You are correct. The position of the skull and which chapter begins is of minor importance. It seems to me that a lot of the Red chapters have the most character shots. There is an interesting risk/reward to lighting multiple skulls before starting a chapter. You can just light a single skull to start that color to advance towards a Wizard mode, but your chapter shots will only be 1x and not worth much. Conversely, you can focus on lighting 4-5 skulls before starting a chapter so your chapter shots are 2.5 or 3X, but you will be very unlikely to reach a wizard mode. You also might drain while trying to light all those skulls.

For these considerations, I like playing as Tia Dalma and Elizabeth Swann. But honestly, the majority of the points seem to come from stacking multiballs and Super X's, so the whole chapter thing is really secondary if you are playing for score.

My favorite part of this game is resurrecting several stacked MB's by bringing in another MB during the grace period after draining down to one ball. It's the best!

Yes agreed, I liked playing Tia Dalma and Elizabeth Swann as well due to getting to a wizard mode. Now I am playing Norrington a lot, because the chapters are won very fast and I had 2 or 3 wizard modes with this character regurlarly.

From strategy perspective I am thinking (after the latest discussion here, which is very interesting) of increasing the skull values first and bringing them into stacked MB, which might be very valuable. Problem is certainly drains in this first stage and the fact that during several stacked MB there is a lot to do and starting chapters need active attention. Otherwise you simply forget to start them.

I thought this was discussed somewhere before but I played Davey Jones and won several liars dice and eventually gambled for “your soul”. I had a great game 5.4 million, 2 wizard modes played and 2 more lit with 23 chapters played and 2 balls left. Well I lost and the game just froze. No buttons worked. Just liars dice music playing and “you lose” starring back at me. Eventually just had to shut off the game as I could even trigger a tilt with the plum bob. Bummer of an ending. Has this happened to others before and what is supposed to happen if you win or lose. I’ve heard it’s just an extra ball if you win and lose you ball if you lose but that seems anticlimactic. Thanks.

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Can’t recall the streams but as I remember loose your soul and it’s game over.

I did this once and won. I received an extra ball. I assume you would lose that ball if you failed. If it is the last ball, it probably ends the game.

Also what do the gold targets on the black pearl do? They don’t give you gold so I assume they are a gold multiplier - like every time you hit the both it would increase the amount of gold that lights up to collect for collecting characters during chapters (ie each time you light 2 or 3 gold pieces instead of 1). Is that true?

When you play for your soul it's ball and character over if you lose. They've talked about how the game doesn't handle it correctly right now. If you play for an EB and you are on your final ball, lose and it's over since you don't have another ball to lose. Your ball will end too if you play for 2 tilt warnings and you lose and don't have to tilt warnings to lose.

On that note, Liar's Dice is so hard. The computer always has ridiculous hands and if I take my hand that has 3 twos in it for instance and just hopefully assume that the computer has one so I bid 4...the computer will call me a liar and I almost always lose. I hate playing Liar's Dice without Davey Jones because it's so often just an excuse to lose all my souls or treasures.

The machine freezing up is a bug, not a feature This is a known issue they need to fix in code (among other things). Here's what someone from JJP wrote in Tiltforums about this exact issue:

"Guess I’m going to have to double check this, sounds like a bug. What’s supposed to happen is you lose your ball like you normally do, but also your character (have to pick a new one). If you win, you get an extra ball."

Pretty sure the two gold targets on the BP advance one of the G-O-L-D targets on the lower pf. When you spell gold you get a bunch of extra gold. Also useful on Tortuga multi-ball to add a ball (gold targets are green).

Thanks guys! Ya it bothered me so I played again as davey Jones. Boy he rolled dice well. I won 5 in a row. Extra ball, my soul (so another extra ball), and doubled my souls 3 times. Ended with 279 souls collected and a Cortes wizard mode of 2.2 million - I’ve never cracked 1 mil in a wizard mode before.

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I really appreciate some of the discussion on the rules. I was just trying to get the high score on each of the characters (my machine used to be on route), and down to the last few. I got to Scrum (I think I'm remembering that right, not looking at it), and got a 6X bonus, which is automatically held over by that character. Got my highest score ever of around 1.7M. So now I'm thinking the PIRATE lanes are really important. Which do you all find the most important to be able to score more? Love the Arrr Frenzy and of course the bonus multiplier was great (@6x), getting 150k after every ball.

Thanks!

I think Super X is most important. You can only get it every other completion of Pirate lanes. Sometimes I will go for bonus x hold if I notice I have a good bonus X. Arrr Frenzy is valuable (3rd completion of Pirate Lanes), especially if you can get it with a MB.

The worst are Big Points and Hurry Up. Both are virtually worthless.

Pintel is a good character for spotting Pirate Lanes.

Super X is the most important for getting big scores. Bonus x is good and can be big (400k+), but even if held and you lose the ball right away, 6x bonus can end up only around 150k. Arr Frenzy is good too, but you need a multiplier with it. My best Arr Frenzy is only around 800K, most of mine end up around 100k. Big Points is only good if you have 6666666 running and 3 Hurry Up's light some reward, I can't remember what Keith said it was off hand, but I have never tried for it.

So for the super x and shot x, how do you get the bigger x? Usually it seems to just life 2x and I hit it. Is there more that I need to understand to get 6x on stuff?

Pintel was my favorite.

The first time you light super x only the 2X stand up is flashing. The next time 2X and 3X the next time 2, 3 and 4X and so on and so on. You don't even have 6X as an option until that final time you light it. And even if it's lit you can still screw up and hit 2x or something lesser than 6X by accident so it's no guarantee still.

There is an LE in the market!

Do you (or anyone) know what you get for hitting big points with all 6 multi balls going? I’ve never heard of 3 hurry ups giving you something - now I’m intrigued. I just hate hurry up bc it’s so worthless. Anyone else know about these?

According to Karl DeAngelo, getting big points with all 6 MB going scores 66K points. I've never done it myself.

I could have swore one time POTC took my picture and it put a fake pirate hat on my head, have you guys seen that?? I never saw again since.

I asked about it in the livestream that Eric did of JJP a month or two ago now in the chat and one of the people that worked on the game chimed in and said 3 hurry ups gave you something, I just can't remember what it was. I guess it must not have been that impressive to me. I can say I've never even tried for 3 hurry-ups myself even after he said what it was, so it couldn't have been that great.

It is 66k.

Yep. Sometimes it will give you an eye patch or a parrot too.

Man I have only seen it once. Maybe some setting?

It’s pretty rare on mine too

I've watched my son do this, not worth the effort. Now 666k would make more sense, given the difficulty.

I've seen it exactly once. And that high score is no longer valid, so it's gone. I think it has to do with the amount of light on your face - it needs to be pretty contrasted with the background. which is obviously rare since most of our game rooms are dark.

I’m for putting a 5 second ball save on the chapter start / star map / jack little area After starting a chapter. Total nonsense to get a SDTM out of that. Rare, but annoying as hell! I’d say the same for the Tartuga drains but hoping the extended snubber bracket fixes that and it’s in the mail. Short vent over. Back to it.

Yep, either that or at a minimum fling the ball around a bit more before the post drops so it doesn't just hit off a back target and come down the middle. Maybe have it go a bit side to side the way it does when the chapter is being selected. A lot of good games have gone to Davey Jones' locker because of draining from the star map release.

You can minimize the drain risk a bit. Don‘t wait until the post drops and releases the ball. Just push the two flipper buttons at the end of the animation when the characters are shown at the screen. Themagnet will grab the ball again and move It in the star map area, so that it does not come down strait from the post.

That definitely works and it’s a rare problem (For me) but it sucks when on a good run and it happens. Tartuga drains are almost 33% of the time for me and it’s maddening. Have the new snubber bracket Coming but the mail couldn’t go any slower it seems.

When you install it, aim it so the ejects hit the top part of the left flipper.

Adjusting the scoop direction slightly did the trick for me.

Regarding the Tortuga eject, I lowered the power so that it ejects very smooth to the right flipper. That puts less power on the Tortuga mech as well and is very constant. No drains at all.

The thing that finally worked for my case, I serviced the Tortuga scoop in horizontal service position from the playfield underside and did two things. First, I adjusted the mech so that the coil would be as flush to the top as possible, removing all slop in the area. Second, I bent the bracket slightly from the underside of the playfield so the shot would move to where I wanted it, tip of left flipper. Adjusting the scoop bracket on playfield topside was never on its own enough, the ball would spray all over the place including eventually STDM.

This is also what I have done. No more drains, ever.

Gonna try this tonight when I get home. If it is a fix, then many thanks to you sir!

Your welcome, no problem. I red it here on pinside as well. You need not wait until the ball does not move any longer and stays on the post. Sometimes it still bounces a bit and you can choose a good moment to push your flipper buttons.

Can anyone recommend a replacement LCD for the apron LCD? Mine has turned monochrome for some odd reason so I assume the screen is bad.

Might just be a connector issue. IT can work itself out, you might check under the apron and the connection to the CPU

Just fitted HMS Endeavour mod for JJP Pirates Pinball machine by Liorillusion, its fantastic, such a great mod and far better in real life than expected.

thank you very much for the video and feedback. enjoy from your new mod

Added UV trough light to enhance GID rings!! Finally gott the effect I was going for!

https://vimeo.com/433384871

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Monthly check for an update. For god’s sakes guys at LEAST fix the ball search!! Now it’s getting embarrassing. Josh is working on Houdini and Lyman has -actually, literally- put out 7 updates since Elvira came out.

Actually did this and it worked great, however got the updated bracket in the mail, installed and now it’s perfect. Firmly puts the ball on the left flipper every time. Either works but for consistency, I’d get the new bracket.

Is the new bracket a fix from JJP?

Do you mind taking a picture of the two bracket so that I can see the differences? Thanks in advance

Keith J did an interview recently and said "I’ve started the POTC final wizard mode and have been working on it on and off. But right now, all of my time is spent on the next game and other stuff " I'm a software dev and coding a project "on and off" is never a good thing. IMO the only way we'll ever see a code update is if they decide to sell more units.

Unfortunately this was pretty easy to see coming a long time ago. The software team doesn't seem to care about it and the designer doesn't seem to care that the software team doesn't care about it. On Eric's stream of POTC a few weeks ago he mentioned the software team will put out a code update when the final wizard mode is done. He didn't seem to have any thought at all that there are plenty of other things to update and fix besides the final wizard mode. The entire JJP organization seems pretty content with keeping POTC in their rearview mirror. The beta they put out a few months ago seems like it mostly just had some stuff they originally said they were thinking about and working on in April 2019. So to me that didn't really seem encouraging. If an update release had really been coming soon then I'd think the beta would have had a lot more to it than just the stuff they hadn't finished from a year ago. Now I don't think it looks like a very good chance the next POTC update will happen by November, which will be 2 years from original shipping of the machines and about 17 months from the last update. I think my post below from 7 months ago seems pretty accurate:

They are probably all pretty beaten down by the whole thing. Eric’s first game out of the gate, and it’s clear there was a huge amount of work put into it, Keith did an outstanding job planning the code, it’s fairly complete as-is. they really must have felt it hard when the decision was made to cut bait. I get it!

But working “in between” other stuff, as was pointed out, is not a recipe for an outstanding outcome. I’m a software developer as well - and I know Keith takes a lot of pride in his code, so there’s a greater-than-normal chance it will hold up. And yeah maybe this is all we get. I won’t lie and say it’s not disappointing though. But I sure will be grateful to finally see that update.