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Khrait and Ship Spells - by Bberke

Easy Ship Spells:

This may change by the time this article is published, but currently once you grapple a Khrait ship you can open their chest and take their secrets without capturing it. This is because you do not lose your captain flag until you actually fly off or die on a ship. When boarding another ship you retain your captain flag and are capable of opening the treasure chest. This is not a bug but merely a known attribute of the current ship code. Therefore to get ship spells all you need to do is grapple a Khrait ship.

Now that you have ship spells you need corpses, which are even easier to get. To get corpses you simply unanchor and begin to crash into the docks. Your deckhands (make sure you bought them) will take care of repairing/pumping the ship. For this trick I set the deckhands to 33 pump 66 repair. Almost right away Griffins or Kah will appear. Once they have, make sure they are on board (you may need someone to engage for this). Go to a room without Kraken corpses (or you'll waste them) and say 'vas smurt'. This will summon randomly a Kraken, Aquoderm or Firesticks to your ship. It will also do one of three things: set your entire ship on fire, cause the ship to be flooded almost (but not quite) to the point of sinking, or cause huge damage to entire ship.

The only way intentional miscasting of ship spells can sink your ship is if the deckhands cannot pump the water out faster than it rises. So, as long as your ship's hull is in decent condition before you cast this, your ship will not sink. Therefore, only the flooding miscast result can cause you to sink or at least that one will long before the others. I have taken the burden of casting spamming 'vas smurt' three to four times in a row. The common result is you don't sink. I spammed it seven times in a row once in my greed for corpses. My hull almost totally destroyed, I ended up with the flooding result and slowly sank when my water reached slightly over two hundred ten tons.

Fighting Khrait:

I feel like saying there are four rules of fighting Khrait, but the four rules are only the beginning. The first rule of fighting Khrait is all firecasters on your ship. The second rule is prioritize your targets. The third rule is once your ship takes damage always have deckhands repairing, dousing and pumping. The fourth rule is always aim for rigging. Lastly grappling is the best way to deal with Khrait, but only under the right circumstances.

A firecaster ship is the most powerful ship on the sea. It is the ship of an expert serpent hunter who has the dispel storm and the create firestorm spell available to them. Even without the spells the all firecaster ship will severely disable any pirate ship 1vs1. A non-all firecaster ship doesn't have a chance 1vs1 against a all firecaster ship.

Prioritizing targets prevents Khrait ships from repairing faster than you can damage them. For example, you have ships x y z. If you fire on x y z equally you have all the Khrait on all those ships repairing against the damage you are doing. However, if you fire predominantly on ship x and only fire on y and z when ship x is not within range than you will quickly overwhelm ship x while slowing down y and z. This is even truer when fighting four or more Khrait ships.

Repairing your ship while it is taking damage allows your ship to keep up its speed and maneuver more. When Khrait fire on you they damage your rigging the most first. If your rigging is damaged your ship goes slower. The slower your ship moves the more often the Khrait's shots will hit your ship and the more damage your ship will take. Therefore, once your ship begins taking damage put twenty percent deckhands on repairing, five on pumping (unless you have players pumping) and seventy-five percent on guns. If your ship catches on fire immediately switch to ten percent douse, ten percent repair, five percent pump and seventy-five percent guns. Under extreme cases when say half your guns are destroyed move more deckhands to repairing. This gets the most out of your deckhands and keeps your ship afloat and firing back the longest.

There are various reasons to always target rigging when fighting Khrait. First you have the highest chance of hitting the ship when you aim for rigging. If there is no rigging left your firecasters will automatically hit the rest of the ship even if you aim for rigging while retaining the higher chance to hit when you aim for rigging. Aiming for a particular part of the ship is more of defining the arc the ammo takes. Boltcasters should always target hull and firecasters always rigging. A ship with no rigging is a sitting duck, in fact at that point it will likely be a flaming duck or perhaps a better analogy is a rat soaked in gasoline and set ablaze.

Grappling the Khrait ship (until Khrait board your ship in retaliation) is the easiest way to quickly take out Khrait. Once a Khrait ship is grappled it stops firing. Five decent volleys will sink the grappled Khrait ship. Once grappled you steal a Khrait ship's secrets without capturing it. Furthermore, a Khrait ship's guns can be fired to distract aggressive serpents or cause non-aggressive serpents to sink the Khrait ship. However, you are vulnerable to being fired upon by other Khrait ships

Capturing Khrait:

A successful Khrait run always ends in the capture of a Khrait ship. To accomplish this a captain needs a crew who can follow simple directions. There are several strategies for running Khrait, but I think mine is the best. When executed properly the Khrait ship can be captured in fifteen minutes or less. The benefits of capturing the Khrait ship are large. Up to four million per formation member as well as over five hundred hero points plus up to twenty million gold in the treasure chest.

Capturing Khrait requires you have a form that can kill one to four Khrait before Khrait relure. Ideally you should have a form of six or more. These simple instructions will keep a form functioning efficiently if followed:

Listen to the captain.
Stay with the formation.
Do not engage until the captain does.
Do not room spell until the captain does.
If Khrait shout while you are fighting them be prepared to flee and do not stack commands.
Flee immediately when told to.
Do not corpse.

Naturally instruction #1 trumps all other instructions because at times there are exceptions.

My strategy for capturing Khrait has evolved over time. It began with simply tremoring at the crow's nest until all of the form was dead, then resurrecting and repeating. It later evolved into standing at the top of a mast, waiting for the Khrait to walk in, moving two down, counting the Khrait as they moved up, and attacking the last two to four Khrait. When those Khrait are dead we would move to another mast and repeat. This latter method was effective but time consuming as one waited for the Khrait to move from one mast to the other and problematic because the Khrait were often miscounted, resulting in a dead form. My current strategy is a refinement of these past strategies.

Whenever Khrait shout it means they are about to move to the room you are in at the moment they shouted. When I first grapple a Khrait ship I send everyone in my form over to the Khrait ship to repair and pump the hull. I make sure everyone taking part is in my form and notify and inform latecomers that they should elect a second form leader or can stay with me. I then board the ship myself and take part in the repairing and pumping.

Before I walk into a room I scan or cast farsight to make sure I'm prepared if the room I'm about to walk into has twenty Khrait. Being prepared means sneaking, moving quickly and having wimpy set high just in case I'm engaged. Most of the time this keeps even my four-hundred hitpoint mage alive.

Once the hull is in good shape and pumped dry I instruct the entire form to meet me at the bow of the ship. This requires your form members to move quickly because if the Khraits lure to the bow you will have to move the form away from the bow quickly. Always rouse all before moving your form. Assuming all of your form is together, quickly move it up to the top of the forward mast.

Once on the top of the forward mast have your form stay sanced and full. The instant the Khrait begin to move into your room, rouse all and go two down. Unless you can spam farsight down and make sure you will not engage more than three or four Khrait, do not engage Khrait at this point. Instead wait for the Khrait to relure to your new position.

The moment the Khrait walk into the room this time, rouse all and go two up. Now you are standing in a room with twenty or more Khrait that are not aggressive to you. Spam look. The moment four or less Khrait are in the room cast acid blast. Do not tremor unless you want to reduce the number of Khrait in the room (in case you accidentally engage more than four). You now have a very limited period of time to ice these few Khrait.

If you are still fighting the Khrait and hear the Khrait shout, be prepared to flee. Make sure your form knows to stop stacking commands and be ready to flee back to their previous position. The moment a Khrait walks into the room spam form flee. Often people die at this point but usually not more than three or four. Tell them not to corpse with shout and resurrect them once the Khrait relure.

If you are successful in killing all the Khrait in the room before they relure have your form check sanctuary, catch a quick tick and be prepared to rouse all and go two down. This process is repeated with the form going two down then two up until all Khrait are defeated. Every four or five passes you should attempt to very quickly check the water level. Attempt to do so before the Khrait begin to relure because you risk luring them back to the hull and wasting time. If water is at waist or worse you should either have one person in your form stay in the hull and pump or grab the entire form and quickly pump the ship dry.

In no time at all, all the Khrait should be dead. Capture the ship to make the treasure chest fill with gold and remember the moment you open the chest anyone can take the gold out so be careful when you open it.

If you have made it this far in my guide to ship spells and Khrait then I commend you. Hopefully these methods are further perfected over time and allow people to learn and enjoy ships more. A captain working his hardest can run serpents and Khrait in less than three hours with a profit of up too forty million gold. Of course this is the exception, making a profit of fifteen million gold after five or six hours of shipping is typical also.