Pirate101 Black Annie Rackham Guide

In the October 2019 update to Pirate101, two new Obsidian bosses join the scene, Black Annie Rackham (Obsidian Bonnie Anne) and Verminius Blightbeard (Obsidian Ratbeard). These bosses rank among the most challenging in the current game. Thus, having a functioning team that knows an effective strategy is key. In this guide, I’ll discuss the Black Annie Rackham fight. I’ll highlight each enemy, along with any noteworthy powers and cheats, as well as provide some strategy pointers. Defeating this enemy 25 times unlocks her in the Crown Shop for purchase.

Enemies

Black Annie Rackham

Stats

• Level 82 Musketeer
• 7114 Health

Cheats/Powers

• Annie has an infinite range, Sniper Shot-like power that deals between 500-1000 damage. She uses this power randomly, generally when you have units near your spawn, on the far side of the battleboard.
• Like her benevolent counterpart, Rackham has a scatterblast trained. She randomly uses this power on her turn, but only if enemy units are near here. This scatterblast does anywhere from 1000-3000 damage and reduces dodge.
• She uses the aforementioned scatterblast to destroy any Blood Flames placed near her, making this power near useless in this fight.
• “Crimson Volley” Whenever one of your units enters a 2 square radius, this epic talent triggers. It essentially functions as overwatch 5 does, damaging and knocking the target back.
• Annie has Reinforce trained.
• Annie has 0 movement range.

Fox Radical

Stats

• Level 80 Musketeer
• 3894 Health

Cheats/Powers

• Four of these foxes spawn in every fight, regardless of how many pirates you have on your team. They, along with some boxes, block Annie in, making her untargetable by melee units until 1 or more of them are killed.
• They have 0 movement range.
• These foxes have many copies of Hail of Cannonballs and Tempest of Torpedoes, the two top tier musketeer bombs. These bombs do not require line of sight or a certain range for them to be used. In fact, they will prioritize casting them near your spawn zone, effectively boxing you in if you don’t move up quickly. They seem to stop using the bombs once you get closer, with some exceptions.

Mutt Fetcher

Stats

• Level 80 Swashbuckler
• 3783 Health

Cheats/Powers

• These enemies have very high movement range and dodge, but have no other noteworthy powers. 8 of these units spawn in the fight.
• Some of them will spawn very close to your team, so you should be wary about their ability to rapidly chain unprotected melee units down.

Strategy

This section of the guide will focus on two major questions: What team should I use? (both combination of pirates and companion choices) and How should I approach the fight?

Pirate Classes

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Like most fights in Pirate101, there isn’t a strict set of pirates that’s necessary to complete this dungeon successfully. However, there are some classes bring unique things to the table that will make your life much easier. I would recommend having multiple pirates with ranged attacks (Privy/Musket/Witch) and strongly urge you to have at least one privateer on your team. A Scratch-buffed group heal from a privateer will often undo the massive damage you’ll take on the first round. Furthermore, Espirit and Zeal do wonders against the high-stat swashbuckler mobs. Scratch buffed AOEs are, as always, a potent way of killing anything that gets in your way.

Melee classes are still very much useful  in these fights, due to the raw power level of hidden attacks + chains, but with a  limited amount of squares from which to attack Annie and the other foxes, a full melee team is inadvisable. For instance, there are only 2 squares, at most, that you can attack Annie from. This means that a full melee team can have up to 2 of its pirates rendered ineffective for parts of the fight.

Gear

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The number one priority on gear should be protection. Unlike many other fights, you need to have at least one Valor’s Fortress or Armor on your gear to not be a liability to your teammates. Check out this guide and the wiki for places to get this gear from. Having at least one revive is also strongly recommended. You can get this from the bazaar or various mid to late game bosses.

Unlike many other fights, Frozen Tide and Blood Flames are not very high priorities to have. With the exception of the Dogs, the enemies in this fight have 0 movement range, making Frozen Tide a waste of a gear slot. Blood Flames, however, is fine to kill the dogs, but Bonnie will Scatterblast away any flames near her, making it useless against the most threatening enemies in the fight.

Companion Choices

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As always, Old Scratch is an excellent choice. However, you cannot use his buffs immediately, or he will quickly die to bombs. Move him (and all of your units for that matter) up and spread them out on the first turn. Then, he can begin to buff your ranged pirates.

Any anti-musketeer units you have are also powerful choices (think of things like the Magnificent 7, a Quick Draw 3 Bonnie Anne, Nausica, Lemba Moonskull). If you fort them first, they can chain down the opposing musketeer units. Without protection, however, they will be decimated.

I’m not a huge fan of Buccaneer units in this fight. They have limited room to attack the musketeer enemies, and without Battle Zeal or stacked Espirits, they will just get chained to oblivion by the swashbuckler dogs. Swash units are fine choices if you have a privy with Zeal and not a complete liability without. In particular, multiple El Toro’s are strongly recommended if you have multiple melee pirates and no Privateer pirates to provide them with Battle Zeal.

In-Battle Strategy

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I’ll try to give a general outline of how you should try to play in this fight. A lot of this depends on your team compilation, so don’t take it as a hard and fast rule.

• First Round: MOVE ALL OF YOUR UNITS UP. This is the only thing that should be done regardless of what units you have with you. If you do not move your units up, they will be effectively immobilized by stacked bombs and will be rendered useless until they die. The only exception is a Privateer pirate, who should use Espirit or Zeal to prevent chain damage from the Dogs.
• Early Fight: Recover from early damage by using group/single heals. Begin to buff your main attackers (anti-musket units and melee pirates) with stat buffs and protection. Scratch can begin to buff your ranged pirates too. Don’t focus too much on the Dogs, they’ll die to chip damage from melee chains, Overwatch/Readied Spell chains, and being incidentally targeted by AOE attacks.
• Middle Fight: Your main attackers should begin to engage the two centermost foxes. Killing them gives you access to Annie. Your ranged pirates should get into range, but should not get too close to avoid being targeted by her Scatterblast and basic attacks. When they’re dead, focus all your firepower and buffed AOE attacks on Annie.
• Late Fight: Clean up any remaining foxes and dogs, keeping an eye on your stat buffs and protection. These enemies do massive damage even without Annie, so don’t spoil a clean victory by getting careless.

Other Tips

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• Fleeing is completely justified, as there is no consequence to rejoining the fight late. Furthermore, when you reenter the fight, you’ll be moved up to where Annie spawns, allowing you to avoid the bomb minefield.
• Melee players need one or more hides to cleanly pass through Annie’s Crimson Volley. You can also “walk through” her Crimson Volley range, like you can with overwatch. However, you shouldn’t rely on dodging, as it’s very unlikely due to her high stats (but still possible).
• Scratch buffed group heals are incredibly potent ways of erasing the damage of a Scatterblast, bombs, or chain damage.
• Even if you kill the boxes surrounding Annie, you cannot stand there.

What do you think of this boss?
Will you annihilate Black Annie Rackham 25 times for the companion?
If you have any information we missed, let us know in the comments below!

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