Sailing guide/Wrangler
In this sailing guide we will go over the finer details of dragon wrangling on the SS Unsinkable.
I will share tips, suggest colour triggers and show you my aliases and how I use them.
Contents
General
As of the time of this writing, there are a few bugs associated with wrangling:
- The engineer's brush doesn't seem to work; no matter how bored/hungry a dragon is, once you entertain/feed it with an item, it resets that stats completely to 0/100. The brush doesn't seem to make any difference.
- Do not knock out a dragon that is still inside the circle. It may not get knocked out properly. At least take a dragon out of the circle before hitting them, or move one room fore to make sure it will work.
Make sure you leave your moon/swamp dragon somewhere safe away from the SS Unsinkable. Moon dragons will upset the other dragons on the SS Unsinkable and will fight them after a while. Moon dragons also have a nasty habit of returning after a while, so keep a look out for that.
Dragons
There are 4 dragons in total, two on each side of the boat. Idiot and Aggy are on the port side of the boat, while Nugget and Bitey are on the starboard side of the boat.
I advise any wrangler to use colour triggers for the dragons. Below are the trigger words as well as the colour I use.
| Name | Scales | Colour code | Side |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aggy | pale green | #98FB98 | Port |
| Idiot | bright red | #FF0000 | Port |
| Bitey | sky blue | #87CEEB | Starboard |
| Nugget | dark purple | #800080 | Starboard |
Items
In general, 3-4 toys and 2 food items per dragon should suffice for an average voyage.
It is common practice to not search for bottles of rum: when you hold a bottle of rum while also holding a healing/energy potion, you might accidentally drink the wrong bottle and get too drunk to fulfil your role properly.
Toys
The rubber toy ball and the squeaky toy animal have separate messages when a dragon has finished playing.
For the rubber toy ball, this is:
You throw the ball a few more times, getting a little further each time to keep Aggy the pale green swamp dragon entertained, until a particularly hard throw sends it bouncing right off the ship. Oh well.
For the squeaky toy animal, this is:
Aggy the pale green swamp dragon leaps upon the squeaky toy animal and spends an enjoyable three and a half minutes tearing it to squeaking shreds. Finally, it climbs atop the pile of rubber scraps and sits there triumphantly.
If you did not get these messages, you need to pick up the toy and try again. Also make sure the dragon did not wander into a different room.
Once you see these respective messages, the dragon's boredom has been reset to 0/100 and you can safely place it back into the red circle in the boiler room.
Food
A dragon need to eat the last piece of a food item before its hunger is reset to 0/100. they all are the same, except that the item mentioned is different. It should look something like this:
Aggy the pale green swamp dragon finishes off the last of the juicy lemon.
Stats
A dragon has 3 possible stats:
- bored
- hungry
- sleepy
Example (with my colour triggers):
This little swamp dragon has been given a little training for its role in operating the Boiling Engine. Not too much, of course, because swamp dragons are terribly explosive; any training tends to be not only dangerous even with protective equipment, but also as short-lived as the dragon itself. It has shiny bright red scales and looks very hungry (80/100), somewhat bored (77/100) and not at all sleepy (3/100).
The sleepy stat can usually be ignored: it will not show up at all unless you are sailing for a very long time, and there is nothing you can do about it other than knocking it out with a control rod.
I advise new wranglers to feed/entertain a dragon once any stat reached at least 50/100. More experienced wranglers might only do so at 60/100 or 65/100.
Every dragon's stats increase at random rates independent of other dragons. So no one dragon gets bored more quickly than another dragon. However, the different stats do increase in different speeds: Boredom will rise most quickly, hunger will rise at an average speed, while sleepiness will rise slowly.
It is very important that no food or toy items are in a room where a dragon is. food on the floor without expressly feeding it to a dragon will cause it to become more hungry very quickly. The same goes for toys; a dragon will get bored a lot more quickly if there are toys on the floor.
Stages
These stats progress through 4 stages.
| stage | description | range (#/100) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | not at all <bored/hungry/sleepy> | 00 - 39 |
| 2 | a little <bored/hungry/sleepy> | 40 - 59 |
| 3 | somewhat <bored/hungry/sleepy> | 60 - 79 |
| 4 | very <bored/hungry/sleepy> | 80 - 100 |
Boiler
To heat a boiler, you need to place <dragon> in circle. If you are holding a dragon that was asleep it is important to wait until the dragon has opened its eyes before placing it in the circle. Otherwise it will not heat the boiler.
A boiler that gets heated needs to be filled. An empty boiler that gets heated will cause the room to catch on fire.
The less a boiler is filled, the more quickly it will heat up. Therefore many wranglers will keep a boiler filled around 2/10 full. It might be better for new wranglers to keep a boiler 4/10 full to give yourself more time.
A boiler can go through 7 stages of heating:
| stage | temperature |
|---|---|
| 1 | cold |
| 2 | warm |
| 3 | hot |
| 4 | very hot |
| 5 | barely boiling |
| 6 | nearly boiling |
| 7 | boiling |
It is recommended to have 6 water tanks at every boiler when setting sail.
Once every dragon has been removed from every circle, the ship will immediately come to a halt. alternatively, you can pull lever to dump all the water out of the boiler and stop the ship immediately like that. This method is not advisable, as it might waste a lot of water.
Dangers
There are a few dangers and pitfalls that wranglers need to look out for.
Fire
Whenever you enter a boiler room that has dragons heating it, there is a chance that one will spray flames all over the room, setting the room on fire.
If you are fast enough, you can simply stamp out the fire (if you are wearing any type of footwear). Otherwise, you need to put out the fire with water. As stated in my general guide, a battered tin footbath is a godsend.
Movement
If you are not able to keep your footing when the ship turns, you may drop a dragon to feed/entertain it, but end up in a different room where you drop the item. It is important to pick the item up again and move to the correct room.
Also be careful not to leave your dragon alone for too long. If it is too bored, it will start wandering around.
Ice
Ice can form on the floor in 4 stages:
| stage | formation |
|---|---|
| 1 | A little ice has formed around the edges of the floor. |
| 2 | Some of the floor is coated in a slippery layer of ice. |
| 3 | Most of the floor is coated in a slippery layer of ice. |
| 4 | Most of the floor is heavily coated in a very slippery layer of ice. |
Every stage makes it more difficult to keep your balance and increases the chance of slipping, damaging yourself.
As with the previous point, ice makes it more risky to feed/entertain dragons. You can break ice as described in my general guide to alleviate this risk.
A room that is on fire will melt any ice in the same room. The resulting water may even extinguish the fire.
Guild Points
picking up, feeding, hitting, or entertaining a dragon will cost GP. It is therefore important to keep an eye on your GP while wrangling. When a few dragons are bored in quick succession, you can quickly run out of GP. You need to be able to hit a dragon at any time, so you need enough GP for that. Especially when it is running around or when the monster is about to show up. A pink crystal ring is a good investment for any wrangler that plans on wrangle more than two dragons at a time.
Triggers
These are the regular expression colour triggers that I use.
| Group | Match | Colour codes | Regular Expression |
|---|---|---|---|
| dragon | (Aggy|pale green) | #98FB98 | yes |
| dragon | (Idiot|bright red) | #FF0000 | yes |
| dragon | (Bitey|sky blue) | #87CEEB | yes |
| dragon | (Nugget|dark purple) | #800080 | yes |
| dragon_stats | not at all (bored|hungry|sleepy) \(([1-3]?\d)\/100\) | #00FF00 | yes |
| dragon_stats | a little (bored|hungry|sleepy) \(([4-5]?\d)\/100\) | #B6C700 | yes |
| dragon_stats | somewhat (bored|hungry|sleepy) \(([6-7]?\d)\/100\) | #EE8200 | yes |
| dragon_stats | very (bored|hungry|sleepy) \((([8-9]|10)?\d)\/100\) | #FF0000 | yes |
| boiler | According to the dials on the side, it seems to be * and cold. | #0000FF | no |
| boiler | According to the dials on the side, it seems to be * and warm. | #2B00D5 | no |
| boiler | According to the dials on the side, it seems to be * and hot. | #5500AA | no |
| boiler | According to the dials on the side, it seems to be * and very hot. | #800080 | no |
| boiler | According to the dials on the side, it seems to be * and barely boiling. | #AA0055 | no |
| boiler | According to the dials on the side, it seems to be * and nearly boiling. | #D5002B | no |
| boiler | According to the dials on the side, it seems to be * and boiling. | #FF0000 | no |
| wrangling_items_food | (medium sized )?lumps? of coal | #D16A2B | yes |
| wrangling_items_food | (tins? of )?shoe polish | #D16A2B | yes |
| wrangling_items_food | (juicy|large) lemons? | #D16A2B | yes |
| wrangling_items_toy | rubber toy balls? | #D16A2B | yes |
| wrangling_items_toy | squeaky toy animals? | #D16A2B | yes |
| wrangling_items_misc | control rods? | #D16A2B | yes |
| wrangling_items_misc | water tanks? | #D16A2B | yes |
Aliases
| alias | content | example | notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| adrag | take animal from backpack; squeeze animal; | adrag | to be used after ddrag |
| bdrag | take ball from backpack; throw ball; | bdrag | to be used after ddrag |
| cdrag | get $1$; aft; put $1$ in circle; | cdrag aggy | to be used one room fore from the boiler |
| ddrag | get $1$; fore; drop $1$; | ddrag aggy | to be used in the boiler room |
| fdrag | take $2$ from backpack; feed $2$ to $1$; | fdrag aggy coal | to be used after ddrag |
| hdrag | hit $1$ with control rod; | hdrag aggy | to be used after ddrag |
| ldrag | look every dragon; look boiler; | ldrag | to be used in the boiler room |
| ftank | fill mk i boiling engine from water tank; bury every empty water tank; | ftank | to be used in the boiler room with a water tank |
