Arr-rrgh! Black Pearl Boss Battle
 

:sadmh9:Well after months of mastering all weapons, and sailing and cannon, then completing the quests leading up to the Black Pearl Boss Battle, I find that I could not attempt it solo or recruit my own crew!
Has anyone else come across this annoying new addition/subtraction from the game?

Crew up with the pirates you want to go with first, then initiate the BB in lookout. There have been a few times the whole crew doesn't get in, some strange hic-up in game that I've reported more than once...

As far as going it solo, no, not an option anymore. You can however just invite a friend to crew up with you and go, and ask your friend to just hang out on the ship with you while you do all the work. Tha's about as solo as you can get right now.

Or invite a single level 20 (or lower) pirate. </devious>

Thanks matey's! I really appreciate the info.:skull:

POTCO has a video saying you can solo through the game. Obviously that's not true.
I reported this as a bug. Hopefully they'll make it so we can solo again.

Does it still work if you turn crew matching on, then do a lookout/treasure map (before anyone has joined your crew) or does that not work anymore, either?

Hi and thanks for the input. I just tried that and it would only look for a crew to match up with.
I just think every one should have the option!

I mean crew-matching through the Frends panel (set to CREW with RECRUIT CREWMATES turned on.) Then opening JOURNAL and clicking BB w/crew.

I agree, it was a neat challenge to have the solo-BB button. It took me quite a while to be convinced it could be done; longer still, to actually do it solo. (By that time, I pretty much had the basics of my method down, for full-crew BBs.)

I've noticed that the more people you get for the boss battle the harder it seems to be.(Just a theory from what I've seen.)
I managed to get myself in the boss battle with one other person and it was very easy. I didn't win but I made it up to the last two forts before battling the goliath.

I wonder if there's some sort of difficulty system.(or players are less organized when they have a big crew.)

That's interesting...I've never specifically measured just that. But I do know that with 9-12 people on board, the frigates do much more damage per second, than with 1-8 people. USUALLY, that is offset by high level gunners you have on board, but with large crews, nothing is easy to measure (as some n00b invariably grabs the wheel, even if you discuss what you are trying to measure before starting.)

OOhhh just tried that, with no luck. They are going to insist I find a crew first.
Aaarrrrrrrr:sadmh9:

I just read through your "Method". You are the Pirate Master. All Hail! Good job! WOW that was awesome.

I wonder how this works on the test server, now that they no longer have crews, per se.

I just reported this as a bug for test.
It should be fixed sometime.

Official Response
 

Hey Everyone interested
Here is POTCO's response to my rant at them about solo Black Pearl.
Enjoy

"Dear Marla,

The reason Pirate's need a crew for The Black Pear Boss Battle, is
because no one Pirate is strong enough to fight it solo. If you or any
other Pirate were to try and rescue The Black Pearl by your selves, it
would end in utter disaster.

Thank you,

Jeremi
Pirates of the Caribbean Online"


arrr they really must have changed it since Master Edgemenace did it.

Hey, hey, hey, it's not like I'm the only one that's ever soloed it. I'm certainly not the first. I just took a lot of screenshots. (And no, it hasn't changed.)

ROFL!

Kudo's to Jeremi for not sending a canned response...but boy is he wrong. I know of more than a few of us who have soloed it, and done it several times. Me thinks most of the POTCO staff has never made it past the tutorial in game.

Thanks for the Giggle Mars ;)

I find this tends to sway with each update... one time you can do it quiet easily - the next update they make it so hard (usually with the bridges) that without a crew of 5 or more you just sink - then the next update its a breeze again....

I think ya gotta hit them in-between the right update :D

That seems to be what's happening.
I haven't been able to win a single boss "solo" for the past month.
The farthest I've got, so far, is the last set of forts.

I would so like to thank the heavy hitters- Sarah, MacIronhawk, Edgemenace and MAXIMUS for weighing in, I feel like a real pirate now. Thanks to all you guys.:dancetl6:

I don't think its how many are in crew. Instead of how many ppl r in crew, I think its how often/frequently the forts+ships are being attacked on is the rate that the ships+forts fire back at the Pearl. (It's noticable when you're with a bad crew who doesn't wanna grab a cannon but rather run wild on deck). That's why you should have a crew with ppl with high lvl in cannons that can aim well at forts+ships & know where weak spots of the ships are to destroy them faster. I think that's also sort of the reason why Firebrand makes ships+forts fire back more often than normal coz of the 20 seconds burning effect...makes them being "constantly" being attacked on, hence they react more & attack the Pearl more. At least thats just what it seems to be like to me...

I've done BB's with a variety of crew sizes, I don't really notice a lot of difference but I'm not even sure how hard even a BB with a big/full crew, coz it is pretty rare for a whole crew of 12 to b teleported without anyone being left behind or if you all make it on board, ppl will be booted offline all the sudden. Either that or the BB will b glitched and you'll be stuck at a black screen or end up landing on the beach or dock