Ice Ocean/Discussion

From YPPedia

Ahoy! This page can be used to post and discuss Ice Ocean suggestions while the forums are unavailable. Each suggestion or comment can have its section on this page, where players can comment. Feel free to edit and format as needed.

Please sign each of your comments so we know who to contact if we want more information. At the end of your comments simply type four tildes (~).

General Ice Ocean discussion/requests

  • Testing on Ice requires the ability to earn poe. Balls, booze and boats aren't free. Please allow us to recover costs associated with the boats and stock. Skilled swabbies stealing the jobber cut, the crew cut and vessel owner share doesn't lend itself to a continued ability to test. Tagline (talk) 22:43, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
  • We have many boats stuck in the queue of the Shatterstone shipyard. Can this queue be cleared out by the OceanMasters or is it our problem to find sufficient labor for this? Tagline (talk) 22:43, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
  • General labor constraints for the Ice ocean. The ocean is heavily constrained by labor and as such cannot sustain it's own reliable supply of rum, cannonballs and ships during test surges. Is it possible to sell rum, shot and large boats from the palace shoppe? Tagline (talk) 22:43, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
  • IO/Viking Testing, So I went on a Junk ship with skilled swabbies as soon as I sail, I order the skilled swabby onto dnav, it refuses to station on the dnav, also I place IO/Viking charts on the ship it doesn't show up in Yer Expeditions on the ship, so was unable to test this, would like these issues to be fixed before I can test them thanks. Scottys (talk) 22:43, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Skilled Swabbies

  • Please add your feedback here like this example, and sign it. Cronus (talk) 21:32, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello, Testing Skilled Swabbies at the moment, the boarder drops in atlantis at the moment are way too strong, 30 boarders on a WG in under 3 minutes no arch drops, caused a sink sadly, amount of moves only 2 moves a turn barely as well makes it difficult to go Z4 or higher in the map. From Scottys.

I ended up lasting about an hour and half and sunk due to getting rammed. I found that the skilled swabbies held their own and I had no issues with the boarders but this was in zone 1/2. This was also on a WG. They can manage well against just bellators but as soon as other dragoons get in the mix it seems to make it harder to win. Dgkk (talk) 18:18, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  • Skilled Swabbies, flotilla testing: BLUF The skilled swabbies need buff to sails carp and bilge. Testing with a grand frig the swabbies can generate two sail tokens per turn with a clean bilge. with a full bilge the Skilled swabs will generate one token every three turns. Carp rate of repair is %8 per turn and a full bilge with no damage will take 7.5 minutes to clear. When damage exceeds ~20% the bilge will outpace the swabs. My collection of bottled grand frigs suggest that the skilled swabbies aren't so skilled. A buff to sails carp and bilge would be welcome. Tagline (talk) 01:10, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Skilled Swabbies, Vampire Lair/CI testing, hello so I've recently been able to Test Vampire lairs on Ice, and its nice to not fight BKs all the time so thank you on that part, so battling the ship once then getting the lair I think thats much better than fighting them 3 times to then go to the lair, also when I get into the lair with skilled swabbies, its basically 1v4, the skilled swabbies do not fight or do anything, which is a bummer when CI's they fight and thats all they do which is fine, but I don't think its fair that skilled swabbies do nothing, I would like them to at least fight in the lair just like CI's and thats it. Bug fix skilled swabbies to fight in Vampire Lairs, also a bump in carp/bilge for swabbies as on bigger ship CI's very hard to keep damage down but sloops are ok, also as you are aware skilled swabbies do not auto-station when leaving the island players are required to re-order them to stations. Scotty (talk) 20:21, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
  • Vampire boat and blood boxes. A win with a single pirate and five skilled swabbies on a sloop vs vampires 3 blood boxes were awarded. This is expected, three boxes per real pirate. The booty div resulted in the mercenaries taking two of these blood boxes. Should the swabbies take anything that they don't contribute? They don't add to the total of blood boxes awarded. As the skilled swabbies require an additional commodity, is their share not already paid in the sunk cost to hire them? This feels like an incentive to not use skilled swabbies. The mercenaries have taken 2 Blood Box as their share. The crew opens 1 chest and finds no items and 673 pieces of eight. No chests are set aside for the vessel owner. Tagline (talk) 21:01, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
  • On a atlantis run last night with 5 players and Crabbythekid popping in and out of the War frig occasionally. We won a total of 23 AC (Antediluvian chests). 10 & 12 AC we won from 2 CITs and pirates hauled 7 ACs from the hauled chests we were only able to keep 1. As it currently stands mercs do not haul so only CITs are profitable if at all. A fix ideally would be to give the ability to Skilled swabbies to treasure haul or to allow the Skilled swabbies make up for the missing spots available on a ship when entering an SMH. for instance Players hire 50 other players on their War frig and they can hire 25 Skilled swabbies totalling to a full WF of 75. Lincoln (talk) 15:30, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Standings Changes 02/27/2023

  • Please add your feedback here like this example, and sign it. Cronus (talk) 21:32, 27 February 2023 (UTC)


It might be broken at the moment, I played the Shipwrightery tutorial on a fresh alt with a normal triple and stayed able (Testee). Then I created a new alt (Jicedelete) and played the tutorial poorly (Double 3s -> Single 4) and went up to Distinguished. I then created a new pirate (Jicetesttwo) and played a triple again, still able. The measure for a Distilling good is also really low, consistent CC1s seem to score good at the moment! Jice (talk) 01:06, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I tried Weaving on a alt that never weaved before (Mexican) I did four puzzles. The first two puzzles only had two colors; The first combo was a Triple Looming Large board cleared got incredible went up to Respected then the second board was a Triple, a Single, and a Double ending with a Looming Large got incredible went up to Master. Third board was three colors I got a Looming Large, a Single, A Double, A Single, and a Double Vegas got incredible and went up to neophyte. Fourth Board also had three colors and I got a Double, a Triple, and a Bingo and went up to Renowned. I went on another character that previously had a little weaving stat Neophyte/Renowned on (Weavin) did a Single, a Triple Looming Large, a Bingo and another Bingo got an incredible and went up to Grand Master. Doing well seems to make you jump standing quite fast Dgkk (talk) 14:03, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

New alts have always had some incredibly fast jumps (especially in the old days). Do you have a pirate with better standings (higher star level) you can test on? See if what you'd consider a pretty meh performance equals a meh score. Cronus (talk) 21:20, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I tried puzzling on a very old alt that has done a lot of puzzling on ice(Draikio) I did very meh boards on weaving I broke a a bunch of singles and one triple and got incredible.( on emerald I feel like this would be a good/fine) The next board I broke a bunch of singles, one triple and a bingo that also resulted in incred.(on emerald I feel like this would be a good/excellent)<-tested this on Emerald and it worked out that way got an excellent(02/03/2023 00:13). One board I slammed pieces in completely random places broke one bingo and booched the board in the end that resulted in a good. The last board I also placed pieces in completely random places broke maybe one triple and a few singles got a good. On Distilling I can consistently get goods by doing combinations of cc3's and cc2's (on Emerald this would produce fines for me or poors). Dgkk (talk) 22:56, 01 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, this is helpful. It's likely that the same score using this new system would grant you a higher DR score on Ice than Emerald. This is a potentially expected result. If bots are being used, they may skew the required score needed to get a DR result higher. So rather than compare to what happens on Emerald, please try to compare it to what you feel is a good performance. It's difficult to do, so your feedback is helpful. Try getting to excellent or incredible - or play the puzzle at what you think that level is. Did your performance feel like it was equal to what those scores should be? We're watching your puzzling on our end, so please keep reporting the name of the pirate along with your findings. Cronus (talk) 21:00, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Today I did 6 weaving boards all on the pirate(Draikio). The first was a single, double, double, bingo , single, double. Second was single, double, double , double , bingo, double , double. Third was Triple, single, double, single, single, single, double, double, double, single. Fourth was double, double, single, single, double, double, single, double , single, double. Fifth was single, double, single, double, single, single, bingo. Sixth was double, bingo, double, triple, double, double. All of the first five boards felt horrible and I have no clue how they scored incredibles. The last board however felt quite decent and was definitely incred worthy. Would you guys rather have a variation of puzzles also instead of just weaving?Dgkk (talk) 00:10, 03 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. We took a look at your backend scores for those sessions and under the old system you would have gotten an incred 4 out of 6 of the times. So it's actually not that far off even though it feels like it was. We're looking into it though. Can you give some other puzzles a shot?Cronus (talk) 22:09, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok loads of puzzling for you to look at, I've done a ton of different puzzles all on (Draikio). I started with Blacksmithing I did 5 boards, they all felt true to their score except one of the excellents was probably a good it wasn't a good board. Next I did Shipwrightery, I either did four or five boards my notes aren't clear. I feel l did four excellents and a good, two of the excellent boards were rough and I felt like those should have been goods. Also, I did 3 Distilling boards 1.(CC2,CC3,CC4) 2.(CC3,CC3,CC4) 3.(CC3,CC4,CC3,CC2), they all got goods for scores and I feel like that's true to score. Then, I did 5 Forage boards 2 were increds and 3 were excellents they all felt alright maybe one excellent would have been a good. Sails was next and I did it for about 10 leagues of which 6 were increds, 2 were excellents and 1 good. All the indicators I received felt false I was breaking really small infrequent combos and didn't even cascade full boards at points. Carpentry came right after and I did about five leagues of that did excellents/increds/goods all scores seemed accurate. Patching was interesting but I think it was because I wasn't at full boards yet. I'm not fully sure how many leagues I did but I know that I got goods then consistent excellents. Usually performing like that in patch i would expect to recieve a high good or very low excellent Dgkk (talk) 1:46, 04 March 2023 (UTC)

Distilling feedback

Distilling scoring curve seems significantly more sensible than on Emerald - CC^8 appears to be around where you start getting Expert labour, which is a lot more achievable. Big fan of the idea of "fixed" scoring, in my opinion if the playerbase all improve at the puzzle they should all reap the rewards of their improvement rather than being stuck on Fines because everyone else has improved even more.

Update, 19/04/2023 - Distilling curve seems to have changed to emulate Emerald's, meaning previous Ultimate standing is now sitting around Master/Respected. Curve seems far too harsh in this new version, and is what I would expect it to look like under the old system that's been distorted by having a very small and very skilled playerbase for the puzzle.

20/04/2023 - Curve has changed again, previous Master up to Grandmaster. This seems like a sensible and fair rank for someone like me who has put in the work to learn the puzzle proficiently, but isn't quite good enough to get consistent CC12s.

23/04/2023 - Created new pirate for testing purposes (Revy) on Ice - Reached Ultimate in 14 boards, with an average CC chain of 10.78. Average CC chain from Able to Renowned was 10.75 (8 boards). Seems very do-able for people who put the work in to learn the puzzle, but I'm not sure how many boards the scoring window takes into account.

"Main" Ice pirate name is Bloodsailor. Bloodsailor (talk) 16:51, 06 March 2023 (UTC)

Ultimate: 

Remove "outliers" from the scoring equation and make the boundaries a bit broader. (e.g top 2.5% are Ult instead of top 1%). You could just grab some scoring numbers from the last competitions and exclude the increds (they are min-maxed & unnatural puzzling; e.g farming 20+ crabs in bilge) to see how well people perform on "average".

Hard scoring brackets: 

Having fixed scores is dumb and problematic: What happens when everyone improves eventually? Will everyone be Renowned+ then? Needs to be more dynamic.

Population count: 

The biggest issue is just that the population is so small and a lot of the times poor pirates can't afford a labor badge, so they dont get to puzzle anyway. Consequently won't be part of the labor "scoring pot". (like it is right now with nobody distilling/alching). The few "greenies" that decide to invest in the puzzle stand no chance and are stuck at a low rank, producing bad labor.

Labor puzzles should be free for all but don't have pirates produce labor if they dont have a badge.

Gameplay quality: 

Fixing the difficulty curve (e.g dnav star level, alch bottle count, carp hole amount...) is much more important than just a visual "rank flavor text" on your pirate page. Gameplay quality matters. It is impossible for low ranked people to score as well as high ranked ones. Especially in Shipwrighting, Duty Navigation and Carpentry.

Pash2101 (talk) 16:24, 28 February 2023 (UTC)Demontoad


My thoughts on puzzles I've played so far:

  • Sails/carp: Feel notably easier - started at low star levels though (and I never even reached the higher ones on sailing), but it definitely felt like it look a lot less effort to score increds on carp (and excellent on sails, on the small boards). I need to play these more and/or at higher star levels to get a better judgment.
  • Patching: Feels very easy to me now - excellent on my first DR, inc on the second one despite being about halfway on the star levels. Will likely never go below incredible again (or even close to the cutoff for it) at current fixed scorings unless I actually fall asleep.
  • Gunning: Hit ultimate in 5 boards. Yeah. Not much I could tell from that.
  • Distilling: Hit ultimate shortly after reaching narrow, following CC11+dismiss, CC10+dismiss, CC11+dismiss. I'm unsure as to what the actual CC chains needed for ultimate are, but assuming it's close to this, this makes ultimate reachable to most that end up dedicating some time to learn the puzzle.
  • Foraging: After my experiences with the other puzzles I expected to reach ultimate here very quickly (similar to gunning), but I believe I got close to apprentice before reaching ult. (Possibly because I made some major mistakes.) My first board (with only a single 1x1 chest on it) I scored a good, and by the third board (which had five), the average of my three boards was "incredible".

My main worry with the system: I'm likely going to be unable to tell between me playing really well, and me playing just about average (or in some puzzles, perhaps even "bad") by my standards, as it'll all likely end up displaying "incredible", and it won't really mean anything to me anymore.

I don't personally have a good solution for this - displaying something special only for the top scorers has the same issues the current system has (although it could be purely "cosmetic" and not provide more juju than any other incredible would - but this will still leave large gaps between "incredible" and "top scorer" with no real way to tell where in that gap you are), and just increasing the difficulty might take away from what you're trying to accomplish with this - making puzzling easier/better for the worse players. In a way it can be "mitigated" by changing my playstyle away from going for score and into going for maneuver tokens, but those aren't available everywhere, and I do also just enjoy aiming for the highest possible scores I can get.

Pirate for my Ice "testing sessions" is Multibella.

(Also, puzzling at lower star levels feels bad overall - not sure if this is the place to discuss that, though) Patgangster (talk) 22:34, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/index.php?title=Ice_Ocean/Discussion&oldid=785759"