morgan's pearl quest

[tcp]

okay, morgan wants pearls. daddy takes nice boat to turks, erases naughty french ships whose sole purpose is to irritate me, then apparently quick saves and goes to world map....logbook entry "quest over!" Ding! Um, the quest hadn't begun yet!!!!

try number two: Daddy avoids French and everyne else entirely, drops into the sea to hunt the stupid little boats, gets one! nabs a few pears (don't know how, tehy just gave them up), and voila! it's 8 PM, can't quick sail to other boats, everyone else disappears, daddy goes to cabin to sleep off and resume hunt, and DING! quest over!

WTF!!!! seriously, WTF! morgan tells me I have a month, not an hour. okay, so is this a game of "get lucky and select the one ship out of ten that has the total compliment of pearls on board? was I supposed to get there at 7 am precisely and then just sail around hoping to pick up ships? if I get there at night, will they respawn in the morning? and why are the designers such d*cks? thanks for changing the game rules without warning, guys! again!

anyhoo, sorry to beat that dead horse deader. still what's the gimmick to make this one work. cause we all know it'll come down to a gimmick.

just to add to the confusion, i did the ol' sail thru the night on hyperspeed and no more ships showed up. so at least for me, on this particular load, etc etc etc., there was no morning spawn. so I have one shot and only one. so how did you guys pull this one off?

 

[tcp]

nm.....figured it out. and for anyone else that has this problem, here's the gimmick. All rules are suspended. Save at the global map when you're near the turks, make sure you get into the north or south bay (I went north), check you compass display on the world map and make sure there's some daylight left (don't leave the global map until you know you can see the stupid little boats!!), and then enter the sea mode and hopefully there will be a few tartanes to plunder. DO NOT FIRE ON THEM (especially if you're a powerful ship). Just run alongside them, they'll surrender the pearls, and keep hauling tail after as many as you can get to hit the magic number. I wound up having to chase them (I needed five to hit my quota) AND fight off a french military expedition. Fortunately, I had the Sea Wolf, because a French frigate took off my mast the second I had my pearls caught. Coincidence, I'm sure. Meanwhile Ballet of Death out of there and go back to Morgan. DO NOT UNLOAD PEARLS ANYWHERE OR ON ANYONE! You'll just have to crawl along slowly, which made sneaking back into Royale a boatload of fun.

Of course, there's zero in game information on this, but no surprise there. Thank goodness for the Sea WOlf. What an awesome little tub. Fires like a frigate and handles like a sloop.

 

[Munty]

Just run alongside them, they'll surrender the pearls,

What is the deal with this stupid quest?! Probably spent the last hour trying to get somewhere with this and still not much closer to finishing it and no closer to understanding it!

Firstly we get told to go to the north beach and disrupt the pearl diving operations and that's it;
so we have to guess how to do it when we arrived? I went through more than a few reloads just sinking the little crappy boats and then landed on the beach (where I was kind of expecting to see some pearl divers) only to be told the mission was failed.
We can't board the stupid little ships for some reason which is completely stupid. What are we expecting the guys to just pass up the pearls when we pass close by to them??? And if we sink them well we get a big fat nothing and like so many other quests in this poorly designed game you only get one chance at the quest before it's failed for good.

Second problem is based on the very helpful fact that tcp posted above. Turns out we just put our ship alongside them and they give us the pearls. Go figure...
But how does it work??? It seems to be complete and utter fluke when the ships do or don't give up the pearls. Ships can surrender but they don't give up pearls!
I tried putting hull and crew down to below 50% to no effect. Seems to make no difference!
Bear in mind I am STILL in this bloody Manowar which is total crap for 99% of the quests in this game and this one is no exception. Even a volley of grapeshot out of the stern has a good chance of sinking these puny little vessels!

This is the best trick I've found and I'm now only 320 and 80 pearls away from completion through pure luck!
Immobilise the opponent... My manowar has a very large bowsprit but when you sit it next to one of these smaller ships it's just about the right size to allow the hull to pass under it but not the sails! So by placing my MoW in the right place I can actually pretty effectively snap off both masts on these smaller ships. Got 3 derelict vessels floating around me in my current saved game!

Now 2 of these are yet to give up pearls but it seems no matter how long I sit next to them and wait I get nothing from them. Bear in mind they have no sails left at all, I can kill the crew without sinking the ship if I'm lucky and a little nudge by my MoW can take the hull down little by little. So I can turn these derelicts into driftwood pretty easily but still they won't give up the pearls! These are the last 2 left so I have got to get pearls from both of them in order to finish this quest and I can't do it!

What now???

And please don't tell me I should use the bluebird of seawolf or something as the point I'm at now it should make no difference. Sure it would've been easier to catch them but I already have caught and immobilised them with my MoW so that won't help Just curious as to whether or not I need to be parallel to the vessel, fore to fore, very near, just boarding distance, moving, not moving, etc...

Once again an overly complicated quest is made even less fun by the complete lack of direction in game. These guys have learnt nothing from their mistakes have they?!

 

[skaparate]

What now???

And please don't tell me I should use the bluebird of seawolf or something as the point I'm at now it should make no difference. Sure it would've been easier to catch them but I already have caught and immobilised them with my MoW so that won't help Just curious as to whether or not I need to be parallel to the vessel, fore to fore, very near, just boarding distance, moving, not moving, etc...

Once again an overly complicated quest is made even less fun by the complete lack of direction in game. These guys have learnt nothing from their mistakes have they?!

You have to be side by side with the pearl divers ships (moving or not), so they will give you the pearls. Now, maybe because the MoW is too big, the game does not realize you're side by side with the other ships (you must be even closer than when you want to grapple another ship, almost crashing them). I always use fast/small ships (like frigates or the xebec blue bird) and I just get close to the ships and they give me the pearls. I would suggest you getting a faster/smaller ship (even a war tartane would be enough).

One more thing, if I remember well, you had to collect at least 1000 small pearls and 750 big pearls, so, catching a few of the others ships isn't enough. When you get the pearls, do not drop them in the cabin chest nor anywhere else or you will have problems when returning the pearls to Morgan.

Greetings.