Pirate Raid (SayGames) Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Sail the High Seas and Wreak Havoc

Pirate Raid is a naval combat game developed by SayGames, where you sail away on your small ship and plunder rival buccaneers. As expected of a pirate, your main goal is to take their cargo to sell on the market and upgrade your dinky dinghy into a beastly battleship. Once you have dominated the current ocean, you take your crewmates to a new sea and continue making yourself known.

The gameplay loop of Pirate Raid simply involves finding treasure, floating out in the open or from destroyed enemies, which range from simple ships to monstrous creatures. Take your earned cargo to the market to sell it off and use the money to upgrade your ship to repeat the cycle. You complete tasks based on this cycle and once all tasks are complete, you move to a new sea to start all over again. It can get repetitive for some people, but it is a good idler.

One major problem with Pirate Raid is the abundance of ads that disrupt gameplay. Fortunately, you can shut off the internet connection on your mobile device before starting the game to counter it, though some options will become unavailable to use. Luckily, our Pirate Raid guide will provide you some tips and tricks to win any battle without the connection getting in the way. Stay with use to see what Pirate Raid has for soon-to-be swashbucklers!

1. Plundering For Dummies

Pirate Raid’s gameplay is simple, as it revolves around piloting your ship and finding treasures to collect and enemies to fight. You control your ship via touching the screen and moving the joystick accordingly. Moving your ship also zooms out your view a bit, giving you a better view of your surroundings. If you just want the increased field of view, simply tap and hold without moving the joystick.

Combat in Pirate Raid involves moving your ship into the range of your chosen target(s), and watch as your ship engages its cannons and opens fire. Ships will exchange cannonballs until one of them sinks, but because of their travel time, it is possible for the victor to go down because of a stray shot. Mind your ship’s health and know when to move out of harm’s way.

While enemy ships will generally stay put whether they are idle or not, you can move freely during combat as long as one side is facing the enemy. This can be used to your advantage by sailing in front of an enemy, landing shots while the enemy’s attacks splash harmlessly into the sea.

With some practice you can even circle around your target, bombarding them with cannonballs as you go. Destroyed ships respawn after some time has passed, giving you a constant supply of cargo. The more powerful the ship, the longer you will have to wait before the ship is rebuilt to be destroyed once more.

Destroyed ships drop their cargo, which you can pick up by sailing over the floating goods. You can only carry a set amount of cargo, and while you can increase the capacity later, you might have to make return trips as you offload your spoils. Be quick about it, as leftover cargo is on a timer and will disappear once that time expires. Your ship starts on a nearby island with three buildings, which are used to expand both the playable area as well as your ship’s capabilities. These buildings are as follows:

• The Market: This is where you sell any pilfered cargo for coins. You can sell them individually, or sell your collected goods in one go;
  
• The Shipyard: This is where you upgrade your ship’s stats in exchange for coins. We will discuss specific upgrades later in this guide; and
  
• The Lighthouse: This controls the maximum playable area of the current ocean. Instead of coins, you upgrade this by bringing the required amount of cargo to the lighthouse. The increased area gives you stronger enemies to face, and more enemies to take down and salvage.

When not in combat, all ships gradually regenerate their health every second, so you can stay in place after a tough fight to patch yourself up. Since this also applies to enemy ships, retreating from a bad fight will allow them to rebuild. If you do get destroyed, you drop whatever cargo you were holding, and you lose a small percentage of cargo to the waves below.

You have an option of watching an ad to recover the lost percentage, but either way you have to sail to where you died to pick up your remaining treasures before they sink as well. Docking near the starting island gives your ship rapid regeneration, but it takes priority over the gradual regeneration your ship normally gets when out in the open.

Pirate Raid gives you a set number of tasks to perform before you can move on to the next sea, ranging from 15-30 tasks in the first few seas. These include destroying enough enemy ships, purchasing enough upgrades, and earning a set number of gold or cargo. Once all tasks have been completed, you can move on to the next sea in line.

There are around seven seas currently available to explore in Pirate Raid, but once you move to a new sea, your ship will lose all purchased upgrades, effectively starting from scratch. You will be locked out from accessing older seas as well.

In the second sea in Pirate Raid, you can build a Tavern using cargo. The Tavern passively generates cash while you are out sailing. Cash generation is capped so you will have to make regular visits to empty the Tavern’s coffers. You can collect your Tavern’s earned coins as is, or watch an ad to double your earnings. You can increase both the rate of money generation, as well as the Tavern cap.

During your travels, you might spot some points of interest, like a maiden chained up for a sacrificial ritual or a random pirate left hanging on a barrel in the middle of the sea. If you sail to those points, you can open up options on what to do with the unfortunate seagoer. You have three options available, but one of them is always locked behind an ad-gate. The ultimate decision is up to you, and each option gives you two rewards.

2. Keeping Things Shipshape

Now, there is only one real place to use the money you earn from selling cargo, and that is purchasing ship upgrades from the shipyard. There are five upgrades in total:

• Health: A self-explanatory stat, this determines how much punishment your ship can take before it sinks;
  
• Guns: This stat gives your ship an additional cannon to fire, effectively acting as a damage multiplier. Because of this, the price for successive upgrades goes up more drastically than the other upgrades here. Also note that this stat does not let your ship attack multiple targets at once;
  
• Damage: Naturally determines how much destruction your cannonballs deal to enemies. Pairs well with the Guns stat above, and is cheaper to rank up;
  
• Cargo: How much cargo you can carry before you run out of room in your hold. This is vital to rank up as not only does it let you earn more money from market transactions; it also allows you to upgrade the Lighthouse; and
  
• Speed: How fast your ship sails, allowing you to catch up to floating cargo or make a hasty escape. Because of this, the price of upgrading this stat also goes up a bit quickly with succeeding purchases, though not to the same extent as Guns.

All these upgrades increase your ship’s level, indicated next to your health bar, with Speed and Guns increasing your level more noticeably than the other upgrades. This can be used as a yardstick to determine whether your ship can handle future encounters. With enough levels, your ship will also increase in size which is a nice touch.

What is a ship without crewmates? You can find crewmates by unlocking chests with gems, the premium currency of Pirate Raid, or by getting keys by completing tasks listed on the top of the screen. There are five categories of crewmates and each of them provides buffs to your ship’s health, damage, and passive regeneration, but their main draw are the perks each crewmate provides independent of their stat boosts:

• Captain: The one behind the ship’s wheel, the captain’s perks revolve around. If your ship is big enough, you can even see him. His perks give your guns a chance to deal critical hits, and can increase your damage against specific foes;
  
• Navigator: The crewmate responsible for plotting your next course, their perks not only affect your ship’s speed, but also how quicky your ship turns to engage the enemy;
  
• Cannoneer: As you can expect, the Cannoneer affects your damage, either by reducing the cooldown between your cannon shots or giving you a chance of firing multiple cannonballs per shot;
  
• Carpenter: This crewmate is the only way you can increase your ship’s passive regeneration, and their perks include increasing cargo space; and
  
• Quartermaster: Despite the name, the Quartermaster’s perks boost how much cargo you can get from defeated ships, or the space of your cargo hold like the Carpenter above.

To keep up with the increasing difficulty of later seas, you can upgrade your crewmates with some Rum, which is also obtained primarily by completing tasks like before. You can only upgrade your crewmates so many times before you hit a cap, but you can increase that cap by promoting a select crewmate. You need three copies of the same crewmate, and they must be of the same rarity as indicated by their background color.

Promoting a crewmate increases the effects of both their stat boosts and their perks, along with increasing their rarity by one tier. Promotion costs no resources, and it gives you a way to clean up excess copies of crewmates you already have.

Beginning in the third sea, you gain access to a special building, the Pirate Academy. The Pirate Academy lets you purchase upgrades for the current sea, using tokens obtained by defeating select enemies on the map. These tokens can be used to buy and upgrade the following:

• Evasion: The actual name of this upgrade is fairly long, but it simply gives your ship a chance to avoid taking damage;
  
• Intimidation: This increases the number of coins you can find from destroying select enemies. This has no effect on cargo or tokens;
  
• Gentle Robbing: A rather oddly-named upgrade, this decreases the time for defeated enemies to respawn, making it easier to farm for supplies; and
  
• Critical Strike: As the name says, this upgrade gives your cannonballs a chance to deal more damage. This stacks with any critical chance perks from crewmates.

As with shipyard upgrades, Pirate Academy purchases are reset every time you enter a new sea.

3. Knowing Your Enemies

All ships have a level that represents their overall health and damage, and you want to try to make your level match theirs. Their levels increase the further you sail away from the central island. Enemy ships will typically be floating near separate isles, guarding treasure chests, or bunched together so that they can compensate any level deficits through sheer numbers.

One particularly strange “ship” are sharks, who can only bite at your ship but will relentlessly pursue you the moment you get in their path. Their bites deal heavy damage and they swim very quickly, allowing them to close the gap before your shots even land.

If you see a shark or two nearby and you feel that your weapons are insufficient, you are better off taking a detour or risk losing some cargo to their stomachs. Even if you do manage to fend them off, your ship will definitely suffer heavy damage and that is a real issue if there is more than one shark or a nearby enemy ship.

From time to time, you will see moving, unarmed ships that pose no threat to you, and they carry both cargo and coins. These ships follow a preset route and rely on speed to avoid taking hits. If you want to plunder their contents, you will have to either get in their path, or sail very close to them to ensure your shots hit. More often than not, these unarmed ships tend to cross paths with armed enemies, so either clear out the area or expect some speed bumps.

Though most of the hostile ships are essentially cannon fodder, there are select “boss” ships that sport fancier designs and stronger weapons. These ships tend to have names and often have escorts next to them. These boss ships drop cargo, coins and, on later seas, academy tokens. If you feel that you can take them and their cronies on, head into range and open fire.

The last hostiles you will encounter are sea monsters, who drop lots of cargo, coins, and tokens. All sea monsters attack by throwing fireballs at you. These behave similarly to standard cannonballs, and two of them also have a secondary attack that gives them an extra punch. These monsters are:

• Kraken: A giant octopus, the Kraken occasionally sends a tentacle under your ship, discouraging you from simply staying in one place while engaging it. The tentacle will even stay for a while after the Kraken dies;
  
• Goddamzilla: Yes, that is what it is called. The giant lizard periodically fires a laser from its mouth, which is pinpoint accurate and constantly deals damage to your ship for its duration.
  
• Note that this does not stop the Goddamzilla from launching fireballs either. Back off when it starts firing its laser, or make sure your cannons are powerful enough to take it down before it takes you down, and;
  
• Hydra: The last monster encountered so far, which does not seem to have anything special compared to the first two monsters. You would expect this to be the first monster, but that is how the monsters were arranged.

Sea monsters take roughly thirty minutes to respawn, but unlike ships you can watch an ad to instantly make a new one to fight. This distinction exists because some tasks may require you to square off against monsters of a certain level, and those tasks will not take into account whether you have killed them beforehand. By contrast, there are dozens of standard ships for you to destroy.

4. Sinking Scallywags And Scavenging Scrap

With the basics to Pirate Raid covered, we can now give you tips on how to be the best buccaneer in the seas.

• Outmaneuvering: Remember, your ship can open fire while on the move, something most hostile ships and especially the bosses cannot do. This gives you an edge in any fight, and you can even take on ships that are slightly stronger than yours just by avoiding their shots. This takes some practice though, as if you move too fast you will overshoot your target, but move too slow and you will get hit.
  
• Circle of Death: One particularly nasty way of taking down single targets or small groups is to move around them in a circular path. This allows you to constantly rain hell on the enemy while they cannot retaliate as you are constantly on the move. Be mindful of whatever landmasses are in the way. Managing your speed is still important as you might not react fast enough to make sharp turns.
  
• Cargo Delivery: Cargo is the lifeblood of your game progress, so knowing when to cash in before things get too risky is important. If your hold is only filled halfway but your ship has taken quite a beating, stay put and recover some health before pressing onwards.
  
• If your hold is almost full, consider selling all your cargo for money as going past your hold’s limits means that you will have to make a return trip to collect whatever was left behind. Better get everything done in one go than risk going back and forth and running into newly-respawned enemies.
  
• Prioritizing Upgrades: When it comes to your ship’s upgrades, Health, Damage, and Cargo are generally the cheapest starting options. Focus on Damage and Cargo as you can compensate for the low health by outmaneuvering the enemy as we mentioned earlier. From there, you can start building up your Health and Speed once Damage and Cargo are both at around Level 5.
  
• Guns are situational in the earlier seas due to their cost, but they can easily turn the tide as your enemies become more difficult. Some tasks may require you to upgrade a certain ship stat to a given level, so upgrading them ahead of time will let you collect the task’s reward immediately.

• Academy Applications: For Pirate Academy upgrades, Critical Strike and Evasion are recommended as they have the most use in combat. Gentle Robbing does have its perks in cutting down respawn timers, especially with standard pirate ships, but it will take some time before the timer reductions become really noticeable with sea monsters. Intimidation is a good “junk” upgrade as it only really affects select ships and not cargo drops.
  
• Whipping your Crew into shape: Your Crewmembers’ stat bonuses should not be forgotten, as they can make the transition to new seas a less painful affair. They can help you save money on later upgrades or save cargo for purchasing new buildings. Some of their perks cannot be replicated through shipyard upgrades or academy purchases. Remember to upgrade your crewmates with rum when available, and fuse any duplicate crewmembers through Promotion.

And that concludes our guide to Pirate Raid. We hope that our advice helps you in conquering the seas and what they have lurking in the waves. If you have any tips you would like to share with us, please let us know in the comment section! Good luck, and game on!