Pirates are **WAY** too common in shipping in Settlers/Phrecia

I was really enjoying the town aspect of the current league and event... Until I hit some magic threshold and started getting pirates seizing my ships. The frequency is *ABSURDLY* high - I'm literally getting seized about 25-33% of the time. That would be okay if the boss was reasonable but it's very over-tuned - the best I've managed is about 25% of his health (I can easily run T10 maps with 0-2 deaths). Even if I pay the EXTREMELY high ransom of the 50k gold (that is about 1-1.5 DAYS of maps at the point I'm at), I still lose the shipment.

Unless this is changed, I think I'm done with the town.

You probably the single person on the server (I suppose PoE2 refugee) that hates pirates.

I would advise GGG actually BUFFED pirates frequency, because of a pile of gold, sometimes profitable unique drops and the fact that the pirate guy is literally does NO damage and just has high life pool.

Well I wish I could swap my pirate rng with yours. I've spawned it once in about the last 50 shipments. I don't know how it rolls on spawning exactly. I'm sending very small shipments, so perhaps I need to increase the sizes if I want it to spawn more, or perhaps smaller shipments is a method if you want it to spawn less. May jus be RNG, I don't know.



...
I just encountered this boss. I think it is one of the better bosses they have created. There are a fair few posts about this though and what i'm wondering is if they are largely coming from SC players or players that do not play strong defensive builds. The reason I am wondering this, is because the boss seems pretty balanced to me. Where I'm thinking the disconnect might be coming from is because of the single portal, which is unusual for POE1. For players that play HC, even if they are in SC, it is probably not noticeably harder than other content. However for players that may be use to having 6 portals, this boss is in effect 6 times harder than it would be usually. 6 times more damage needed per death, 6 times less flask refresh. So other than the penalties for loosing the fight, I'm wondering if this is what is causing some of the aggravation about the difficulty. Where other players don't notice it as much.

The other thing is the area level. I don't know how it works, but I checked it on this occasion, it was area level 84, on a level 92 character. It feels to me like it scales as you level, a bit like Catarina. This may not be correct, I didn't check the levels earlier on, but it felt like I was getting hit pretty hard. It is possible that if people are playing it at different levels, that has something to do with some people finding it more difficult than others.

There may also be something on it's defenses that is making it harder for certain builds, though I have not noticed this myself.

"

wilcoxon#7936 wrote:

I was really enjoying the town aspect of the current league and event... Until I hit some magic threshold and started getting pirates seizing my ships. The frequency is *ABSURDLY* high - I'm literally getting seized about 25-33% of the time. That would be okay if the boss was reasonable but it's very over-tuned - the best I've managed is about 25% of his health (I can easily run T10 maps with 0-2 deaths). Even if I pay the EXTREMELY high ransom of the 50k gold (that is about 1-1.5 DAYS of maps at the point I'm at), I still lose the shipment.

Unless this is changed, I think I'm done with the town.

You know there is a risk meter when you send out your ships, right? It scales with the proportion of shipment value to crew skills; higher shipment values make the risk go up, higher skilled crews make it go down. If you send out 3 ships with a 33% risk, you will on average have one ship with any sort of interference. That's not necessarily always pirates, could be port taxes or crew members leaving or something else.

But if you ignore the risk meter and just fill your ships to the brim, you will always have some sort of encounter. And if you have an encounter with every shipment, your chances of getting pirates are much, much higher, too.

So it's really all in your hands: if you want less pirates, send less risky shipments.
I hope this helps :)

"

CyberDurden#6348 wrote:

I hope this helps :)

Your risk meter has absolutely nothing to do with the pirate boss appearing and holding your crew hostage.

I'm not going to quote the rest of your post because I'm hoping you do the right thing and delete it.

Please do not post disinformation, it's actively toxic and harmful to the community.

"

CyberDurden#6348 wrote:

"

wilcoxon#7936 wrote:

I was really enjoying the town aspect of the current league and event... Until I hit some magic threshold and started getting pirates seizing my ships. The frequency is *ABSURDLY* high - I'm literally getting seized about 25-33% of the time. That would be okay if the boss was reasonable but it's very over-tuned - the best I've managed is about 25% of his health (I can easily run T10 maps with 0-2 deaths). Even if I pay the EXTREMELY high ransom of the 50k gold (that is about 1-1.5 DAYS of maps at the point I'm at), I still lose the shipment.

Unless this is changed, I think I'm done with the town.

You know there is a risk meter when you send out your ships, right? It scales with the proportion of shipment value to crew skills; higher shipment values make the risk go up, higher skilled crews make it go down. If you send out 3 ships with a 33% risk, you will on average have one ship with any sort of interference. That's not necessarily always pirates, could be port taxes or crew members leaving or something else.

But if you ignore the risk meter and just fill your ships to the brim, you will always have some sort of encounter. And if you have an encounter with every shipment, your chances of getting pirates are much, much higher, too.

So it's really all in your hands: if you want less pirates, send less risky shipments.
I hope this helps :)

Thats not how that works. This only works for the "pirates stolen half of our shipment" once your ship returns. Ship being kidnapped by the boss and demanding 50k ransom or fighting him and having 50k gold reward and some runes is not affected by % in your risk window.

Something you could do is run only low level crew and frequent lower shipments so that if you loose them it does not matter. It sounds like you have been getting a rather high spawn rate. 25-33% is much higher than what I get. Sipping worker wages are not that high, so it is possible to do going to the close ports. There doesn't seem to be much value in going to the long ports, other than the reward type or potentially the quota you get.

I would encourage trying to get to a point where you are beating the boss though, because the reward is pretty decent and why most people on here are saying they want it to spawn.

I'm trying to look up the level of the fight. The wiki says 84, which is what I have noticed, but I had the feeling that if you encounter him earlier it was easier, like Catarina. Doesn't look to be that way though. Maybe you need more power before attempting this fight, as t10 map is a fair way below lvl 84 content.

Just looking up some of the new bosses stats on PoeDB and noticed they seem to have a fair bit more evasion listed than a lot of the other bosses. It's only 12000, but compared to other bosses that is a fair bit more than they have. Often 4-8k. So i'm wondering if this might be causing some people with attack/crit based builds to be having a tougher time with the fight than they might on other bosses. May not be enough to make a difference, but if some players are pushing the limit on their accuracy, it might be that on this fight it is not high enough to sustain their usual dps. Otherwise maybe something to do with the area level.

I just had a rather long fight against the Admril, though my build has hits can not be evaded, so the above does not explain it. I just have very low dps, 200k ish, so it is expected. He has the same elemental resistances of 50 as most the other bosses and. It says he has 76million life, which seems more than some of the other bosses, slightly less than black night. Unsure how accurate these values are, some entries seem to have invalid numbers.

So I wonder how hard they intend it to be. Seems to me it is slightly more difficult that conquerors. Which I think is about right. I'm not sure how hard they intend it to be. In terms of some other league bosses, I would say it is in the middles somewhere. Probably harder than the easy expedition bosses, but easier than the toughest. Probably similar for heist as well and Delve. Have not done much king of the mist, so not sure on that one.

This boss is not hard.

I've gotten him twice now and I believe both involved adding dust to bump the shipment values over 100k (these I think were 40k+ dust).


Died this time to the circle thing, wasn't sure what to do so treated it like Sirus, but now realize probably have to get friendly with pirate in center.

still, one time fight on an unoptimized ssf chaos TA totems, my older chaos over time builds don't do enough (anymore compared to before) with much better gear.


Now that its taking time to assemble the mats for shipments I can definitely understand not wanting to deal with said pirate.