A Pirate's Guide to Dubloon Disaster

Lots of up and coming pirates cut their teeth on this game, it tests the pirates seamanship, cunning and greed for those lovely dubloons.

Now if you follow an old scallywags advice, you will be able to earn yourself lots of Neopoints and a shiny dubloon avatar. Yarr.

The Dubloons

Just thinking about those lovely shiny dubloons makes an old pirate's mouth water. Yarr……(drools). What? Oh.. no you can’t eat dubloons, I wouldn’t advise that. But take your dubloons to The Golden Dubloon and the food is so delicious, I recommend Bilge Rat Madeira.

Anyway back to the Dubloon Disaster. As you may or may not know, not too long ago the pirates of the fearsome Black Pawkeet attacked another pirate ship just out of Krawk Harbour. That ship contained many lovely dubloons and sunk to the ocean floor. The Black Pawkeet still guards the wreck of that ship and fires mines at any scallywag who thinks he or she can make off with the loot.

That’s where you came in my scurvy mate. Your job in this game is to collect the Dubloons from the wreck. For some mysterious reason these dubloons can float! Each time you collect a dubloon from the waters, another one surfaces!

So you go out there, hop in your row boat and collect those dubloons. If ya get real good like me, you can call yerself a true pirate. Yarrr.

The Mines

Collecting those dubloons sounds easy right? Any ninny could do it! But if I made it sound simple, I apologize. For it ain’t that easy at all.

You see, as I was saying earlier, the Black Pawkeet still guards the wreck of that ship that was loaded with dubloons. They are waiting for low tide so they can go out and collect them. But in the meantime they guard that treasure like hawks, err well like Pawkeets anyway.

So whenever you collect a dubloon, what do they do? They fires a mine at you. Not a normal mine. For they are pretty bad shots. Yarr hahahaha. No these mines be the homing type, that means they will chase after you till they get close enough to blow you up! So… what’s an up and coming pirate gonna do? You can either run away, like a frightened Tuskaninny, or you can meet the challenge.

Ye see, there are two different strategies you can use to defeat these mines and collect the dubloons. You can either try the fast way or the slow way. For gaining Neopoints I suggest the fast way. For winning the Dubloon Disaster avatar, I suggest the slow way.

The Fast Way

Inherent in the tracking system of the homing mines is a weakness. While individually a homing mine can chase you around all day long, their weakness lies in multiples. Each time you collect a dubloon, the Black Pawkeet fires a mine at you.

When there are two or more mines in the water, you can outsmart them.

The trick is to select two mines and try to get them to blow each other up. You may ask, how do I get them to do that?

Well, it’s quite cunning really. You first have to try to lure the two mines as close to each other as possible. This can be done by floating in the middle of the two. As they get close flee in a 90 degree angle to the mines. As they follow you they will continue to get closer to each other till they touch and blow up.

You can continue using this approach, pairing off mines and exploding them, whilst collecting dubloons. But it doe’s involve a bit of luck. At any time, your luck may turn and the Black Pawkeet could fire a mine right on top of you!

So for making NP, I suggest using this fast way. Score 167 points and you can claim 1000 Neopoints for your efforts.

However if you want to win the Dubloon Disaster avatar you need 800 points. And I may add that it can be a tad frustrating if your luck turns anywhere between 168 and 799 points and the Black Pawkeet fires a mine right on top of you. So if your going for the avatar, I suggest the slow way.

The Slow Way

The slow way takes advantage of one of the games rules. The Black Pawkeet won’t fire any more mines if there are nine mines in the water already.

So to take advantage, put on your Cowboy hat and get ready to rustle up these mines like stray cattle.

If you have played the game already, you should know that mines travel slowly when you are a distance away and faster when you are close.

This means if you play cat and mouse with a mine, you can draw close to a mine and have it chase you where you want. Other mines that are at a distance from you will advance only slowly.

So, what you do is lead them towards the centre of the screen to form a cluster. You don’t have much space so you will need to circle around the screen. Move slower and deliberately closer to outlier mines and get them to follow you towards the centre, you then arc off, circle around the group, come back and draw them closer, till you have a neat cluster of nine mines in the centre of the screen.

To maintain the cluster of mines and to keep them from detonating each other, you will need to circle the cluster continuously, collecting dubloons as you do so.

Every so often you may encounter the inconvenience of having a dubloon surface underneath your cluster. To get the dubloon you will need to lure the cluster to a different part of the screen.

Choose a side of the screen that is furthermost from the dubloon as you can manage, and lure the cluster towards it. Do half-circles around the cluster, in the direction you want the cluster to move. Slowly they will draw away and you can collect the dubloon.

Keep this up for half an hour, which can get quite intense, believe me! And you should have scored 800 points which is enough to earn the avatar, and call yourself a real pirate!

A Couple of Handy Tips

When collecting a dubloon, don’t stop moving. If you turn on the spot or simply stop rowing a mine could appear on top of you and blow you up before you have a chance to get away. (Mines take about a second to activate after they appear and it is better to run straight over one before it can explode, than to have one pop up right next to you and detonate before you can get away).

Whirlpools can occur once per game. They suck you and any mines down to the ocean floor. If one pops up near you keep on moving straight. If you try to turn you can get sucked down.

And to make sure the game runs smoothly try turning off the wave effect and high quality graphics options before you start your game.

Hope you have fun!

Yarrr