Strategy hints for PLUNDERSTRUCK! grind

Community Plunderstorm
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Yes I know, everyone says get 500 plunder and bugger off into the storm. Not always a guarantee depending upon where you land, however, I did find what for me was the best landing location to grind the plunder quick and decide if you want to carry on.

The first week of non-stop plunder (based upon a 2-3 hour window per day of actually logging in and not logging into retail since the even went live) took me to Renown 18 and was pretty frustrating in terms of grindy rep. After the reset on Tuesday and a full 22 levels of grind to go I happened upon a little landing gem of a starting location that I would guess in the last couple of days grinding out the last 22 renown levels I probably saw 15 other players there in I don’t know I assume 90 games or so? It has 4 elites, a good mob density, several golden chests 2-3 magical chests, 2-3 supply chests and if no one lands around you which typically seems to be the norm, there also usually yields, another blue magical chest and a fat golden chest on your way out of the usually non contested area and level 6 if not level 7 with usually a decent set of upgraded skills in 5 minutes or less. Not only that, if you are into rinse and repeat, the storm is right there and you can sacrifice yourself to the storm gods.

Where is the gem? if you look at the Arathi Highlands map, it is the little ship cove just south and east of Stromgarde. Once I realized this I landed there every single match (unless the cannon spit me out over Hammerfall [another juicy area]) and the grind was really accelerated. This post will get buried, but before it does it may help a few smooth out the climb for the Polly Roger and title.

You’ve been PLUNDERSTRUUUUUCK!!!

(with apologies to AC/DC)

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Thx for tip

Plz deleet :pray:

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I know of it. I loved it. It is starting to get attention now for the reasons you mentioned. But that also means people are not elsewhere, which is good.

Wowhead published a hotspot landing map which was a blessing because the hot spots immediately became cold.

My personal tactic is to lag behind players if I can. I generally just sweep up areas with the stuff left behind. Some players leave behind chests and gold which is super easy to pick up on volume.

I will also scamper in and away on the fringes of a duel. If you get lucky you can drag the guy chasing you into someone else and they will duke it out.

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No wonder everyone is having a hard time grinding it out if everyone is doing this. 500 Plunder is a bad game where you die off the drop. You get so much plunder from wandering the map, 3rd parties, etc. I don’t even go out of my way to pick it up and I’m averaging way more than 500/match.

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Despite the obvious advantage of using your bird-crash to take out an elite, I’ve found that instead landing on top of a wall or other un-climbable spot allows for starting each match from a place of calm rationality- an absolute must for many neuro-divergent mindsets. No frantic panic… instead I can check my Captain’s Orders, get a good bird’s eye view of what’s below me, and leap in one of several directions which are either directly applicable to the quest, or at least free of obviously menacing pvp’ers already popping power-kills.

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Honestly I didn’t even realize there were quest until someone else mentioned it. My first objective is to get to level 2 and at least 1 ability. Then start clearing the POI and either kill anyone there, bully them into leaving, or leave myself. The whole time, even while PVPing, I’m killing NPCs because levels are pretty important. I never pay attention to the quest because I’ll end up completing them naturally just by playing, no need to go out of my way. Same thing with Plunder. I end up getting so much just from playing that I stopped going out of my way to pick up every little pile of plunder. I also constantly am looking on the map for any unkilled Elites because they provide a good bit of XP and a guarenteed ability that you may need. Late game I start thinking about rotation because I want to end up in the top 3 and prefer to be able to 3rd party. I’ll always focus the higher level player in the final ring because I don’t want to have to 1v1 a level 10 when I’m level 7. I’d much rather have to 1v1 a hurt but alive level 8.

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In most matches, I get way more than that. Sure, it takes a bit longer, but I enjoy the searching around, provided I actually find abilities while I’m plundering.

I had a match today where I had around 1800 (ish) plunder at the end, and I barely had to fight anyone else.

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The theory is you get your 500 plunder and yeet into the storm and it’s a “faster” way because you can then jump into a new match and rinse and repeat.

Getting more than 500(ish) takes much more time. MOST matches I’m in the 5-700 range (sometimes 8 or 9) and it takes me much more time.

I get their method, it’s just not fun to grind it out that way. I enjoy the search (one of the few things I enjoy about this gametype).

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Yeah I dunno. I was averaging 1500 per match and the matches aren’t that long. I feel like I can get 1500 quicker in a single match then the time it would take me to get 500, die, queue again, get 500, die, queue again, get 500, die. That’s at least a few minutes just sitting around in the lobby waiting for the game to start let alone how ever much time it takes to get into the lobby and then drop and hope you don’t die off the drop.

Also that 1500 is me not picking up plunder. If I go out of my way to farm up plunder its closer to 3k. I don’t suck but I also don’t consider myself THAT good. I would say above average at best. However I’ve seen multiple post about people complaining about dying to NPCs and the only NPC I’ve died to was the Piece of Hate and only because I was already low on HP and got stunned in the AOE.

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I think this is why:

I’ve literally never fought it because I’m worried I would just end up dying to another player while fighting it.

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finally on the fly strategy driven opportunity.

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I completed the grind in about 8-9 hours of play time. I started Tuesday, so I’ve been playing since they put in all of the Plunder buffs though.

I will admit I’ve always been good with memorizing maps in video games and the fact that Plunderstorm uses a classic zone made it even easier. Learning all of the possible chest locations helps A LOT. This is incredibly important. Gold chests give you huge level leads early in the game and magic chests give you abilities which obviously help.

Run over the glowing piles of gold to actually obtain plunder. I see so, so many people just ignore these when they kill creatures, open gold chests, or eliminate other players. It doesn’t always spawn directly beneath the defeated creature, sometimes it spawns a little ways away, but it adds up fast.

Areas I prioritized, in this order: Faldir’s Cove, Hammerfall, Ar’gorok, Newstead, Witherbark Village, Circle of East Binding. Where I landed depended on two things, how many other players I saw on parrots around me and how close my own parrot spawned to each of these places. Do not fly across the map just to get an “optimal” location. It puts you too far behind and is a waste of time.

Make sure you have your interact key bound to something you can easily spam so that you can instantly pick up abilities. I can not stress this enough.

Land on an elite. They are marked on your minimap, they always give you an ability, and you usually get enough exp/plunder to instantly level up to 2.

As soon as you land and have that first ability, start running directly to the nearest elite and pull as many regular mobs to you as possible. Literally every ability in the game is AoE and NPC attacks are easy to dodge so there is no drawback to doing massive pulls.

Repeat this until you’re level 7. If you manage to get an area to yourself you can usually get there very quickly.

This is the part a lot of people may not like but it’s the hard truth: if someone lands in your area, engage them in combat. You either need to kill them or force them to flee. Once they’re out of your area and no longer pose the risk of taking mobs/loot from you, you can ignore them. Keep an eye on them to make sure they actually flee instead of coming back into the area but do not chase them across the map. Chasing for long periods of time at low levels is a waste.

Once you’re level 7 you need to start hunting other players. Kill elites and other creatures along the way and loot any gold/magic chests you see to try to upgrade your abilities or replace them with ones your more comfortable with.

Killing players awards a ton of plunder at this point in the game. If I ended a game with less than 2.5k plunder, I considered it a failure but I can count the number of times this happened on my fingers.

Play aggressively. Once you engage at this point in the game, one of you needs to die. Spending a ton of time playing defensively and running away is a waste of time if your goal is to maximize rep per hour.

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It also permanently aggros to you if you get near it and no one else manages to hit it, which is obnoxious. -_-

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I agree and I mentioned 500 plunder for the plunder to minute ratio. In all.thw games.i played I died to the storm maybe 3 or 4 times. I generally ended up up leaving the landing area with well over 500 anyway and then would hit up the front of Stromgarde to try and nab a Pieces of Hate, PvP a bit. I’m a bit older and don’t have good twitch reflexes so honestly I really kind of suck but found I enjoyed the challenge, especially when the skirmishes involved multiple similar level toons. Nevertheless, the sweet spot for rinse and repeat is 500+ plunder and die if the objective is to maximize your plunder:time effort.

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If you accidentally aggro Pieces, lead it into the storm.

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2.5k is not feasible for PVErs in every match though. 1.3-1.5k are what we usually collect. Too many factors involved - but the best thing you can do is to play Vulp/Gnome/Gob to hide easier.

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People avoiding the gold monster that are just grinding renown confuses me. All it does is continually drop plunder. My strategy was to make my way to where the thing spawns and then just run around it collecting the plunder it dropped. If someone else came, I’d fight them. Often I died, but that’s fine, just requeue. Sometimes I kill them, which is better cause players drop a lot of plunder. Other times the person flees, which is also fine, cause I get to continue collecting the plunder.

Also frequently, several people come and fight each other, then I’d try to be on the fringe and help kill, then sprint in and loot all the dropped plunder. Being around when a bunch of others are fighting each other is very profitable.

This may not have been the most efficient way, but it was more engaging than just dying to the storm after completing the quest.

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Can’t get plunder if you’re dead, and every try hard on the map shows up when those things pop. I’d prefer to get my loot elsewhere while they are occupied. I still do fairly well for myself.

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oh… YOU are why my favorite spot in no longer a sure bet for me… I mean… I appreciate that you are trying to help people, but still feeling a BIT salty that I have to figure out another decent enough option on that side of the map…

P.S. I’m being facetious in case its not obvious. it really was a good spot, but it is what it is with live games. things will change and you just… adopt as best as you can.

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Have you tried the cave east of hammerfall?