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Sea of Thieves adds a ship progression system

Do merchant voyages during Gold and Glory weekends.

Leveling up renown, do skeleton captains or open a vault (that gives you a TON).
I'm already 75 merchant, 75 gold hoarders, 75 reapers. I focused on LOTV to max out my Athena this past weekend, hit 30, then went back to doing FOTD.

I can stack 3 FOTD in about an hour (15-20 mins per FOTD). during gold and glory that would sell for 1 million per 3 stack. so I was making about 1 million an hour. reapers is really close to FOTD.

next gold and glory I'll probably focus on hunters call. although I have been neglecting my order of souls.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
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The season is so much better than S6: where the fortresses were fun for a while but got repetitive. The milestones for both the ship and pirate a fun to unlock and they grant upgrades like new titles for the ship and new banners that people see when they spot you.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
I’d enjoy playing solo a lot more if there were more than 4? ships on the map at any one time. It’s a huge map and the player interaction is my favourite thing. I’ve had many sessions where I’ve not come across anyone, and that’s super disappointing. If they could double the ship count to like 8 or at least 6 without tanking the framerate it would be amazing.
 

Lasha

Member
I was thinking more like Tarkov, Hunt, DayZ, etc. it works fine in those games and it's fun to earn things that change up the gameplay.
SoT adds new gear or quirks that affect gameplay. The updates are given freely so everybody is on the same playing field.
 
I’d enjoy playing solo a lot more if there were more than 4? ships on the map at any one time. It’s a huge map and the player interaction is my favourite thing. I’ve had many sessions where I’ve not come across anyone, and that’s super disappointing. If they could double the ship count to like 8 or at least 6 without tanking the framerate it would be amazing.
You can have five ships. Just hit reaper 5 bro.
 

Lasha

Member
The ship customization rules but I like the QoL stuff. Sovereigns save so much time selling. It's especially great for times you drop a guy off with a rowboat to sell since it avoids so much running around. I love being able to grab captains voyages and play exactly as I want. Rare takes excellent care of this game.
 

iHaunter

Member
We don't deserve this Rare.
I played it last weekend with some friends. The game is still an ENORMOUS piece of shit. Still only a couple of ships. Still the same exact mission system. They added a small story mode with Pirate of the Caribbean. But the game has practically 0 improvements to it. What's the point of playing it? There's no goal, there's nothing to do than aimlessly go from island to island, get chests, then what? Get rep for some mediocre cosmetics? This game is the definition of pointless. We played for 6 hours, got bored, and uninstalled it.

Edit: I got it for $20 on steam sale and still feel ripped off.
 
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I love this game, but the devs really don’t want me to play it.

I want a single player only lobby. Everyone in single sloops. GIMME IT, RARE.

or hell, just give me a solo world to explore and chill out in. I could spend months just doing simple item collection.
 

Lasha

Member
The Gameplay loop is terrible. You spending 550 hours doesn't un-prove that.
What about Sea of Thieves loop is different from any other game?

I love this game, but the devs really don’t want me to play it.

I want a single player only lobby. Everyone in single sloops. GIMME IT, RARE.

or hell, just give me a solo world to explore and chill out in. I could spend months just doing simple item collection.
I think you like the aesthetic of the game rather than the game itself. Rare floated the idea of private servers to let players and communities chill out and enjoy the world. The idea was met with backlash when Rare mentioned that the worlds would not allow gold or progress with factions to carry over to the main game. Players didn't want to chill, they wanted to increase their stats risk-free which completely breaks the game.

Solo only worlds wouldn't solve your issues either. Solo v Solo is really boring because its basically just boarding. Better players will jump on your boat, throw a bunch of firebombs, then camp you until your ship sinks. Or just camp you until you scuttle. SoT already has mechanics for avoiding fights. Sloops go fastest against the wind. Brigs are the fastest with full sails. Either are able to outrun and outmaneuver a Galleon. Many solo sloopers hide out on the east side of the map because sloops are far less likely to be wrecked by the volcanoes.
 
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What about Sea of Thieves loop is different from any other game?


I think you like the aesthetic of the game rather than the game itself. Rare floated the idea of private servers to let players and communities chill out and enjoy the world. The idea was met with backlash when Rare mentioned that the worlds would not allow gold or progress with factions to carry over to the main game. Players didn't want to chill, they wanted to increase their stats risk-free which completely breaks the game.

How does it “break the game”? It gives players another avenue to enjoy the world that was created. Let people earn progression solo if they so choose without the fear of being harassed/ganked by players. If you still want the seas to feel dangerous, add more variations of skeleton AI ships to attack you.

Solo only worlds wouldn't solve your issues either. Solo v Solo is really boring because its basically just boarding. Better players will jump on your boat, throw a bunch of firebombs, then camp you until your ship sinks. Or just camp you until you scuttle. SoT already has mechanics for avoiding fights. Sloops go fastest against the wind. Brigs are the fastest with full sails. Either are able to outrun and outmaneuver a Galleon. Many solo sloopers hide out on the east side of the map because sloops are far less likely to be wrecked by the volcanoes.

I woudl rather have that than getting harassed by a group of 4+ and having to actively quit the game for a good amount of time because I can’t get anything done or even try to have fun. This was a *constant* issue during the first year or so of the game. After that I said fuck it and just stopped playing entirely until 8 months ago when I tried to jump in again. Same exact issue happened. I loved what I played, but the community was trash and the constant griefing was tiresome.
 

Lasha

Member
How does it “break the game”? It gives players another avenue to enjoy the world that was created. Let people earn progression solo if they so choose without the fear of being harassed/ganked by players. If you still want the seas to feel dangerous, add more variations of skeleton AI ships to attack you.



I woudl rather have that than getting harassed by a group of 4+ and having to actively quit the game for a good amount of time because I can’t get anything done or even try to have fun. This was a *constant* issue during the first year or so of the game. After that I said fuck it and just stopped playing entirely until 8 months ago when I tried to jump in again. Same exact issue happened. I loved what I played, but the community was trash and the constant griefing was tiresome.

The entire premise of SoT is risk versus reward. You search for treasure as a hunter and you play as prey while you sail to an outpost to turn in your loot. Solo PVE servers take away any risk which in turn destroys the entire premise.

You wrote that you "loved what you played" but what game were you playing? It sounds like you want to play a completely different game. Skull and Bones is going to be more your speed since it is designed as a single player PvE experience. SoT is doing well. Players keep enjoying the world that was created and adapting to its rules. You can either learn how to play the game within its constraints or leave for any of the thousands of other PvE games which contain the features you care about.
 
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Havoc2049

Member
Solid update. Of course right after I bought the Uber-expensive complete Dark Adventurer set and the Legendary Veil set, they start charging gold for every little thing. 🤣

I think the quickest way to earn gold is doing the Legend of the Veil Athena mission. Do two or three back to back, while stacking the emmisary missions, lowering and raising the emissary flag in between each mission. Then complete the emmisary missions to finish it all off. All that new Athena loot is worth tons, and of course the Athena chests and kegs.

With stuff like Forts of the Damned and Forts of Fortune, they can become long drawn out battles that attract everyone and their mother to your location and you can end up earning no money at all. Unless of course you set up a server alliance.


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The entire premise of SoT is risk versus reward. You search for treasure as a hunter and you play as prey while you sail to an outpost to turn in your loot. Solo PVE servers take away any risk which in turn destroys the entire premise.

You wrote that you "loved what you played" but what game were you playing? It sounds like you want to play a completely different game. Skull and Bones is going to be more your speed since it is designed as a single player PvE experience. SoT is doing well. Players keep enjoying the world that was created and adapting to its rules. You can either learn how to play the game within its constraints or leave for any of the thousands of other PvE games which contain the features you care about.

You can still have risk vs reward without having to force people to deal with griefing asshats. Piloting a ship is great, fighting skeletons is fun, raiding forts is fantastic, doing story content is addictive - that is why I loved what I played. What I don’t love is playing with other players or being griefed by them.

As I said before, improve the enemy AI, have increasingly dangerous odds going for treasures, icnreasing “aggro” range to skeleton ai ships. The more loot you carry, the higher that aggro is.

It isn’t a difficult concept and games have provided this level of challenge and risk vs reward gameplay for decades.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
The Gameplay loop is terrible. You spending 550 hours doesn't un-prove that.
Everyone has an opinion and yours is as valid as everyone else’s. It’s probably just best to say this type of game isn’t for you.

There’s an insane number of people playing this on Steam, look at the monthly player counts. A peak concurrent player count of 25k is a bad month for this game, and that’s not including Xbox and the Microsoft Store Front on PC. Clearly it’s doing something right for a lot of people.
 

Lasha

Member
Your continued need to remove context from arguments to push disingenuous assertions is petty and childish. Is the concept of opening up the game to more players that triggering for you?

An argument implies that I want to change your mind. I don't. SoT being a PvPvE sandbox is not an opinion I need to justify either. Rare intentionally designed SoT around constant PvP risk and has always justified it's choices. Your best bet is to wait for private event servers. You will be able to enjoy all of the gameplay you love without affecting anybody else by altering the foundations of the game.
 
An argument implies that I want to change your mind. I don't. SoT being a PvPvE sandbox is not an opinion I need to justify either. Rare intentionally designed SoT around constant PvP risk and has always justified it's choices. Your best bet is to wait for private event servers. You will be able to enjoy all of the gameplay you love without affecting anybody else by altering the foundations of the game.

You have yet to even answer *how* that affects the foundations of the game Or how it affects other users.

All it sounds like is that you don’t want people to have another avenue to enjoy the game.
 

Havoc2049

Member
You can still have risk vs reward without having to force people to deal with griefing asshats. Piloting a ship is great, fighting skeletons is fun, raiding forts is fantastic, doing story content is addictive - that is why I loved what I played. What I don’t love is playing with other players or being griefed by them.

As I said before, improve the enemy AI, have increasingly dangerous odds going for treasures, icnreasing “aggro” range to skeleton ai ships. The more loot you carry, the higher that aggro is.

It isn’t a difficult concept and games have provided this level of challenge and risk vs reward gameplay for decades.
It's an MMO pirate game called Sea of THIEVES, so getting your loot pirated or taking other peoples loot is part of the fun and part of the gameplay loop. Hell, the whole point of the Reaper faction in Sea of Thieves is to pirate, cause mayhem, sink other ships and turn in their emissary flag. The battle between the Trading Companies and The Reaper's is a classic battle of good vs evil and part of the lore of Sea of Thieves. Rare just had a season long story loop with a bunch of linked Sea of Thieves Adventures, culminating in a big community battle between The Trading Companies and The Reaper's to either save or destroy Golden Sands.

But, as the old saying goes, "If you can't beat them join them."
Become part of the community! Join a Discord or Facebook Sea of Thieves group and get a server alliance going. There are always server alliance posts on Looking For Group (LFG). That way you can grind Tall Tales, grindy achievements and accommodations, and earn tons of gold without the risk of getting sunk in PVP. Plus, you get to meet a bunch of cool people from all over the world and have a good time.
 
It's an MMO pirate game called Sea of THIEVES, so getting your loot pirated or taking other peoples loot is part of the fun and part of the gameplay loop. Hell, the whole point of the Reaper faction in Sea of Thieves is to pirate, cause mayhem, sink other ships and turn in their emissary flag. The battle between the Trading Companies and The Reaper's is a classic battle of good vs evil and part of the lore of Sea of Thieves. Rare just had a season long story loop with a bunch of linked Sea of Thieves Adventures, culminating in a big community battle between The Trading Companies and The Reaper's to either save or destroy Golden Sands.
Which I don’t have a problem with. What I have a problem with is having the same 4 people constantly harass, stalk, and kill you, camping your body and preventing you from playing the game. That is what I mean by “greifing”. Getting sunk and losing 2-3 hours of progress isn’t griefing. Leaving your ship full of loot, going to get more loot, and coming back with no ship is not griefing. Constantly being harassed by the same group for 2-3 hours unable to play the game - that is griefing. It is endlessly frustrating, not fun, and doesn’t promote a “Pirate” game.
 

Thanati

Member
So is this finally worth and fun if I play single player?
It’s great fun in single player. You can easily meet others to play with if you want but it’s so cool just getting on your ship and sailing around.
 
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ManaByte

Gold Member
Which I don’t have a problem with. What I have a problem with is having the same 4 people constantly harass, stalk, and kill you, camping your body and preventing you from playing the game. That is what I mean by “greifing”. Getting sunk and losing 2-3 hours of progress isn’t griefing. Leaving your ship full of loot, going to get more loot, and coming back with no ship is not griefing. Constantly being harassed by the same group for 2-3 hours unable to play the game - that is griefing. It is endlessly frustrating, not fun, and doesn’t promote a “Pirate” game.

Well the game has mechanisms to deal with that. It's not really possible to "corpse camp" because once your ship sinks it'll respawn elsewhere. But if there are a group of people stalking/harassing you; 99% of the time they'll stop if they get sunk out of revenge. If someone is doing that, this is what to do:
  1. Wait for your ship to respawn.
  2. Look on your map for the nearest fort. Forts are always full of gunpowder kegs.
  3. Sail to the nearest fort and get 1-2 kegs, and store them in your crows nest. Most people won't look up there and even if they do; if they explode the keg you'll just lose your mast. Storing the keg below deck will sink your ship if it gets hit.
  4. Sail to the general area where the griefers are. Run to your crows nest and grab a keg.
  5. Jump off your ship into the water. If you can get on their ship, good, detonate the keg below deck and it will sink them if they're not fast enough with repairs.
  6. If you can't get it on their ship, swim underneath it and detonate it right against the hull.
  7. If they're not sunk after that, respawn and then go on their ship and kill them while they're bailing/repairing or detonate your second keg on their ship while they're trying to save it.
Most griefers will give up if they get hit like that. They want the power over people and don't expect someone to fight back against them. Every time I've run into a group like that; they ignored us after we sunk them back.
 

Lasha

Member
Well the game has mechanisms to deal with that. It's not really possible to "corpse camp" because once your ship sinks it'll respawn elsewhere. But if there are a group of people stalking/harassing you; 99% of the time they'll stop if they get sunk out of revenge. If someone is doing that, this is what to do:
  1. Wait for your ship to respawn.
  2. Look on your map for the nearest fort. Forts are always full of gunpowder kegs.
  3. Sail to the nearest fort and get 1-2 kegs, and store them in your crows nest. Most people won't look up there and even if they do; if they explode the keg you'll just lose your mast. Storing the keg below deck will sink your ship if it gets hit.
  4. Sail to the general area where the griefers are. Run to your crows nest and grab a keg.
  5. Jump off your ship into the water. If you can get on their ship, good, detonate the keg below deck and it will sink them if they're not fast enough with repairs.
  6. If you can't get it on their ship, swim underneath it and detonate it right against the hull.
  7. If they're not sunk after that, respawn and then go on their ship and kill them while they're bailing/repairing or detonate your second keg on their ship while they're trying to save it.
Most griefers will give up if they get hit like that. They want the power over people and don't expect someone to fight back against them. Every time I've run into a group like that; they ignored us after we sunk them back.

I sunk a Galleon like this today. The Galleon is especially vulnerable since outside detonations will hit that bottom deck which creates openings to board/anchor/harass/keg more. The latest update decreased the respawn time for solo sloops so you can do all sorts of silly things when chased.
 
Well the game has mechanisms to deal with that. It's not really possible to "corpse camp" because once your ship sinks it'll respawn elsewhere. But if there are a group of people stalking/harassing you; 99% of the time they'll stop if they get sunk out of revenge. If someone is doing that, this is what to do:
  1. Wait for your ship to respawn.
  2. Look on your map for the nearest fort. Forts are always full of gunpowder kegs.
  3. Sail to the nearest fort and get 1-2 kegs, and store them in your crows nest. Most people won't look up there and even if they do; if they explode the keg you'll just lose your mast. Storing the keg below deck will sink your ship if it gets hit.
  4. Sail to the general area where the griefers are. Run to your crows nest and grab a keg.
  5. Jump off your ship into the water. If you can get on their ship, good, detonate the keg below deck and it will sink them if they're not fast enough with repairs.
  6. If you can't get it on their ship, swim underneath it and detonate it right against the hull.
  7. If they're not sunk after that, respawn and then go on their ship and kill them while they're bailing/repairing or detonate your second keg on their ship while they're trying to save it.
Most griefers will give up if they get hit like that. They want the power over people and don't expect someone to fight back against them. Every time I've run into a group like that; they ignored us after we sunk them back.

Thank you for the tips. I will try that I try the game again in a month or so. XBC3 takes priority atm.
 

nikos

Member
Gave this game another shot last night. Finished A Pirate's Life with a friend which took us a little over two hours. Great experience and I can't wait to play more.

I never really knew what to do in this game, which made me feel lost, but I'm realizing it's a gigantic sandbox that you're meant to explore without much direction. Going to try to get over the hump this time and stick with it because there's a really great game here.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
I sunk a Galleon like this today. The Galleon is especially vulnerable since outside detonations will hit that bottom deck which creates openings to board/anchor/harass/keg more. The latest update decreased the respawn time for solo sloops so you can do all sorts of silly things when chased.

Detonating under a galleon will sink it 90% of the time.
 

Lasha

Member
Detonating under a galleon will sink it 90% of the time.

Detonating under a galleon then detonating onboard gets you up to 100%. I feel like a tutorial explaining the joys of kegging would go a long way toward helping new players get acclimated to the game. Too many new players are afraid to store them on their ship.
 
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