The Keep:Pirate Cove

Description
Doing things the pirate way... Enter if you dare!

Our guild wasn't created by us - it was boarded, taken over, robbed of its gems, and renamed by our pirate crew. You can still see the wreck of one of its old challenges inside. Yarrrrrrr!

It all started with being greedy, robbing pirates. By Davy Jones's wriggly beard, we never intended to be useful! We were (and are) just living the pirate life - we boarded not just this guild, but many others, robbed their gems, and then either sank them or held them for ransom (so people who wanted an own guild but didn't have the necessary gems could claim them) or made them part of our own fleet. Soon it turned out that by doing so, we were contributing to keeping the Habitican seas free from old abandoned guilds drifting there aimlessly and cluttering up the shipping lanes. The Habitican Admiralty noticed that, too, and started helping us - much like in the olden days with letters of marque and privateering. So nowadays we actually fulfill a function (removing inactive guilds that are no longer useful from the list of public guilds) - but we also still make a good profit from looting all those guild banks! And we don't forget to have lots of pirate fun and adventures, too. We've also fought the first Habitican guild-vs.-guild battle we know of, and might fight more in the future. And we're currently the only Habitican guild with more than four gems in our treasure chest!

Our current captain is Admiral Dewines. Our previous captain was Mara the Marine Marauder.

We have a sister guild - the Elven Grove full of elves hunting old abandoned challenges. It has its own wikia guild page, too.

Current Actions and Adventures
The pirates are currently working on the Inactive Leaders of Guilds with the aim where possible replace leaders with current active members of that guild.

If you wish to help see Conquering Guilds: Guidelines & Tips on tips how to approach guilds appropriately.

Challenges
Most of our challenges aren't inside our guild, except @Sphinx's Robin Hood challenge (running repeatedly, and won by @Dewines, @Riverstone, @Phantom818, and @Sphinx so far) and the old sunken football challenge. Most challenges are outside in the guilds we conquer or engage in battle with, or in the The Bulletin Board 📌 or (rarely) in the Tavern.

The challenges regarding the conquered guilds are mostly about distributing shares of the booty (guild banks gems) among our crew. Most of those are won by us pirates, but if a landlubber stumbles into a boarded guild with booty challenges, e can usually win one, too.

Sometimes we also create challenges about holding a guild for ransom (finding a new captain for the conquered guild - not necessarily a pirate). If you want to create a guild but don't have the gems for it, just ask in our guild chat if we have one we don't have a use for yet! Usually we'll just give it to you without challenge. But if two or more people want to become captain of the same guild, or if we're not convinced of your guild idea or captaining skills, we might set you some tasks first (things like finding a good new guild name, writing a new guild description, creating a guild challenge, etc., and just generally convincing us that you'll be a good guild leader).

When we battle another guild, there's usually one battle challenge in that guild (with two habits, one for the pirates, one for the other guild, but otherwise identical). When the fight is over, there are "badge" challenges for the winners and the other participants, so everyone who participated in the guild-vs.-guild battle can have them in their profiles. For more details, see the section about guild batttles.

Guilds We Fought in Battle
So far, we have only fought two guild-vs.-guild battle:

As far as we know, this was the first guild-vs.-guild battle in Habitican history, and contributed to one of Captain Mara's contributor tiers in the "Challenger" category.
 * 1) We attacked Gryffindor Houseon June 15, 2015, and did battle with them for 13 days. As weapons, we used habits asking the participants to "Bravely complete, or work for half an hour on, a terrifying task!". The Gryffindors fought very bravely, and both groups were ahead at several times, but in the end, the pirates won!
 * 1) We invaded the ⚔ The Duelling Grounds ⚔ in July 2016. They fought bravely but in the end it was declared a draw. Both ships flew each others flag for a week to honour the bravery of each other.

We're hoping to do more battles in the future! If your guild (or other group of people) is interested, please let us know!

Captured Guilds
"Captured" means that at some point, one of the pirates became guild leader ("captain"). Many of the guilds we've captured got sunk (i.e., deleted or made private) in the end. (If you want to know how many exactly, look at the section about Sunk Guilds - this wiki page is easier to update if the numbers only appear in one place.)

All the captured guilds are listed in the Archive.

Let the future be as bootyful!

Sunk Guilds
"Sunk" means that the guild either got deleted or made private. Making an inactive guild private is frequently used as an alternative to deleting it because, in case any of the guild members ever returns to Habitica and would like to have the guild back or look something up in there, the private guild serves as a backup and can easily be turned into a public guild again. (In some other cases, though, old guilds get privatized because the new guild leader is actually repurposing them as active private guilds, usually with a different name and topic and no intent to conserve the old chat and challenges.)

In Pirate English, if the guild is described as "destroyed", "wrecked", "shot to smithereens", etc., that means it got deleted. If it is described as being sunk in one piece, e.g., "scuttled", "foundered", "submerged", etc., that means it was turned into a private guild (but will most likely be inactive in the future). If it "was turned into a submarine", it was turned into a private guild with an active guild leader intending to use the guild (often with a different name and topic). This terminology is just for the fun of gamification, though - it's not an exact science, please don't take it too seriously! If you use different descriptions when adding a new sunk guild to the list, no one will keelhaul you for it.

So far, we have sunk over 90 guilds in total. We captured 39 of those first (they appear in both the Sunk Guilds and Captured Guilds list) and sunk the other 51 without capturing them. 52 of the sunk guilds got destroyed beyond repair, 33 got scuttled in one piece, 5 were turned into submarines.

All the sunk guilds are listed in the Archive.

Conquering Guilds: Guidelines & Tips
This section isn't finished yet (and will probably always be a work in progress).

With anything please communicate with the Pirate Cove first, so Admiral @Alys is aware of your actions and the more experience adventurers can offer advice.

The list of steps below are out of date as most guilds we are looking at replacing Guild Captains based on the Inactive Leaders of Guilds.

We are currently not looking for new targets till the existing list has been completed.

Overview of Steps to Take
 * 1) Identify a target.
 * 2) Check if the guild is already listed among the Guilds in Our Sights.
 * 3) Add it to the Guilds in our Sights list and bring it up in Pirate chat.
 * 4) Pirate discussion with a final decision by @Alys.
 * 5) If the decision is that the guild is suitable for boarding, proceed through the rest of the steps. Otherwise, simply update the Wiki with the final decision.
 * 6) Hail the guild using the pirate script (currently being developed).
 * 7) If there is a response,discuss it in Pirate chat. If there is no response after a week, message the leader using the pirate script (currently being developed).
 * 8) If there is a response,discuss it in Pirate chat. If there is no response after a week, request ownership of the guild.
 * 9) Run booty challenges.
 * 10) Alert @Alys that the guild is ready for its final disposition.

Finding a Target

 * It should be an inactive guild (i.e. no chat for six months) and/or a guild with exactly the same topic as another, more popular guild that it could be merged with. Many such guilds are already listed in the Guilds in Our Sights - you can also pick one of those and do the next steps with it if they haven't been done yet.
 * An active guild with an inactive leader (i.e. no login for six months) may ask an Admin to replace their leader, but this request should come from active guild members rather than pirates.
 * No matter what target you select, final decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis.
 * If you're considering targeting a guild about a certain locality, please note: Each country can have its own guild, unless that guild is extremely dead, in which case you can start a discussion in Pirate Cove chat about deleting or privatizing it. We don't have an exact definition of "extremely dead" but perhaps six months without any activity is enough to warrant starting a pirate discussion. If there are two guilds for the same country, and not enough activity to support two guilds, we might consider a merge (and therefore target the less active one). We do not have any special guidelines for localities smaller than countries.
 * If you're considering targeting a foreign language guild, please note: Each language can have its own guild, no matter how dead the guild is. (At least that was the latest consensus reached - part of the guidelines are still evolving.) If there are two guilds for the same language, and not enough activity to support two guilds, we might consider a merge (and therefore target the less active one). @Alys suggested: "One option when we find a dead language guild is to put a comment in it saying that even though there's no activity, any new speakers are welcome to post, and that might cause older users to start posting again (comment in English then in the Google Translate version in the guild's language)." We'll try this in the future.
 * If you're considering targeting a religion guild, please note: Pirates should not take any actions with religious guilds other than telling @Alys about them. (That can be done in Pirate Cove guild chat if you like, it isn't so secret that you have to use private messaging or email.) @Ays will take care of them herself. She said "I would prefer that they weren't contacted by pirates [...]. There might be subtle differences between the guilds that mean they shouldn't be merged. If any of the guilds are removed, I'll do it with a quick deletion or privatisation, and I won't change any of their owners to Pirates."
 * A good order to look for new targets is:
 * 1) Check the "Guilds in Our Sight" list and look for those in there that seem like easy targets with no (or few) complications.
 * 2) After that, attack from the top of the Public Guilds list downwards. Leave the complicated ones alone at first. (The easy ones usually start somewhere in the middle of the list.)
 * 3) If/when you ge to the bottom of the Public Guilds list, if a guild is probably too new to have had a chance to attract members yet, leave it alone at first.
 * 4) After that (if we ever get there), we can deal with the complicated ones that are left.
 * However, these are just guidelines for when you don't know which guild to deal with next. If, for some reason, you think now is the right time to deal with a certain guild, it's fine to do that first.

Adding to the List and Starting the Discussion

 * Please also look at this page's Talk page to learn how to make the wiki edits corresponding to your pirating actions, thereby keeping the various guild lists on this wiki page up to date!
 * It is helpful if you add relevant details: When was the last (non-piratic) chat post? When did the guild owner last log in? Are there challenges in the guild? Gems in the guild bank? Interesting content in the chat, guild description, or challenges, that is worth saving? If there is another guild with the same topic, which one? Has the guild leader been contacted yet, and did e answer? Did the other pirates mention anyhting important in guild chat when the guild was discussed?
 * Once you add a guild to the list and start the discussion in pirate chat, you are responsible to follow this guild through the entire process before targeting any other guilds.
 * Discuss whether it would be a good idea to target the guild, and what should probably happen to it (Boarding? Deletion? Repurposing? Privatizing? Or does one of the old members there want to take over and become guild leader?)

Hailing
The guild leader should have some time (at least a week) to answer. If you know that no one else messaged the guild leader yet and if you're sure that the guild is a good candidate for boarding/deletion, you can message em before talking about the guild in Pirate Cove chat. If you aren't sure (whether someone already sent a message, or whether the guild is a good target at all, or what you should write in the message), please talk about it in Pirate Cove chat first. When you message the guild leader, please also update the guild entry in the Guilds in Our Sights list and add the info that you've sent the guild leader a private message (and when), and whether the guild leader has answered yet or not. (Or if you don't know how to edit the wiki, get another pirate to do it for you.) This is especially important because otherwise, no one except the sender and receiver of the message will know about it, and that will lead to other pirates messaging the guild leader, too (because they think it hasn't been done yet), and the guild leader will feel spammed. Once you receive an answer from the guild leader, please tell the other pirates what the guild leader said about what should be done with the guild, and also add that info to the guild entry in the Guilds in Our Sights list (or get someone else to do it for you).
 * If you clearly speak for just yourself and not for the pirates as a group, you can also say whatever you like. (Example: Explaining what the pirates do and what the options are, and then saying: "I haven't discussed this with the other pirates yet and I don't know what they think, but in my personal opinion, ...")
 * Older stuff (that still has to be merged with what's been said above - maybe with subheaders "When to Hail" and "How to Hail" (i.e., what to say, PM and/or chat, etc.?)
 * Hailing in guild chat means: Ask in the target guild's chat if anyone's still interested in keeping the guild, or if it can be deleted or repurposed (or maybe privatized).
 * The guild leader should be messaged (if e didn't react in chat). This makes sense even if the guild leader hasn't logged into Habitica for many months because, depending on their settings, many Habiticans get email notification for private messages. In the message (which should be as polite and respectful as pirates can be), the guild leader should be asked if e's still interested in the guild, or if it can be deleted/repurposed/merged with another guild, or if e'd prefer if it was privatized. If the guild leader owns challenges in the guild, those should also be mentioned. If there are gems in the guild bank, it's fair to also tell the guild leader that e can get them back by making a challenge with the gems and declaring emself as the winner. And, to quote Admiral @Alys, "the guild leaders could also be reassured that if the guild is given to a new owner or deleted, the admin who does it will give them back their gems".
 * (When the guild finally gets deleted, privatized, or leadership changed by an admin, that admin will send the guild leader a standard message, too. But the admin's message will only inform the guild leader about it being done, whereas the pirates' message asks the guild leader for their opinion and gives em a chance to intervene.)

Final Dispositions: Possible End Results
This usually happens if the guild is utterly inactive and/or useless, none of the guild members want to keep the guild alive anymore, and there's no interesting content in the chat or elsewhere in the guild that is worth preserving. If there are gems in the guild bank, the guild usually gets captured and plundered before deletion. But there's no guarantee for that - an admin may decide to delete the guild immediately, with gems and all. (Why wait when you can get rid of a dead guild now?) If the admin is generous, e can put the "lost booty" in the Pirate Cove's guild bank directly (that's how we got our unusually high number of gems there) - but that's a favor, not something we're entitled to! Technically this is a type of deletion. If another, more active guild with the same topic exists, and everyone decides to move over to that other guild and give up the "duplicate" guild, it can be deleted. We must be extremely cautious with these. Unless we have a good understanding of the guild's topic (usually only possible if we've been guild members for a while) then it's likely that we aren't capable of deciding if a merger should be considered. Making an inactive guild private is frequently used as an alternative to deleting it because, in case any of the guild members ever return to Habitica and would like to have the guild back or look something up in there, the private guild serves as a backup and can easily be turned into a public guild again. Privatization is a good solution if the guild contains interesting content, or someone apparently spent a lot of effort creating it (for example by creating a special guild logo or a complicated challenge), or the guild has a serious and sensitive topic (for example offering support for people with a special health condition), or the guild leader is active or hasn't been away from Habitica for very long yet. A privatized guild usually keeps its gems. (In some other cases, though, old guilds get privatized as a form of repurposing: There's someone around who would like to have eir own private guild but doesn't have the gems to create one, and there's a guild that would otherwise be deleted - so that person gets the guild, the guild gets privatized by an admin, the new leader throws all the old members out, renames and redesigns the guild, and uses it as eir new private guild, without intent to preserve any of the old content.) That means, the guild stays public but gets a different name and topic and a new leader. That usually happens if, at the same time, there are both a guild that would usually get deleted, and a person who would otherwise create a new guild. That means, the guild keeps its topic and stays public. In some cases, pirates wandering into a guild might serve as a "wake-up call", and the members might decide to try to improve the guild a little - find a new active guild leader, change and improve the guild name and/or description slightly, maybe broaden the guild topic, create new challenges, and/or promote the guild in the The Bulletin Board 📌 or the Tavern. But basically, the guild stays the same (and the guild members are in no way obliged to take any of these actions). This usually happens if pirates ask in guild chat: "Is this guild still active? Is anyone here still interested in keeping it?", and people answer that yes, they want to keep it. If it's already clear from the start that the guild will stay - for example if it's quite active but just has an inactive leader - this isn't usually a job for the pirates! If the active members want a new leader, they can request a leadership change themselves. To quote Admiral @Alys on the matter: "I'd prefer that the Pirates sought new leaders for only guilds that are dead, or near-dead (or ones where the current leader does want to resign, of course). I think it's best that you don't suggest to active communities that you might look for a new leader from outside the community. I'm concerned that it would make the guild members not feel at ease in their own space." Of course, you're free to join the guild and voice your opinions there - that you'd like to have the guild name/description changed slightly, that you'd like to have a new active leader who can do this, that you think the guild could benefit from being promoted in the The Bulletin Board 📌 or with an entry in the Guilds Guide or its own wiki guild page, or whatever - but that's not a pirate action, it's something that you can do as a guild member there, independently of the Pirate Cove (if you want to).
 * The guild gets deleted:
 * The guild gets merged:
 * The guild gets privatized:
 * If a guild contains interesting content and gets privatized, only its members will still be able to see that content, though, and no new members can join or even find the guild without invitation. If the content (challenges, tips and tricks in chat, links in the guild description, etc.) would still be useful in other Habitican guilds, it should be "rescued" and moved there before the guild gets privatized or deleted.
 * The guild gets repurposed:
 * The guild stays more or less as it is:

Technical Details
You might also want to know some technical details - especially which of these things can be done by Habiticans themselves, and which can only be done by admins:


 * Guild deletion and guild privatization can only be done by an admin.
 * Guild leadership can be changed by the current guild leader or by an admin. If the guild leader is still active, it's usually eir decision to change guild leadership (or not), and the guild leader should do the change emself (unless there are technical difficulties, then the admin can help).
 * For moving old challenges out of to-be-deleted guilds, please check the details in our sister guild Elven Grove and their wikia guild page.

There's more technical info on the wiki page about Guilds (especially the sections about Transferring Guild Ownership and Guild Deletion) and the wiki page about Challenges.

If things don't go as planned, it can also be helpful to check for known guild bugs in the GitHub issues. For a more detailed search, here's GitHub's very helpful help page for searching issues. There is a label "groups" (meaning both guilds and parties), and here's the list of all open issues with that label - but relevant issues don't always get labeled. Apparently you can't add labels to issues as a normal GitHub user. Here are some GitHub issues that are good to know about:


 * Guild leaders can assign a new guild leader - only, there's a known bug: The new guild leader can only be chosen from the first 15 members of the guild (the ones that are visible in the Members list). The bug has been documented in GitHub issues 2160 and 1806. Currently, there are two workarounds: You can either ask an admin to assign the new guild leader, or you can use the "plankwalking" method and kick members out of the guild until the person that you want to make leader is among the first 15 that show up in the Members list. (Obviously, this is rather rude and should only be done with small guilds and/or inactive members, and with proper warning.)
 * Issue 3937 is a precedence case where @Lemoness decided that "Guild leadership should only be reassigned when the Guild leader requests it, unless they've left the site completely for a long period of time, such as a year." However, some small inactive guilds got deleted or repurposed lately where the guild leader had last logged in more recently, sometimes only 3 months before deletion. In the end, it's the admins' decision - but the longer the guild leader has been away, the more likely a guild leadership change or guild deletion becomes. If the guild leader hasn't been away for very long (but doesn't react to messages and chat), it's more likely that the guild gets privatized instead.

There is also a Trello card discussing guilds.

Pirate Code
... or Pirate Articles. If we weren't pirates, this section would be called F.A.Q. (Frequently Asked Questions). It's just supposed to sum up the answers to the most frequently asked questions in short form. ... To be continued.
 * 1) What if a guild has a poor name or another obvious problem? Answer: Pirate Mission Creep is something to be cautious about. Pirates don't usually handle this sort of thing, and the "Guild Leaders and Challenge Creators" guild is more suitable for this. However, any person acting on their own behalf and not as a Pirate is free to suggest a name change to a guild.
 * 2) (not yet writen)

Guild-vs.-Guild Battles: The Technical and Organizational Aspects
A "guild vs. guild" (or "team vs. team" - not restricted to guilds) battle challenge can be made simply by making a challenge with only two habits which are identical except for one of them saying "Fight for team A!", the other saying "Fight for team B!". (Of course, the habits should also say what the participants are expected to do.) Then the Habitica Swagger API interface can be used to keep track of the overall values of the two habits. These habit values correspond (roughly, but close enough) to how often the habits have been clicked. The group with the higher habit value wins. The participants simply join the challenge, decide which team they want to fight for, and click the habit of that team whenever they do the work required by the habit.

If the challenge creator wants to find out who fought for which team, they can see this by looking at the CSV file which shows who clicked which habit. The CSV can be downloaded directly by clicking on the "Export to CSV" button in the challenge, or by using the Habitica Swagger API interface again. (Of course, you could also make a to-do "State your loyalty in the Extra Notes!" instead.) This can be helpful if you intend to make token challenges for all the winners (and maybe 2nd place token challenges for all participants of the other team) after the battle.

The habit values correspond to the sum total of work done. If you'd rather declare the winning team by average work done by each team member, you could also divide the habit values through the number of team members, then compare the results.

The mechanics are also discussed on this Trello card(in the April 29, 2015 comment).

The challenge should contain a disclaimer saying approximately this:

"Disclaimer: All this is supposed to be fun for everyone involved! You are not required to participate in the challenge, no matter which guild you belong or don't belong to. Also, if this challenge makes you feel uncomfortable, please talk to the challenge creator and/or the guild leader of [the guilds involved] and/or a Habitica moderator, and we'll try to fix it! We don't want to violate community guidelines and don't want anyone to feel really, non-fictionally, threatened."

If you are planning a guild-vs.-guild fight, it is good manners to contact the guild leaders of the involved guilds first (if they are active). If you're not planning a surprise attack, you can also ask the guild members first via guild chat. If you're not sure how to proceed (especially if one of the guild leaders is inactive), please read the community guildelines first, then contact a Habitica admin/moderator and ask.

The guilds involved should be chosen wisely - they should consist of members who actually like such a fight instead of feeling annoyed by it.

Ideas for Staff
Pirates are currently organizing some ideas to forward to Habitica staff. The page where those ideas are being organized is here.

Different Flags
(Flags not shown to avoid spoilers and copyright issues.)
 * Standard: http://i.imgur.com/oOPGubk.jpg
 * Valentine: http://img0.etsystatic.com/058/0/8817204/il_340x270.716391514_krn0.jpg
 * Pi Day: http://i.ebayimg.com/00/$%28KGrHqYOKiwE5hhLRyDJBOep6qUI8!_35.JPG
 * Easter: http://s7.photobucket.com/user/Cookgirl/media/2013/EasterPirate_zps4e2c6e3a.png.html
 * International Talk Like a Pirate Day: http://wallpaperbang.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Talk-Like-a-Pirate-Day-19-Sep-Wallpapers.jpg
 * Halloween: http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6045/6300391097_108bea7248_m.jpg
 * Thanksgiving: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3064/3063761200_3e481fdbee.jpg
 * Christmas: http://www.theflagshop.co.uk/ekmps/shops/speed/images/christmas-pirate-flag-5074-p.jpg
 * New Year: http://rlv.zcache.com/pirate_new_years_eve_party_invitation_postcard-r83e5412cda1d4e1886fbabd79d6db4b9_vgbaq_8byvr_512.jpg

Obscure Treasure Map to Pirate Music
Mara's recommendations:
 * Visit the Scoundrel's Inn!
 * Listen to Bilgemunky's old podcasts in the Bilgemunky archive! (And then look for more from the bands mentioned there!)
 * "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag" has a nice piraty soundtrack that can be found in various places on Youtube.
 * Then there are "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" (original and cover version) - also on Youtube.
 * And, of course, all the Disney-copyrighted stuff for "Pirates of the Carribean". Chicken_on_a_Raft.png
 * Thanks to @Dewines for digging up Jimmie MacGregor's version of "Henry Martin"!
 * Then there's also the chicken on a raft.
 * The halftime show at the Viking Horde vs. Sparrow Warriors Super Bowl III serves as a good excuse to put that link here, too.
 * Whenever you're dealing with one of the Harry Potter-themed guilds, it helps to know that Hermione Granger was born on Talk Like a Pirate Day.
 * The Spooky Men's Chorale doesn't exactly sing pirate music - but one of their members is a pirate, too!
 * And so much more...