The Keep:Pirate Cove

The Keep: Index > The Armory > 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 their 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. For a long time we were the only Habitican guild with more than four gems in our treasure chest and even now no other guild is on a par with us!

Our current captain is @cTheDragons. Our previous captains were:

• Steady-hand Admiral @Dewines
• Amazing Captain & Founder 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 reports of the @GuildBot with the aim, where possible, to replace leaders with current active members of that guild.

If you wish to help, see How to Help on tips how to approach guilds appropriately.

Challenges

Most of our challenges aren't inside our guild, except the old sunken football challenge. Most challenges are outside in the The Abandoned Camp or in the guilds engage in battle with. Previously we used to host challenges in the The Bulletin Board 📌, in the guilds we conquered or (rarely) in the Tavern.

Our challenges are mostly there to introduce swabbies to the correct procedures, review the procedures, or friendly competitions between the pirates.

Sometimes we also battle other guilds. 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 battles.

In the past we used to set up challenges regarding conquered guilds, they were mostly about distributing shares of the booty (guild banks gems) among our crew. Most of those were won by us pirates, but if a landlubber stumbled into a boarded guild with booty challenges, they could usually win one, too.

Another method from our history, we created challenges about holding a guild for ransom (finding a new captain for the conquered guild - not necessarily a pirate). It was possible, in case someone wanted to create a guild but didn't have the gems for it, to ask in the guild chat and if we had one we didn't have a use for yet we would have given it without challenge. But if two or more people wanted to become captain of the same guild, or if we were not convinced of the guild idea or captaining skills, we could have set 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 would be a good guild leader).

These types of challenges no longer occur now that we have @GuildBot scouting out the seas for missing captains.

History of the Guild

In the Beginning

Pirate Cove was first started by true pirates. In the previous version of Habitica, a member list of a guild kept in order which users joined, with the leader as the first in that list. Pirates would join a guild in the secret hope that they will become one day the leader of the guild by others all older players leaving the guild before them. Once the pirate would become guild leader, they would steal the gems for the guild.

After gaining too much loot and recognising that many ships, eh guilds, laid waste in the seas of Habitica, Pirate Cove was created by such a captured guild and then activity was coordinated amongst all pirates.

Read the Conversation from the bottom up. One of the original pirate hails during the early days of Pirate Cove. The conversation is with Admiral Dewines and Ships Scout Riverstone, (before they were Admiral and Ships Scout). They discuss the creation of Elven Grove.

Pirate Actions and Captain Summary Reports

Pirates started scouting out the oceans for guilds in trouble and instead of waiting to become guild leader would hail ahead of time to see if a mutiny needs to occur or if a guild should be just looted and sunk. Before sinking, whoever discovered the ghost ship would run booty challenges to celebrate the ship's voyageurs and share the loot amongst the pirates.

It was becoming very busy in the oceans, and there was a concern from guild members that some guilds were being hailed too soon. The admiral then ordered only guilds that have leaders inactive more than 6 months to be hailed. This was originally determined by Admiral @Alys and then by the most clever senior pirate @accio-books.

All our adventures from that time can be seen in the Archive.

Scouting with Crew Member @GuildBot

Habitica's seas are always more populated, it became difficult tracking all battles, and what each pirate was doing. So, to make everything easier for everyone, and being able to continue the process at a faster pace as required by the greater number of ships, the @GuildBot came. The @GuildBot monitors all ships, and when a captain is absent for at least six months, the bot hail the guild, and then, when there are posts after the hail, it notifies the pirates so that they can report to the admirals and the volunteers.

How to Help

A small warning on the Pirate Cove: there is no Contributor Tier for sailing with the pirates, it's only for the fun of it, but help is still much appreciated.

Pirates use Pirate English: we follow the orders of Admiral (mod/admin) @Alys, @Dewines and captain @cTheDragons. It is therefore important for us to communicate with the Pirate Cove, so the admiralty is aware of our actions and the more experienced adventurers can offer advice. Guilds are ships with guild leaders being the captains and guild members the crew. The status of a ship can be described as Captain MIA, Captured, Target Spotted etc. Possible pirate actions are Hailing, i.e. approaching a guild, or Sinking, i.e. deleting a guild, and more.

Us pirates don't do much most days of the week. If we were up for a generic nine-to-five job, we wouldn't be pirates. @GuildBot with its amazing sailing talents is doing most of the work. So, after a week of scouting the Habitican seas GuildBot visits the Cove each ~Thursday with a report and our job is to evaluate GuildBot's report (i.e. we don't have to look out for ships and missing captains ourselves).

The bot report is divided in various sections listed below, with indications on how pirates should approach the guilds in each list. It doesn't matter in what order we look through the report. It only matters that everything gets checked.

Captain MIA

The captains of the ships listed in this part of the report have not been seen for 6 months (= they stopped using Habitica). GuildBot already hailed those ships and the pirates are waiting for captain volunteers. We wait for 21 days after the hail, so you firstly check the date of the hail and if it's less than 21 days, you ignore that ship more or less, except there has been a lot of chatter on the ship, because the chat only holds 200 messages and we don't want to miss any volunteers, that's why checking the number of posts is the second thing to do. You could also visit the ships, if you wish, because sometimes there are questions about the pirates' work or the captain's position from the crew, e.g. "how to become captain?" etc.

☸ Reporting on possible Captains ☸

Now, if 21 days have passed/or there are a lot of posts, you definitely visit the guild and check the messages to look for volunteers.

• Report only ONE guild ship per message and include the link to the guild location of the ship, so that GuildBot can track the sailing route of each ship! You can create a hyperlink using Markdown: [Guild name](URL of the guild). It's also best to mention the situation of the guild (e.g. Captain MIA) and how many days it's been since the hail (no need to do maths, it's stated in GuildBot's post in the hailed guild).

• In your report list all people who volunteered and mention for each candidate when they joined Habitica (the pirates call it born: dd mmm yyor yyyy-mm-dd - that is 19 Apr 20 or 2020-04-19). Examine if they have posted to the guild before and/or after the hail (scroll through the chat or use the Party & Guild Data Tool), how long they have been a member of the guild (check the date of their earliest post), whether they contributed to the guild by running challenges (check challenges/guild description/skim through their posts), do they have leadership experience being the captain of another ship (check their profile) etc. Everything that might be considered a leader-like activity and thus would qualify them for the position. By using the Party & Guild Data Tool you can look up their Total Chat Lines and whether they are contributors to see how established they are in the guild (& Habitica). And you could check their Total Checkin count in their profile because sometimes you encounter people who, for example, were born in 2014 but have only logged in twice. See if the aspiring captain(s) mentioned any plans for the ship in their application message (e.g. they want to run challenges create treasure maps etc.) and how the crew reacted to their application (e.g did their post recieve Likes? Did someone say "yes, you'll be a good leader"?).
  Please Note: It is important all aspiring captains post to the ship. If they PM you or post in the Pirate Cove please direct them kindly back to the ship, pirates should try to avoid completing pirate activity behind the scenes as no one will know of your adventures! so the crew can all comment on the post. It is important to keep your language neutral and not to give your opinion on how successful they are likely to be in becoming a leader as this is a job just for Admirals.

Assessing captain candidates with the Party & Guild Data Tool. You may want to use the User ID of the candidate(s), not the display name or @username as it can have changed. If a user has changed their @username/display name please add it to your post to make it easier for Admirals to review the possible recommendations. Tip: in the "Export Chat" section of the tool (you can load infos about 0 members for faster load), you can easily see how much participation a person did in the guild.

• Make a recommendation to the Admirals on what to do with the candidates/ship. Should a candidate be promoted to be captain, because they are old enough (> 6 months), have the support of the crew, have been actively sailing with the ship for a long time...? Or should they not be promoted because they are too young/only recently joined the crew/never posted in chat...?
  If there are volunteers but none of them is a suitable candidate, recommend to Drop Anchor (= to postpone any decision-making for a few months to see how the guild will develop in the meantime. The ship will be rehailed later). If there are no candidates at all, but the guild is active, you could also recommend Dropping Anchor. If there are no candidates and the guild is also completely silent (aside from a small number of new users posting short greetings), recommend Last Rites.

• An example post for recommending a new captain :
  
  For [GUILD NAME](https://habitica.com/groups/guild/0000000-0008-0000-0000-0000000000000) (Captain MIA, 21 days since hail)

@USERNAME (Born: 2019/01/19 Posted before hail. Verbally supported by one other user, and message liked by another 5) has volunteered to be captain. Recommend for promotion as they are super active in the guild and promoting guild participation through challenges.

Captured

This part lists ships without captain (= they left the guild or have deleted their account). GuildBot has become their capatin and has hailed them. The handling of these ships is exactly the same as Captain MIA.

Last Rites Activity

The ships in this list are at the risk of being sunk (= deleted). They have been in the Captain MIA/Captured list before and despite GuildBot's search for a new captain, there are still no volunteers, nor does the crew seem to want to keep the ship. Or the ship was very small and inactive upon being spotted by GuildBot (i.e. less than 30 chat lines, small member count or last chat was two years ago etc.). The procedure of reporting volunteers is mostly the same, except you report the kind of messages present in the guild since the hail (e.g. "new messages are just short greetings from new users"). Crew might wish to not delete the guild even if it's inactive, this means we drop anchor. Otherwise, there are either leader candidates or you recommend Sinking.

Please note: In some cases, for example, if a ship's topic mission is considered valuable, yet there are no volunteers even after Last Rites have been read, it might be appropriate to look for a captain proactively by searching for suitable cadidates with the Party & Guild Data Tool. This method is often employed with Non English Ships because each language and country can have its own guild. So, if there's only one ship for the language/country in question, we'll put in extra effort to ensure its seaworthiness. When using the tool make sure you set the max members to a number greater than the guild count number and selecting the column option as Mama Bear. Under the Member Activity section order by chat lines. Typically a suitable candidate is someone who has been active in the last 7 -14 days, and is one of the most active posters in the guild. (This is different for every guild, sometimes it is 20+ post other times is just 3+ posts).
You can recommend more than one potential captain.
If approved, you can PM them to ask to volunteer in the guild chat. Example PM to be sent is:

Ahoy! My name is USERNAME and I'm a pirate from Pirate Cove. Recently the pirates have hailed the guild [GUILD NAME](https://habitica.com/groups/guild/[GUILD ID]). Would you be interested in becoming guild leader? Being a guild leader does not require too much effort, just being willing to participate in the chat if required. If you are interested, please state it in the guild. Feel free to post even if someone else has asked, as it is not first come first served. Thanks

If there are two guilds for the same language/country, 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.

We do not have any special guidelines for localities smaller than countries.

Just Launched Ships

These are newly build ships to enrich the Habitican fleet. But some of them are problematic and some need special handling, so that's what we are looking out for when checking them. Read/Skim through the guild names and the summaries. Look out for:

• Duplicates: There are already four guilds about cooking ship-restaurants, do we really need a 5th one...? Does the ship cover topics that the others don't (e.g. it's about baking!)? Are the other ships not able to take more crew on board (e.g. have more than/close to 5000 members)? If the ship seems like an unnecessary duplicate, bring it to the Admirals' attention and say, why you think it's a duplicate. (Check the Guilds Guide for a list of already existing ships)
• Lobby Guild: It's a small public boat that is used to hire crew to a private ship in a hidden port (e.g. because the private guild is about an adult topic and such guilds are not allowed to be open-access). The guild name, summary or description usually state if it's a lobby guild. Just point out in your report on such a guild that it's a lobby guild.
• Non English Ship: The crew of such ships might not understand the pirates if they visit, so we have to mark them as Non English and specify which language(s) to use instead to communicate with them. There are also bi-/polylingual ships - for example to study or translate languages. In that case they might not need a Non English Hail, but we still need to report all Languages Spoken.
• Violation of Community Guidelines: These ships are troublemakers. Report what problem they cause (e.g. adult topic in public guild, illegal substances, gun enthusiasts etc.) so the Admirals can deal with them.
• Loving Care: A few types of ships are sailing under the Loving Care flag. These are:
  • Ships with crew who went through some serious hardships. Having pirates visit them might lead to panic on the ship (= psychological distress). They require gentler handling. Examples are Anxiety Alliance, Autistic Adventurers, guilds about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder etc. Report to the Cove if a new ship might fall into this category.
  • Ships with crew who often sails to distant lands, so it is normal to not see them around for more than 6 months, thus the 6-months-rule for missing captains can't be applied. Examples could be guilds for long-distance drivers or soldiers. The leaders of such guilds might be on a long mission during which they don't have access to the internet.
  • Ambassadorships. The captains of these ships help maintaining relationships between the land of Habitica and other places in the world. Their disappearance might require a thorough investigation.
  • Any other ship that needs an experienced senior pirate to hail it, e.g. Official Habtica ships are generally picked up by Admirals or High Lieutenants (Tier 7).

A newly launched Non English Ship.

Target Spotted

Ships that were spotted on GuildBot's radar because the Captain went MIA or they were Captured. GuildBot is basically asking for permission to hail them and which hail to use. Pirates should check if it is fine to continue with the hail, or if there is any need for one of the labels flags listed in the Just Launched Ships section, and if there is the need of a flag, report it in the Cove. We also check whether the ship is active (= large crew who is still busy sailing the Habitican seas and/or is chatting in the guild maintaining the ship). If yes, we recommend hailing. If not quite sure (= ship appears to be abandoned), we might recommend Last Rites. If the guild is very small (< 20) or inactive (= little to no chat), you can recommend Sinking.
Please remember before calling for Last Rites or Sinking, not all slow sailing ships are dead ships as stated by Crewman @Riverstone.

A small boat on GuildBot's radar. With these parameters it would be fine to recommend Sinking.

Do Not Hail

GuildBot is not allowed to visit these ships for various reasons. We must ask for permission and which hail to use before manually hailing those ships. Hails must be adjusted to the circumstances of the ship:

• Lobby Guild: Should be handled by senior pirates.
• Non English Hail: Experienced pirates familiar with the language can ask permission to hail these guilds. If a guild has been in the list for over 21 days and there is no volunteer, any pirate willing to use Hails In Other Languages can hail the guild. Once permission is received, the pirate can procede to hail the guild. Please post both the language for the guild as well as English translation when hailing. After the hail, any message that the pirate posts in the guild answering the users should be both in the guild's language and in English. Wait at least 14 days after hail to report back in the Cove with new volunteers.
• Loving Care: Guilds with this flag should be hailed by a senior pirate using a Gentle Hail - please note it may not be suitable for all guilds.
• No Action by Order of Admiral: Pirates should do nothing with these guilds.

Ships are marked with a Label/Flag informing about the reason GuildBot is not allowed to automatically hail them.

A Manual Bilingual Hail for a Non English Ship.

Admiral Review

Just records of our reports for the Admirals to review and take action.

Take Action

Admirals shall use their admin superpowers authority to change the settings built of these ships. There's no need for us to report on them.

Further Information

Slow Moving Guild Does Not Mean Inactive Guilds

From the mouth of Ships Scout Riverstone:

There was a discussion a while ago about slow moving guilds (it spanned a few guilds so I can't remember where exactly to link to it) and what the appeal was. Quite a few people posted what they like about being in slower guilds, and one of the points that stuck with me was one that came up a few times about a feeling of "quiet solidarity". People talked about how even when there was next to no chat, knowing that there were other players going through the same issues and struggles as them made them feel like they weren't alone, and there was support there for them if they needed it. Even if they didn't end up posting, the fact that they could if they needed to gave them a sense of support and security that helped them cope. Quite a few people said that their favourite guilds where the ones that the chat could be silent for more than a month at a time, but as soon as someone asked a question, it would be answered. One person said it was like having a "silent crowd behind them, backing them up". That really stuck with me, so I've tried to keep it in mind when looking at how active a group is. Some guilds work better with a fast pace, and while some players prefer it, I think we should be careful about assuming that slower guild need to be rejuvenated, or that faster and more active is always better."

Privatisation

Making an inactive guild private is used as an alternative to sinking. This decision is made by the Admiral @Alys as she is the only pirate who can complete the action. Privatisation is often completed if the ship is not a complete "ghost ship" or has a signification history that may want to be kept if any of the guild members ever returns to Habitica.

Pirate Code

• Unless there are special circumstances deemed by the Admirals, only ships with captains leaders that are inactive more than 6 months can be targeted.
• When hailing and answering questions in a Guild, use Plain English. We are all pirates, but the landlubbers sometimes have trouble understanding us!
• Except for special circumstances, like the ship of the Dread Pirate Roberts, A member can't just come in and claim the guild. They need to show they've been productive member of the guild before.
• Merging two ships: We must be extremely cautious with this. 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. There will be some exceptions to that, but still: Here be dragons! :)
• 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.) @Alys 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." ////is this still up to date...? Pirates don't take over guilds anymore...
• Pirate Mission Creep is also something to be cautious about. The Guild Leaders & Challenge Creators guild might become more active in helping guild leaders run their guilds effectively, perhaps taking over some of the things Pirates were staring to do. //// can be deleted?
• Pirates don't do guild name changes apart from ensuring that the Community Guidelines are followed and the guild name can be read on all devices. However any person acting on their own behalf and not as a Pirate is free to suggest a name change to a guild.
• 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.

This is when the guild is made private.

Guild-vs.-Guild Battles

Guilds We Fought in Battle

So far, we have only fought two guild-vs.-guild battles:

1. We attacked Gryffindor House on 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!
   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.
2. 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!

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 two challenges, one in each guild with the tasks for the challenge. (Often these challenges are just 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 Challenge Data Tool can be used to keep track of the overall values of the teams, by looking at the number of positive clicks for each team which, if desired, can be divided by the number of players to determine the outcome.

If the challenge creator wants to find out who fought for which team, they can see this by delving deeper in the task history of each player in the Challenge Data Tool. You can also use the by clicking the blue "Export to CSV" button at the bottom right hand corner of your challenge. 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.

Please note if you do not wish to look at each click history in Challenge Data Tool but prefer to look at summarised habit values in in the tool or Export CSV 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 by the number of team members, then compare the results.

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 Guidelines 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.

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://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/Cookgirl/2013/EasterPirate_zps4e2c6e3a.png
• International Talk Like a Pirate Day: https://www.askideas.com/media/79/Talk-Like-A-Pirate-Day-Sept-19-Skull-With-Swords.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".

  

• 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...