Sea of Thieves

[thesnwmn]

1 minute ago, Captain Kelsten said:

Aah that’s fair enough then. It’s definitely not for everyone. I would say it’s not a strange decision, it makes perfect sense given it’s a pirate game and pirates went round sinking each other and nicking each other’s treasure! 
 

But yeah if the thought of someone killing you even once puts you off, you’re probably best to keep away, I’m afraid. Sad, though, because it is such a beautiful world. 

 

That's a very fair point.

 

In some ways it's the same question around difficulty modes and the locking of content behind some level of progress. If I buy* a game can I not play it how I want. Is it not my toy then?

 

If I choose to play in an empty world with no other player pirates (not sure if there are AI pirates) then maybe I'm not having quite the swashbuckling adventure the developer envisioned but I'm maybe still having lots of fun.

 

But of course if I did that I shouldn't sit and complain that my game feels empty. I've chosen that. But I'm sure some people would of course then say the developers need to do more for people like me and suddenly they're making a game that's very different from the one they intended.

 

* And obviously this is "free" on Game Pass so an even blurrier definition

[Boothjan]

I always check the emissary tables at the outpost when I first spawn into the game.

 

Look for the little toy wooden boats - they represent how many ships are on the server as an emissary for that faction.

 

If I want to avoid pvp, I look at the Reapers Bones table. If there are the little boats on there, I'll leave the game and try another server.

 

Of course, this doesn't guarantee you won't be pestered by non-reapers but I reckon 75% of crews who come after you are reaper emissaries.

[SuperCapes]

Check Athena too in the tavern. Those can be pretty aggressive as they all think you are gonna nick their shit. 

 

You will often find that if other emissaries attack they are not quite as frightening as Reapers. Tends to be newer players. Still a battle all the same, but with time you should be able to fend them off at the very least. 

 

This game makes me realise how animalistic we can be with our instincts. Last night we sunk a poor sloop that was on an Ashen Winds island just because we were worried they would intervene. Turned out it was one dude just doing treasure hunts, and I felt guilty as all hell. Until we beat Red Ruth and got all the loot that was!!!

 

We made a cool $200k on our first jaunt out which is not bad at all. Excited to get a proper session going, and I love the idea of progressing towards some of these cosmetics. Gives us a reason to continue outside of just having a good time anyway. 

 

[Captain Kelsten]

Today I crossed paths with a sloop. They messaged me: “you looking to fight or just chill?”  I replied I was just chilling doing voyages. They’d just returned to the game after a while away and were doing Athena voyages to level up. They were confused by how much had been added since they last played, which I said I could empathise with! Anyway, ended up with a lovely conversation and a new friend on Xbox live! 

[Captain Kelsten]

Did I just spend an hour between work calls fishing? Why yes, yes I did. Did I come up with a special fishing outfit just for the purpose? I did indeed! 

[SuperCapes]

I just solo'd an Ashen Winds only to have a sneaky bugger try and nick my stuff!

 

They then tried to put a chest of the damned on my ship, but I managed to fend them off before slipping away with most the loot. I managed to sell it before turning to fight. After about 30 minutes I sacrificed my boat to defeat them on theirs. A few minutes later they slipped beneath the waves. 

 

Was great fun! 

[SuperCapes]

So just did our first Athena quest in the form of Legend of the Veil. This game is bananas. Truly bananas. 

 

Was a sensational experience. My mates nephew bless him was incredible on patching duty, but got unlucky when he got wiped, and then we got destroyed by tonnes of cannon balls. He spawned back but we couldn't save the ship, so he fished all the loot out the water and put it on the stairs of the fort, whilst we went and got another ship. 

 

We were able to still hit Athena 3 from the loot at the end anyway and it added to the experience! 

 

Was absolutely class. We celebrated by spending a few million in the shops O.O

 

Back on again on Friday night to help the lad hit Pirate Legend since me and my mate hit it the other day. 

 

This is my GOTY (released pre 2022) for this year's vote. 100%!!!

[Captain Kelsten]

I’m on 40/35/37 for gold/souls/merchants now. So close to legend! 

[SuperCapes]

Thats awesome @Captain Kelsten!!!

 

it is pretty exponential, so you will fly through the last few ranks honestly. Just aim for world events if you enjoy them! The loot is amazing! 

[Captain Kelsten]

Can you solo/duo world events, though? 
 

And by world events you mean the big skulls in the sky, right? 

[SuperCapes]

1 minute ago, Captain Kelsten said:

Can you solo/duo world events, though? 
 

And by world events you mean the big skulls in the sky, right? 

 

Yup yup! 

 

I would advise duo at the least, especially to get used to them! There is alot of risk associated with them for sure, but the rewards are ace.

 

I would suggest Ashen Winds (the red tornado) even in solo. Just blunderbus and charged sword attacks. They all have bosses which are nails and have so much health but there are ways to make them easier! Tridents! Four tridents take down a skeleton lord (around about). Parking a ship and cannonballing is another option, but risky as the lord's can just fire bomb your ship and it's a nightmare as a solo player. As a duo though, always use the ship cannonball strat. Get one player to lure the boss to the boat and go to town! 

 

Give them a whirl as a duo for sure. They can take ages at first but you get the swing of it in no time. Charged sword attacks are your friend most the time. The skull islands have wave after wave, and the best way to go is run, let them build up behind you, flick around charge attack repeat. You will be flying in no time!!! 

 

Most importantly enjoy it! And check the horizon every few minutes

 

[Captain Kelsten]

Today in what was meant to be a quick 20 min fishing trip between work calls, I sailed from Ancient Spire to Devil’s Ridge, fished up 5 different types of Pondies, sailed to Stephen’s Spoils to hand them in, realised there’s no Hunter’s Call rep there, made my way to North Star Seapost, got attacked by a skeleton sloop and Galleon, crashed into a rock whilst bailing and they were shooting cannons at me, grabbed my crate of Pondies, jumped over board, watched my ship sink, swam for 3 map squares fighting off sharks before pulling myself onto the jetty, handing in the Pondies and getting the “Hunter of Pondies” title. 
 

Pathetic as it is, I’m now very proud of that title

 

[moosegrinder]

So the other day 2 guys got on my ship while docked and told me to surrender, presumably under threat of being blown up with an Athena barrel. Well...

 

 

[SuperCapes]

Just had the greatest couple of hours of our Thievin' ever. Truly amazing.

 

So I jumped on before waiting for my buddy. Sloop under my feet, I went for the nearest Fort of Fortune. It finishes as I approach it and see a Galleon, which has the PvP flag raised. Athena Level 5...

 

I engage solo. Why not! Chain shot their main mast, couple of cannonballs before I get boarded and taken out. Some language and trolling was used against me and I was laughing and having a good time... They sank me and started using some very offensive slurs. Homophobia and Racism is not a problem for these it would seem. The dirty bastards. 

 

My friend pops on just as the new boat spawns and we bomb it straight for them. Couple of cannonballs and fending off three boarders their ship hits the sea floor in no time at all, with many a curse coming our way. Laughing at their deserved destruction one starts sniping from the island. My mate scoops their sunken loot and I head over to tidy them up. We see them absolutely flying towards us, so we make sails for the nearest outpost, but knowing we could sell next to nothing I jump overboard with the Chest of Legends in hand, and we dupe them out of it. They catch my mate and sink him scooping their loot back...

 

HOWEVER!!!!!!

 

This will not deter us against the awful act of true toxic online behaviour (I swear and get angry sometimes, possibly in a toxic way, but never do I throw slurs of any kind. Not even fucking close). 

 

We hop back in and make chase once more. We ram them only to be sunk straight away. Pull our kegs up and set sail for them again! This time... with just the cannonballs on a fresh boat, absolutely lay waste to them, but they just survive. I swear, if we had another stack of cannonballs it would have been game over. My shot was cracked for once, and I was repeatedly confirming hits. Felt incredible. We are not caring of success at this point, as stealing their Chest of Legends and wasting their time, is success enough, but we take another punt...

 

They have decided to park up at the nearest outpost knowing we will not surrender, and as they are harpooning their loot onto the new dolly, we fly in and sink their Galleon whilst fending them off from boarding us. Three left on the Island, I go wild Pistol in hand. One dead. Two dead. The third running trying to cash anything in (freshly scooped for us onto the dolly) I pistol him in the back, and once more for good measure. SILENCE. Not a word from them. We scoop what is left out of the water and cash everything in, only a few skulls missing, to net a sweet 80,000 for our efforts, but more importantly, success over the worst kind of gamer. 

 

We then find them waiting at Reapers as we approached with their Bounty Chest, but manage to rope a dope them and get the sell before they could. We even managed to sell their book for the absolute comedy of it all. 

 

That is our best Tale so far, on the Sea of Thieves.

 

 

[Boothjan]

I love posts like this. Bravo, sir! 

[Captain Kelsten]

2 hours ago, SuperCapes said:

Just had the greatest couple of hours of our Thievin' ever. Truly amazing.

 

So I jumped on before waiting for my buddy. Sloop under my feet, I went for the nearest Fort of Fortune. It finishes as I approach it and see a Galleon, which has the PvP flag raised. Athena Level 5...

 

I engage solo. Why not! Chain shot their main mast, couple of cannonballs before I get boarded and taken out. Some language and trolling was used against me and I was laughing and having a good time... They sank me and started using some very offensive slurs. Homophobia and Racism is not a problem for these it would seem. The dirty bastards. 

 

My friend pops on just as the new boat spawns and we bomb it straight for them. Couple of cannonballs and fending off three boarders their ship hits the sea floor in no time at all, with many a curse coming our way. Laughing at their deserved destruction one starts sniping from the island. My mate scoops their sunken loot and I head over to tidy them up. We see them absolutely flying towards us, so we make sails for the nearest outpost, but knowing we could sell next to nothing I jump overboard with the Chest of Legends in hand, and we dupe them out of it. They catch my mate and sink him scooping their loot back...

 

HOWEVER!!!!!!

 

This will not deter us against the awful act of true toxic online behaviour (I swear and get angry sometimes, possibly in a toxic way, but never do I throw slurs of any kind. Not even fucking close). 

 

We hop back in and make chase once more. We ram them only to be sunk straight away. Pull our kegs up and set sail for them again! This time... with just the cannonballs on a fresh boat, absolutely lay waste to them, but they just survive. I swear, if we had another stack of cannonballs it would have been game over. My shot was cracked for once, and I was repeatedly confirming hits. Felt incredible. We are not caring of success at this point, as stealing their Chest of Legends and wasting their time, is success enough, but we take another punt...

 

They have decided to park up at the nearest outpost knowing we will not surrender, and as they are harpooning their loot onto the new dolly, we fly in and sink their Galleon whilst fending them off from boarding us. Three left on the Island, I go wild Pistol in hand. One dead. Two dead. The third running trying to cash anything in (freshly scooped for us onto the dolly) I pistol him in the back, and once more for good measure. SILENCE. Not a word from them. We scoop what is left out of the water and cash everything in, only a few skulls missing, to net a sweet 80,000 for our efforts, but more importantly, success over the worst kind of gamer. 

 

We then find them waiting at Reapers as we approached with their Bounty Chest, but manage to rope a dope them and get the sell before they could. We even managed to sell their book for the absolute comedy of it all. 

 

That is our best Tale so far, on the Sea of Thieves.

 

 

[Mars]

I've never played this but love watching the TCGS 'Sea of Friends' sessions on YouTube. Very chill. 

[moosegrinder]

Had some shenanigans with my nephew last night. He's 1500 hours deep into it and stupidly proficient in solo pirating. Like, shoot over to a galleon, wipe out the crew, get back to the ship and finish pirate legend quests proficient. Oh to be 22 again and have that kind of commitment.

Anyway we were doing something to do with Athena which meant searching some ship wrecks then going off the map to some forts, shooting them, looting them, getting out. We drew the attention of a Gold Hoarder Emissary galleon which I was informed must be either a) new to the game or b) a PUG group/rando crew. They spent a good 40 minutes chasing us around the massive typhoon that spawns in this area to try and sink us but we just out maneuvered them at every turn. Hand brake turns in a fucking sloop, man. So good. They were trying to fight off ghost ships and our attacks and my Captain shooting himself over to take them out that they just gave up and tried to camp an outpost they thought we'd go to. So we looted the fort and went to a different one.

I'd like to say I played my part (I'm ok on the cannons) but I basically just kept repairing shit while our Ben did all the heavy lifting and reaped all the rewards. Hurrah!

[Captain Kelsten]

Played some with my brother tonight, duo sloop shenanigans on the good  ship Cranky Crab (so called because it creaks and groans but is good in a pinch!).

 

We spy a shipwreck poking out of the water. I say to him “did you know if you crash into shipwrecks it doesn’t damage your ship, so it’s a good way to stop the boat? Look, watch!”

 

I ram the shipwreck with the prow of my ship, my ship flips into the air, spins round repeatedly and lands about 50ft away upside down in the water, with about 100k’s worth of treasure on board. 
 

Weirdly, though, it’s not actually sinking. The game just thinks down is up and up is down now (reminded me of that bit in Pirates of the Caribbean At World’s End!). I could manipulate the sails, I could even turn the wheel, but I couldn’t flip it over. 
 

Eventually I decided to lower the sails and the ship drops me into the ocean and shoots off like a rocket, still upside down in the water! 
 

Eventually it seemed to right itself and a mermaid got me back on board - thankfully all the treasure still accounted for! 
 

I had hoped to capture it but Xbox only does a minute recording and I spent the first minute saying “what the fuck?” And laughing my ass off

 

[moosegrinder]

RE: Xbox recording: You can change it to 3 minutes if you drop the quality to 720p.

 

Edit: and record much longer if you have an external HDD attached that's formatted correctly.

[moosegrinder]

It's been a while since I've played a game that swings me from "This is so good!" to "I fucking hate this fucking game and want to throw my Xbox out of a window".

 

I thought I'd try and grind some Order Of Souls rep, so I bought the relevant captaincy bundle and set off for Shipwreck Bay. 4 named skellys on there so I expected it to be a bit of a chore. The very first skelly plus his crew that I came across would not die. Like at all. Sword or pistol, nothing took them down. Are skeletons harder at night? Is that a thing? They went down eventually (not sure if it being dawn played a part) but just made me think the games combat is awful; just circle strafe, get caught on scenery, sprint and eat, reload, repeat. The next 3 went down much easier, so I got my 4 skulls and went back to hand them in as this was roughly 40 minutes work.

Got back and handed them in and all 4 skulls barely got me a quarter around the rep icon. The bundle from the shipwright gave me 8 quests but Jesus, is it that stingy? What's the best way to grind rep because this small escapade just makes me think this game doesn't give a fuck about your time. All the stories in here are ace but all seem to be from a good couple of hours of gadding about on the seas and I just can't play games like that any more. I keep going back because there's a lot to like about this game, bit I think it's about time I just admitted to myself I'm much happier playing it in multiplayer and stop trying to convince myself I can solo it.

[Captain Kelsten]

There are various types of skeleton. 
 

Normal skeletons

 

Plant skeletons - keep them out of water or they heal

 

Shadow skeletons - hold up your lantern to make them corporeal and then hit them

 

Gold skeletons - bring them into water or throw water onto them to slow them down

 

Coral skeletons - think these are the same as normal ones 

[Captain Kelsten]

Also, yes, the game is a time sink. It’s just full grind. Grind for gold, grind for cosmetics, grind for rep, grind for commendations and now now, grind for ship and pirate milestones. But this isn’t world of Warcraft or any other game with vertical progression and power creep. It’s all cosmetic. It means nothing. It’s fancy clothes and ship bits and dress up. So don’t worry how much rep or gold, don’t worry how much time, don’t worry if you lose everything, just enjoy your time on the waves. And if you’re not enjoying it, stop playing. The game doesn’t deserve your time if you feel your time is being wasted. 
 

I completely understand where you’re coming from, too - the reason  I’ve stopped playing this a couple of times is because it always took too long to accomplish anything of value, it could be frustrating as hell and I felt I had better things to do with my time. I think what’s helped this time is that my son is playing with me, there’s loads more to do than when last I played, the sea forts can be done usually in 10-15 mins if that and get some decent rewards. That’s not to say there hasn’t been a few times I’ve almost rage quit due to someone attacking me for no reason other than to do so or spawn camping me etc! 
 

It’s definitely more fun in multiplayer - even playing with my son, which is almost the same as solo slooping as I have to do almost all the work - is more fun. Message me next time you’re on and we shall sail together.  

[moosegrinder]

38 minutes ago, Captain Kelsten said:

There are various types of skeleton. 
 

Normal skeletons

 

Plant skeletons - keep them out of water or they heal

 

Shadow skeletons - hold up your lantern to make them corporeal and then hit them

 

Gold skeletons - bring them into water or throw water onto them to slow them down

 

Coral skeletons - think these are the same as normal ones 

 

God I wish I knew these before. My sword bounced off the gold ones and I had to keep going back to the ship to reload as there was literally no ammo crate on the tiny island I was doing a different bounty on. The sword skeletons don't drop ammo (which makes sense).

 

It keeps pulling me back, mind. I wish I could play for the stories like a lot of people do but I need quantifiable stimulation. I need them numbers to go up. 

[Captain Kelsten]

Today I did two gold hoarder voyages in the devil’s roar. There has to be a way to get all that treasure solo! 
 

Anyway, made a bum load of gold, bought my Brig, “The Lucky Lobster” 

[Captain Kelsten]

What I like to do before I log in is have some idea of what I want to do. I find that way my time feels less wasted.
 

For example, on Thursday I decided to do that Pondie fishing for the title.

 

Then yesterday, I decided my son and I were going to do a tour of all the ghost forts, which proved very profitable. 
 

This morning, I decided to do Gold Hoarder voyages in the Devil’s Roar. 
 

This evening, I woke up on Golden Sands Outpost so decided to collect all the lore bits in the area for Umbra, unlocking two sweet new tattoos for my trouble. I made zero money on this session. I didn’t collect any treasure, I didn’t emissary up, it was just a nice relaxing evening sailing around the Ancient Isles finding books, paintings, carvings and other odd small lore bits to add flavour to the world.  
 

In other news, Gold Hoarders at 50! Then decided to level Order through voyages - those ghost ship battles do NOT seem worth the time or effort. 

[Captain Kelsten]

 

The next adventure, Hunter’s Cry, is out on the 18th. This is the first I’ll be able to take part in! 
 

 

[Captain Kelsten]

Look at this handsome old rogue. He’s got some stories to tell, I bet. 

[Boothjan]

First go since the launch of season 7 last night - I love the captaincy update. 

 

I always wanted more stats and they've definitely delivered in that sense! It's also given every faction a new lease of life.

 

I'm up to level 75 with gold hoarders, order of souls and Merchants so having all the new captaincy levels to grind is great. Can't remember what captain voyage I chose but it was pretty big - a vault key mission as well as riddles and treasure maps. Took me ages and ended up with 200k gold and a level 5 gold hoarders emissary rating.

 

Think I'll be on this a lot over the next few months. 

[Boothjan]

The new adventure is cool - but I hadn't a bloody clue WHAT was happening until it was all over! 

 

I do like it when they attempt to get different crews working together.  I'm aware that there are some idiots out there trying to sabotage other people's progress but fortunately I met several crews who were all working together, so I managed to get my commendations.

 

I will now be grinding loads so I can unlock and afford some trinkets for the Molly New.  And the Booty Squall when I get round to buying a galleon...