NOM NOM NOM – what’s this, LOLcat jokes in StarPirates? No way. More like a way for players to upgrade their equipment.
In StarPirates there is a limit to the number of items that you can equip on your ship. So what’s a hardcore gamer to do? Or even a new player who wants something a bit better than the fleet is willing to lend? Upgrade your items – you can do that with NOMs. These are findable item parts, that when used in conjunction with some cargo and Duct Tape can make your mighty items even mighter. Shields protect more, weapons blast more, and other items are even better.
There are 5 levels of upgrades (for now), each of which is progressively harder to achieve. The trade off? Once upgraded an item cannot be traded away. The NOMs are rolling out slowly but with player requests are about to accelerate. In fact, in SpyBattle-2165, the more aggressive sister of StarPirates many AWEs (the SB equiv of NOMs) are already findable, even if they can’t yet be used. A player vote is on to see if this will be rolled out to StarPirates as well.
Oh, and if you want you can trade any item for 5 AWES or NOMS — which is enough to upgrade to Level 1, but about 1/20th of what is needed for the 5th level of upgrade.
So what have NOMs and AWEs wrought? Well they have cleared the markets of many surplus items. They’ve made every type of item relevant — after all even an unlucky, poor player can afford to upgrade a few items. It’s given a lot more to trade and find, plus the excitement of waiting to see what item will be NOM’d next.
And most of all it’s fast, furious fun – which is what we’re all about.