so I’m on my way to the beach for some Skull Island sunshine. The Holiday season is upon us, so I hope that these days you’re finding yourself warm and happy as well (or chilly and happy, if that’s your preference).

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Speaking of the holidays, we’ve kicked off the 12 Days of the Spiral, and we’re incredibly excited for this time of year! First of all, we’re thrilled to have started an epic Throwback (Giveback) Thursday where we’ve brought back two of our previous charity mounts – the Bah Humbug and the Noelephant! If you’ve always wanted to parade around on a festive elephant, or crawl around on a holiday themed scorpion, now’s your chance! These mounts benefit both Creative Action and Children’s Health℠ . More info here.

Our biggest holiday update in this corner of the Spiral was the addition of the Krampus as a skeleton key boss fight! There are three versions – find the wooden keys if you’re a newer Pirate, the stone keys if you’ve got some experience under your belt, and the gold keys if you’re a veteran. Design had a LOT of fun crafting these fights, and we hope you’ll find them incredibly fun and unique and enjoy the rewards. There’s a new Lump of Coal pet and a new Bell Staff weapon set we think you’ll find appropriately awesome - whether you’re naughty OR nice.

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While you’re in the holiday spirit, make sure to visit Aquila and Cool Ranch – one of my favorite things to do every year is jump in our editor and decorate for the holidays, and you’ll see some new holiday cheer in Illios and Frontier Town. They don’t let me into our design tool very often, but it always gets me in the spirit of the holidays to spread decorations to new areas of the Spiral. Keep an eye out for new Frostys to find as well!

Also, with our winter season, there’s new PVP rewards to earn – we’re switching it up a little this year, so keep an eye on Honest Thomas Purdue and Trusty Flint Locke.  If you’re keen on obtaining the horned toad pet, you’ve got a few more days to battle and boost up that rank!

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If you’ve been away from the Spiral for a while, you might be thinking, “Skeleton keys? What’s that?” Well, we’ve added the World of Dreams to Pirate, and you can read more about it here. The short version is that we added four new boss fights for veteran pirates:

  • Captain Blood
  • Brass Monkey
  • Duck of Death
  • Old Scratch
Old Scratch’s skeleton key fight also includes a fourth promotion for this old and trusted companion.  If you’ve reached level 70 and your spooky companion has the title of Undead Houngan, you should seek out a tavern cellar.

 
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We have heard your requests for some of what we call “quality of life” updates, and we were able to tackle quite a few on your (and our) wish lists with this update. Quest finder was number one on our list. We know there are some quests out there that are hard to find, and we’re happy to help you on your quest to complete all of them! Then, we tackled some important updates on inventory. We know loot is very important so we wanted to first give you a way to protect it with Item Locking, then give you more space to store it (and more friends to adventure with) with bank, backpack, and friends list elixirs.

  • The Expand Backpack Elixir will add 40 slots of backpack space (max 2 per Pirate) 
  • The Expand Bank Elixir will add 40 slots of bank space (max 2 per Pirate) 
  • The Expand Friends List Elixir will add 25 more friends list spaces (max 2 per Pirate)
  • We’ve granted all Pirates 20 extra bank spaces FOR FREE.

Another exciting addition to this corner of the Spiral is Member Benefits.  We run these for a limited time every so often, so being a member has its perks!

  • Double companion orders – Double the loot when companions bring back their haul of goods. 
  • Double pet XP – Double your pet experience from training and snacks! 
  • Free player/companion respec – Change how your pirates and companies are trained without cost.
  • Free Miracle Mitch prices – Wounded companions are healed for free!

This update also included some new pet names, as requested for many years, the Tiger Claws now show up when equipped on MOST mounts (as long as they would not cause your creature bodily harm), and we think we’ve FINALLY put to bed any issues with the Hydra fight. Rejoice! Again, you can see all the details here in the link above.

 We were thrilled to celebrate Pirate’s SIXTH birthday this October, and we partied hard the last half of the month. 

  • All the new member benefits mentioned above were turned on ALL AT ONCE!
  • New class-themed stage ship mounts graced the Crowns Shop
  • A scavenger hunt with some new loot and badges
  • A new pillow fight event
  • A new birthday cake housing item + other gifts thank you to our community

We’re very much looking forward to 2019, and all that the new year will bring. We’ll be SEVEN! That’s pretty amazing! Let us at KingsIsle wish you a happy holiday and a bright new year to you and your crew. May the winds be at your back, and your aim stay true.


With Fire,

Leah “Professor Falmea” Ruben
Senior Producer of MMO Content