I'm currently ranked ~350. Where's the grog? When I go to plunder I have to cycle through >30 islands (commonly > 50) to find an island with enough grog to pay for the pirates to actually make that plunder! Gold is no problem, but I'm maxed for gold at the moment.
What PH level are you, and what troop composition do you use? I personally i'm finding okay grog at the moment.
9 65 troops, of - 5 Gunners - 8 Sky - 8 Bombers - 8 Juggs - 4 HGs All bar the HGs are maxed to PH8 These probably cost about 400 grog now. I've saved money by ceasing use of the Doctor since he's become almost useless. I'm mostly finding islands of ~500 grog.
I use 10 brutes 30 gunners, which costs ~80k, which is still a ton. I don't care about getting the ph or even getting a 1* because I only care about loot at the moment. I'm hovering around 400, myself. Any base with >350k grog and gold, which I'd say is about 30% of them, makes the initial screening. If it looks like it hasn't been active in a while (PH8 without upgrades to the new gold or grog stores), I snipe the collectors (1-3 brutes is usually enough to distract the few defenses that reach collectors long enough to hit them, but if the base looks like I can easily 1* it, I'll drop the lot), then forfeit. Its only ~250k profit per fight, worst case, but if you do a couple it starts to add up. Not as fast as gold does, its really rough keeping all 11 troops constantly upgrading, but it works. I certainly can't afford my previous 700k grog army that steamrolled everything anymore. I don't bother with guild ship troops either. I imagine in a month or two grog will start to become plentiful again at lower ranks. Many people are fighting to get all their troops training simultaneously. Army costs are fairly expensive, and it costs ~40million grog to get all 11 troops training, each batch of trainings. But when people aren't upgrading troops anymore, that grog will start piling up again. The hardest part about it is when you get to PH9, you can no longer find anything below ph8 unless its a rumble rival, and all the PH7s that quit and had lots of easy-to-get loot are no longer accessible. The 1 mill infusion every day from rumbles is nice, its certainly paid for an upgrade, but the only efficient way to get grog is to snipe collectors with cheap armies. If you're fighting a base that's protecting its PH instead of stores (which is a terrible idea when you're farming, but its great for farmers), the stores are usually fairly easy to get to, and only protected by a GP. clear side buildings with a sole gunner, drop a brute on one edge of the GP range, and then flood the other side of the gp with your gunners. They'll usually clear 2-3 of the stores before bring it on runs out, then they get killed by splash. But you got the stores, which is the only thing that mattered. If you're in it for loot, commit to it, don't care about getting even 1*, because its going to kill your efficiency. A cheap army (~80k for 70 slots) can certainly get 90%+ of the loot out of a base, and you usually don't even have to deploy the whole thing. Side-tip: consider moving all your rearmable defenses somewhere they won't ever be touched, and then leaving ph somewhere relatively easy to beat, but with enough in the way that when they take the ph they won't make it to stores. It cuts 200k+ gold off rearm costs, and most people won't make it to stores, so you net less loot lost per defense. If you don't mind spending a bit more, find a ph8 with decent loot (they don't have shark traps yet) and send in a big horde of cloaked thieves. If you place them right, you can take every single collector and store before they die, since they do such a ridiculous amount of dps to them. You'll probably be able to get a larger number of more lucrative stores than the gunner sniping method, and will probably average more grog profit per fight, but if you're gemming the training time its going to take a lot more gems, and if you're not, you'll get less fights per hour for less net grog per hour. Since you can't find anyone lower than PH8, and many of them are fairly maxed out, it really doesn't matter what rank you're at. I've tried everywhere from 100 to 750, and there's not much difference at the moment at any rank. You'll find 350k in most of them, and if you're good at spotting inactive players, collectors will always be a good portion of that.
As an fyi, PH8 collectors fully loaded can be looted for 310k gold/grog across the lot of them, so look for a minimum of that. I look for slightly more, because its rare that the stores contain absolutely nothing. A couple gunners can usually take all of that, and be retrained quicker than your next fight. Brutes and extra guns are only worth it if you need a win to keep rank up, or to distract defenses.
I look for that, as well as gold/grog amounts which are identical or similar. If there's a question, I drop a gunner next to an exposed collector and see how much he gets from it per shot. Great way to judge whether a base is worth the time
I have the same method @Kelani If you see that the stores aren't the new ones, its pretty likely they have full collectors, but either way, its worth one gunner to check if you think they might be. Worst case the collector is near empty, but its almost never been less than the cost of the one gunner.
I am finding lots in the 200-300 range. Am currently at 316 with 6.2m grog, so please come and raid me as I have nothing to spend it on until my next upgrade comes off cooking. Also, look for those bases that are inactive, with about 330k of each, and accessible collectors. They take minimal gunners to empty the collectors, and make a cheap and quick rebuild. lord Fontlaroy WP Edit: apologies for repeating the collector suggestion above
