Saturday, August 27, 2011

My Treasure and Ship Part Values


I played Phantom Hourglass three times now and each time I got quite different values for my treasures and ship parts. I thought I should share and analyze it.

Well, there are four different values a specific treasure or a ship part might have - 50, 150, 800 or 1500 Rupees. Those are randomly chosen when your savegame is created with a certain balance between common and rare treasures / ship parts. Those with a value of 50 or 150 Rupees are considered to be common and those with a value of 800 or 1500 Rupees are considered to be rare. Note that the Regal Ring and the Golden Ship Parts will always have a value of 1500 Rupees and therefore always belong to the rarest treasures / ship parts. The values of the other treasures and ship parts are randomly chosen and shuffled to encourage trading between different players. You can trade online or in local multiplayer using the Freedle and the Contact Mode. A ship part that is "a trifle" in your savefile, might be very rare and valueable in someone's other file.

In most locations you will get a common treasure or ship part more often than a rare one, naturally. However, there are certain spots in the game, where it's more likely to get something rare like a Golden Ship Part. For example scoring more than 2000 points in the archery minigame gives you rarer ship parts. Or when you replay the Temple of the Ocean King two treasure chests will appear at the end and their value is determined with how many time you've got left on the clock (it's possible to beat the dungeon with full 25 minutes in the hourglass, see my guide).

So much about the theory, here's my list of values. Each ship part in a set will have the same value and the values of the sets are the same of the treasures in order. So, for example all parts of the Demon Ship will have the same value as the Goron Amber.

1st game:

Pink Coral / Bright Parts: 50
White Pearl Loop / Iron Parts: 50
Black Pearl Loop / Stone Parts: 50
Zora Scale / Vintage Parts: 150
Goron Amber / Demon Parts: 150
Ruto Crown / Tropical Parts: 1500
Helmaroc Feather / Tourist Parts: 800

2nd game:

Pink Coral / Bright Parts: 150
White Pearl Loop / Iron Parts: 50
Black Pearl Loop / Stone Parts: 800
Zora Scale / Vintage Parts: 150
Goron Amber / Demon Parts: 150
Ruto Crown / Tropical Parts: 50
Helmaroc Feather / Tourist Parts: 800

3rd game:

Pink Coral / Bright Parts: 1500
White Pearl Loop / Iron Parts: 50
Black Pearl Loop / Stone Parts: 800
Zora Scale / Vintage Parts: 800
Goron Amber / Demon Parts: 50
Ruto Crown / Tropical Parts: 50
Helmaroc Feather / Tourist Parts: 50

I prefer the first one actually, mainly because the values grow in order, which looks nice. Except for the Tropical and Tourist set, if those two were switched, it would be perfect. But overall I like it. The 2nd one didn't have anything worth 1500 Rupees next to the golden stuff and it took me very long to collect all 64 Ship Parts in this one. A common treasure worth 50 Rupees was missing at the end and it took me forever to get it. The 3rd game was quite interesting, because it doesn't feature any stuff worth 150 Rupees, but two things in the 800s and two things in the 1500s. So, half of the sets and treasures were considered to be rare. I made a lot of money selling treasures and duplicate ship parts in this savegame, money that I could easily spent on buying all expensive items at the shops and more ship parts for my collection. This might have been the most valueable set up and it could be, that collecting all ship parts might be easier with such prices, but I never tried, the savegame was on a rented copy and I never finished all sidequests there. And I didn't like that there wasn't anything in the 150 Rupee category.

1 comment:

Link-13- said...

Hehe. Nice to see another soul that has put that much time in Phantom Hourglass. I have been replaying this game this month, and got all Ship Parts, after hunting for an elusive Golden Prow for far too long. My prices were these:

Bright Parts / Pink Coral: 150
Iron Parts / White Pearl Loop: 150
Stone Parts / Black Pearl Loop: 50
Vintage Parts / Zora Scale: 800
Demon Parts / Goron Amber: 50
Tropical Parts / Ruto Crown: 800
Tourist Parts / Helmarco Feather: 150

I hadn't realized that the prices were not fixed (even after looking up guides for other stuff for the game), so thanks for writing this post.

Due to the dozens of times I ended up playing the Temple of the Ocean King, I calculated that I had amassed 188,850 rupees in ship parts! This endgame of Phantom Hourglass, trying to collect everything by grinding, trading with other players, or turning on the DS at a specific time of the day (Beedle with a golden helmet appears after 22:00 on weekdays) kinda makes this game contain a small Animal Crossing within! I think I ended up playing it more this way than the regular playthrough, making a habit of turning it on at night to check if Beedle had a golden ship part, or replaying the temple a couple of times while listening to podcasts!

Lastly, I can say that the "With Anyone" online multiplayer is still alive and I have played with dozens of different opponents in the last two months, although the waiting time for an opponent can vary from a few minutes to a couple of hours.