Review 2008

This post is dedicated to those of you who are playing the Pirates Assault online game. Please keep in mind that this post will be permanently updated so you'll have all the information about the gameplay, issues and also a lot of tips. You may also find useful the following posts:

• List of melee main weapons
• List of melee secondary weapons
• List of ranged weapons
• List of canons
• List of amulets
• List of rings
• List of crystals (soon to come)

Skills: calculator for base skills and abilities

Let's get started ... The first major tip is the character's skill calculator. Please notice that there are 2 types of skills: base skills (Strength, Stamina, Dexterity) and abilities (Fighting ability, Parry). There are also 2 formulas for finding out the cost of each and every skill you may want to improve.

Formula for the base skills (Strength, Stamina, Dexterity):
(level-5)*(level-5)*2 gold needed
For example: I have 10 points on Strength. To raise this skill by 1 (up to 11), I will have to pay (11-5)*(11-5)*2=6*6*2=72 gold.

Pirates Assault: base skills calculator (Strength, Stamina, Dexterity)

Formula for the abilities (Fighting ability, Parry):
(level-5)*(level-5) gold needed
For example: I have 10 points on Parry. To raise this skill by 1 (up to 11), I will have to pay (11-5)*(11-5)=6*6=36 gold. As you can see, the cost is half the one for the base skills!

Pirates Assault: abilities calculator (Fighting ability, Parry)

...soon to be updated

Harbour tavern: Crew for the ship

Your ship can accomodate a certain number of crew members, depending on ship's level. Your crew helps a lot on the Sea Battles by adding valuable points to Attack ability to sieze ships and Defensive ability to prevent ship siezures. The available crew members are not related to any skill you may have or to the level of the boat. There are 3 types of crew members available: Mate, Pirate (man), Pirate (woman). The Mate can be hired for 50 gold per unit, while the Pirate (both man and woman) are priced 100 gold per unit. Although it states nowhere, Shanks foud out that each type of crew member has its specific skills:

Mate: 1 Attack, 0 Defence - 50 gold to hire
Male Pirate: 3 Attack, 1 Defence - 100 gold to hire
Female Pirate, 2 Attack, 2 Defence - gold to hire

What's the meaning of that? If you have the basic boat, the Sloop, you'll have (by default) 15 empty slots for crew members. If you hire 15 Female Pirates, the Attack ability to sieze ships will become 30 (15x2) and the Defensive ability to prevent ship siezures will become 30 (15x2) also.

Please note that if you choose to dismiss some of the crew members, the money you spent hiring them will not be reinbursed!

Ship: crew, attack & defence, repair, upgrade

Every pirate can have only one ship at a time. Based on the pirate's level certain improved ships become available ... at a certain cost (gold). Your ship gives you the opportunity to transport goods (cotton, cacao, coffee, hemp and rum) from one place to another and to gain gold (by buying them at lower price and selling them at higher one).

Also, the ship helps you carry Sea battles. During sea battles, the things that count are: the crew, the level and the number of cannons installed, and your Captain skill (which allows you to buy and user more powerful canons). The crew (as stated above) grants you specific Attack ability to sieze ships and Defensive ability to prevent ship siezures. The winner of a sea battle gains gold and a fraction of the enemy's cargo (usually 30% of the cargo). After a sea battle the ship may suffer some damage, be sure to repair the ship 100% (the ship repair is carried out at the Shipyard and costs 1 gold per point of damage) before going on a sea battle.

Merchants: making money in the peaceful way

You can use your ship for transporting goods from one location to another (you buy them at a certain location, transport them to the next and then selling them at a bigger price) and making some gold. Until now, the prices listed below are stable (don't change for the same harbour):

Pirates Assault: merchant prices in every port

As you can see, the most profitable routes are:

• Cacao from Andross (4 gold/unit) to Port Categenka (9 gold) with a profit of 5 gold/unit
• Rum from Port Tunguska (9 gold) to Andross (15 gold) with a profit of 6 gold/unit

The distances between ports are illustrated below, keep in mind that the values are expressed in minutes and are calculated for the first level ship (Sloop):

Pirates Assault: Trade routes distances

If you use jewels for lowering the time between destinations, the actual times will be decreased 10 times! Returning to Tortuga from any town takes 2 minutes, so it's very safe although not very profitable.

Attack bonus and defence bonus calculator

Attack bonus: (low_damage+high_damage)/100*(strength_skill-5)
Example: for a base damage of 11-20 and strength of 30 (bonuses from items are added also), you get a (11+20)/100*(30-5)=31/100*25=0.31*25=7.75 bonus damage.

Defence bonus: (low_defence+high_defence)/100*(dexterity_skill-5)
Example: for a base defence of 5-8 and dexterity 34 (bonuses from the items are added also), you get a (5+8)/100*(34-5)=13/100*29=0.13*29=3.77 bonus defence.

... you can use the calculator here.