Welcome Guildies and Friends

Welcome to the blog for the Pirates of the Caribbean Online guild Gold Strike, and our sister guild, Libation Seekers, a guild with beverage-themed pirate names.

Do you have a story to share, a leveling tip, a screenshot of your recent accomplishment?  We would love to have you share with us, or just comment on our antics here.

If you would like to join the blog as a contributor, please go to http://wordpress.com and register an email address.  Then comment on this post, and I will add your email address as a “contributor” to the blog.  If you have any questions about how it works, I think you can click on my name in red below this post, and send me an email.

Thanks for being here, happy reading!  (scroll down to begin reading the posts in our blog)

Sam

Fair Winds, Mateys

Dear Guildies and Friends,

I felt like I needed to stop by and say thanks to everyone for such a great run in Gold Strike.  For over a year, it was my pleasure to spend a good part of my evenings, after the home crew was tucked in, with some of the saltiest pirates that e’er sailed the Caribbean.

It seems that Gold Strike is quieting down, as folks move on to other pursuits, real life or in the game.  Several of you have started your own guilds, and I am thrilled and look forward to hearing tales of their growth and adventures.  I am grateful for the wonderful times that we had, and will always enjoy looking back on the times spent on one or another of your boats, joking, helping and hunting the great ships of the enemies.  Special thanks to all of the officers, who made the guild one of the best in the game. While Sam will still be around, and I may log in occasionally, I am pretty sure that we will be shifting our membership over to basic, at least until some point in the future.

Many have moved on to new pirates and experiences, and I wish you all the best.  As you may or may not know, the Goldslipper crew, for now at least, has been taken with World of Warcraft, and we would welcome any of our friends to come and join us in our ventures there.  It be a fair bit different than the high seas, but most challenging and fun, and I would give quite a bit of gold to have some of me old mateys with me on some of the quests there      If that is of any interest to you, please do not hesitate to email me at      goldslipper@me.com

I’ll keep the blog up, and will probably be adding a blog for our World of Warcraft activities soon, so please stay in touch, and let us know how ye be.

With warmest regards,

Sam

New Updates, New Caves and a New Quest: Part 2

OK. I have looked at the caves on Padres del Fuego and they look great too. The Lava Gorge has a great orange glow to it and the Catacombs are not for the weak at heart. In fact my pics aren’t up to my usual artistic quality (ahem…) because I was running for my life while hitting F9 over and over again. When I did this stuff for money in real life we called it “Spray and Pray.” Shot as much as you can and SOMETHING will come out well…

The Casa Muertos quest is easy but can only be completed if you are level 20 or above. It is also broken. I honestly expected it to be fixed by now but I guess the guys at Disney deserve the weekend off. Anyway, here are some more pics:

Into the Lava Gorge.

Something weird about the flat rocks. They make me fall.

Lava Gorge Map

Who IS the handsome Pirate in the stripey shirt?

I love this one…

Dum…Dum…Duuummmmm.. Catacombs.

Map of the Catacombs…

Running for my life…

Running and on fire…

Running, hiding and almost dead…

A Boss…that I’m hiding from.

Oops…Time to run again.

Help me Tom Cruise! Help me with your witchcraft!

Is there something behind me?

At this point, all I could do is laugh.

Ho Ho Ho…Green Giant Jolly Roger.

Beckett’s Quarry. Everything else is Beckett’s Quarry.

Here are some shots of the new quest..

QUestions? Comment or e-mail me. I’m tired…

I just liked this one….

New Updates, New Caves and a New Quest!

I have been to the other side and it is good. First off, let’s get straight to the point. When the new update hits live it will include a bump in weapons and notoriety.

Notoriety will go to 50 and weapons will go to 30. There will be a new quest offered on test called Casa Muertos. House of the dead? Nice. Ships go faster, get a speedometer and will no longer slow down just because you tweaked your direction a little. Enemies give more rep and the caves. Ohhh the caves.

All of the caves have been revamped. Well actually scrapped, dumped, destroyed, tossed out, and replaced with something far more complex, far more beautiful and way more interesting. Gone are the cookie cutter caves of old. Also gone are their beige color schemes, identical layouts and dull, short footprints. These caves are unique and complex. No two caves have the same color scheme and, honestly, individual parts of the same cave have different looks. The caves affected are:

• Murky Hollow – Port Royal (PR)
• Royal Caverns – PR
• Thieves Den – Tortuga
• Lava Gorge, Padres del Fuego
• Beckett’s Quarry, Padres del Fuego
• The Catacombs, Padres del Fuego
• Cursed Caverns, Isla Tormenta

I have been to them all but only have a few screenshots of some. I am going to post the ones I have so take a look and sit back and know that good things are on the way! And so is part two of this post…I hope.

Semper Fidelis – Ironmonger

Inside the Royal Caverns.

Royal Caverns.

Every cave gets a map.

Royal Caverns

Into the Murky Hollow.

The running water looks great.

Oooohhhhhhh….Spooky.

Are those MAGIC Mushrooms?

Nice cave…Nice Shirt. An Undead Bandit gave it to me. Really…

Looks like Mordor.

Yep… Mordor.

The animation on this guy was very smooth. Looked good.

I love the boat speedometer.

Thieves Den.

I would SO live there.

I don’t know what these are but they looked cool.

Dregs now guard the entrance to Tormenta.

Moody…

Looks Davy Jones-ish…

PASTED!

Pirate Comedy…Sort of.

I got bored. No one would attack me so I decided to practice my comedy routine.

I do NOT intend to quit my day job…

Semper Fidelis. Ironmonger.

A Pirate’s Dream.

This just cracks me up… Thought I’d share…

Lordy, Lordy…Look Who’s (Almost) 40!

Hey gang. Not sure who visits here anymore but I thought that I would like to mention that Dread Pirate James is going to hit level 40 tonight.

I was plundering the caves of Tormenta the other night, breaking a personal record by the way(3000 straight points in Tormenta without a healer or a single tonic!), and realized that I was very close to mastering. I logged off for the night and logged on to finish the job Monday night.

Almost 40.

No one was logged on so the once mighty Gold Strike was represented by a single, albeit fierce, pirate. Bart logged on a little later and since I still think hitting 40 is a big deal, I asked him if I should wait for a gang. So I waited.

Anyway, the final 250 points will be conquered tonight. I will be on Kokojillo Ocean tonight around 10 pm central time. I hope some of you will be there.

Dread Pirate James/ James Ironmonger

Just a Couple of Interesting Pics…

Hey Gang, Ironmonger/Dread Pirate James here. I was poking around the Caribbean and took a couple of interesting screen shots.

This first one comes from a trip to plunder the seas around Padres del Fuego. I was sailing with Tess Merrimeade and Charles Squidbreaker in my brand new War Frigate, the Dark Phoenix. The first ship we hit yielded two Royals and then the Royals just kept coming. See for yourself…10 royals and only 3% ship damage! Tess and Charles are dead accurate gunners. Lucky too. Don’t tell anyone but we sank the next trip out.

Ten Royals!?!

Our next picture is just a little strange. I noticed that this EITC Bloodhound was being piloted by a BOSS! It is not a flagship and I have no idea why it needs a boss to pilot it. I have never seen it before but I noticed it while hunting behind Tortuga.

Boss Captain?

Anyway, I thought that some of you might enjoy these. Click on the pics to make them bigger. The Boss thing is a trip. Happy Sailing!

Ironmonger

Congratulations to Sam and Craig

We would like to welcome two new officers into the ranks.  Sam Dreadeagle and Craig were both welcomed into the ranks last evening, with overwhelming support from the other officers.  

Thanks for being a helpful part of the team guys, and look forward to having you as part of the Gold Strike Management Team.  

Sam

p.s. Please make sure to bring the donuts to the next officers meeting, the new guys are always responsible for that . . . . oh wait, I forgot, we don’t have meetings, lol . . . just bring some donuts the next time everybody is with Neban racking up major points, kay?

Congratulations Shanda!

Shanda Lear was the lucky winner of a night on the Black Pearl, last night, as she completed her Boss Battle!  Congrats Shanda, nice work!

Brig took us through, and made things a wee bit more exciting by letting us shoot from both sides on the second and third set of bridges.  With a very small amount of hull left, we still figured the Gold Strike crew could make it, and, of course, we did . . . . 

Thanks to Fie, Anne, Brig, Sam, and a bunch of others, great job!

Shanda, hope you enjoyed your night on the Pearl, and I hope that the pillows are softer than the ones on your war galleon, lol!

Okay, please make sure you are sitting down when you read this . . . . .

I know a lot of you thought this would never happen . . . . . . but it did . . . . .

Thanks to the Neban points on Saturday, and about an hour with Tess this morning, Sammy finally made it to level 36.  After Tess left, some other folks were kind enough to hang out and provide an occasional heal.  I told them that the guildies would fall over in shock when they found out that I had actually leveled  : )

Thanks to everyone who helped out along the way!