Yarrr!

[MongoJerry]

THE ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Yarrrrrr!

Back in the olden days of the closed beta when the reputation mechanism was new, I visited Stranglethorn Vale with my dwarf hunter and noticed that as I completed quests in Booty Bay, my reputation with an organization called the Bloodsail Buccaneers dropped farther and farther down first into hostile and then into hated. This led me to wonder two things. First, was there a way to improve one's reputation with the Bloodsail Buccaneers? And second, was there anything fun you could do if you did?

Over time, scattered rumors surfaced about a pirate's hat that one could get if one got a friendly reputation with the Bloodsail Buccaneers by killing enough Booty Bay bruisers. I always wanted to try this out, but I always copped out with the usual excuses: It would take so much time to grind, and I was afraid that maybe reputation with the goblins might be important one day.

But then yesterday, one of our guild's mages, Vendetta, announced on guild chat that he was going to Booty Bay to grind out some bruisers. He and a couple other people had been chatting up the idea for a week, and he announced that he was going to finally do it and offered to let anyone who wanted to come to join him. I was standing there staring at a bunch of furbolgs that I had been farming off and on for weeks to grind out cash and reputation. I only had two days left until school started up again, and I thought, "You know? Why not end the summer with a bang?" So, I told Vendetta that I'd join him, and scurried off to Booty Bay.



Once at Booty Bay, we changed into our Bloodsail Buccaneer outfits using our ample supply of Savory Deviate Delight. Savory Deviate Delight is a favorite item for members of The Core, you see. On a couple of occasions, we've done Warsong Gulch matches in pirate and ninja costumes (which makes things interesting, because you can't mount while transformed). Plus, on any Molten Core screenshot involving The Core, you'll find any number of pirates and ninjas running around.

I opened up my reputation pane, and my mouse arrow hovered over the "At War" box next to the Booty Bay reputation bar. My conscience screamed, Do you really want to do this? I clicked on the box and quickly closed the screen. I'm not going to think about this. I'm just going to do it.



And so we began. Let me tell you, that first Booty Bay bruiser you kill is the toughest. The whole time, you're thinking, "Are you really really sure you want to do this?" And as the combat log fills with blue "Your reputation with Booty Bay has greatly decreased" messages, your brain yells "Stop!!!!!" I'm not going to think about this. I'm just going to do it.

The good thing about killing the bruisers is that they give really good faction. I don't use the Reputation mod, but Vendetta said he was getting 25 reputation with the Bloodsail Buccaneers for each bruiser we killed. (I like to keep the number of mods I install to a minimum, but I suppose I should finally break down and download Reputation).



The bad thing about the bruisers is that they're really tough. I used to be one of the biggest proponents of installing tougher guards with ranged attacks in the goblin towns, so I'm glad to see how much tougher the guards have become. But in our case, their toughness hindered the pair of us greatly. Sure, we could single target kill two or three guards at a time, but we had originally hoped that we could aoe farm Booty Bay and build up our reputation quickly. Unfortunately, we quickly learned that one mage with one priest healing him or her isn't enough to aoe farm there. Even a mage as well equipped as Vendetta is can spend his or her mana bar on aoe attacks without killing all the bruisers in an aoe-fest (never mind the frequent adds one gets mid-fight). Plus, the bruisers hit decently hard, and the worst is when you get repeatedly shot and knocked back by the gunners. Once a gunner gets locked onto you, it's hard to cast anything other than instant cast spells, since you get knocked back about every three seconds. On top of that, if you get shot at a bad angle, you can end up getting knocked over the ledge into the water, something that frequently happened to the pair of us. The going was slow.



When we first got knocked into the water, we tried to get back up into the town using the small ramp up to the lower level of the wharf. This seemed like a reasonable idea at first, but we soon found out that this spot is a really bad place to hang out. Booty Bay bruisers spawn and patrol down there constantly, so we never had a break, and I think some of the bruisers above us aggroed on us as well. After a handful of attempts of trying to enter the Booty Bay using this ramp, we abandoned the idea and swam around to the cove to the north (where our soon to be Bloodsail Buccaneers brothers and sisters hang out) and reentered Booty Bay from the front entrance.



This time, instead of going down to the wharf, we stayed up top along the back of the cliff face. This was the first good tactic the two of us discovered on this trip. There aren't any Booty Bay bruisers patrols in this area, so the pulls were controllable. What's more, we never got shot here, and even if we did get shot, we weren't in any danger of getting knocked back into the water. We repeatedly killed the bruisers at the entrance to Booty Bay and those along the back stretch of the town. Incidentally, the civilians in Booty Bay give a very small amount of reputation gain (I think 5 points), but bruisers spawn when you attack them, so killing them was a good way to get several more bruisers to appear when we wanted them to. Oh, don't get in a tizzy. That back stretch of Booty Bay tends to be hardly used, and if someone really needed to buy something or get a quest from one of the NPC's, that NPC would respawn within a couple minutes. The general response of those who came by tended to be "What the..." and "You guys are nuts!" Our response was always, "Yarrr!" of course.

After a fair amount of grinding, my reputation with Booty Bay dropped from high friendly to neutral to barely into hostile as you can see in the screenshot above. Meanwhile, my reputation with the Bloodsail Buccaneers went from the start of the "d" in hated to the end of the "d" in hated. I was at the point of no return. At this point, I could still go up to the Venture Company operation in northern Stranglethorn Vale and grind out enough reputation to get back up to neutral with Booty Bay. But if I continued to kill many more Booty Bay bruisers, any hope of ever entering Booty Bay safely would be lost. Meanwhile, what I had hoped would be a fast aoe reputation farming run that could get me a hat within a couple of days was starting to look like a weeks-long grind that I didn't think I had the stomach for. I got cold feet.

I called off the grinding session at that point and told Vendetta that I wanted to farm some cash to purchase the Living Essences and Essences of Water that I needed for a couple of enchantments. (The Booty Bay bruisers don't drop any loot at all). This was absolutely true, but what was also going through my head was that unless we could organize a larger group with more firepower, I just couldn't see how my dreams of becoming a pirate could be fulfilled with only two days left of summer vacation to spend on the project. Vendetta mentioned that some other guild members wanted to be a part of what we were calling the Pirates for Life organization and that since people would be logging on that evening for a Molten Core farming session, maybe we could organize a larger Booty Bay raid after that. I hoped so.

UP NEXT: More firepower!

[lfd]

Cool. I've been wanting to try this, in the absence of finding much else interesting at level 60, but like you was put off by essentially permanently losing faction for good with the steamwheedle cartel. I guess you could always go back to war with the Bloodsails afterwards, but it'd be a verrrry long grind, especially since you aren't going to be able to hand the reputation quest in Gadgetzan in until you hit Neutral with it, with only spillover reputation from the pirates... urgh.

Then again, I can't remember when I actually needed to enter a goblin town recently (actually, I can - it was to launder money across to an alliance alt via the gadgetzan auction house).

[MongoJerry]

THE ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: More Firepower!



That night, after a guild farming run in Molten Core (we got six cores and a Belt of Might -- not bad), Vendetta asked some of the guys who had previously expressed interest in becoming pirates if they wanted to raid Booty Bay. Sure enough, they did, so a five man pirate crew, composed of the following characters, set off on the quest to obtain that unique and most awesome Bloodsail Admiral's Hat:

Vendetta: lvl 60 Mage
Dimiotrix: lvl 60 Mage
Uubu: lvl 60 Warlock
Teriyaki: lvl 60 Priest
Neriad: lvl 60 Priest



Now this is the kind of firepower that I was talking about!



After an initial foray down to the wharf, Vendetta and I told the group that we should head up along the back of the town to avoid getting shot into the water by the gunner bruisers. We started off with some simple careful pulls. One thing that Vendetta and I noticed was that more bruisers appeared when we pulled the shopkeepers this time than when just the two of us were attacking them. I suspect that there's something in the Booty Bay defense AI that says "Release X number of bruisers if Y number of people get on the shopkeeper's hate list" or something like that.



When we came to Dizzy One-Eye, someone yelled out, "There's Dizzy One-Eye! I hated that guy's quest. Get him!" -- a comment that was followed by many murmurs of agreement.



As we moved deeper into town, we became bolder and began pulling more bruisers and shopkeepers each time.



By the time we got to the alchemist's shop near the gryphon master, my reputation with the Steamwheedle Cartel had been irreparably damaged. There was no turning back now!

[MongoJerry]

We attacked the gryphon master, because we'd heard that your reputation *really* takes a hit when you kill him (and we assumed that your Bloodsail reputation would correspondingly increase greatly). However, we only got 5 faction points for killing him, as opposed to 25 faction points for killing the bruisers, so he turned out not to be worth the hassle. We avoided killing him the rest of the night in order avoid being accused of griefing. We were there to have fun, not to grief, and we wanted the other players who came along to get a kick out of the unusual sight of seeing Booty Bay raided by a bunch of pirates (at least, once the players realized that the NPC's respawn quickly). Besides, the last thing we wanted was to have people call in their big brother level 60's and get into a turf war. We just wanted to have a fun relaxing (possibly insane) night on the town.



After we killed the gryphon master, a couple of alliance players showed up on the scene. We shrugged, waved and apologized to them to let them know that we meant no harm. As you can see, one of them, Silthin, understood what was up. :D



One interesting tidbit we discovered was that now that we were Hated with Booty Bay, we couldn't even use the mailbox here or down at the bank anymore.



We shot Baron Revilgaz and pulled him and Fleet Master Seahorn as well as a posse of bruisers out to the platform under the gryphon master. I was actually surprised how easy they were to kill. I had thought Revilgaz and Seahorn were elites, but it turned out that they're not. Of course, a lot of bruisers spawned when we attacked them.



The platform area beneath the gryphon master turned out to be a great spot to camp for a while, because lots of bruisers pop or patrol into the area, and we could pull NPC's and bruisers from the top floors of the inn to us there. We had to back off after a while, though, just to give ourselves time to drink.



We went back out across the top of the town again, and just to get even more into the spirit of things, I broke out my Cannonball Runner, the trinket that spawns a small cannon that one can get from the cannon master in the Scarlet side of Stratholme.



Things were going pretty good. I mean, when you've got that much aoe firepower and healing power concentrated in one group, how could things not go well? We thought it was time to take on a bigger challenge and head down to the wharf.

UP NEXT: The Wharf, the Inn, and the Bank, Oh My!

[MongoJerry]

THE ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: The Wharf, the Inn, and the Bank, Oh My!



We headed down to the wharf and quickly dispatched all the NPC's near the boat ramp, along with the corresponding bruisers that spawn when you attack them. We then asked ourselves "Should we?" and the answer came back with a resounding "Yes!" and we charged into the Old Port Authority.



We aoe'd the mother out of first one half of the Old Port Authority and then the other half. Bruisers appear for every NPC that you hit, so it's hard to get across just how many bruisers appeared when we did this (I was too busy healing to take screenshots during the biggest part of the fight). In addition, bruiser bodies decompose a couple seconds after death. However, take my word for it, there were a lot of bruisers in there!

After this fight, we heard the first and only verbal complaint of the night from another player regarding our little invasion:

Player1: Do these guys respawn, or are we f***ed due to your fun?
Neriad: They respawn. Yarrr!

The other guy there laughed hysterically at the sight and said:

Player2: I hope you guys aren't drunk! :-)
Dimiotrix: ... hic!

At this point, a sixth pirate joined the party -- Uinr, a level 60 rogue. We gave him some Savory Deviate Delight to turn him into a pirate and just before we started off again, Uinr realized that he wanted to buy a parrot before was no longer able to. "Oh yeah! Parrots!" came the reply. So, we had Uinr buy a Senegal parrot for each person in the party. (See? I told you that the NPC's respawn quickly). We lined up for some very silly screenshots and then kept going.



For those of you who have yet to grind for reputation, let me explain briefly how it works, because it works somewhat differently from grinding for experience. With reputation, simply being in the party that kills the mob isn't enough. You have to "tag" the mob in some way -- either by damaging the mob or by healing someone who has already damaged the mob. You don't have to be in the party to get reputation, so you could leech reputation by tagging mobs that other people are fighting. Also, everyone gets the same amount of reputation when the mob dies no matter how many people tag a mob. That is, if you solo grind Booty Bay bruisers, you'd get 25 reputation points with the Bloodsail Buccaneers for each bruiser you kill. Or, if you kill the same bruiser in a group of 20, you'd still get 25 reputation points. So when you're farming reputation, the bigger the party the better, as long as you're able to keep up and tag all the mobs that the group is killing.

As a rogue, Uinr had the toughest job, because he didn't have many viable aoe skills available to him (OK, blade fury, but that's about it). He didn't have any aoe trinkets, bombs, dynamite, or potions, either, so he had to try to tab through the crowd of bruisers the group was killing and make sure to hit each of them at least once. However, the one thing Uinr did have going for him was that he had skipped Booty Bay entirely while leveling up, so he didn't have as big of a reputation hill to climb as the rest of us did.



We went back up to the top of the town and worked our way to that platform under the gryphon master that had been such a good source of bruisers before.



On the way there, I noticed that my reputation with Booty Bay had sunk to as low as it could go. Literally, my reputation with them could not get any worse. However, the good news was that my reputation with the Bloodsail Buccaneers was climbing fast. I had started this invasion with my reputation at the "d" in Hated and my reputation with the Bloodsail had climbed halfway to Hostile already.



After we pulled and killed Baron Revilgaz and his cronies once again, someone yelled out, "The inn! The inn!" and jumped down to the inn's lower entrance. The rest of us jumped down quickly and followed him inside.



The result was a massacre of epic proportions.



After which we sat down to have a little picnic.

[MongoJerry]

We then ran upstairs to kill the rogue trainer (with Uinr yelling, "I hated that guy's quest! Kill him!"). What followed was a wipe that was partially... well, ok, entirely my fault. While we attacked the rogue trainer and his corresponding bruiser guards, someone else pulled the bruisers and NPC's from the floor above us. This would've been fine, except for the fact that I was taking screenshots. When I hit Alt-Z to bring up my UI again after taking this screenshot, Uubu's life was at a sliver and he died before I could target him with a PW:Shield. The corresponding loss of firepower on such a big pull was detrimental, and the deaths of the rest of the party cascaded from there. But I did get this awesome screenshot, so it was all worth it, right guys? Uh, guys?



We rezed out in the water and medded up on a small patch of land along the sea cliff. We downed some more Savory Deviate Delight, but even though we began with over 60 Delights, our supply was starting to dwindle. There's only a 50% chance of getting a pirate form from the Delights, you see. Plus, the disguise only lasts an hour, and we had had a handful of deaths along the way. We needed to be more careful or else we might not be able to be pirates for the whole trip (the horror!).

As we swam back to Booty Bay, some of the bruisers saw us and swam out to meet us, so we had a couple of fights in the water itself.



We fought our way up the ramp to the wharf, killing Old Man Heming in the process. War, a level 60 warrior who was a member of a prominent alliance guild against whom we've PvP'd many times, was there waiting for us on the docks. We waved and saluted him, while we continued to aoe the bruisers down. I wondered if he was going to attack us, but he just turned around and left. He also probably thought we were drunk or something. :D



We fought our way along the wharf, and then someone yelled "The bank! The bank!" We sprinted down to the bank with bruisers in tow. The number of bruisers in that fight was unbelievable, and we came so close to wiping again but nobody ended up dying at all. The others in the party congratulated Teriyaki and I for keeping everyone healed so well (Prayer of Healing is a godsend sometimes). It probably helped that I wasn't taking screenshots during the battle. The bank is definitely the toughest fight of the whole place, even when you don't bring your own group of bruisers with you.



The Bloodsail Buccaneers reputation bar was moving quickly. Another 5-10% more to go until Hostile!

UP NEXT: Oh, My. Oh, God! Nooooooooo!

[MongoJerry]

THE ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Oh, My. Oh, God! Nooooooooo!



We ran back into the inn.



We then made our way upstairs and took out Revilgaz and Seahorn in a massive aoefest. As evidenced by the tauren standing there, we often had spectators follow us around to watch the show.



We then jumped down to the bank again.



We then made our way back through the town, hit the Old Port Authority again, hit all the shopkeepers along the top of the town, killed Revilgaz and Seahorn again, destroyed the inn, annihilated the bank, and so on.

It was fascinating to watch the reactions of other players to our pirate raid. Imagine being a level 35-40 Alliance player entering Booty Bay. You turn the corner and see a group of level 60 Horde in pirate outfits aoe'ing the mother out of a group of Booty Bay Bruisers. Some of those pirates wave or salute you while they continue to aoe the bruisers. Do you:

a) Laugh, cheer, and/or salute the pirates and watch the show? We had a lot of that happening on our trip.

b) Run and hide for fear that after the bruisers are dead, the pirates will come after you? I imagine we probably had a few of those. After all, Tichondrius is a PvP server, and ganking lowbies seems to be a pastime for some people. Still, the pirates could've targeted you and killed you in two seconds rather than waved and saluted you, but I guess for some it's best to be safe than sorry.

c) Attack the pirates? OK, you as a level 40 player are going to attack six heavily armed level 60's? For some reason, a few people thought this was a good idea. Luckily, most only thought this was a good idea once. However, there was this one level 60 warrior who was wielding of all things a Doomsaw (like he's going to do anything to us with that) who just kept coming. I guess he thought at some point he'd get a lucky execute in or something, but it's not like we ever let our health get down that low when we knew he was around. We might've been drunk or insane, but we weren't stupid. He finally gave up after dying four times.

d) Run through the aoe zone of death? This was the most inexplicable reaction to our invasion. We have a warlock spamming Hellfire and two mages spamming Arcane Explosion, and a couple level 35-40's thought it was a good idea to walk through it all to the other side. With 8-12 bruisers attacking us, it's not like we were going to stop firing just to let them get through. All they had to do was wait for the fight to be over and then pass by, but no, a couple of people thought they should go right on through, and of course they died about 2/3rds of the way across the aoe zone of death. That's natural selection at work, I guess.

At one point, a level 40 Horde player decided to take advantage of the fact that we were killing all the bruisers by attacking every level 35-40ish Alliance player who came along. He followed us around for a bit, and once we realized what he was doing, I sent him a polite but firm request that he move off someplace else. I didn't want people to think that he was with us and end up having our pirate fun marred by some flame-war forum post saying, "Nice job ganking all the lowbies, The Core!" or some such BS. The Horde player was nice enough to comply, though.



We kept going around and around destroying the town. Then came the highlight of the evening. A level 60 shaman guildie named Zylonis decided to stop by to watch the show. We teased him by saying, "Hey, Zylonis! Heal us." "Yeah, Zylonis, just heal us." He answered:

Zylonis: You bastards. I like my reputation with Booty Bay. Thank-you very much!

But after watching a few fights, Zylonis decided to test things out, so when we were fighting a solo bruiser, Zylonis did heal someone and nothing happened. The person he had healed probably hadn't tapped the mob yet. However, this experience emboldened Zylonis, so when we pulled the next big batch of bruisers (pictured above), he healed someone again. After a moment, we heard this on teamspeak:

Zylonis: Oh, my! (pause) Oh, God! (now over both teamspeak and guild chat) NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

With 375 faction lost with Booty Bay for each bruiser killed and having been a party to killing 8-10 bruisers, Zylonis went from being three-quarters friendly with Booty Bay down to one-quarter friendly in just that one fight alone. We rolled on the floor laughing and cackled with glee. "You're one of us, now, Zylonis! Join us!" we said. "Noooooo!" replied Zylonis, who refused to do any more than rez us from that point on.

That did give us the mildly evil idea of inviting lowbies into our group and asking them to heal us. I mean, can you imagine being a mid-30's level character suddenly finding that you're kill-on-sight every time you try to walk into Booty Bay? Or finding that you get attacked instantly upon landing at the Gadgetzan flight path? Or finding out that they can't take up goblin or gnomish engineering and can't buy the alchemy or tailoring recipes in Gadgetzan or Everlook? Pure evil. Our better conscience prevented us from doing that.



At about this time, Vendetta, the one who had started the party in the first place, had to leave (he had girlfriend aggro). However, we were gaining reputation with the Bloodsail Buccaneers so quickly that the rest of us continued. In short order, Dimiotrix became Friendly with the Bloodsail Buccaneers, so he was the first one to get the quest to kill Baron Revilgaz and Fleet Master Seahorn. The fight shown above is the fight to kill Revilgaz so that Dimiotrix could get his hat.

Incidentally, I also found an interesting bug/feature with the Savory Deviate Delight in that if you switch your hat out, your pirate hat disappears. Turning off and on your helm graphic doesn't get it back either. I know that this is a largely pointless observation, but if you ever want to go around as a hatless pirate, that's how you do it.



With Vendetta gone, our firepower took a severe hit. Plus, it was getting late, so we were probably more sloppy and reckless than we should have been. We died more frequently than we had before, but that was OK. We were still making great progress and before I knew it, I had already reached Neutral with the Bloodsail Buccaneers. "Hostile" had flown right by, and I celebrated by dancing with "Pretty Boy" Duncan.



Our supply of Savory Deviate Delights finally ran out, so we all donned our blue Admiral's hats (except for Dimiotrix who already had his red Bloodsail Admiral's Hat) and continued. Just a bit further, and we'd all get to Friendly with the Bloodsail Buccaneers.

UP NEXT: Hip Hip... Arrrrr...

[MongoJerry]

THE ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Hip Hip... Arrrrr...

We continued to make our way around Booty Bay. One party member after another obtained Friendly with the Bloodsail Buccaneers until finally...



Ding!



Dimiotrix had already shared the Bloodsail quest with some of the others before he had turned in his quest to get his hat. I was the last one in the party to reach Friendly and could have had the quest shared with me, but I wanted to get some screenshots. So, I cast Levitate and ran south across the water to the Bloodsail Buccaneer boats.



And there I spoke with Fleet Master Firallon who said that he'd make me an honorary Admiral of the Bloodsail Buccaneers, if I killed Baron Revilgaz and Fleet Master Seahorn. I accepted the quest and got summoned by my party onto the roof of the bank -- just off to the side of where Revilgaz and Seahorn stand watch.



Our plan was simple. Go in, kill Revilgaz and Seahorn, and run like heck.



Seahorn down. Check!



Revilgaz down. Check!



Jump into the water and run like heck. Check! Dimiotrix died during the fight, but that didn't matter, since he already had his hat anyway.



We hurried to the Bloodsail Buccaneers ships in anticipation.

[MongoJerry]

Upon turning in the quests, Fleet Master Firallon gave each of us a Bloodsail Admiral's Hat.



And then for each of us, Fleet Master Firallon led a rousing cheer:

Fleet Master Firallon yells: Three cheers for Neriad -- Admiral o' the Bloodsail Bucaneer Navy!
Fleet Master Firallon yells: Hip hip... arrrrr...
Fleet Master Firallon yells: Hip hip... arrrrr...
Fleet Master Firallon yells: Hip hip... arrrrr...

(Note: The word "Buccaneer" is misspelled in the cheer. lol)




So what is this hat that people destroy their Booty Bay reputations for? It's a distinctive red admiral's hat that is also the only thing in the game that summons the rare Blood Parrot.



Here's a closeup of the parrot. After you summon your parrot, you can swap out your hat if you like and still keep the parrot. Of course, if you had a Bloodsail Admiral's Hat, I don't know why you'd want to swap out your hat in the first place.



After turning in our quests, the pirate raiding party gathered on the top deck of the Bloodsail Buccaneers sailing ship to take some photos.

UP NEXT: Aftermath

[MongoJerry]

THE ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Aftermath



In the aftermath of our raid, it's been fun to see all the little differences in the game. For example, all of the zeppelin masters are now hostile to me, although they don't attack on sight.



Whenever I fly into Gadgetzan, I get immediately attacked by Gadgetzan Bruisers.



The moment that caught me off guard, however, was when I flew into Flame Crest to turn in a libram quest and got immediately attacked by Tinkee Steamboil and all of the goblins that inhabit the outpost.

When I began posting this tale on the Amazon Basin forums, I found that some other people already had a discussion going about gaining or losing reputation with the goblins. TacoSupreme said, "I've heard the pirates in arathi can boost bloodsail faction as well without killing BB faction, not sure if its true." Well, Jeez, I thought. Now you tell me. So, I downloaded Reputation and went to Arathi to check it out.



At first glance, the story seemed to be true. Killing the deckhands and most of the NPC's there gave 1 reputation point with the Bloodsail Buccaneers each time I killed them, and the First Mate and Captain gave me 5 points. What's more, there didn't seem to be any spillover reputation loss with the rest of the goblin factions. It would be an awfully tedious process to get the thousands of reputation points needed to get to Friendly with the Bloodsail Buccaneers, but it seemed like a way was available to gain reputation with them without losing reputation with the goblins.

But hold on. There were still several possible explanations for this. It's possible that the pirates in Arathi are indeed special mobs, but that hasn't yet been proven. It's possible that the reason for this behavior is that Neriad is level 60 and maybe there's something about the reputation mechanics that's causing the reputation loss to somehow round down to zero. It's also possible that because I'm already fully hated by Booty Bay that I can't lose any more reputation with them and therefore there's no extra spillover reputation loss, either.

To test the specialness of the Arathi pirates, I brought out my level 39 dwarf hunter alt (on Stormrage) and killed one of the Blackwater deckhands.



Well, that pretty much settled that question. Killing the pirates in Arathi does cause reputation loss with Booty Bay and spillover reputation loss with all the goblin factions. But how come Neriad didn't lose any reputation with the goblins? Is it because she's level 60 or because she's already fully hated by Booty Bay?



To test that out, I first traveled back to Booty Bay and killed a bruiser. Aha! Neriad didn't lose any spillover reputation with the goblins when she killed the bruiser, either. It seems that when you're fully hated by Booty Bay, you won't lose additional reputation with Ratchet, Gadgetzan, or Everlook by killing additional bruisers.



But I wanted to make sure that there's really nothing special about the pirates in Arathi for those who are level 60. So, I rode up to the Venture Company operation on the lake in Stranglethorn Vale and killed some geologists in order to boost my reputation with Booty Bay. Each geologist increased my reputation by 1 point. (Woot! Only 41,999 geologists to go until I'm neutral with Booty Bay!). Incidentally, I also tried killing the higher level Wastewanders in Tanaris, but they also only gave 1 reputation point of faction per kill. After getting 75 reputation with Booty Bay, I headed back to Arathi and killed a deckhand.



Sure enough, I lost a bundle of reputation with all of the goblin factions, so it's clear. When it comes to farming for reputation with the Bloodsail Buccaneers, there's nothing special about the Arathi pirates, other than the fact that they're lower level than the Booty Bay bruisers, so one could start building up one's reputation at an earlier level by farming them. In addition, once one has reached fully hated with Booty Bay, there's no longer any spillover reputation loss with the rest of the goblin factions when you kill Booty Bay NPC's.

So, where do we go from here? Well, there should be more Bloodsail Buccaneers quests, of course! Some ideas that our pirate crew bandied about were:

1. Bloodsail buccaneers should be allowed to fish as part of the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza! Bloodsail pirates should be able to catch Tastyfish and turn them in to a Bloodsail Buccaneers NPC for prizes. After all, don't pirates appreciate the taste of succulent fish, too?

2. There should be an epic mount for those who get to be Exalted with the Bloodsail Buccaneers. Our suggestion is a dingy with a small sail that one can use to float across the water -- kind of the way that shamans can waterwalk or priests can levitate across the water.

3. How about a pirate hat or a coat that when worn lets you speak and understand [Pirate]. All others would only hear "Arrrrr..." or perhaps a random selection of "Arrrrr...", "Ahoy, Matie!", and "Shiver me timbers!" It would be up to Blizzard to decide if cross-faction speaking would be allowed in this case. I think it'd be cool if it did allow cross-faction speaking, though.

4. There should be a pirate emote. Maybe only allow people who are friendly or better with the Bloodsail Buccaneers do the pirate emote.

But if none of these ideas ever get implemented, what do I think of this adventure? Is the hat and parrot and everything that goes with it worth everything I had to do to get it?



Yarrr! Tis so worth it!

[vor_lord]

Thanks, Mongo -- great read as always.

[Hedon]

Yeah great read and fantastic screenshoots.


I just couldn't get myself to kill the Goblins though, as I find them just too cool to turn them into enemies :blush:

Remember the cute "Are we there Yeti" Quest you did for them in Everlook? Can you imagine how this poor Goblin Girl feels now, about your betrayal? ;)

[redinter]

A great read Mongo, that hat surely is a great reward. :)

[MongoJerry]

Remember the cute "Are we there Yeti" Quest you did for them in Everlook? Can you imagine how this poor Goblin Girl feels now, about your betrayal?  ;)

You mean the one who terrorized all her friends? Hm, I should go up there and kill that big meanie for doing that and making me be a part of it to boot!

[Warlock]

Sounds fun. Very much something for 60's to do *after* completing all those quests that involve world tours of the goblin cities!

I do have one question....

What do you get at Bloodsail Exalted?

[Bob the Beholder]

IT'S SPREADING.

Random comment time: The warrior that posted that is quite possibly the best in the server. I remember, once, when I was in BRD, a friend of mine who had died to the two level 60 rogues, one level 60 mage, and one level 60 druid camping the entrance told me that Belgraad arrived and destroyed them all simultaneously. Was supposedly at over half health by the end of it.

I asked him about it once, and his only reply was, "The legend is true." And then I laughed.

</random>

[MongoJerry]

Over 11,000 views on this thread now. It took a while for this Neriad tale to get noticed, but over the last couple of days, it's seemed to have picked up some steam.