Title kind of gives it away, doesn’t it. I mean, why do I keep buying these things?  Let’s see – 12 dubs per box, roughly 3000 poe/dub right now – you’re paying 36,000 for a gold box. 4 boxes this time, and I end up with a piggy bank, a plum chroma, and 2 trinkets.  The piggy bank coughed up 20,000, the trinkets weren’t turtle shells, just stuff I already had, and the chroma (the 6th plum one in my booty) may bring more sometime on the other side of the calendar, but probably not so much now when everyone is getting them.  Really, I probably would have been better off selling off 50 dubs on the dubloon exchange and buying what I got in the inn.  So again, why do I keep buying these things?

Oh yeah, tan monkey and golden seal.

On a side note – I’m assuming that Quid Pro Clothes is going to be non-existent soon.  It still shows existing galleries and designs, but as soon as you go to edit anything, you get an error message.  So, to whoever created the site – Thank you very much!  It was a very useful site for figuring out my outfits, and it will be sorely missed.

Yeah, I know.  5 months with no updates – shame on me.  But to be honest, I just haven’t been playing all that much.  I get on to buy the latest LE sloop, maybe do a Kraken run (except all my kits have expired now), but for the most part I’ve been doing other things lately.  Mostly watching some very excellent Korean TV shows.  They’re very enjoyable (I’ve gone through 5 different series at least twice, I’m enjoying them so much), but since they’re Korean, and I don’t speak Korean, I have to read the subtitles.  Which means I actually have to pay attention.  Which means I can’t leave them going on in the background while I do something else – like play Puzzle Pirates.

It also doesn’t help that when I do get on, few of my friends are around.  It’s kind of a bummer, but since I actually find out more about what’s going on with them from facebook, the game isn’t quite a necessary anymore.  And then there’s the issue of the future viability of the game…

I haven’t given up my piratey lifestyle though.  Thanks to this…

I’ll soon be able to dress something like this…

And trust me, those kilts aren’t cheap — in Puzzle Pirates or in real life too.

I’m not the only one who hasn’t updated their pirate blog lately either.  Rikko seems to have abandoned his blog even more than I have.  His last update is about my having put one of his pictures of Lillythanne on a tshirt for a fictional Harley Davidson dealership.  He didn’t do a calendar for 2016 either – much to my disappointment (fortunately my wife got me a Harley calendar for Christmas – but I still miss my pirate pinup girls).  I have a project in mind that I want to do, but I was wanting him to do a new Lillythanne pic for me.  He did, thought he doesn’t know it yet…

Part of this is the same Lillythanne picture I used on the Tshirt, along with parts from 4 other Rikko pictures (I’m not even sure he can figure out which ones).  I plan on doing something like this..

Except with black instead of chrome hardware, a rosewood fret board, and these tuners and knobs…
Now that would be an instrument worthy of a pirate…

… to grandmother’s house we go.

It’s November, and to celebrate, the ringers are selling wine boxes.  I got a bodice, and a trinket — wasn’t really interested in trying my luck more than that.  Still, I did have a bit of good luck recently.  I hadn’t been playing much lately – I missed out on the trick or trinket time completely.  For some reason, I couldn’t get on and do anything reliably.  I was constantly lagging out, and had to reclient so much I couldn’t play.  Turns out, my problem was cause by an access point I had hooked up to improve the wifi coverage in the house — it was causing all my problems.  Once I disconnected it, everything returned to normal.  Go figure.  So anyway, everything is running normal again — I decided to get on, and found a Kraken hunt to get in on.  Did OK — not spectacular, but all right.  Mostly eggers, and I was the only one who bothered to pick up pods too.  We got 50 eggs, then ported – just 3 of us left.  Worked out well for me, got a lovely chunk of change, another throne, and Krakling number 6 – light green.  It was a pleasant way to come back into the game after just lurking for the past few weeks.

So I’ll try to get on a little more often from now on, maybe I’ll get lucky again…

And why is the 12th month DECember?  And why do I care?

Yes, I know, I missed updating in September (which isn’t the 7th month) – but to be honest, I haven’t been doing much lately. I got surprised by the chocolate box promo – and by the gold box promo going on now, because I’ve not been getting on all that frequently.  Oh well, for the choco box promo I got a trinket, a Tudor Bodice and a plain shirt.  For the gold box I’ve gotten a trinket (not a turtle shell though), a gold skelly armor, and a gold candelabra.  I guess I could have done worse.

Ships — still buying ships that I never use.  Well, that’s semi true.  I do use the ships with wardrobes, sword and mug racks, bludgeon chests and Trinket Cases – and the Mechanized Ballyhoo has an easel I use (that way I don’t get some other pirates name as governor on my portraits).  Anyway, I’ve got the 3 latest ones…

The Olympic class.

The Explorer Class

The Undead Class

They look neat, sure, but only the Explorer class comes with the extra storage.  But as I’m a collector, I got them anyway.

Anyhow, I really need to start playing more often again, but it seems like most of the group I used to hang out with isn’t there anymore.  They’ve all found other things to occupy their time and just don’t play like they used to.  And in truth, so have I – but then I tend to do things in cycles, and eventually I’ll cycle back to Puzzle Pirates.  I’ve disappeared from the game before and I’ve come back.  This time, I’m trying to check in more often than I did that time – at least so I don’t miss anything.  Like Peg’s upcoming Skelly Pilly – Bone Voyage. Don’t want to miss that…

Of course, I don’t know if it’s a white, black, or little black dog.  Well it’s August anyway, and time for another blog post.

There hasn’t been a whole lot going on for me lately – well, not on the game anyway.  Microsoft was nice and sent me an update that was genuinely useful.  Several months ago some friendly website decided to send me a nasty piece of “ransomware” – my Norton Security program caught it right away, but while it was able to keep the virus from activating, it was unable to get rid of it.  I tried their suggestions, which failed miserably, the turned to my trusty Malwarebytes software.  It got rid of most of the nasty, but my machine was flaky afterwards – most stuff ran fine, but a few games didn’t seem to work right.  After a while, I realized they’d work if I was patient enough to let them sneak past whatever was the problem.  Of course that meant clicking on the program icon, going downstairs and getting something to drink, then coming back up and maybe it was ready to start.  And Microsoft would occasionally send an update that would get to 67%, then fail and have to roll back.  But then it sent me the latest malicious software tool and “YIPPEE!” the nastiness was gone and everything runs right.  That meant I could run Sims 2 properly again – so I’ve been spending a lot of time in River Blossom Hills growing my various teenagers up and sending them to college.  I’ve also been doing some real world stuff – our church’s praise band did a big concert in the park, which I not only played in (bass, keyboards, and guitar), but built an upright electric bass for.  And after using it for the concert, I’ve taken it back apart so I can put an actual finish on it (red dye on the the front with the nice grain, red paint on the rest of it).  BUT!  I still find time to sail the waters of the Emerald Ocean.

I’ve been on several cit runs, and more cit sinks (not the funnest things, to be sure), a few Kraken Hunts (none with Platia, I am persona non gratia with him now – at least that’s what Bonna and I think), and several Haunted seas voyages.  The ringers said that they had adjusted the payouts for the different monster hunts, and it certainly seems that way.  I had already been getting mostly (still useless) trinkets from KH and poe, so not much really changed there – but the HS runs have been a little more generous with both the poe and the (actually valuable) trinkets.  And yes, I did get enough to grab a night blue chroma, now all I need are a bunch more (bill says as he grins to himself).

I was in the inn the other night, and someone was trying to sell a golden turtle shell.  I have all the trinkets but a turtle shell, so I asked what he wanted for it.  He said make an offer, and I told it wouldn’t be nearly enough.  He persisted, and I told him that most people want more for the shell than you can sell the turtle for.  He claimed the turtles sell for 600K or more — something that surprised me.  I’ve certainly never seen anyone buy a golden turtle for that much – maybe one of the more rare ones, but not golden.  To make a long story shorter, he asked 450K.  I said not interested.  Then he started trying to sell me a turtle.   I’ve already got one I told him.  He tried a few more times to get me to buy something, but stopped mere moments from me muting him.

Rikko put a post about my tshirt on his page (see the link over there at the side to visit him).  Bisca asked about getting one, something I wasn’t sure anyone else would be interested in – particularly someone I only knew from reputation.  If you’re interested in getting your own “Lillythanne’s Harley Davidson” tshirts, I can send you the link you need for customink.com.  It’s going to cost you as much as a real Harley tshirt though – they charge $34 (including shipping) for these low volume shirts.  Of course, you can opt to use the artwork on a different shirt, but it would cost you more.

Saw Pegasiswolf’s new gallery (but then again, who hasn’t – she got so excited when she finally got it), and Meijinn mentioned something that would be really nice.  She’d asked about smaller ones, and I told her there wasn’t any – but then it occurred to me, why not?  Pirate Halls have 4 different sizes (and prices), why not different sized galleries?  Not all of us have as much stuff Peg, but we do have some surplus, and maybe we’d like to show it off too. You could pay 512k/512 for a Grandiose Gallery, 256k/256 for a stately Gallery, 128k/128 for a fine gallery, and 64k/64 for a modest gallery.  That way us poor folk could still have a nice little space to show off our goodies too.  Maybe someone with the Ringer’s Ears can mention this.

Of course, you can’t put one on Admiral, because they’ve built another @&^$%& tailor shop.

I finally found a way to combine 2 of my favorite things – Puzzle Pirates and Harley Davidsons…

Of course, if it wasn’t for Rikko, there wouldn’t be a pinup girl for the front of the tshirt – the back is a photoshopped picture of my motorcycle added to a dockside portrait background.  It’s hard to see, but under the “Because you can’t pillage everyday” it says…

Admiral — Wensleydale — Scrimshaw
Emerald Ocean

 It’s the three islands I spend most of my time on, so I used them for this.  I collect Harley shirts, so this was a perfect addition.

Now, on to other news…

I’m actively considering unhearty-ing Justrandomzz.  Why?  Because he cades Admiral, for what I can only assume was the express purpose of dusting the trading post (the only one in the arch) and putting in — you guessed it — another [insert your favorite expletive here] tailor shop.  This has been the story of Admiral for the past year or more — flag cades admiral, wins, and builds another frikkin’ tailorshop (because they have to give all the government businesses back when they lose).  So now Admiral is nothing but tailor shops, and I have to search other archs to find a trading post (there used to be one on Kent, maybe the OMs can bring it back).  God forbid your game is glitchy and the minimap doesn’t want to work, because you can’t walk anywhere on the island anymore.  Of course, the only reason anyone cares about Admiral is because of the Inn — if we all agreed to start doing business on a different island (like Bowditch or Aimauri), Admiral would probably die out.  But we won’t so…

Gone on a couple of reasonably successful Haunted Seas runs – got a couple of beachcomber trinkets – and even one haunted trinket, and a fair amount of poe.  Maybe a few more and I’ll be able to get night blue chroma.

Xmas in July was fun, although I didn’t get to spend as much time on board as I’d have liked to.  Still, won a couple of presents (a wrapped parlor badge and some spools that Peg let me trade for an outfit), so that wasn’t too bad.

I turned 50 a week ago (meanwhile, a few miles from here, my little sister is turning 39) — I’m OK with it, although it did give me pause when I realized that my Dad turned 50 the day after my wife and I got married.  Speaking of getting married, I’m a week from celebrating 25 years of marriage to the world’s most patient and forgiving missus in one week.  I’m pretty sure her parents didn’t think we’d last 3 years – guess we showed them.  We’ll be in Branson next week on vacation, so my time online will be somewhat limited.  It’s vacation time, I should be doing something more interesting…

Well, I think I’ve vented enough for this month.  Unless someone else builds another tailor shop…

… or have I used that one already???

Anyway, it’s been about a month, and I’ve actually been ready to write something for a little bit, but was waiting for some portraits.  For instance, this one…

As usual, I’m in the inn, just waiting to see if someone was offering something interesting.  Captbigbelly was in there, talking (arguing sometimes) with a couple of guys in there.  I tease that I’ve sank with him more times than the other guys have sunk period, then in tells told him that I used to go out with him as Suzysunshine all the time.  He replies that he remembered me, and asked if I like spring green — well, after buying the new parrot what else could I say but yes.  Next I knew he gave me this little ghost bunny.  I thanked him profusely of course, then, after getting a ghost amulet, I had this picture made.  That makes pictures of Lillyth as a Vampire, Werewolf, Zombie, and Ghost — all I need now is a Skeleton portrait.

Then, there was this picture…

Again, sitting in the inn, and Meaganz announces a black/aqua spider for 1.2M.  I send her a tell saying that it was just my luck, her offering something like that when I was low on cash.  She offered to sell it for 1M.  Oh man!  I told her that I had put all my cash into dubs for the upcoming Gold Box promo.  She wished me luck on the promo, and I went back to my house.  I checked the Dubloon exchange, and watch as someone posts to buy more than 300 dubs at a price that would net me a little bit of profit.  I immediately send a tell to Meaganz asking if she still had the spider.  She said yes, and I invited her to my house and started selling of just enough dubs to meet her price.  Needless to say, I’m quite pleased — elastic was (trying) to sell a named aqua/aqua spider for 1.6M, so I thought 1M for unnamed black/aqua was a good deal.  Then the next week, I still had enough dubs to buy 5 gold boxes – I got a crystal ball, 3 trinkets, and this little critter…

My luck with gold boxes is a mixed bag – usually I get trinkets, but I did get a tan monkey once so you can never tell.  I figure a gold seal is a good deal.  Yeah, I know a seal in a picture with a hula girl doesn’t make the most sense, but I wanted to show it off anyway.

So anyway, I’m slowly rebuilding my poe stash – I’ve gone on a couple of reasonably successful Cit runs, and a good, and a not so good Haunted seas trip.  Kraken hunts will be a tougher matter now, I’m no longer hearties with Platia.  I haven’t muted him yet, although it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s muted me.  What can I say – I’m down to counting weeks on one hand until I’m 50, and I’m just too old to put up with certain behavior.  When the two of us were heading up to the top of the board, he accused me of cutting him off — even though I was actually a step ahead of him anyway.  Even worse, he said he was going to die because of me — but he didn’t, the tentacle chasing us followed me!  He sat there and sulked though, until he did get sunk, then he decided to not do anything for the rest of the run.  Not a problem if you’re an egger – but a big one when you’re the bomber.  And there was still 15 minutes left in the hunt.  I finally got fed up with him – I sent him a tell and said he could me blame for his sink all he wanted too, but I was a step ahead of him and he knew it.  Then I told him to grow up and stop ruining it for the other people.  Then I left.  If he’d been someone else, I would have muted him, instead I just unheartied him.  I sent a tell saying if he decides to grow up, I’d be happy to hearty him again.  He replied something like good luck without me.  Oh well.  He only invited me on kraken hunts every other day (or less), so it’s not like I’m missing out on a whole lot.

And I’m no longer being blown up regularly by the bomber…

… good for ice cream cones, not so great for everyone else on the kraken hunt.

The other night I’m out with Momentary, and someone starts yelling at another player – blaming him for knocking her out of a whirlie.  Lot’s of ‘I was First’ and ‘You’re supposed to wait’ and the usual nonsense.  Except she doesn’t SHUT UP!!  10 minutes left in the run and she keeps going at it.  We get back to the ship and she’s still going at it.  Then the other shoe drops — she was double clienting, and the guy messed up her plans.  Oh boo-hoo!!!  Cheating the rest of us out of POE by double dipping, then whining because we didn’t do things the way you expected.  Meanwhile, you’re blundering around killing the rest of us off in your greed.  We all pretty much muted her, so she started yelling on the alt!!  One of her names is Asaomun, if you care, I’m thinking the alt has been deleted.  Then, last night with Platia, it was the same kind of thing — guy in a bumper boat (they always use bumpers – all the better to kill everyone else off with), constantly getting lost in the whirlies, while I get tentacled to death waiting.  Finally Platia boots the one guy (Firstround) for killing her while she’s bombing.  Almost immediately after, a pirate named Lastcall bailed on us.  Gee, what a surprise.  Our last entry was so bad – tentacled at the egg box 5 times – 4 times because of someone else blocking the way.  I finally gave up – 10 minutes to go and I pick up my iPad and start playing Farmville 2.  I figured I wouldn’t get much out of the run, but it just wasn’t worth the hassle.  So the run from hell finally ends and we port, and sure enough, I see three kraken dolls and 2 boxes with poe.  Or at least I think it’s 3 kraken dolls — that top one looks different.  Turns out, my horrible night ended with me getting Krakling number 5, a violet one to go with the purple, blue, aqua, and lime ones I already had.  With the serpent I bought the other day, that brings the count to 14 familiars – not too bad.

Didn’t post anything last month – I know, just awful.  But to tell the truth, there just wasn’t much worth posting.  Oh sure, at the beginning of the month I did this…

Gave me a chance to see Lillythanne with a nose, and to show off her purple clothes (and one of her kraklings).  I know it seems odd (for a clothes horse especially) but until this outfit, she didn’t really have anything purple.  Now she does.

Anyway, most of the month of April can be summed up like this:

April xx:  Went on a kraken hunt.  Got poe and more stupid trinkets.
April xy:  Went on a kraken hunt.  Got poe and more stupid trinkets.
April xz:  Went on a kraken hunt.  Got poe and more stupid trinkets.

See what I mean?  Sure, there’s a narrative flow of sorts, but it’s even more boring than the cello part for Pachebel’s Kanon in D Major.  It did help replenish my treasure chest at home to almost it’s previous level (it was mighty bare after I bought that parrot).  I traded off some trinkets for another kraken tattoo outfit design (haven’t used it yet, but I will), and made a spring green/inky tabard outfit.  I also managed to win 2 black chromas (I now have 4) and a black kraken wig.  Other than that – April was a bust   —–   Oh wait, I almost forgot,  Meijinn decided she didn’t want to be captain anymore and so I’m the new captain of our crew.  Yippee – captain and queen both.

May is starting out a little better – I’ve been getting some clothes again, and got a very nice violet/violet kraken throne (just don’t know where to put it yet).  Sometime in the past I won an inky/gold kraken tub — kind of wondering how much i could get for that, but for now it sits in my inventory.  Also, Gaia was in the inn the other night selling familiars. She was selling an indigo/blue serpent for a reasonable price — I offered a little less and she went for it anyway.  Now I have a good excuse to make some indigo/blue clothes.  Still looking for something mostly white though.

P.S.  In case you missed it on facebook, I finally framed my Rikko pics.

The next projects will be even more interesting….

Well, it’s been a slow month since I last posted.  I’ve gone on kraken hunt after kraken hunt, and all I’ve gotten is POE and a lot of duplicate trinkets.  Maybe someday the Ringers will finally offer something more than Kraken Tattoo outfits for your trinkets.  As I seldom see inky chromas coming up in the booty division, I’m hoping to see them in the trading posts soon – as I’ve got almost 180 trinkets, it would be nice to do something good with them.

Went out on several cit runs, all of them failed.  The most annoying one was done by a pirate (ironically) named Citrun.  She advertised, she filled a ship, but instead of actually trying to run a cit run – she decided to try to sink a better b-navver than her.  We sank – of course – with absolutely nothing to show for it.

I finally found something other than clothes, clothes, and more clothes to spend my POE on.

Not the outfit, the differently colored parrot.  I had been looking for a tan/white parrot (like one that was the prize in a competition not long ago), but no one was selling.  There was someone offering a tan/chocolate parrot in the inn one night and I almost went for it, but a parrot that was basically 2 shades of brown seemed less than exciting.  A day or two later, someone was arguing about familiar prices in the inn, and someone decided to offer this lovely little bird.  I offered them  a little less than their asking price (mainly because that’s all I had) and they took it.  It was less than I paid for the tan / magenta parrot I bought years ago, so I was pleased.  Still, some people in the inn thought I paid too much (not knowing what it was I paid for it).  We all know that pets, familiars, ships, etc are actually worth nothing — they’re nothing more than a few bits on a server somewhere.  Of course, the POE and dubs we spend are also worth nothing (even if you pay real money for it).  So, I paid what I paid, and I’m happy with what I got.  Of course, now I need more Spring Green clothes…

I also splurged on my first baglah…
Since I’ve failed to find someone selling a verdant sloop, I settled on this.  I’ve also bought a Gold Class war brig, so that makes 3 total (smuggler, haunted, and gold).  Here I am with a fairly large fleet of ships – that never get used.  Oh well..