Rumors

Real pirates had lore of mermaids and buried treasure and all sorts of mythological monsters. Y!PP has many of these, but we also have a lot of "functional" rumors and myths, which it's important to dispel. Here are a few of them.

Black blocks in swordfights are caused by a damaged ship
Unbreakable black blocks in Swordfighting are caused by damage to your ship. They are not caused by OM intervention, by random generation, or by anything else. If you want to see fewer black blocks, don't get shot as much. If you want your opponents to have more black blocks, shoot more.
 * Status: True

Carpentry and patching help to repair the black blocks in a swordfight
Black blocks simulate damage to your ship as well as to your crew. Think of it like this: When you're hit by a cannonball, does it just break your boat? No, it breaks your sailors as well. Black blocks represent this. You start each battle with no black blocks, regardless of how much damage your ship has. You can use Carpentry or Patching to keep damage low, but once you've been hit, you cannot get rid of the black blocks. For more information on how to do this, see the sea battle page.
 * Status: False

"Brigand Captains" should be killed first
Ordinary Brigands do not have captains. The brigand wearing a hat is no different than any other brigand on board the ship. It does not matter which sequence you kill the brigands in. You will not win more or less booty for killing hatted brigands first or last. Variation on this rumor is to kill the him last.
 * Status: False

Brigand Kings do have captains, but they exist only for role-playing purposes. It doesn't matter if you kill a Brigand King/Queen/Admiral/Creature first, last, or in the middle, so long as they're eliminated by the end.

Bans are serious!
On some other games, a banning is a light punishment. You're expected to create a new character and start from scratch.
 * Status: True, true, true!

Y!PP is not like "other games". When you are banned from Y!PP, unless you get a pardon, you are not allowed, ever, to start a new account or rejoin the game. If you persist in trying to rejoin and are caught (and odds are you will be if you attempt to do so), your computer will be tainted. Once your computer is tainted, you will no longer be able to register new accounts. The taint will also prevent you from being able to play other Three Rings games (such as Bang! Howdy). Note that a permanent ban is different than a temporary suspension, which lasts a set amount of time and then is finished, but has other long-term consequences.

For more information on bans and how to try and submit a ban plea, see the ban page.

Independent flags score points for the defender in a blockade
Independent factions score points for themselves in a blockade. In fact, they could possibly hurt the defenders by contesting flags that are held by the defenders. However, if an independent faction wins the blockade round, the round goes to the defender.
 * Status: False

Teaming makes brigands "cheat"
Good players know that when you have a lot of people teaming on you in a swordfight, you should stall. (Not use the space bar at all, and focus on surviving instead of sending strikes and sprinkles to your opponents.) Brigands do the same thing. If there is a team of four or more on a brigand, they will begin stalling.
 * Status: False

Brigands never cheat in swordfights. They just slow down, the same way players should in the same situation.

Shouting causes lag
In general, incoming chat does not cause network lag. It's far more likely that events such as people moving around, changing chat circles within a large scene, or many pirates aboard a ship fighting in one brawl is causing network lag for people with slower connections.
 * Status: False.

However, people with low-spec machines (especially with slow CPUs) can experience an application slowdown when chat messages of any kind are displayed on their screen, because it is transparent, and the graphics calls to superimpose this text on the window are computationally expensive. Also, during complex animations, such as a swordfight aboard a Grand Frigate, or a blockade board, the server sends so many updates that the client's frame rate lags far behind real-time events. A system with low amounts of RAM will also lag; the cause of this is typically excessive paging (known as "thrashing") as the Java application uses more and more virtual memory. The best way to avoid these kinds of lag is by upgrading the Internet connection, the computer hardware, and by using the most recent JVM (Java machine) available.

Your sword color affects the attacks sent to you or the pieces that you receive

 * Status: False

The pieces received in the top left-hand corner of the screen are completely random, and are only affected by chance.

Each sword has a drop pattern: this determines how colors will appear on attacks that the opponent has received. A sword's colors indirectly affect the placement of colors in its drop pattern. The only property of a sword which can influence a fight is its drop pattern.

A sword has no effect on the size and quantity of attacks, nor on where they fall on the opponent's board. Any two swords which break a chain will send identical sprinkles and strikes. Although the same attack is sent, it may enter the opponent's board differently - for detailed information on how attacks enter the board, see the Black Death Sword and Sprinkle Placement Guide.

Since NPPs play an approximation of the swordfighting puzzle, they do not receive or send attacks in the same way as players. However, it is still true that in games against NPPs, their sword determines the color of attacks sent and nothing else. It is not currently known whether or not NPPs take into account a player's drop pattern.

Injury Rumors
Rumors abound about how to receive injuries. Here's a few truths to dispel those rumors.
 * Planking does not cause injuries, under any circumstances.
 * In PVP, you must be a full member of either crew, or you cannot be injured.
 * On a blockade board, anyone aboard any sinking vessel, regardless of their crew, has a chance at an injury.
 * You do not need to hold the deed to a boat to get an injury.
 * Injuries are entirely random. Being on a smaller or larger ship does not make you any more or less likely to be injured. Theoretically, a grand frigate with 150 pirates aboard could sink once, and give everyone aboard an injury, but one pirate could also sink 150 times and never get one.

Leaving the fight after you're knocked out helps your team
Leaving the fight once you are knocked out, and then re-entering to watch does not make skellies or brigands easier to beat. It has no effect on the battle whatsoever.
 * Status: False

Different color skellies/zombies are harder/easier
The color of a skeleton or zombie makes no difference to its difficulty - for instance, a red skeleton is no more difficult than a blue skeleton. For more information, see the skellie and zombie pages.
 * Status: False

The skellie "leader" is important
The skellie "leader" (the one which sends you information about the fray count in a /tell) is no more difficult than other skellies in the fray. For more information, see the skellie page.
 * Status: False

Brigands can read your moves during a sea battle
This is a highly debated topic that has yet to see a definitive answer. One side holds that higher-level brigands know exactly what moves the navigator places, and can thus react to them. Another side instead says that brigands can only react to your movement bar, the same as players can, and that mysterious "understanding" of a player's move simply comes from intelligent AI. There have been methods proposed to test the truth of this rumor, most often involving how brigands react to LSMs, or last-second moves, which some say prevents them from knowing what a player's moves are.
 * Status: Controversial

Throwing cannon balls overboard during gunning reduces the balls on the ship
Throwing items overboard has no effect on the number of cannon balls on board, it will just slow the pieces on the board down.
 * Status: False