Game Update Notes

Ahoy! Raise your sails and ready for adventure. We’ve made a huge amount of amazing improvements to the previous version of the Pirate101 Beta. It’s really going to raise your game and ready your aim!

New Tutorial

After character creation you’ll find your mischievous pirate buddies Boochbeard and Gandry are ready to help guide you and your companion through the basics. To keep things action packed, you’ll be learning the ropes while escaping the clutches of the Armada!

After breaking out of the barracks, you’ll be learning battle board combat on the deck of The Abominable, an enemy ship full of Armada foes led by the Clockwork Emissary, Deacon.

For ship sailing and broadside combat basics you’ll be sailing on Boochbeard and Gandry’s vessel out in Skull Island Skyway—talk about learning how to drive on a cool ship! See the section on Ship Improvements below for more information on Broadside combat.

New Tutorial Tips

During game play you’ll now receive helpful tips along the top of your screen as you encounter new situations. These tips are given to you by helpful characters from the game and can be replayed at any time through the “Replay Tutorial Tips” button in the options menu.

Notification System

Pirate101 keeps track of an amazing amount of notifications about your character so you can see exactly what happened to your character in which order. You can see all your notifications by clicking the “See All Notifications” button from your Options drop down menu.

You’ll also notice when you log back into the game, Boochbeard and your companions will fill you in on where you left off on your mainline quest. Never be lost again!

Training Alerts

You’ll be receiving alerts for your training quests and promotion quests now! Since training quests can come from any of the trainers and reward either an item or a power, be sure to check all the trainers when you head back to Skull Island.

Your ships are no longer just for travel and a staging area for combat (although there’s still plenty of deck side combat to be had). Welcome to fierce cannon exchange and action packed sailing with the all new Broadside Combat!

Be sure to take the tutorial and check out the Broadside combat section in the new Expanded Game Guide to gain a better understanding of the basics because the seas are now a more dangerous place! If you get too close to an enemy ship, broadside combat will begin immediately. Your ship will slow down, cannons will start blazing, and you’ll be in the thick of a mighty battle. You’ll also want to be careful when sailing through a group of ships since they tend to gang up on you if they’re close by.

Your ships can take damage now as well as be healed, and we’ve given players a whole new reason to form groups—a good crewmate in charge of extinguishing the fires that pop up on your ship’s deck during broadside combat will be helpful!

The masthead equipment on your ship now comes charged with a cool power to help you in Broadside combat. Don’t miss the Storm Lord power on Boochbeard and Gandry’s ship in the tutorial. Now that’s power!

If you’re looking for extra speed, visit the new fuel shops on the city docks, but make sure you un-bottle the ship you want to fuel!

We’ve got your vessels in ship shape! Here’s a quick look at the changes:

• New Ships—all the ship vendors now sell parts and new ships. You’ll want to have the latest and greatest ships from every world of the spiral.
• Name your Ship—that’s right! You can now name your ship!
• Ship Equipment—be on the lookout for new Ship parts vendors on the docks of most major city destinations. They have some interesting new equipment for you to test out. Each ship has some new vital statistics like Accuracy, Defense, Armor, Rate of Fire, Damage, and Health. Ship equipment can help with these statistics as well as the statistics you may already familiar with such as Integrity, Turning, and Speed.
• Nautical Ranks—players can now achieve up to level 50 in a secondary leveling bar known as Nautical Rank. Destroying enemy ships in Broadside Combat will result in increases in nautical experience. You’ll earn badges as you rank up as well.
• Ship Emblems—emblems have been modified and improved with all new pirate symbols for your ships. There are even a few new background patterns as well. Enjoy experimenting with them while creating your new characters.

Players will find the battle board a lot more awesome. Attack animations have been improved overall. There are more critical animations from enemies and companions, and definitely more lively combat will be experienced. Other improvements include the following:

• Combat cameras should be swinging into the action better.
• The Battle Board look and feel has been improved.
• Colors and interaction are more intuitive.
• There are more and cooler props on the Battle Board.

Housing

Housing has arrived in Pirate101! You can find two new houses for sale from Mr. Trelawny the housing vendor on Skull Island and a couple of premium houses in the Crown Shop as well. If you lack the funds to purchase a new house, don’t worry, you can now decorate your bunkhouse with furniture while you’re building your stash of gold. While in your bunkhouse, housing, or premium housing, open your furniture menu through the “Place Decorations” buttons in your character drop down menu and get creative!

Zookeeper Joel the Pet Vendor is awaiting your gold on Skull Island! Players can now collect pets in Pirate101 from various vendors around the spiral, from the Crowns Shop, and as loot from bosses. You can even score a pet as a reward for earning a badge!

After securing a pet, equip it in your inventory.

To show your pet following you around instead of your First Mate, look in your options screen to change your follower to your pet instead of your First Mate.

If you’re lucky, your pet may even hop into battle to give you a hand! They have a 50% chance to spawn with you. You do not control them, they are allies.

Badges

Players can now earn badges for the amazing feats they accomplish! Now you can display a badge right under your name through selecting your favorite badge in the My Badges Screen. As an awesome benefit to earning badges, you also find some badges award items when you earn them. Woo Hoo!

Companion Management

When a companion is selected in the Companion Management screen, look for the small triangle at the bottom of their portrait. This shows your companion’s Epic Abilities and Unit Abilities. At varying levels your companion may show a lightning bolt symbol next to their icon. This means they have earned a new power. The button you normally click to train a companion will show the text “New Power” instead of “Train.” Use this button to give your companion a new ability! You can train passive skills and even active companion skills in some cases.

Training Tomes

Fancy yourself a treasure hunter? The best treasure is knowledge! Be looking for hidden training tomes that have been placed around the world. These tomes give you additional companion training points. You’ll know you’ve found a training tome when you see a sparkling book on the ground that is labeled “ancient tome.” In every tavern you’ll also find a professor who will part with a training tome (or ten) . . . for a price!

Crown Shop

A new Crown shop has been added to Pirate101. To access the Crown Shop, just click its icon at the top of the screen. Be on the lookout for fun items only available through the crown shop. During Beta you will be given an allowance of crowns to try out these items. Remember that these purchases will not apply to your character at launch and are only for testing purposes. Have fun!

Dye Shop

Players can now locate Dye Vendors in town areas. These vendors function much like the Dye Vendor found In Wizard101, but in addition you will also be able to dye your ship equipment!

Puppet Shows

All of the Puppet shows are now fully integrated into the game! Even better, you can now replay all the Puppet Shows to enjoy them later in case you missed an important detail or just want a good laugh.

Life Fountain Functionality

Don’t forget to visit life fountains when you’re low on health! Now you will have to interact with the Life Fountain to feel its healing effects instead of just be near it.

Teleporting and the Bone Bar!

You’ll notice many changes to the user interface from the previous version. The bone bar can be found on the bottom left hand corner of the screen just above the health meter. This bar has a lot of helpful buttons like Teleport to Skull Island, Teleport to Last Life Fountain, Teleport Home, Open Map, and the Potion Bottle. While sailing, you’ll notice a second Bone Bar on the right hand side of the screen, this is where you’ll access your ship’s powers for broadside combat.

Our Beta players had some wonderful input into how to improve and polish Pirate101. It’s almost impossible to list all the changes that have been made, but here is a long list of things you have helped us identify and improve:

• Players should no longer find themselves stuck in the skyways when zoning.
• Your chat window should no longer experience “doubling” when whisper chatting with friends.
• We’ve added over 4,000 new lines of voice-over dialogue have been added (NOTE: There are still more voice-overs being added to the game, and we’ll be adding more in soon. There’s no need to bug report missing voiceovers at this point. Thanks for your patience!)
• Nameplates have been added to quest objects that you need to collect around the Spiral.
• Players may now group immediately after creating a new character. You no longer have to own a ship to group.
• Players should no longer find themselves stuck in combat while grouping.
• Overall quest flow has been improved and even more quests have been added.
• You’ve got your wish! You’ll find even more promotion quests for your companions.
• Game balance has been improved.
• There is now better placement of enemies in the world.
• Players will now find more variety in equipment both in vendors and as loot drops.
• Players now have access to more outfits with better statistics for each world.
• Players and their companions will now have more powers to choose from.
• Quest arrow navigation has been improved.
• Multiplayer Deck side combat has been improved and should be more smooth (no more battling with ships overlapping each other).
• The zone maps are all finished, and now you’ll find all kinds of great information on them.
• Those boring rides through the Spiral Pathways between Stormgates should be much more interesting now! But watch out! Spectral enemies lurk in the voids of space.
• Label colors have been added to enemy units to help you better identify their power level. Hostile creatures have orange (more powerful than you), gray (less powerful than you) or yellow (as powerful as you) names displayed above their heads. Blue-labeled characters are other players, and green-labeled characters are friendly characters controlled by the game.
• The overall general world ambience has been improved with sound, additional passive creatures, and thematic characters.
• Mini-games can now be found in every tavern (Not just in Avery’s Courtyard).
• Taverns all have cellars now! Don’t forget to visit your companions in tavern cellars!
• More loot! There are now random treasure chests placed throughout the world. Some are cleverly hidden!
• Character creation looks and plays better.
• The boss fights around the Pirate101 world are more challenging and should come with more interesting twists.
• The Skyway Blockades will now alert you to why they are there and why you can’t pass if you’re not ready.