I’ll tell you what – I’m almost to the point where I’m not going to buy another bravery badge.  These sea monster hunts are getting lamer and lamer as time goes on.  The past 2 nights have been miserable failures, and I’m still running into “I’m going to start planking people!”  Yeah, you’ve spent the past 4 hours trying to get enough people to fill your boat and you’re going to start planking people.

Morons.

Rather that sit through what promised to be another epic phail of a Cit Run, I decided to join Emerlaus on a flotilla attack.  Sure, all you get is poe on one of those – but, despite what Meijinn says about chest distribution being random, I wasn’t getting Jack Spit from SMH’s lately anyway.  Used to be all I could count on was some poe and a bunch of useless trinkets.  Well, now that the trinkets aren’t quite so useless, I can’t even get them anymore.  So I went out with Emerlaus, and made almost 10k just rigging and treasure hauling.  From now on, I’m only doing monster hunts with Viator, Erics, and Cartrunner.

And Bigbelly — sure he sinks (a LOT), but I’ve got some of my best stuff from his trips.  I guess he’s lucky that way…

 

I have finally managed to combine my two favorite games, Bioshock and Puzzle Pirates…

It took a lot to get this picture done – the biggest part was getting the outfit.  I searched through every tailor stall on Admiral and Wensleydale trying to find a tan diving helmet that didn’t cost an arm and a leg.  Then I ended up having to make the gloves, flare pants, tudor bodice, and boots — nobody already had them in the colors I needed.  I had to use gloves, because that was the only way to get the correct pose – which meant I couldn’t use the freebie picture you get with a new pirate.  So there was more poe and dubs going out the door, all so I could get this picture…

Then I had to find an appropriate Bioshock background.  Unfortunately, most game screenies were filled with splicers, or at least the players hands.  I found one that I liked – good size, proper mood, no player hands – but it had a ‘little’ problem…

Eleanor would cover most of the little sister, but not all, so I photoshopped her out, so I could layer in Eleanor.  Speaking of layering in – then I had to draw the Big Sister weapon myself, and I’m no artist.  I ended up finding an example from a video clip, then traced the outlines in photoshop – transferred that to paint to draw it, then back to photoshop to add some detail.  I also had to add in the rest of Eleanor’s boots (as you can see in the solo pic, the bottom of the boots aren’t there).  I started going through crew pic after crew pic until I finally found someone dressed in tan boots to cut and paste in.  My daughter recommended the sparks from her hand, as if she was about to use electroblast on someone, and then I added the red glow in the helmet viewport, and a shadow underneath.

And that’s how someone with little artistic talent makes a picture.  Join us next time when I finally buy Lillythanne the Steampunk outfit from an earlier post, and create the picture of her and her steamship…

UPDATE:  I wasn’t completely finished I guess – I wanted to make a version to put up on the Yppedia in Eleanor’s pirate profile.  I ran the picture through the halftone filter, using a dark brown color to get a sepia toned image.  Then used the texturize filter to make it look like it was crumpled and flattened out.  I ended up with this…

“Every one station up”
“3 open sails”
“I’m not going in until every station is filled”

<ten minutes pass>

“I’m not kidding, fill sails or I’ll start planking lazers”
“lazers watch out”

 

Oh. My. Gosh!

I don’t know what’s worse the fact that a couple of people on deck can’t take a station long enough for the idiot running the SMH to finally enter the board – Or the idiot running the SMH for wasting everyone’s time on something as stupid as 2 open sail slots.

AAAAAARRRGGGGHHH!

This time I actually shouted “here let me help” and I left the ship, left the crew, and muted the moron making the threats.  I’ve been doing this stuff for 4 years – you know what happens when captains, XOs, and MAAs start planking people who aren’t doing exactly what they want?  THEIR SHIP ENDS UP SINKING!!  I don’t particularly want to ever go out with this doofus again.

EVER!

(and I still willingly go out with Captbigbelly – the most prolific sinker in the game…)

 

UPDATE: 15 minutes after I did all of this, the doofus running the SMH was sitting on an island – meaning he sank…

Remember how I was saying that Lillythanne wanted an Octo in the last post?  Well, she was sitting in the inn on Addy, waiting to see if anyone came in with an offer to sell something in her budget (she was very close last week – if Mei had been on I would have hit her up for a loan, but…).  No one was selling any fams, but someone was unloading some Haunted Seas trinkets.  Now Lillyth has had her eye on this little bit of shipboard furniture for quite some time:

I think it looks really cool, and would make a nice addition to one of Lillyth’s ships (she has a sloop all decked out with Skellie gear – helm, figurehead, cannons and what not).  The only problem is – there’s not much else in this style you can use on a sloop.  Sure, there is this, and you can get a Hunted Ship’s wheel – but the matching cannons are too big.  Then there’s the matter of all the other Haunted Seas goodies to decorate the ship.  Oh yeah, the Night Blue paint too.  So I thought, why not just get it all in one big piece…

This would be my first big ship — also my most expensive.  I needed more HS trinkets than I had to get the plans for it, then there was the build cost, then the dubs (a lot, but 50 is only a little more than the 40 I shell out for each of those limited edition sloops I get).  So…

There’s Lillythanne on the deck of her first big ship – the Possesed Gar.

Yeah, I’m going to come up with a better name for this one of these days…

That’s the crew name I ended up using.  Apparently, it wasn’t complaining that I was using some odd character – it didn’t like the word fart.  FART.  You can say fart as much as you want to and the rest of the game doesn’t care.  You can name your crew Iceholes and the game doesn’t care.  You try to use the word fart in a crew name – the game tells you you’re using an illegal character.

D’OH!

Actually, more lame, but whatever.  I have a new crew for my alts, and now I have to start earning them some poe so they can start upgrading themselves.  Of course, that means I’ll have to stop playing Lillythanne all the time (and darned if she isn’t looking to get herself an octo now…)

 

So, after what seems like weeks of boring, pointless swordfighting – I finally reach the mystical level of NARROW in all the appropriate pirate disciplines and was given the button to start a crew!  Yay!  So, I click said button, put in the name “Old Fartz” as well as the private and public statements, then click on the create a crew button.  And I get this:

      Shiver me timbers: Crew names must contain only alphabetic characters, spaces, dashes, and apostrophes.Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t ‘O’,’l’,’d’,’F’,’a’,’r’,’t’,’z’ all letters, and the ‘ ‘ is a space.  What in that name is NOT an alphabetic character, space, dash, or apostrophe?  After all that tedious leveling up, to get thwarted by some obscure bug?  I sent in a bug report – probably should have petitioned, but I’ve never been a big one for doing that.  We’ll see…

That’s the name of the pirate I’ve been trying to raise the stats on.  He used to be Aloyicious on the Hunter Ocean, but after the merge he got relegated to secondary status – and a different name.  But that’s beside the point – what’s important is that I finally got him to Narrow on Bnav.  Yippee!  Except I’m not done – I still have to get his SF to narrow (something I don’t think any of my pirates have – what can I say, I mostly sword fight in sea monster hunts where you don’t get rated).  But once I get that done (and rigging, but that shouldn’t be a problem), I’m going to create a crew and call it Old Fartz – provided they don’t deny the name (of course, they approved Iceholes, this is tame comparatively speaking).  If you’re an old fart, feel free to join…

So I’m on a SMH with Erics – and some guy is crowing how he got top treasure haul.  I look on the duty roster, and sure enough, there he was with his excellent and his 2 chests.  I scroll down and find my name – and my 7 chests.  More than anyone else.  Time comes for the next report, and there I am with a good again, and this time 8 chests – more than anyone else – again.  So, do I get anything extra for my skill at hauling in chests? Nope.  Doesn’t exactly seem fair, does it.  Oh sure, eventually I’ll get the Overflowing Chest trophy, but – who cares.  I want one of those really neat prizes that come in those nicer chests.  Oh Well…

 

I’ve got all these alts just sitting around taking up space, so I’ve decided that I’m going to create a crew called Old Fartz for them all to be in.  Not my big 4 of course, but Seumas, Kahina, Anoldguy, Lillyth, Brthrmaynard — those guys — they can be that crew.  Although, last time I looked, Iceholes has been shrinking quite a bit.  Narcky (the former captain) has gone inactive, and the crew list looks pretty small on those times when I log Aloyicious or Suzysunshine in.  Maybe I’ll see about moving Suzy to Tro and Pinkpearls new crew.  Maybe Aloy can become the leader of the Old Fartz.

But anyway, before I can form the crew, I have to get someone up to narrow on Battle Navigation.  I understand the concept, and how the whirlpools work, but I’ve not done any of it before.  So, I’m taking over a naval vessel and going back and forth between league points trying to find a green ship for me and the bots to attack.  It was so bad tonight, I went ahead and hit a yellow and a red.  Lost both of them of course, but I’ve gotten up to apprentice/proficient.  Maybe after another hour or 2 I’ll finally hit that narrow.

We’ll see…

 

I was looking at my hard drive and came across this picture…

 

War frig CI – pretty sure it was Cartrunner’s idea.  We were fortunate enough to get out in one piece…