Foraging offer
A foraging offer is a mechanism to allow pirates to be paid for their foraging labor. Pirates who forage on a ship which has posted a foraging offer will receive a number of Pieces of Eight for each type of commodity they find. Optionally, this offer can also be posted to the notice board, and pirates who apply for this job are whisked to the ship where they can play the foraging puzzle by clicking on the hold.
While all of the other crafting puzzles are only offered inside stalls or shoppes, and hence have systems of pay in exchange for labor in place, the foraging puzzle does not. Instead, fleet officers and above in a crew and deed holders have the ability to post a foraging offer for the ship they are on, which pays pirates an amount of PoE depending on what they forage. Selecting the forage offer option on the hold menu allows the officer to set a price for each item that can be foraged at the current island. The pay fields are initially set with a percentage of the estimated market value, but this percentage can be changed. Alternatively, the fields can be set to any desired figure. This allows officers to set a price that they feel the commodity is worth. For example, if they do not intend to transport any foraged gems to sell, they may simply set the pay for gems to zero, relying on the fact that gems are rare enough for this to not discourage potential applicants.
The forage offer dialogue box also gives an officer the option of posting the offer on the notice board. If this option is selected, the offered pay rates will be shown on the Voyages tab. Pirates may apply and be jobbed aboard similar to any other advertised voyage. As of release 2008-08-28, pirates without a labor badge or subscription may not apply to forage, even on free play days.
Pirates must also have a labor badge or subscription in order to post a forage offer, and will additionally need an officer badge to see and accept incoming jobbers requesting to forage from the notice board.
