With the latest update I think you can just board the enemy ship at the outset rather than having to go through the horrid 1, 1, 1, 1, 4 thing.

Oooh definitely the preferred option then.

I just focused on upgrading my ship and basically outran like 90% of the battles. The only ones I had were really the scripted ones and one or two where I wasn't paying attention or because I simply was in the mood to do one :)

I loved having a ship but not a huge fan of the ship battles.

Hum. And people liked that game - what was it called - pirates or something like that - you basically had three things to do - ship to ship battles; dancing and some third activity i can't remember. Mind you i didn't care for it but it was wildly popular.

It's bloody hard to get any reputation with Aloth…. what's wrong with this guy? Can you still progress with his story even if he doesn't like you?

It's been a while, but I'm fairly certain you can, yes.

Glad you mentioned this! It gave me a good laugh - which I needed when I discovered that I didn't get my save file copied from my previous computer. It took QUITE some time with the PoE Wiki and my old screenshots to piece together (more or less) what I did four years back.