Discussion Peter Blood's Frigate

[DTScurvy]

Has anybody ever attempted to go through the game as Peter Blood without selling/storing the Cinco Llagas at the beginning? The debuffs from the lack of navigation skill could possibly be overrided with a high Insight setup and doing the Port Master's quests, and the ship's power could aid in dealing with the insanely high skip upkeep via constant plunder.

I've never tried this, but it seems like a good candidate for a challenge run. Peter Blood is my favorite character to use, mainly because I really like the Errol Flynn film, and it would be pretty neat to play him without the initial scramble of getting rid of the Cinco Llagas and building up enough money to buy another decent ship, even if I'm not sure such a thing is even possible.

Another possible addition to this challenge run would be to recreate the film/novel and immediately go into piracy after escaping slavery instead of signing up for the British who wrongfully imprisoned Blood in the first place, meaning locking yourself out of the nation questlines and only doing pirate stuff, presumably getting quests from national ports via stealth and trading licenses.

 

[DTScurvy]

Well, I tried it, with a high Insight and Talent setup, several trips through storms, dozens of shopkeeper missions, and as many port master missions I could do. I was under the impression that the total navigational skill of your crew was combined between the captain and the navigator, which is apparently untrue. By the time I had gotten to 40 navigational skill, I had already fended off multiple mutinies and paid for the expensive repairs of the frigate about 3 times. The talent debuff from the lack of navigation skill crippled my experience gain, and this whole time I gained only one ship skill point, and no personal skill points. I would have to continue like this for much longer than I'd like to get to the required 80 navigation, and even more after that since your navigation skill itself is debuffed by the ship's size.

I guess you could just have a tartane as the flagship until your skill is high enough, which would eliminate most of these issues, but the whole point of this was to keep the frigate alone and deal with the debuffs while scrambling to the 80 navigation. Doing that at Peter Blood's beginning does seem to be possible, but it's even more tedious than the average COAS early-game. Nonetheless, despite the debuffs and constant low morale, it was very fun to play early-game with a ship that doesn't fire friendship balls until you get the Pro Cannoneer skill or spend a fortune on upgrading your cannon caliber.

Despite the seemingly commonly held belief that playing as Peter Blood necessitates a slower beginning than the other two vanilla characters, it looks like you could theoretically have a much easier time at the beginning of the game with a proper flagship, since you could always switch to the Frigate before an encounter to insta sink the pirate luggers that harass you - not to mention the tons of cash you can make with shopkeeper quests from the frigate's hold space. I plan on writing a steam guide for COAS on how to get to the good parts of the game faster with Peter Blood after I play some more and find the most efficient way to do it.