[Bilgepump]

Here is a fast way to get your grenades up to a decent level.

The basic idea is to minimize all other rep except grenades. Do NOTHING else.

When you hit level 20, you get the grenade unlock quest. The quest involves searching a LOT of barrels and crates, and sinking some ships. Clearing out the mobs so that you can search the barrels and crates will give you rep. So will sinking the ships. You don't want that.

So get a high-level friend to help you out. Let them escort you through Kingshead and PDF and occupy the Navy while you search. Let them sink the ships while you sit on the deck sipping umbrella drinks. You will almost certainly have to pay this back in the future. Do not heal them until after the fighting stops. Do not fight back if attacked.

Once the quest is complete, hit the store and get a full load of type-1 grenades.

You can't do a lot with these. You need to gain some levels fast. In particular, we want to get to level 4, when you get long volley.

Go find a fly trap. It doesn't matter where, Misty Mire on Tortuga works well because it's close to a resupply source.

Position yourself far enough away that the fly trap can't hit you. It can still spit poison, but you'll kill it long before you see yellow on your HP bar.

Throw grenades until it's dead. Wait for respawn. Repeat. If you run out of grenades, go back and get more. Do this until you're level 4 at grenade. This won't take long, maybe 10 or 15 minutes.

When you hit level 2, put one (1) point into stinkpot. When you resupply after this, fill up on these, too.

When you hit level 4, put one (1) point into long volley.

Now you're ready for the serious action.

Load up on grenades and go to Kingshead. IF YOU HAVE A WIDE-BRIMMED HAT, TAKE IT OFF FIRST. See "Notes on Aiming" below. Do not sink any ships on the way, no matter how fat and juicy they are.

At the parade ground just inside, there's that group of 1 officer and 6 veterans. They are your target. There may be other people there, see "Dealing with Other Players" below.

On the long fence, count over 7 fenceposts. Stand in front of it, and back up a couple steps. This is the sweet spot.

Wield the grenades, and select number 2, stinkpot.

Target the leftmost veteran, the one closest to the officer. You should see a faint red circle at his feet.

Use long volley to toss a grenade at him. Let fly when the bar reaches 80%. See "Notes on Aiming" below.

If you're lucky, the officer and all the veterans will come running over. Most of the time, I got all the veterans, but the officer stayed behind. Sometimes the officer and one veteran stayed behind. If more than two stay behind, throw another grenade to pull them, too. Try not to throw more than two grenades for the pull, but don't sweat it if you do. If you keep missing, try looking up or down to fine-tune your aim.

When all the soldiers reach the fence, lob grenades at them until they're dead. You should get around 250 rep per round. The levels will flow like water.

If they can hit you through the fence, back up a bit. If you get hit by your own grenades, back up a bit.

At level 6, you get Determination (faster HP regen). Toss the three skill points you have accumulated into it. Same with the one you get at level 7.

At level 8, you get the fireball grenades. Put one (1) point into that. At level 9, put the point into Determination to max it out. At 10, you get smoke bombs. Put one (1) point into it. After this, save your skills. I put 5 into Ignore Pain at level 17, but it took a while to get there.

You will have to reload eventually. Fill up on every type of grenade and sail back. Keep doing this. If you have a mule on a free account, you can park it against the back wall and use it as a go-to target. You can also group with it for the rep bonus. It is possible that someone may jump on the spot while you're gone, but that never happened to me. See "Dealing with Other Players" below.

Suggested firing order:

You get more rep with the grenades that do lower damage, like smoke bomb. The problem is that you only have 25 of those, and it's possible to shoot all of them off on a single group and not kill them.

I suggest spreading them out and using them up evenly to minimize the reload trips, like so:

Toss 1 smoke.
Toss 2 fireballs.
Toss X stinkpots, until its count matches the fireballs.
Toss explosives until dead.

You'll probably need to deviate from this after awhile, and maybe use more stinkpots and fewer explosives, or vice-versa. The idea is to be as close to empty as possible before going off to reload. Pull with the stinkpots. If you start running low on them, conserve.

You will start this at level 20, and all those soldiers will be red, and give you 35-40 rep each. They will turn green at grenade 18, and start giving 18-20 rep each. By this time, you'll be most of the way through level 22.

Sometimes, one of the soldiers will hop the fence. Go ahead and use the cutlass or dagger. Or grenade them, too.

I used this method to get from 0 to halfway through 18 in grenades in one afternoon. I plan to continue this method until grenades are level 20, or until they go grey on me, whichever comes first. By then, I'll be 23 and be able to get the PDF teleport, and will switch to PDF beach.

Update: At grenade 22, they turned grey, and the rep dropped to 8 or 9 per soldier. I was about 1000 points from level 24. If I hadn't avoided all non-grenade rep, I probably would have hit 24 while I was still grenade 21, and they probably would have greyed out then instead. So I squeezed out enough grenade rep to get an extra grenade level, instead of being about 3/4 of the way through 21.

NOTES ON AIMING

It'll take a little practice on the long volley to get it right. I noticed that the aim worked best when the target was vertically aligned with the left side of my character's head. That is, if I were to draw a line straight up from the left side of his head, it would hit the target. The horizontal aim depends on how tall your toon is. On my short one, the top of the fencepost was at ear level. On my taller one, it was chin or shoulder. Play around, you'll find what works. If you have a wide-brimmed hat, take it off. It can make it hard to see what you're aiming at.

DEALING WITH OTHER PLAYERS

This is a heavily-camped spot. There is no other place like it in the game. It is the best spot for initially leveling both grenades and staff. The rep is sweet, and wiping out that group will get you lots of gold. This is a combination that tends to bring out the worst in other players.

If someone's there, and isn't willing to share, change servers and try again. If they are willing to share, I strongly recommend that you alternate pulls instead of both blasting the same group. This will keep your rep per grenade high, and minimize the resupply trips. You can even group for the rep bonus and use each other for go-to targets when resupplying. It's also nice to have someone to talk to - it can get boring. I made a new friend this way.

If you do find a solo spot, you will almost certainly have someone come up and see if the spot is available. The polite ones will ask to share, or go elsewhere without saying anything. I'd advise sharing if possible. Karma and all that.

But sometimes you get people that just start blasting away, and won't take the hint when you tell them you don't need help. You can either stay and wait for them to run out of ammo (they tend to really stink at this and burn through the grenades real quick) or change servers. I usually change servers. It's not worth the stress of arguing with them.

You will also get low-level leeches trying to suck up some risk-free rep at your expense. Since they have to wait for you to pull, you can just tell them that you aren't going to pull until they leave, and then outwait them. Or change servers.

I had to change servers three times, I think.