Plunder beacons

Hiya!

I've navigated under multiple facet and find like one beacon per hour. Did they change the spawn rate or am I missing something?

Thanks

Some days your lucky to find a couple it seems then other days you’ll find 3 at the same time 
I read that you need to destroy all the pirate and merchant ships to get the beacons to spawn 

Skett said:

Some days your lucky to find a couple it seems then other days you’ll find 3 at the same time 
I read that you need to destroy all the pirate and merchant ships to get the beacons to spawn 

Seems like the case. Where there are ships the area around has a chance to spawn. And after scuttling a few, sailing around the area will have chance to bump onto them. But then some times its still luck as you said, and perhaps depend on how we comb the area.

All ships (Plunderbeacons, Merchant, etc etc) work off the same spawn system.  Any ship that spawns has a chance to be a Plunderbeacon, so getting more to spawn (i.e. blowing up other ships) is your best bet to getting to seeing them on the High Seas.

If you continue to have issues or you think there may be something not functioning as expected please submit a bug report to bugs@uo.com with the date, time, shard and facet you are experiencing the issue so we can investigate.

Thank you 

*hits like button*

Wait wrong forum. Would some one flip the switch for this please 

@Kyronix, Should the blunder beacons despawn at the same rate as merchant and pirate ships? Right now the beacons do not appear to despawn until server up in the morning.

Actually I don't like despawn... lol. Twice the plunderbeacon vanished before my eyes just when I spotted it and was about to get ready for the first hit. Would be good of the AI can spot a player is nearby and hence reset the timer to despawn or disappear.

Tough to find them on LS.  You have to sink pirate ships over and over till a Beacon spawns.

I’d have to double check about despawn, but the plunderbeacon employs sophisticated orcish sonar that prevents it from despawning when enemies have entered firing range.

Kyronix said:

All ships (Plunderbeacons, Merchant, etc etc) work off the same spawn system.  Any ship that spawns has a chance to be a Plunderbeacon, so getting more to spawn (i.e. blowing up other ships) is your best bet to getting to seeing them on the High Seas.

If you continue to have issues or you think there may be something not functioning as expected please submit a bug report to bugs@ uo.com with the date, time, shard and facet you are experiencing the issue so we can investigate.

@Kyronix ;

Can you please clarify whether, if any Ship under that same spawn system, that is, Pirate, Merchant, Plunder Beacon is NOT tackled by any player, it then after some time (how much time ?) "de-spawns" and respawns again as something else ?

Let me make an example to better clarify myself....

Let us assume that in a given spawn area there is a total of 10 Ships, and let's say that of those 6 are pirates, 3 are Merchants and 1 is a Plunder Beacon.

Does the system work in a way that, after X time that those "other" 9 Ships have spawned can "de-spawn" and have a chance to spawn as a Plunder Beacon even if no player attackes them ?

Thanks for the clarification ! 

MissE said:

There has been a problem since the soulbinder spawn was turned off.  Prior to that whenever you went pirate hunting you ALWAYS found at least 2-3 boats (tokuno) south of the docks over the server line and plenty of beacons.  Now you can cross the line and find NONE, then as I said above muck around for ages just trying to find one.  

This was a thread created back in April on the same issue:  https://forum.uo.com/discussion/comment/40395/#Comment_40395

@ Kyronix I think you can see there is some kind of problem with the spawn.  It happened back at the beginning of April as per that thread and has been continuing since.

 

Go to LS. There are always ships and rarely beacons. I've spent an hour and more sinking ships and only have found 1 beacon.

The feedback is appreciated, please submit a report as I indicated above.  Thanks!

I think we need to have complex plunder beacon sonar as a drop from those dynamic event... It functions like those guys standing a Zento Docks that report current location of pirates.

This is what I submitted:

Hi!

I have been doing regularly recently and they do spawn in same area around where other ships spawn. 

If understand correctly, when you scuttle ships, it could respawn another ship or the beacon. If it happens to be a beacon  then you need to comb the area to find it. But if there are other players in the same area, they may spot it earlier and sink it before u even find it.

So normally when I spot another player in the same region, I would just leave and find another place to hunt. 

It is similar to the Cu Sidhe... you will need to either tame or kill the existing Cu Sidhe to spawn a color that you like. Assuming the area is 10 times as big, and the next Cu Sidhe is spawn near another player then too bad.

Kyronix said:

The feedback is appreciated, please submit a report as I indicated above.  Thanks!

I did that on this day (July 15) and got no confirmation email or whatever and the problem is still there.

Can you increase the spawn from Orc Ships, Neutral Ships and Beacon please.

And while you're here, is it possible to set a filter on the tracking so we can stop track player's ship in Trammel at ;least. We find more player's ship than ennemies ...

I was going to create a new thread but luckily remembered seeing this one.

I've spent the good part of the past couple hours and about 3-4 hours yesterday (mid-day) sailing around Tokuno (south of docks as noted by MissE) looking for Plunderbeacons to destroy to get a head start on my trade cargo (for hopefully a cool new usable item in the market) and I only came across 2 yesterday and none today. I've come across probably 15-20 orc ships in that period which I've destroyed them all hoping something else spawns no luck. 

@Kyronix - Looks like bugs have been submitted for this but I'm still seeing the same issues as outlined by the others above. I'd also like to point out that in my 5-6 hours of sailing so far I haven't seen a single merchant ship which would at least be a nice consolation prize if I can't find the beacons. Have you looked into the spawn rate? Is there anyway we can get it bumped up as we look to obtain new stuff from the black market?

**Edit - Can we also look at making the "start tracking" command only track NPC ships?? Since we cannot plunder player ships (at least in Tram/Tok), it seems like it only clutters/throws off tracking of viable ships to scuttle. I get all these trackers for players ships empty in the middle of the seas (or along shore).

When I saw the name of the March event, I pulled my ship my out of drydock and went hunting yesterday in Tokuno waters. I recall Kyronix mentioning that the Bucs Pirate would be getting new rewards sometime in the future so I am stockpiling cargos as well.  I found one Beacon and after destroying it a 2nd one popped up on same screen. I also found 2-3 Orc pirates. What I hope to see is an increase in neutral merchantmen. After the Rising Tide event cycle I never had to mine or lumberjack or farm hides again! 

I've logged about another 3 hours sailing since my post and I've come across 2 more beacons (I saw a third but I think it was bugged**) and another 12 orc ships but still no trade ships. From what I can tell I'm the only ship sailing around. It just seems like the ratio is off... hoping @Kyronix is able to bump up the beacons AND trade ships ahead of the upcoming new content to allow people to be proactive.

**the bugged beacon was very weird. I chased an orc ship which ended up sailing into it where I was able to kind of pin it with my ship. All the crew were on the beacon but probably within 3-4min of me shooting the orc ship to scuttle it; the beacon looked like it blew up and was completely gone (again all orc crew were still there before it suddenly disappeared). Had it not been for my journal showing Orc Crew and the krackens/sea serps/water eles around I probably would have thought I was seeing things. 

Id rather have Pirates and Beacons. Trade ships are just in the way.  

Personal observation is a pirate ship has a greater chance of spawning when you sink either a pirate or trade ship and an equal chance when a ship naturally despawns on its own. That or the RNG hates it when I go trade ship hunting for crafting resources.

Sometimes I like to scuttle pirate ships, disarm the pirate captain and just leave the ship there.

Yarrrr (done in me best Garr Grimbeard voice)  some rules for piratin!!
1.you pirate in Fel no pesky other player ships takin up ye trackin (and if der is ye sinks em)
2. we takes no prisoners you see innocent crew members i see's cargo....
i nevers waste me time wit da plunder beacons i cans kill 2 ships getting more cargo whilst ye does one .... 

2.  Beacons give a Mythical crate which is worth 10x more than the next highest. Ships do not give Mythical crates.  

keven2002 said:

From what I can tell I'm the only ship sailing around. It just seems like the ratio is off... hoping @ Kyronix is able to bump up the beacons AND trade ships ahead of the upcoming new content to allow people to be proactive.

Sailed around for 2 hours last night, destroyed 15 plunder beacons. 

A guy on LS hunts them every night and makes gates for cannon shots. He plays for 4 to 6 hours he probably finds 5 or 6 a night.

Violet said:

Sailed around for 2 hours last night, destroyed 15 plunder beacons. 

What shard and where if you don't mind me asking? Very possible I'm looking in the wrong place (I had great success in Rising Tides just going south of Tok docks; but that isn't the case now).

keven2002 said:

Violet said:

Sailed around for 2 hours last night, destroyed 15 plunder beacons. 

What shard and where if you don't mind me asking? Very possible I'm looking in the wrong place (I had great success in Rising Tides just going south of Tok docks; but that isn't the case now).

We used to find them on a regular basis. But a while before this thread was made, something changed on LS.  Plenty of pirates and freight ships.

@Violet - Can you let me know where you were sailing (and maybe your path you sailed) when you found all the beacons? It seems like you are the only person that has been able to find so many beacons in such a short time.

@Pawain - where are you seeing trade ships (or maybe what time)? I've been sailing around for 3 days now and haven't seen a single trade ship yet. I've primarily been in Tok (aside from the first day I started S of Skara) during the mornings. At this point I'd much rather scuttle a trade ship over an orc ship since I've already collected enough orc ship deeds for 4 ships (with ship plans to spare).

I've been sailing around for almost 2 hours now in Tok and I've scuttled 6 orc ships and come across 1 beacon (just now). 

Something weird that I came across this morning that was extremely weird was I ran into a "ghost" trade ship; as in I was sailing around Tok (south of the mountain most NE of the map) and a trade ship appeared on my radar sailing my direction (as I was loading my cannons) and I actually saw the nose of the ship and then it completely disappeared from the radar and my screen when I went to move my ship. I would have thought i was just seeing things but this exact same thing happened to me the other day too; a trade ship was moving on my radar and when I caught up to it; it just disappeared (at that time I thought I was seeing things and chalked it up to that). I wasn't close to the server lines either time so it's not like they crossed the server to disappear.

Has anyone else experienced these "ghost" trade ships in Tok? I'm wondering if that's why I haven't seen any to scuttle while sailing 3 days in Tok. 

Not if it's quite the same, but when any sea vessel (Orc, Merchant, or Beacon) spawns somewhere in Tokuno, I see a ship appear next to me and then poofs. If I back track, I often find a vessel in a previously empty spot - previously empty as in the 3 screens prior to the ghost ship. I never did notice the radar if they appeared in there. I'll try and notice next pirate run. I know too that they despawn even in the middle of a fight. (Really sucks when only have a couple  of cannon shots left.)

Took out two beacons and a pirate ship the other day ago East of Jhelom in Felucca.

I use Tokuno on each side of the lady of the snow spawn. 

I'm thinking there are 5 things that spawn in each area I use. I start straight out of the docks then go to the other side by sailing or docking on land and recalling.

The guy that has been doing them daily uses tram off Jhelom.

Most odd behaviors I see are when you chase a ship past a server line.

There are more pirate ships on LS than the other types but I only sink trade ships if I can't find anything else.

Pawain said:

I use Tokuno on each side of the lady of the snow spawn. 

I'm thinking there are 5 things that spawn in each area I use. I start straight out of the docks then go to the other side by sailing or docking on land and recalling.

The guy that has been doing them daily uses tram off Jhelom.

Most odd behaviors I see are when you chase a ship past a server line.

There are more pirate ships on LS than the other types but I only sink trade ships if I can't find anything else.

I'm using the same area in Tok and have not seen any trade ships (aside from the 2 "ghost" ships). I think they might be bugged in ATL. I agree that the pirate ships are by far the most common.

I spent 90min this morning after I posted focused on specifically trying to find a trade ship... I didn't see any within those 90 minutes but I saw a total on 23 pirate ships during that time; there were 3 occasions where there were multiple pirate ships on my screen at the same time.

@Jepeth - Did you see any trade ships there? I haven't tried Fel yet but given that I havent been able to find a trade ship to scuttle in 4 days of sailing it's about my last resort.

I did, it was a pretty good mix for me that day.

All jokes aside east of jelhome in fel best bet !! Keep your front 2 cannons loaded with grapeshot on the off hand chance you are attacked!

I just went out for an hour and 1/2. Got 3 beacons and 4 pirates. Spawned a trade ship.
Was the most productive period I've had in a long time.  2 others were out 1 was on the first beacon when I arrived. 

I got a chest on a pirate ship that had 56 or so different fish steaks so I have to stop to put those away.  I guess I have them all now.  Nope I dont have them all.  Looks like there are 6 of each type and 10 types.
I dont have all the Swordfish or Hake.

For what it's worth... I've been sailing now for a few days (almost always in the AM) and I've found that around now (7:30am EST) I basically have to "work up" the spawn (ie beacons/ships).

Yesterday I ventured over to Fel and literally sailed East of Jhelom for 45min before locating a pirate ship (I was spamming 'start tracking" and nothing was even appearing). Once I scuttled it though I only had to sail for about 10 more minute before I found another pirate ship and after that it was about another 10 and I saw a beacon...and then I was getting 2 arrows on my screen to another 2 ships (1 trade FINALLY and 1 pirate). After I scuttled those that seemed to pretty much open the gates... so roughly 75min... I started getting a good mix of beacons/traders/pirates. 

I'd assume if I was able to play primetime the spawn rate would be pretty good if others were actively doing them

I sacked 4 merchantmen (Queen's Customs agent here) and discovered tons of contraband in illegal ingots, exotic woods, and hides from endangered species - all of course was confiscated in the name of the Crown! Then I sunk a beacon and scuttled a pirate ship. A profitable hour's voyage in Tokuno's waters.