Pirating as a primary source of income?

[sovereign]

You most certainly can make loads of money off of piracy.... but you have to be smart about it and take care to make offers that people will accept.

The silver mining craze was great... I bought and kitted a Raba for about 60 mil total, and within two hours of repping it I had make back everything I put into it and another 140 on top of that.

My trick? Don't try to get too much out of any one person. Take little bits from people, as big as you can while still small enough that they think it's either faster or better to just pay you rather than try to run. Cargo piracy setups are great for this since when someone refuses to comply you actually get an even larger profit- the one trader who decided to stake his team's 70 mil load of silver on the chance he could get to Narita before I finished him off probably kicked himself pretty hard. I only demanded 1k from a 5k transport- they still get a lot of their profits (as do I by ratio of profit to work) and when possible I offer to escort a trader I've cargo-pirated the remaining way in case there's Blood Dragons or whatever lurking around.

Out of a dozen traders, eight complied without hesitation. Yeah, I'd probably have made a little more in the short run if I had pirated them for all of their ore, but by keeping it low most of them came back. I was neither bountied nor avoided- just paid.



A little planning goes a long way. I planned on making sure the other players didn't mind my costs, and for that I actually "got rich quick". I highly suggest this philosophy to other would-be pirates.

Oh, and as a side note, pirating with at least one other person really improves your chances- even splitting the money you'll still make more (especially in cargo pirating in the event you end up killing a non-compliant). When your other person is a Phantom it gets even better. :D

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