I told you I’d be writing a post about clothes again.  Well here it is…

Yes, I went nuts with the clothing again.  I had lots of poe, and what I thought were reasonable enough excuses to spend it.

Outfit number one, a lovely purple gown and corset set to go with my lovely little purple and white serpent.  I think I might have found these already made on someone’s rack.  Either way, it goes nicely with the snake.  I also have made a purple and white midriff top to go with a purple rag skirt I had gathering dust on the rack at the tailor stall.  So there’s two new outfits.

I got the plum/plum bloomers and plum/plum veil quite some time back in various plum box promotions.  After finally acquiring two plum chromas, I searched around to find the cheapest, new midriff top, and colored it to match the rest of the set.  I’ve also got the matching slippers, but you don’t see them in the picture…

OK, before I continue, I just want to say a little something about chromas — I like them quite a lot, but it’s made clothes of certain colors less valuable than they used to be.  Once upon a time, Atlantean colored clothing was quite expensive – now, not so much.  Indigo stuff is actually some of the cheapest clothing around these days – seeing how generous the Cursed Isle runs are.  At the opposite extreme is Night Blue – Haunted Seas runs are the polar opposite of the Cursed Isle – stingy, stingy, stingy.  You might as well go with someone on a flotilla, since most of what you get is just poe.  I also think there’s limited usefulness in the black and gold chromas, I mean, anyone can buy those colors at a tailor stall.

Except…

I’ve not seen one of these little bits of armor showing up in black.  But since you can’t buy these (you have to win them) you don’t get a choice of colors.  I have a total of 4 of these right now, 2 of them are in Atlantean for my warrior queen outfit, I have a violet one that I actually have priced to sell, and now this lovely little black number (thanks to what I felt was an affordable black chroma).  I searched all over Admiral island to find a stall that actually had a black/black gown (that was cheaper than having one made from scratch) – but wasn’t so lucky with the helmet.  I did find a stall with surprisingly cheap black (and white) Atlantean helmets – which I bought – but I liked the look of this outfit better.

Way back when, in my Fame post, I posted the BK picture that Everclearboy had done, and the participant portraying Madam Yu wore this outfit in either lime or light green.  I thought it would look really cool in Wine, and since I had several wine chromas – I tracked down the parts and made it.  The corsair’s coat was originally red/red – but that was easily enough fixed.  Black long dress with Wine at the bottom easily enough done.  Fairly cheap black/indigo boots (not like you’ll ever see the indigo).  But, like the Valkyrie helmet, I had to make the Qin hat myself.  Easily enough done.

Now this one is kind of obscure.  I’d been running around with the pattern for the Samurai helmet since I’d done all those BK hunts, and I finally found a use for it.  I’ve been reading a Japanese light novel series called High School DxD (I stumbled across it while originally looking for High School of the Dead anime).  I enjoy it quite a lot, and the main hero of the series is a second year (soon to be third year) high school student named Issei Hyoudou – he has the ability to become “The Red Dragon Emperor” or Sekiryuutei.  So I come up with this idea (although it was originally for a male outfit).  Still, I like it…

So there you go, the new post on all my new clothes.  I also bought new wardrobes, so I’ll have to do a content update on them soon too.  But first, I heard some fantastic news….

later.

… since Lillythanne isn’t getting much of a chance too.  So far, I only go out with Pegasiswolf or Reveran (which is odd, because I didn’t think he knew who I was – guess he does) – and since everyone is all hyper about Krakken runs, regular cit runs are getting harder to find.  I’m getting to the point where I log an alt on just to see if anything is going on, and I’ve transferred my speed and bumper kits to another alt just to keep them from expiring on days I can’t get anyone to job me.

I’ve also been spending my hard earned POE on more new clothes – but more of that in the next post…

I’m hoping it’s because they’re readying the servers for the upcoming Kraken release, but things are lagging really bad (although it was apparently better tonight than it was last night).  Illusory decided to make a go of it anyway, and we went in on an SMH.  We had 2 wins, 2 losses – mainly because we had 5-7 people drop out before the swordfight even began thanks to – you guessed it.  On top of that, the cits we did win were very stingy (30 and 32 ACs for a war brig – not the best of hauls).  Still gotta give him kudos for the attempt, and I’ll not hesitate to go out with him again.

Peeeeeeeeeeeeg, it will come back to you…

People of a certain age remember the music group Steely Dan – those of us at the upper range of that certain age also remember a cute little ditty called “Peg” (they also had songs called “Josie” and “Babylon Sister” – though I don’t know if Rikki from “Rikki don’t lose that Number” was a girl or not, but my guess would be yes). So why all this? Because I think of the song “Peg” when I see my friend Pegasiswolf.

Peg’s an interesting person – first off, she’s almost as old as I am, which makes her a rare commodity in a game populated by high schoolers and college kids (the former captain of Suzysunshine’s crew is the same age as my daughter). She also is a favorite subject of Rikko (see the Girlz of Emerald link over there on the right). And perhaps best of all, she sponsors the yearly Xmas in July event — a 24 hour Grand Frig pilly where she gives away trinkets, presents, ships, and gives red and white candy striped outfits to anyone who pillys with her. Unfortunately it was a week ago, so if you missed it, you’ll have to wait until next year.

I don’t exactly remember how our friendship progressed – I mean, I know her because of the game, but with facebook involved, I don’t know which happened first. Oddly enough, I think I friended her on facebook before I heartied her on Puzzle Pirates. Probably through some posts by Tonigirl – and probably involving Rikko. Either way, we’ve become friends in a way that never existed before the internet showed up, and that’s fine with me. Thanks to her, I finally got a promise from Rikko to do a picture of Lillythanne (and also was invited to be his hearty) – and after she invited other people to do artwork of her, I created one of my photoshop jobs for her.
I thought it was appropriate for the woman who runs Xmas in July.

She also allowed me to participate in the memorial for her brother:

(http://www.talesfrombeyondjohn.blogspot.com/)

And I also modified one of my pictures to add to that as well…

I have no desire to ever leave Meijinn’s crew – she moved to Sage at my invitation (she’d had an alt on before, but not her main), I manage her tailor stall, I’m a senior officer in her crew, and I’m the queen of her flag.  Still, I am seriously thinking of moving Suzy or Al to her crew – if she has a fleet officer space open…

I did something tonight that I have never done before:

I told a bnavver to blame the jobbers.

I’ve done the SMH thing for years – it’s basically what I do when I log in. Over the years I’ve been with good navvers, bad navvers, lucky ones, and unlucky ones. Usually, when a ship sinks in SMH, the real reason is that the navver got greedy. When it was time to turn tail and run, he (or she) decided they just had to get one more cit/trike/graveyard/fray. Sure, I can understand the dilemma, stay in and try for more loot, or exit to shake the goons or repair the ship. We all know, you exit the board, a bunch of people are going to jump and you’ll never get back up enough to go back in. So they risk it, and we sink. When that happens, don’t go blaming your jobbers – it was all you. I’ve found that those navvers are also the ones that start the voyage threatening to plank people if they don’t station – I’ve been known to tell those kind of people “Fine, plank people – I’ll start with me” and I’ll leave the ship, the crew, and put them on MY mute list.

This time – 2 cits, too many solos, no chance that that group was likely to succeed in winning anything. Then, as I’m bilging, it starts making “that noise”, the one that lets you know you’re in trouble. Sure enough, an archelon is there causing us problems, damage is growing, and there’s all of three people on carp, and three on bilge. He shouts to get people to station up, and no one moves.

We sank of course – on his nice smuggler class war brig. In the end, the sink was still technically his fault – caused by something he did before he even left the dock.

He hired lousy jobbers.

Not to me – or anyone I know – but to this…

If this reminds you of the Puzzle Pirates X client – it sort of is.  For those of you without iPads. this is what PP looks like on one.  And yes, it suffered from the same annoying problems the X client suffered from – but the Ringers kept it going for the Ipad players.

Well as you can see, they aren’t going to do it anymore – and I’m willing to bet it’s because of the upcoming Kraken update.  It would undoubtedly require a huge amount of coding to add that to the iPad version of PP, so they’ll just give it up.  I understand the business reasoning behind it, but it’s still a shame that it’s going bye-bye.  I seldom puzzled on the pad, but I did use it to log when I was away from my computer just to see what was going on – say hi to people – check on orders and stuff.  And if the X client had gone over better, they may have continued the iPad version.  But oh well.

I won’t mind so much if we get to get involved with some tentacley goodness…

As you guessed, this will be a picture post, after all, there’s 9 months of stuff to catch up on…

Here I am with my second latest acquisition.  Yes, second latest – I ended up buying an unnamed purple and white serpent in the inn the other night.  My current snake has a silly name (Knott Fangy) and odd colors (navy/gray).  The only outfit I actually made for it was a navy/sea green gown and corset set (which can be seen in our flag portrait), which isn’t terribly exciting.  Now, I get to explore the realm of purple and white, which is still a little pricey, but more interesting.  The picture is called ‘Little Miss Muffet’, but unfortunately I didn’t have a bowl trinket, so I used the porcelain cup instead.  I also haven’t come up with a name for the spider yet – I’m going between Shelob, Ungoliant, Charlotte, or Itsy Bitsy.  Despite being a big Tolkien fan (the source of the first 2 names), I think I’m leaning towards Itsy Bitsy…

I picked a different outfit for Christmas last year (2013) – usually I wear the green/white gown set (sometimes the white/maroon), but this year I went with the lemon/maroon — I always thought it made a nice antiquey kind of look.  The reason for the pic though, is for the little critter on my shoulder (Samuel Adams – not my choice) and the one on the ground (I named him Opus after my favorite comic penguin).  The yeti doll was just a convenient item in my inventory at picture time.

New Ship Pics…
I’ve had this one for a bit, but I apparently never mentioned it before – cupid class ship that I chose to name ‘Darling Nicky’.  For you youngsters out there, “Darling Nikki” is a Prince song featured in the movie Purple Rain.  But there wasn’t a fish called the nikki…

The Frozen Lutefisk — an oldy but goody, taken during winter, so it has additional decorations…

Nothing special about this ship – but what was the deal with the ocean????

I believe I mentioned The Twinkling Star Gazer in the previous post.  Nice angel for the figurehead…

And lastly, the new crimson sloop — the reason why it looks different than the other ones, is that I have a new HD monitor on my desktop, so I can have a larger Puzzle Pirate screen (thus, larger screen caps).  Oh, you might notice my little turtle there on the deck as well…

Wow, it’s been waaaaaaaaaay tooooooooo looooooonnnnng since I updated this thing, hasn’t it.  Well, to be fair, the Bioshock Infinite DLC did take up some of my time. As did the complete replay of the Bioshock series just before the arrival of the extraordinarily disappointing second part of the Infinite DLC.  I did get on fairly regularly, but didn’t always do a whole lot.  I did manage to win another blue Seahorse (which I still have) on a cit run, and I won a tan monkey from a gold box (which I traded for an unnamed spider) bringing my familiar count up to 7 (2 seahorses – blue and atlantean, tan monkey, tan octopus, tan and magenta parrot, yellow and tan spider, and a navy and gray serpent).  I have a large room filled with karkinos – including a white one (finally – but only because a hearty was selling it), as well as a little blue dog, a hedgehog, a dream sheep, and as of today – a golden sea turtle.

I’m still buying LE sloops, including a Celestial class sloop I renamed the Twinkling Star Gazer, as well as a Roister class and a Crimson class (YAY a working wardrobe, trinket case and sword rack – how cool was that!) bringing the total of sloops up to 28, with 2 war brigs (Haunted and Smuggler class), and a Frost class longship.  I sold my verdant class cutter, and hope to use the cash to buy a verdant class sloop – if I can find someone who will sell one.

Despite there being 4 pirates in the picture at the top of this page, I’m truly down to just Lillythanne.  Aloyicious and Suzysunshine’s crew is dead – last time I checked there was only 1 person still active (and only 4 in the whole flag), and I seldom log in on them (I’ll logon Aloy if I buy a ship on Scrimshaw – he has the route from there to Admiral memmed, so I can use him to transport ships between the archs.  Suzy gets logged in when I buy dubs to get an extra free gift, and because she’s a she, any clothes she may get can be worn by Lillith).  All the other alts – nothing…

Anyway, there will be another post soon with some pics of this that and the other things.  Until then, I have a cit run to pay attention too….

OK – I’m playing again.  Until they finally release the next Bioshock Infinite DLC anyway (I am so stoked about exploring Rapture before it all goes down the toilet!).

So, in the past week or so, I’ve made enough money to buy the latest sloop (pictures when it arrives), gained yet another Karkinos and new trophy or two – but I’ve also ended up swimming home at least 3 times.  And that turned out to be 3 nights in a row – it was a bit disheartening to say the least.  Fortunately, the past couple of nights have been a bit of a turn around – mostly.

The night before last, I go out with Icyman on a cit run.  We do OK, but it was a lot of hard work – the map, quite honestly, sucked.  To be fair, it was probably a good map for someone doing a back wall Friglantis or the like, but for a cit run it was AWFUL!  In there for 2 hours and it only spawned like 4 or 5 cits – most of which were on the high side of the zone 4/5 border.  Not the best place to be when you’re in a Brig.  Last night, same Icyman, same ship, same horrid map.  Same cits appearing only in Z4/5 – only this time the jobbers can’t team to save their lives, which it fortunately didn’t come down to because Icyman decided to bail for the night.  I don’t blame him in the least, of course – who want’s to lose a ship because the map and jobbers both suck?  So anyway, it’s getting late when we port, but I see than Naving is almost full, and at the LP for another run, so I apply.  We get in, and the cits pop up – and we knock them back down.  Not a record night to be sure, but I still take home more in that trip than any other trip this month, so I’m not complaining.

All from a change of map…

Yes, yes, yes – it’s been a long time since I posted anything.  To be fair, it’s been a while since I’ve done much in the game – so there hasn’t been much to write about.  I get on every so often to see if I’ve sold anything at the tailor stall, and to keep up to date with anything important.  For instance, the roll out of the game on the iPad – fun new way to play, right?  Ehh – maybe.  I sometimes end up spending too much time trying to remember where things are (like the “go home” button), and when you’re browsing for clothes and the like, you don’t get the little pop up window that tells you details (color names, item age, etc).  I also occasionally have trouble hitting the exact spot I want – but I suppose that’s not quite as much of a problem with a full sized iPad, I’ve got a mini.

Back in the I love BK post I mentioned saving trinkets in hopes of the Ringers offering BK dolls — well, they are now, but only for buying dubs.  Not the way I was hoping they’d do it, but at least they’re available.  I can use the dubs, and every so often they have the color boxes too, so it’s worthwhile.  Didn’t get so lucky with spring green boxes, but got lucky with the recent plum box…

The lucky bit was the seal – although I did get a few bits of clothing too, just not these.  To complicate matters, after I got this outfit, they offered the first LE sloop in several months.  Unlike the the last one (the Serpent sloop if I remember correctly), this one looked genuinely interesting…

The Alice class sloop – you can either go through the looking glass, or you can go down the rabbit hole (the ship comes with a white rabbit already – I swiped Grace Slick from Aloyicious to give it some company).  There’s also a chess board complete with a “Drink Me” potion to let you really get into the game.  When I went looking for a possible rename (cheapest rename is “adjective – type of fish” , ie, Red Goldfish, Awful Trout, Gold Fingerfish – you get the idea), I came across a fish called the Hata.  Unfortunately, someone already got Mad Hata, so I had to settle for Mad Hatahata.

Close enough for me…