I was going to write something else tonight – I really was.  But last night we came across this…

So, do you see anything odd?  Anything missing?  Where’s the eggs?  We looked everywhere, honest and true, but there was no egg nest.  We went ahead and played it anyway – Imaduck is a fantastic bomber, and we got a bunch of pods.  Still, no egg – really weird.

I went out with Czarina again tonight – thought I was doing good, but I managed to miscount and end up in a whirly.  it would have been fine, but some (insert your favorite expletive here) named Camelrider got himself stuck on a wind that kept slamming into me in the whirlpool  and I couldn’t get out.  Of course we died, but he decided he was going to spend the rest of the entry whining about it.  I’m used to people whining, but when some (again, insert your favorite expletive here) calls me a greenie —  I politely told Czarina that I don’t job with (you know the drill) and that I was leaving.  I apologized, and told her how much I enjoyed jobbing with her and Imaduck, and she said she hoped I’d job for her again.  I said I will.

But not if Camelrider is there…

I get on this evening, looking for something to do.  I see Mei on a kraken hunt with Bigbelly again, so I click the button.  He ignores me (don’t really blame him – he probably remembers me bailing on him the other day).  But about the same time, I see a listing from Gurndigarn advertising a “casual” kraken hunt.  I’ve been with him with other hunts, and knew he was a good bomber, so I click.  He jobs me, a bunch of others I’ve never seen before, and Gamersimpson, who will be handling the bombing duty.  First entry – the booms come with comforting regularity and I get not one, but 2 eggs and a locker.  Second entry – pretty much the same thing.  Nobody rushing, nobody clumsily knocking other people into walls (well, not much anyway).  In fact, the only complaint I had was that we only did the 2 entries.

And Gamersimpson is now one of my top favorite bombers…

So, I go out again – this time with good old Captbigbelly.  12 people, 2 bombers — certainly this one should go well, right?

How can 2 bombers fail to keep a kraken head down?  It didn’t help that the map was cruddy, but I mean really.  I guess the final straw was when some blundering boat knocked me into a wall trying to get into the cuttle box – then griped in chat when I bumped her back.  I pointed out that she did the same thing to me, then bailed when we got booted.  Very annoying.  So I notice that Meijinn is getting ready to go in, so I go along to help out.  We start out with some average bombing support and …

… It’s lot’s of fun.  Despite the kraken head not being regularly knocked down, I still manage to get an egg and a nice group of boxes.  Same for the next run.  By time the third entry came up, it was me, Mei, Pinkpearls, Peg (all 3 of whom are facebook friends of mine), Yarmatey, Revkoolaid (who asked to heartie me), and someone else I wasn’t familiar with.  Basically, a kraken hunt with my friends.  And I enjoyed it, even on the last entry where I got tentacled every time I tried to get anything.  It was fun.

And isn’t that why we play the game?

I’m thinking it might be time to give up on this whole Kraken Hunting thing.  Yes, I get frustrated when I’m trying to get a 3 lock chest hauled in and suddenly I get pulled to do a fray.  Sure it’s annoying when you’ve got a bunch of sword fighting primadonnas who don’t feel the need to team during a citadel fight and we lose again.  And yes, it’s supremely disappointing to sink when you have over 200 lockers in the booty.

But I usually don’t find myself wanting to cuss at the screen.

Tonight – OMIGOSH!  Kraken hunts with bad bombers are the very worse ways to spend an evening.  I swear, every time I got anything good, I look at the kraken head and ….  where’s the bomber?

Every
FRIKKEN
TIME!

I’m only so good in the first place, but I’ve at least reached the point where I can usually get at least one egg each run (in my bumper boat) and several lockers and boxes even with average bombers.  But tonight was absolutely horrid.  I almost rage-quit, but I stuck around until we got booted off the board.  Then I left,  I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I really should stick with people I know.

BTW – I changed a few things in the wardrobes (added an inky outift, and traded out a different outfit in the Atlantean room).  I’m still looking for a chocolate gown to go with a chocolate corset I got with the recent chocolate box promo, but I’ve not had much luck so far.

The latest color box promotion happened recently – it seemed to be a shorter run than usual though.  This time, it wasn’t a fixed color, but a random one “chosen by the monkeys” — not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but oh well.  Anyway, I got 2 boxes, just to see what I could get, and ended up with an enameled skull (a furniture item) and a chroma — but not just any chroma.  I got — a MAGENTA chroma!!  Big deal you may think, you can get magenta clothing fairly cheaply.  Sure, but with a magenta chroma you could make a magenta Atlantean Helmet (how’s that for a very rare item?)  For me, it was the perfect chance to make this outfit…

If you look through the wardrobes (which has been updated) you’ll see a lot of magenta clothing – mainly because of Riff Raff, so for me it was a great prize.  Would I have been happy with another familiar?  Sure, but this was nice too – especially since I’ve looked all over and have yet to find a magenta golden conquistador armor on anyone’s rack.

Been doing a lot of kraken hunts lately – mostly with my crew – but still have yet to get something really cool.  Most of the time I just end up with poe, but sometimes I get lucky.  For clothes, I’ve got an inky tricorne and inky fancy boots – for furniture, I’ve got a kraken sink, a chum bucket, and a harpoon cannon.  But other than a dozen trinkets, that’s been about it.  I’m still hoping though…

So I get on last night, and watch as Armboy’s attempt to load a Friglantis killed the only Cit run on the board — only to have his Friglantis run peter out as well.  So, I decide to join a rather strange Kraken run being loaded by a guy named Rohitpa.  He was looking to load a baglah — 18 people for a kraken.  He did attempt to organize things, looking for 9 eggers, 5 podders, a small chest runner, and 3 bombers.  We only had 2 bombers, and no one specifically for small chests — we were actually a few people short on each category, but on the whole I thought it went well.  I definitely learned a few things…

1. The importance of a GOOD bomber can not be stressed enough.  The value of 2 GOOD bombers is beyond words.  On at least 3 separate occasions I was nose to nose with a tentacle – I heard that comforting boom of a powder keg, and the tentacle slithered below the waves allowing me to safely return home.

2. 15 to 18  people are too many – but 12 might work well.  2 bombers when there’s only 7 people hurts the harvesting effort.  Bombing is fine, but someone still has to get the chests.  But too many people and you…  Well, let’s put it like this.  Last night, I was doing very well in getting pods, EXCEPT for my run ins with a furry blue, hook nosed muppet of a pirate (who shall remain nameless) constantly trying to kill me.  I’m serious – I’d be heading out from the start, and this guy would be stalled in front of me.  He’d spend multiple turns looping in whirlpools I was desperately trying to get through.  He’d knock me off course and into walls.  I swear, one trip up, he’d ran me into two walls, and then sat at the only safe exit for the pod box, like he was waiting for me to exit so he could kill me.  Unfortunately, Yarmatey was also trying to get through – she asked me to go, and all I could say was ***** (the pirate’s name).  He finally managed to trap himself next to a wall, and I made my escape — only to have him directly in front of me as I was trying to leave the board!!  The next trip up, I managed to avoid him completely and manage a 6 minute or less pod (which is good for me).

3. Vent is really useful, as long as you keep the chatter to just navving issues.

Anyway, for 3 entries, I got 26K and a pair of inky fancy boots – not bad for 90 minutes.  But then, things got weird – I encountered this in my chat log..

I started getting strange chat appearing in my window.  One of them, Brokenhalo, is a hearty of mine, so I tried to find where I was when I was near her talking to someone – and I couldn’t find them.  i finally did a /w and discovered them on a ship somewhere else.  Somehow the game decided to send their chat to me.

Maybe the kraken is making Lillyth a little schizo….

I don’t have the artistic talent that Rikko has, but I’m not too bad at Photoshop – so to thank him for his picture, I made one for him.

Hope you like it…

I said I had some big news a few posts ago, and now here it is.

RIKKO HAS DONE A PORTRAIT OF LILLYTHANNE!!

OK, so he got her name wrong, but he got the picture perfect – even down to the motorcycle in the picture!  Rikko’s personal blog is in the list at the side – feel free to visit it yourself and see some of his other work.

[ed note: I photoshopped the name to correct it.  8/29/14]

This is the official Wardrobe Content page.  It will be updated whenever things get changed.  For more information, see the original wardrobe post.

The Main Hall

The Kitchen

The Backyard

The Upstairs Hall

The Art Gallery

The Atlantean Room

 Lillythanne’s Room

Shigeko’s Room

when available

Suzy and Aloy’s Room

The Basement

The basement wardrobe now houses shoes and boots for the gown outfits

The Townhouse Main Hall

when available

The Townhouse Ladder Room

The Townhouse Kitchen

Townhouse Basement

Townhouse Upstairs Landing

Townhouse Bedroom

The Fantastic Dr Neon

The Christmas Cookies

The Gold Fingerfish

The Sharp Keeled-Bullseye

First and foremost, PuzzlePirates is an online roleplaying game.  As such, it pretty much requires each user to have a unique name — after all, it would be kind of tough to figure out which Johndoe you were looking for.

[interesting side note, I graduated high school with 2 guys named Tim Brown.  It didn’t stop there though, they were both Tim L. Brown.  But Wait!  It went so far as being different by 1 letter, right in the middle.  Tim Leon Brown and Tim Ledon Brown.  end of side note]

When I first logged into the game — well actually I don’t remember what I put in the first time, it was back when the game first started, and I wasn’t impressed, so I didn’t come back in until a year or so later.  That time, I chose a name I used for this, that, and the other thing since I was a kid — Aloyicious.  I really have no idea where the name came from, it’s just something I pulled out of the ether when I was in Jr High School (the full name was Aloyicious Terrance Peabody III – for what it’s worth).  When I decided to add another character, I wanted to do a black skinned girl with white hair, and I wanted to name her Storm.  Too late, already used.  So I tried Orroro.  Nope, gone. So I, once again, pulled a name out of the ether and called her Suzysunshine (her full name is actually Tsutsi Tsungzhinas – I used it for a story competition). I made her and Aloyicious a couple, then decided to add a sister.  I named her Lillyth (because, of course, Lillith was already taken).  Unfortunately, I did this before I understood how the game worked, and put her on the same account as Aloyicious – which made some things difficult. I deleted her, and tried to recreate her on another account – but couldn’t right away.  So I created Lillythanne (and later recreated the Lillyth right back where she originally started).

So what about name?  Nobody types Aloyicious – they call him Aloy, or just Al.  Suzysunshine is always called Suzy.  It happens all over the ocean – Nobody calls Peg, Pegasiswolf.  Everclearboy is usually called Ever. Captbigbelly is often referred to as CBB.  Even shorter names like Meijinn and Eumica get called Mei and Eumi.  You must be careful though – don’t call Titevie, Tit — she will promptly correct you to call her Tite.

So what does all of this nonsense have to do with the picture at the top?  The woman in the picture was no pirate.  She gave birth to, and raised 4 boys and 3 girls.  She was involved in her local church, even though her husband (who had an unfortunate fondness for Stag beer and Roi Tan cigars) seldom joined her.  The 7 children gave her 13 grandchildren.  She had a stroke, but kept going.  Her husband had a stroke and a heart attack, but she kept going.  Her husband died, but she kept going.  It wasn’t until a fall at a family Christmas get-together broke loose a blood clot that she finally left this world.  That woman was my grandmother, Lilly Howell Benton.

And it means a great deal to me that my main pirate is usually called Lilly.