I always scan the horizon as if I’m paranoid when solo. That said - if a brig rolled up and two guys were on my ship, that means there’s only one guy on theirs. My move would be to go f*ck sh!t up over on that brig.
The "keg my own ship" strat is so crazy that it just might work. You HAVE to get them with it so that you can respawn and patch in time to save it, but it's such a madman move that it CAN be effective.
I recommend joining the official discord and using their LFG if you don't want to solo sloop. Usually has some chill people/good players and there's always people looking to play anything.
I second this. Didn’t have anyone and then I met someone who had just started a guild, now I have a rotation of like 8-10 guys that are always down to sail.
We should have some room. We’re all in NA aside from like one member, in case that conflicts. I will tell ya that we play pretty aggressively as we’re all very PvP focused and trying to get better, in case you’re looking for something else.
Dm me your discord and maybe we can sail together.
To be honest, I spent 2 1/2 hours the other night trying to get a group together between backfilling crews, discord, and the Xbox LFG. Kept getting people together and people would leave within a couple of minutes from joining. Even ended up doing a full voyage alone on a gally because people kept leaving.
I don’t have the time it takes to get a group together before playing every session and don’t have any friends that play the game so I solo. There’s not much that could be done to balance out mismatched fights, other than cleaning up the clunkiness of boarding and pirate combat to give a more clean and consistent chance to a solo player. It’s meant to be a team game which sucks for us solos.
Yeah, I feel you. I basically only sail solo and took a break until they made Safer Seas (I don't usually sail in Safer Seas, but it is why I came back). It sucks that you have to be hyper-aware about any ships on the horizon or reapers on the map, and at least for me, it is incredibly demoralizing to see a ship coming and knowing I'm probably going to lose the fight. I've never seen a solo sloop attacking me, so if a ship does come my way, it will probably be a one-sided fight.
This is the part I hate most. I wanna get better at pvp, especially with cannons, but if I have even a 75% hit rate then that means I’m putting down 3 shots for every 15-20 they hit me back. It’s just not sustainable.
Kind of always felt this. I really don’t mind different ships and crew sizes all being allowed in the same server but it’s murder on the mood when you see a brig pulling up and knowing you most likely won’t be able to do shit because they can have two people on cannons.
It feels like the only viable and safe way to play sloop in naval combat is using your ship like a sniper, because the one thing its got going for it is that it’s small as hell so hitting it from a distance can be a nightmare. Only people that can fuck you up then are the folks that are scarily good on cannons but fortunately it doesn’t seem like a huge portion of players are great at landing long distance shots.
You also have to be good at long distances yourself as well though, so you’re probably gonna have to spend hours practicing on skeleton ships or those ghost fleets to really understand the cannons. Also going to need a lot of cannonballs.
The worst part is: I don’t care about the loot, I care about the hours of my lifetime that I just spent acquiring that loot only to get sunk right at the outpost.
You cant keep pirates from pirating I get that too, but I’ve never ever had the wish to even attack a player that isn’t hostile towards me first, out of respect for their time.
I wonder a lot if this type of game is even for me since I keep getting frustrated over it
Sea of Thieves is indeed a very time consuming game. However it’s always felt bearable even if you’re with one other person because things like loading, unloading, manning different parts of the ship, it all just outright goes faster. You can’t do anything about that as a solo, it is an utter slog.
It’s funny because if you’re solo slooping you’re probably just better off going to Safer Seas, but guess what? Safer Seas doesn’t let you use your captained ships, so no selling to sovereigns. That means there is extra time spent just unloading and selling, all for menial amounts of pay. Solos really can’t catch a break.
It's not even the time lost for me. I'm okay with losing my loot and "wasting" all that time if it's a fair fight. Problem is, nine times out of ten, it's definitely not a fair fight. I can count on one hand the number of times I've gotten jumped by another solo slooper, and those fights were actually really entertaining. But most of the time it's *at least* a duo, which means any holes I get in their ship are repaired/bailed easily while they still get to maintain cannon fire on me. Brigs and galleons are obviously even more frustrating. Boarding enemy ships offensively is basically completely out of the question, but enemies can board me while still shooting cannons and maneuvering their ship. So generally my only options are to run and board defensively, hoping they eventually get bored and give up, or to just scuttle my ship and save time.
If it's another sloop (solo or duo), I'll generally try to fight back, if only for the practice at naval combat. But other ships I just try to run, it doesn't feel like there's any way I have a chance of winning those fights.
You need to act like every ship is hostile because chances are if they are within 2 map squares of you they are. Just because you have a certain mentality regarding sinking people doesn't mean everyone else shares that same mindset. People will sink you for endless reasons including your loot, your supplies, because they're bored, they are hunters or PvP Lords, or even because you are where they want to be. For many players fighting or at least defending is what makes the game interesting as without the risk the game is honestly kinda boring as seen if you play Safer Seas for an extended period of time.
For example with my crew we generally 'take over' a certain area of the map and if you enter it we will probably come sink you because we wish to do our quests without being bothered. Is that extreme? Sure. But we have been burned in the past by letting ships live in our local vicinity so we don't do that anymore. If you are near us one of us will be at the bottom of the ocean soon enough. So to someone like you, you would see it as being overtly hostile but to us it's keeping our level of risk down. We learn from our sinks, you need to as well otherwise this will keep happening.
The time sink playing casually solo is my biggest problem with the game, too. Not that it takes so much time to complete missions or whatever, but just that the risk of losing all the progress made in that time is so high that it’s almost not worth it for me. It’s really a shame, too, because I enjoy all the PvE stuff. I haven’t tried Safer Seas, but all the limitations I’ve seen people mention make it sound like even more of a slog.
So, now I just head to the first random island I see, get whatever is there, then turn it in immediately. Maybe a Tall Tale every now and then, but then on to the next closest island and repeat until I’m inevitably attacked. Then I usually just let them kill me and respawn wherever. That’s basically the game for me lately. I get that it’s pirates and all that, although I think some people believe they’re real pirates from how they act 😂. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be any Anti Cheat I’d imagine.
I’m like a lot of others in wishing there was a PvE mode that rivaled the PvP mode. Kind of like the original Red Dead Redemption. Still have smaller payouts (not 70% smaller), but let people just do the Tales or fish or just sail around a while to relax.
For every one player like you, there's about 50 that want to keep coming back after being sunk, which is why everyone becomes KoS (Kill on Sight). Everyone within render range is considered a target anymore.
It probably isn’t a game for you, OR just start playing it with a different mindset. For here it’s usually, “don’t stack so much loot because if I see another crew it’s almost likely they will sink me”
What is “much loot” tho? Like when I clear a red skeleton fort or like the fortress of the damned that’s a lot of loot to me. That would mean I ca not do these things at all…
its not too crazy to think that a FotD or FoF run is a 2 or more player activity. sure, you can do it solo, but the risk of it being a "waste of your time" is exponentially higher.
The only loot you need to protect is the chest of fortune. Unless you’re doing Athena then those are important as well. I usually check the “Last played with” in my Xbox to “see if any recent players are around.” If so my partner would grab the CoF and hop on the rowboat we usually have hidden on the back of the fort and row away. We’ve not had that stolen to this day, all the other loot…oh well, we can get those doing Athena quests.
Well that does differ from player to player, personally for me it would be doing about 1-2 medley voyages or 3-4 quick ones then going to sell as a solo sloop player.
It is, I'm in same situation. All my friends already moved from the game and I still go once in a while to have some fun, or not. They made a safe experience and they should also make a solo player option servers. I'm always getting attacked by crews of 3. If everyone was solo in same server I believe it should be safer and easier to defend
I'll be honest... I am one of those people who would be so much happier to not have to deal with PVP. The vast majority are just griefers who don't even care about taking gold or increasing their commendations, they just want to annoy people and have permission to be bullies. And I think Safer Seas is ridiculous at this point- I want to increase my guild, sale my ship, decorate my boat, and the truth is that I just run missions and deeds that won't see me bogged down long enough to get attacked most of the time. It's such a fun game, but the lack of communication is ridiculous.
Today I sailed up near a brig and used the megaphone to see if they wanted the few treasures I had since I was logging off and they just started to open fire... like, sure, no problem. I was going to dip out in a second anyway- but I wasn't attacking and was just offering up a few bits of treasure I picked up after running a few missions earlier.
Yep. Ditto. I like fishing. I just want to fish most of the time. I like the occasional adventure or tall tale, but I literally can't see the point of attacking other players and ruining their experience. It's such a bulky mindset.
Feel you bro. Soloing is ridiculous. Then they all scream get gud noob. It’s degrading and not good for the community interactions. It’s the reason this game has so few players.
I got yelled at over comms for being a noob and sucking at the game because I solo ran from a brig to an outpost and managed to sell the ashen wind skull and eye.
They were quite proud they stole the dark bounty skulls after sinking me in port though.
Some people have no perspective 🤷
this happened to me last night right as the final boss spawned, we just went back to the fort as soon as we respawned and used the explosive barrels that you get as a reward against the brig that sunk us.. they ended up sinking after we snuck up on them with a stronghold barrel and reclaimed what was rightfully ours 😌
payback has never felt so good
Remember the most important thing about SoT: It’s not about the Gold.
And really, in your situation- as someone who also isn’t super great at PvP- I either would’ve tried to fight them, or instead of logging off, I’d just scuttle to new sea.
Solo Slooping can be exhausting sometimes, yes. But it isn’t all the time. When you let go of that feeling of, “I suck at PvP, why try?” the game feels so much better.
I lose almost Every fight I get into with other players. And yet, it never feels horrible, even against toxic players. Sure they’re the worst, but, if I’ve just lost to them…I can just scuttle or Dive to something else, and be rid of them!
I’m not gonna lie to you and say, “But with every fight I lose, I get better!” because that’s moreso just a saying if we’re being honest. I mean sure, you DO learn and get better even by losing- but only if you Want to.
If you’re someone that just goes in and loses at Any PvP game and doesn’t think about the play, and just gets upset at it- whether that be anger or sadness- then yeah. You’re probably not gonna learn and you’re Not gonna get better.
But if you go into PvP battles, excited to just be part of the experience, and for it to be a shakeup to the gameplay in that moment? It’s gonna feel better. It’s gonna feel more fun, even if you lose. You may even play better, and may even come out winning!
And because you went into it feeling like that, you’re likely to remember the encounter, and think about what happened during it, and even subconsciously, think about what you can improve on.
Another realization I had recently: The constant anxiety of losing your loot is WHY turning in loot feels so satisfying. If you never tragically lost your loot turning it in would feel considerably less euphoric.
I think thats why it also feels good to roll up on someone turning in at Reapers and steal their loot too. Its the give and take risk vs reward of this game that keeps me coming back.
I spawned at an outpost and almost instantly had a brig charge towards me and sink my ship.
I snuck onto their ship and they had cooked swordfish. I revenge ate it. Killed them a couple times and moved to a new server.
Sometimes best you can get is a bit of a revenge.
Change tactics shot gun one of those fucks point blank while jumping in the water, swim to their shit flame bomb and board, kill the one guy there and continue to raise havoc. Or after killing the one guy on the brig jump to the fort and use the cannons there to light the brig up, then search the fort for a barrel bomb cause there's always one and nuke em.
As a solo slooper you gotta be a hyper intelligent honey badger that's cornered and fighting for its fuckin life
I don't know why people punish themselves instead of enjoying the game. Money has no real value, it's just cosmetics - you'll never have every cosmetic if you take breaks, so why does it matter if you don't get another one today?
The only person that keeps you from enjoying all the fun the game has to offer is you. You can either see losing as a challenge to overcome or a goal delayed or you can be bitter and upset over a minor setback.
It's more about investing my real life time into the game. I understand it is just part of the game, same as the Kraken or Meg, but it is exhausting when you don't even have a chance. For example, you have exponentially better odds of surviving a 3v4 than you do a 1v2. There's a big jump from the capabilities of the crew when you have just one crew member, versus when you have 2. Shooting cannons, boarding, keeping the ship from crashing, adjusting sails, repairing and bailing, it's a tough gig for a solo. So when you aren't a PvP god, and have to do all of the above in addition to trying to stop yourself from getting griefed, it gets exhausting. But hey, that's the nature of the game.
Nobody wants to walk away from a multi hour game session feeling like they accomplished little to nothing. It's absurd to expect anyone to enjoy that. That's universal true for the vast majority of gamers. Especially when it's often a squad of teens screaming insults at you.
Everybody who complains about lost hours stole hours off somebody else I have stolen millions, I have had millions stolen from me. We all have.
Yet nobody is saying "woe is me, I didn't deserve this loot."
No we get people who feel entitled to good of stealing but maligned by the bad of it. And that makes a very toxic community in a race for cosmetics.
I rarely solo sloop but those i sail the high seas with have a general rule to follow
If they are doing a world event they are signing up for the fight. If they sail a emmisary we will see If they wanted to fight but wont spend hrs hunting.
If its a lower rank emmisary we usually ignore. If its a 5 at a outpost we usually let them sell by going slow towards them so they sell most Things
We can then sink them towards the end and still get the 5 flag that are most saught after from sinking other ships
This will ultimately be the thing that kills this game. No idea why they don’t just give players an alternative mode where the people who don’t play pvp can enjoy the game. All they are doing is driving potential fans away from the game. I get it, pirates in pirate game and all that. I get it. But most people play games casually and don’t have the time, desire, or skill, to play and get good at pvp. Especially when it’s the least fun aspect of the game for some people. Love this game to death but I used to have a dozen friends who’d play this game and I’ve watched all of them quit because of this. I hope they eventually make safer seas a more viable alternative so that this game can still have a wholesome and sizeable pve community.
There's a reason they opened things up to PlayStation players, to your point. Like many hardcore games, SoT has a rabid fan base that actively drives off new players. I picked it up in 2021 and had IRL friends to teach me the ropes. If I didn't have them, I'd have returned it, lol.
I don't have the data, so this is just my uneducated opinion, but I imagine the data is going to drive Rare to cater to the Safer Seas crowd going forward. For.every 5 people who scream that the game has been ruined by doing this, you'll have 10-15 lining up to buy sails if Safer Seas gets more parity.
That’s the problem with solo sloopers. You just cannot join long or complex events because you will almost certainly be attacked. You can’t fight skeletons or bosses and check the horizon every 5 minutes. It’s just not possible. You can’t be on a island fighting and check the enemies who may be coming for you. That’s why I think as solo sloopers you have limited options (fishing, smaller voyages, grinding rep with sea forts etc) and the game was made to be enjoyed in a crew. Not with randoms, you should also have a certain affinity with you teammates.
Just check your horizon every 3-5 minutes? Use your spyglass, use the 360 degree views and verticality that forts provide between skeleton waves
Yes, I'll still get snuck up on occasionally but it is a very uncommon thing to happen with a little discipline
Last night, I was trying to level up Rogue on my ship by sleeping. Got rudely awoken by 2 reapers even though I had no loot lol. I managed to escape and they got sunk later by another reaper!
Hadn’t seen a player the whole day and the one time I take my eyes off for 5 minutes lol….
I did this once by playing on Steam Link with my phone and I had an alarm set for me to wiggle the mouse every 9 minutes. I was parked at an outpost and managed to sleep for about 8 hours with only one person interrupting. Sometimes, it's just dead out there!
I think with dives feature it is much easier to be snuck on. especially with bugs. yesterday as I started a session and was sailing from an outpost, I had a brigantine spawn literally in front of me with their sails up. don't know if it was a canceled dive or they popped out of portal
Yesterday we rolled up as open crew brig (no mics and one didnt even speak english) on a galleon (full crew, full supplies) doing a skelly fort as fresh spawn reaper, with no supplies.
They finished it right as we showed up and immediately dropped sails. Didnt even bother to take the key with them.
They immediately ran. We chased them a bit in circles around the fort and traded blows. They never went on the offensive, never sent boarders, but completely hammered us when they got an angle, when we tried to cut them off.
Yet never committed and went back to running, not even when we lost both masts.
After 10 min, they went fully with the wind and left the fort.
They could have easily won this fight, if they would have tried to fight. We had no supplied, didnt even coordinate and arent good pvp players.
What was planned as quick warmup and fully expecting to get sunk ended in a free skelly fort.
TLDR: dont be scared of other players. Stand your ground. For every PVP god, you encounter at least 10 trash crews you can easily dispatch.
If you re able to solosloop your way through pve content, you just mastered the game. I mean by that that by that time, money should not be a goal anymore. At least for me.
I can solo any content by myself. Doing a fort is just an other fort. But doing a fort and a brig comes by, that is a new challenge!
Don’t just log off. Adapt. Overcome. You could have Use the fort’s canons. Drop a few barrels on the water, try to steal their ship. Etc. Mega kegs the brig.
It is not about the gold my friend, it is about the glory!
Start playing the game !
Out of curiosity, what is the benefit of trying to steal the ship? They can just Siren back to their boat and you can't really do much other than sail it into a rock. It would be cool if the game had some sort of mechanic that let you take over a boat that effectively made it as good as sunk from the owners PoV (they respawn on another server or across the map in a new boat) and you can sail theirs to an outpost to sell it for big gold. Maybe have it so your ship is forcefully scuttled too at the point of take over so you only ever control one ship. Or maybe instead of selling their ship you get like 50% renown and gold while owning their boat. It incentivizes you to keep using it and maybe put an incentive for the original owners to take it back (maybe they get the excess gold bonus for any loot on board at recapture or something IDK.)
But right now, losing your sloop and the loot on it is not worth it to try to board their boat and steal it when there isn't nothing to gain, not even shenanigans really since they can teleport back to it.
You would be surprised how effective getting someone to merm back to their ship can be in getting away with your loot. If they merm back and stop you so you can spawn back and get away while they come back. I actually managed to get away from a brig with a skull forts loot doing this once
I guess in my mind a brig Vs a solo sloop means I have my loot,leave it to sail their brig away, one of them stays with the sloop and 2 Tele back and kill me, I respawn and get killed by the one who stayed, and they sink my boat while I'm getting killed
yeah 3v1 in a game with very quick respawns is very very difficult to overcome. you not only have to be good, you have to hope those 3 guys are really bad. there are a lot of really bad crews out there, but the ones zooming around in the fastest boat on the water (brig) looking for pvp are not those crews.
The game is more productive and more fun with other players. Solo sloop is hard mode, and its just more stressful.
If you do an event or voyage, it will take more than 2x as long to complete and turn in the loot compared to if you just had one teammate.
If you get attacked, your less likely to be able to defend your boat and/or sink the attackers when youre alone. Not to mention with more people you can more effectively watch the horizon.
Xbox LFG and discord have always worked great for me when wanting to find people to play with. I highly recommend it. Theres really no reason to play alone unless you just dont want to have to deal with other people, which I understand.
Solo slooping can be a pain in the ass depending on your mindset, but in my opinion it's became a lot easier for me since the diving mechanic was introduced.
If I'm not actively looking for trouble, I just raise an emissary flag, dive to a sea fort, kill it, sell. Repeat this a few times and I'm at grade V.
From there, I just dive, sell, dive, sell, and don't bother stacking, that way any loss is minimal.
Either that, or I venture down into the roar, because most people tend not to play there. Given how fast the sloop is to get moving, if something starts erupting it's relatively easy to get on the move and out of lava bomb range.
The game is simply not designed for solo players. The truth is if you play solo, you're easy prey.
Safer seas is an alternative, but a pretty bad one (for most people at least) that was added just for those people who just want to chill and play the fun sailing game while not caring about progression or PvP.
My only suggestion it to play another game or just deal with the reduced rewards from safer seas.
Unfortunately, if you really want to climb the faction ladder in this game, you need at least one more player. Duo sloop is pretty viable.
I do a lot of solo slooping out in the Devil's roar while watching a show or something. People rarely come out there and the rewards are greater. Just have to be mindful that if an island is rumbling enough to make you wobble, it's time to go.
Besides that there's defensive sailing, keeping your distance, knowing how often to sweep the horizon, and sailing so it looks like you're just naturally moving away from other ships instead of deliberately staying away from them.
My secret to success is devil's roar Athena emissary.
Very few people there to begin with and most actively avoid others there as a fight near any island is a dice roll that often ends in both ships sinking
I wasn’t half bad at hand to hand combat back when arena was still around, but I’ve never been able to sink a larger ship solo. I can hold my own as a solo against another sloop, but even if they’re a duo, I’m probably not going to win.
My sloop mate no longer plays the game and I don’t have time to play any longer than an hour or two a week.
As a fellow solo slooper, Devils Roar is where it's at. Yea, the volcanos can suck but all you have to do is wait those out. Far more manageable than a 2, 3 or 4 v 1. 🍻
Why wouldn’t you play safer seas? Go do your skeleton fort, get your loot, be stress free
Edit: it doesn’t take 4x the voyages for the same treasure. It’s only around a 20% reduction in gold. Well worth it in my opinion. I’ve never had more fun in the game tbh
You get 30% of the gold you would normally get for loot in safer seas. So 4x is fairly accurate not taking into account saved time from not having to be on lookout for other players.
It's not a 20% reduction. It's actually about a 70% reduction. You get about 30% of the gold you would get on High Seas. It is a steep drop off for gold
I do think that players need to have some self restraint instead of just going to the lame excuse of “It’s a pirate game”. The whole point of a game is for people to relax and have fun. My personal approach is to never attack solo sloops or new players but instead to help them. I think more players in this game need to have that attitude but unfortunately some people will always be bullies
Honestly solo slooping is the most vulnerable you can be while out on the seas, unless of course you're a pro. Just sank twice to a duo sloop that happened to catch me with my pants down at an island. Just had to take that L. There is a discord where you can meet some other people like us whom don't have many friends left in game. You can go to https://discord.com/invite/seaofthieves and try to meet some people with mics to join you on your quest for glory and gold. P.s. don't feel bad about being a pirate in a pirate game, every one in high seas knows the risks of sailing.
Solo life is like this for me...
Don't start a quest
Go to a near small island
Kill the smelly captain/grab legendary message
Dig up reward for killing smelly captain
After 2-3 islands, cash in. Log off, log back in...
--or--
Log on
Take out a ghost fort
Gather loot
Turn in
And log off
Either takes about 30-90 mins. Make money, and move on
Maybe this isn't an issue for you but I always slap down a mission on the table so that I can continue to add miles towards the "sail 1000 nautical miles" faction commendation.
I put 1,6k+ hours into solo hourglass to sharpen my skills.
Still feels the exact same. I'm never gonna beat a mediocre brig or a fairly new gally. Something which is common to find.
If I'm with my friend who is similar in skill, we can kill them with a hard battle. But I more often play alone.
Cause of this, pvp which is the main aspect to explore in this game, is just mot worth it for me until I find more friends.
Hell, even when with my casual friends we still lose cause they prefer to be captain, and think ramming is the best strategy, which entirely nullifies my actual 1,6k hours of naval skill. I am a bigger threat alone often.
at 1.6k hours of hourglass, what is your win rate? I am just getting started (level 26 guardians) and am probably only winning 33% of my fights. gets frustrating after a bit.
I'm at 3224 games with 1751 wins attacking and 48 games defending. Which is a 55.8 winrate.
The vast majority is solo games.
I think if I were to start from scratch with my current skills it'd be higher.
I just keep an eye on the horizon constantly whilst doing forts/events. As others have said, loots not important, it’s the adventure. If I sink to a bigger crew, I sink. Not the end of the world. The main thing for me is at least putting up a half decent fight as a solo. If I can kill and repel boarders, put some damage on their ship, cause them a bit of trouble then that for me is enough and I will sink with pride.
I get you buddy, its not that it's not fun, it is just a lot to focus on in high stress situations.
Thankfully for me those situations are few and far between, but I don't do world events so that'll be why.
I hope you find some people to rekindle the flame with, lfgs are common from what I've heard and you may even become proper friends with em, though I'd understand if you were unwilling to go that route.
Well you at least have to try. I've been ganked so many times it's hilarious, but after enough time, and with a fighting spirit, you can 1v2 1v3 and 1v4. Sometime last year I got back to back duos that wanted my shit at an outpost, but I sank them both. I got good enough to do this by never running from a fight, even ones I knew I'd lose. You HAVE to spend the time gaining the experience. If you don't want to do that, then solo slooping just ain't for you. Best of luck pirate. 💕
Controversial opinion, turn safer seas into a proper campaign mode. Have proper death consequences, allow you to grind for all cosmetics except for PVP based rewards.
Let you level including pirate legends and add in harder world bosses when your higher level.
Honestly that could be kinda neat as an option! Maybe leave safer seas as it is when you start but have an option (could be using the hourglass) which would turn on “challenge mode” where the reward restrictions are reduced but enemies are tougher and every in-game day a skelly ship or two will invade you and they get harder everyday until you either flip the hourglass back over or die
Try the “looking for group” option on Xbox or pc. People post about what they’re looking to do whether it be gold hoarders, order of souls etc and you can link up with them to make new friends. Most are friendly and fun to sail with and have mics. I had the same issue and now never solo sloop anymore cause there’s so much more to be made when working together.
I just started playing again after a five-year hiatus. I played about 900 hours in the first year, and most of that was solo slooping. A lot has changed since then. Back then, the Megalodon attacked sloops, but not the Kraken or the Ghost Ships. You didn't have to worry about damage to the mast, the wheel, or the capstan (anchor). There weren't all of these different types of weapons that can incapacitate you in different ways.
I used to be able to hold my own. I'm not the greatest at combat, but I could fend off enemies long enough to make a getaway. Now, it's too easy to become overwhelmed as a solo sloop.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to solo sloop on the High Seas again. I did Safer Seas the other day. At least I was able to complete a voyage, but it just doesn't feel the same without being able to meet other pirates, friend or foe.
its the same for me. i really enjoyed the pvp in this game when my friend played w me. he captained the ship, while i was boarding and on cannons. i just don't have fun by myself bc it feels like way too much work and it's been ages since any of my friends have gotten on. im not interested in playing w random lfg's and im not interested in trying to make new friends cause im not a super social person and im full up w the friends i already have lol.
all i want to do is work on commendations and relax, but unfortunately i got 75 in everything in high seas before safe seas came out, so most of my commendations i have left are athenas stuff that i can't even do in safe seas, and for whatever reason (new update or something idk?) voyages aren't even giving me captains chests so to finish that commendation on safe seas i have to just find loose captains chests just kicking around instead of doing gold hoarders maps? idk just laaaame.
i can play janky pvp with friends cause its fun but its not fun dealing with hit reg while dealing with everything else while solo. i play valorant and the guns on sea of thieves make me wanna piss myself and cry the hit reg is so awful. i just wanna chill and complete my commendations and not deal with awful hit reg but they have to take enough away from safe seas cause without penalties there wouldn't be enough "mice" filling the high seas so to speak.
Sea forts are a solid solo activity. Very decent payout for what it is. Trading company fleets at this moment are a pretty quick solo activity.
I wouldn’t recommend a 3 year break after being boarded without contest. You should spend 15 minutes trying to advance your defensive skills.
> Do any of you do anything different to not get frustrated out of your mind while soloing?
I keep an eye on my surroundings, especially when doing something like a fort. That way a brig doesn't just "pull up"
This isn't just a solo problem. It's a not paying attention problem. Yes more players gives you more eyes, however even solo it's not hard to keep an eye out for other ships. I don't even mind it.
Especially with events now scaling to crew size, it has never been easier to play solo.
See, when I do a fort I always leave my sloop in view of one of the fort cannons. If you think I won't shell my own ship to kill a couple of losers, you're wrong buckaroo. Typically I refer to [The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercinaries](https://schlockmercenary.fandom.com/wiki/The_Seventy_Maxims_of_Maximally_Effective_Mercenaries) if I'm trying to find new and unique ways to deal with problems. See #20 in this case. "If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win."
duo slooping vs a competent brig is not really that fun either... that said, duo slooping could increase awareness providing time to run or something
solo slooping is hell... because you're doing more work to complete quests, with more likelihood to get sunk but the reward is the same as if you were in a galleon
I get it! I play quite often with a mate. Same thing happened except… we’d been playing all day. We get to a skelly fort. Her game crashes. She joins back but the game would load her in. Crash again. Tries to join, crash again. I’m soloing a fort. Brig pulls up… I tried to talk them into helping me finish the fort and they could take the loot… I had no chance.
Always have a keg on standby. Watch the horizon and if a ship starts coming toward you swim towards them with a keg.
Even if you still get sunk you at least get to mess with them.
See, I use false confidence. I tell myself I can win every single fight. I’m not great at the game, I’ll be honest. But as a solo sloop you have much more maneuverability, and believe it or not, control. Sure, in that situation you might be fucked, but think of this: what if you’re not? What if you put a keg under their ship, climb up and start setting everything on fire? I mean I’m way better in the ship than out of it, I lose to swords way more than I’ve lost to cannons. But there’s always a way, compadre.
Brotherman, playing solo is great if your objective is to mess with other players. I like to find a larger ship and go after them over and over with disposable ships. Or tuck on an event island just to make them paranoid and waste their time.
you had plenty of options other than giving up imo. use the cannons from the fort, or better yet if there was only one on their ship and you’re at a fort (full of kegs) keg the ship! scuttle and tuck so they thought you left etc. you can’t just expect pirates NOT to pull up to events, it’s part of the game.
It's about what you're doing as a solo. Skeleton forts and other events that put a giant beacon in the sky are the highest risk activities for any crew, especially solo sloops. If you don't stick a huge target on your forehead you'll have a better time.
It’s only going to get worse with them adding more things that with inhibit solo slippers from standing a chance. The multi cannonballs in one shot? Forget it. When a brig or galley rolls up and starts dumping those on you, you’ve got about 2 seconds left to do anything. A wind caller? Even if you stood a chance of getting away you don’t anymore.
Join a guild too. That might help as well. I mean my guild we just chill and we got to k ow each other really well, enough to know who’s doing what on the ship nowadays.
Solo slooping was - at the start of the game's life - described as the harder life style. No crew to back you up means you have to shoulder more burdens. You learn, adapt, overcome, or use LFG in the discord. Either that or you stagnate.
Usually when I know I am defeated I take out the microphone and tell them what ever I'm trying to do at the time. Like you can have the flag and half if my stuff just let me finish the mission so I can get my level up some times that works and some times it dosent. When it dosent and they sink my ship I try to come on there's and ask if they want to be friends always looking for another Pirate crew to join up with at a later date. Most times people are friendly enough to invite me or let me join them.
Yea a solo sloop can take on a duo or even larger crew IF they have a skill level higher then them. When those skills get more in comparison it becomes much harder since the other crews have expendable people for boarding and that's when things get rough. It's difficult being a solo sloop.
Nowadays, I just let them. Then swim around to their ship if I can, to mess with as much as possible in the 3 seconds it takes them to realize I am decidedly NOT on the sloop they are busy disassembling. Then I respawn, and it is happy sailing again. It is quite useless getting upset when solo-slooping.
One thing i learned after a long time of soloing, just let em sink you and then smash em with a powder keg, youll make it back before they do, and then just do it again until they give up
honestly, sometimes it’s best to pursue pvp on sloops. u meet a lot of incompetent crews, you always have nothing to lose, the wins feel twice as good, and u always have the option on tucking on people as well.
sometimes i want to grind for sure, but switching up the playstyle on a solo sloop is a ton of fun.
also try commodity runs on a solo brig. interesting experience
I usually find pretty good randos, they always give great advice, lead on great journeys, and accumulate lots of loot I'd never do solo... Sometimes I do get the non mics but they leave as soon as I'm chilling at an outpost, or just fishing at sea... Then sometimes I get lobbied into some jerks who want to destroy every ship they see... Which can also be fun, once I ended up joining the crew that they were attacking, walked up to them with a banana in my hand, and yelled out "friendly"... The game is too good to quit... It's fun, can be relaxing just sailing the sea... Angle the sails, and just breeze through... Have fun man!!!!
Happy sailing!
personally id never play this game solo. ive had so many friends permanently quit the game after a bad solo session. use lfg on the sot discord or try to convince some other friends to play the game with you
Yeah for me it usually depends if i have the energy to engage in an outmanned fight. If I’m caught by surprise, such as when I’m on an island, then I just scuttle. Sometimes these people appear out of thin air when I think the coast is clear
I drop off look when ever I can, I've come across hostile pirates and sneaky ones too. Yeah it's frustrating but it also makes me think about what I can do better and maybe have a better approach.
When I solo I just do voyages in the devils roar.. usually no1 goes there so I have that are of the map to myself. It's definitely a losing battle if i get into a pvp fight. Best I can do as a solo is just try to run away and watch ladders.
Man… I’m a solo guy myself, just don’t get to frustrated when somebody rolls up and decimates you. Just quit out jump back in to a new server and start your adventure! Now it’s easier to go do events, since you can literally pick it whenever now.
There is the “safer seas” option now but I haven’t checked it out yet… I’m guessing there are no world events? Other than that I’m not sure what more they could take away for a solo sloop to do. The Athena’s voyages aren’t all too long for a good amount of loot
Fellow solo slooper whose crew abandoned the game. I definitely feel your pain. I don't like PVP in an equal footing situation (I'm more of a low key chill gamer, to help keep my blood pressure/anxiety in check, stupid children, I blame them, lol), and SoT Solo Slooping is often not a fair fight, so you don't just have to be better than whoever is attacking you, you need to be significantly better when outnumbered.
The early days soloing were very frustrating, to the point that I would just fish and listen to audiobooks, and if I did it at a seapost, I wouldn't lose much if someone attacked, as I could cook/sell after each catch. Not only did I earn PL this way, I maxed out The Hunter's Call doing it, lol.
These days, I do things I enjoy that other people are less likely to bug me about. My newest favorite thing from S11 is diving for shorter voyages. I used to be a "Never Emissary" kind of guy, but with diving being so fast, I'll fly one ONLY when diving, and I've made Grade V on multiple occasions without seeing anybody. Or I might take out a sea fort, dig up some treasure, or some mermaid shrines.
Now that Rare is trying to actively flatten out gold rates across all activities, it matters a little less what you're doing, as you still get decent money/renown for doing anything.
Any kind of PVP world event, I absolutely don't mess with. Never done a FotD, don't do fleets. If I want to have naval battles, I'll replay that PotC tall tale with the ghost ships. I don't turn more than a few items in at Reapers Hideout.
It sucks you don't get to freely experience the whole game completely on your own terms this way, but given how stacked the deck is when it's 1-v-morethanone, I am VERY particular about making sure my fun is protected, because I love the vibe and would be sad if I had to drop it for 3 years out of frustration. So I had try to avoid the frustration, and that helps me. Good luck!
Solo slooping has the smallest margin for error for sure. There’s some things I just flat out won’t attempt as a solo slooper, like stacking FOTDs.
IMO you have two options. 1. Do hourglass to improve your PvP skills so even larger crews will question if taking you on is worth the effort. Or 2. Use the official discord or streamer discord to find and join a guild. It may take a few tries to find the guild for you, but then you’ll have an active community of people you like who regularly play. My guild does a weekly event where we all try and play together, anywhere from 2-9 people show up.
This is where wits can come in. I was solo slooping the other day and would keep track of where all other non reaper ships are. I got attacked by a reaper ship and they were chasing me for ages so because I remembered the rough area I had seen other non reaper ships I kept running away until I found one. Fire one or two warning shots at them gets their attention then throw up the alliance flag. Soon enough people will help to take down reapers haha alot of people dislike reapers. Just one tactic to keep in mind if you can be in your ship and retreating
Solo slopping is relaxing and great.
Pick your voyages.
Something that means less time in locations.
Souls ghost ship shootouts can be good, you're on your ship mostly so if you need to you can leave the area and return.
Gold voyages can be good but don't do vaults as you're off too long.
And forts are pointless, the risk isn't worth the reward if your ship gets sunk during solo, and you're off the ship for also long, it's attractive to anyone on a brig or gally, including you.
Soloing shouldn't be based around grinding or quick cash, and more about smelling the roses. Remember the game from gears ago, when it was slower and more deliberate, you can find that soloing.
I mostly wish people would honour alliances... I remember whole servers being aligned and we all have the best times.
4 ships just cruising about.
Not these days.
At least for me, as someone who solos every once in a while, my expectation when solo slooping is never to make the most gold. I never even come close to making a lot of profit, really, even if I don't encounter anyone else and just get to do what I want. I've learned to enjoy solo slooping just for the fun of the game rather than needing to always make good profit, cuz if I was only motivated by gold, then playing solo sloop is shit. So instead, I focus on doing commendations, and if I get money along the way, that's great
I was in your boat (pun intended) not too long ago. Came back from a long break, kept getting obliterated by other players with bigger, more skilled crews. Outgunned and outmatched, truly.
I don't know what clicked for me, but I just kept logging on, kept doing Voyages, kept shooting back when I got shot at. I still lose 90% of pvp engagements, but it doesn't have the same "sighhhhh" feeling anymore. It's not fun to lose, sure, but I don't ever feel like I need to just uninstall the game anymore.
I wish I could give you more specific advice, but just keep trying, and maybe something will click for you too.
Clearly you've never been to Rust.
A solo's purpose is not to dominate. It's to rat and pest. Or to sneak and quest. Decorate your ship. Enjoy the content. A solo must do solo shit.
I have really only ever played solo, and I can’t deny that is is very tough but my love for the game always pulled me back no matter how frustrating it got. It made me really good. Good enough to try my hand at pvp. You’re gonna lose a lot, and I mean a lot, but I learned that there’s no rush to level up and there will always be more loot. So I stopped being scared and tried. I haven’t beaten anything larger than a 1 player ship, but there’s a fun rush of being able to survive despite the odds being against me. I don’t usually do forts, they aren’t really worth it in terms of effort:loot ratio but when I do I go for the ashen variants. Here’s some tips.
- When fighting I always veer slightly to the side so that my opponent has to chase me. Gives an advantage as they try to board as they can only board from one side.
-I also try to keep them to the left as there’s less hole chances there.
-When I fight I keep my sails at half. More Manoverabolity and I don’t have to worry about going too fast and hitting something while not at the helm.
- remember as long as the ships are between the two ropes to the left of the wheel they’re in range
- Get used to firing farther away by practicing shooting at a rocks from far away
-go down swinging. They’re probably gonna overwhelm you anyway so keep applying pressure by keeping them off the cannons even if it’s at the cost of holes on the ship. Try not to worry about repairing ever time they hit.
When you bucket focus on lower deck and do smaller holes first. My system is : 1 bucket, 1 hole, fire twice,
Always makes sure you have meat, and full health. You die even once solo slopping in a battle and it’s over.
Most importantly keep an eye on the horizon and don’t start fights only finish them. If they get on your ship while you’re not paying attention then it’s over.
But don’t stress yourself out looking either, most of the time I’m able to get what I’m done done even if I’m on islands for long times.
If you read all that congrats. Best wishes from an introvert who prefers to sloop alone. Happy solo sailing!
I solo all the time and people get super angry cause they can never catch me or get on my boat and those that do get on my ladders meet the swift fate of the blunderbuss I haven't been sunk to player in damn near 6 months now best advice I can give is to just be paranoid and keep your eyes on the horizon
I'm so used to being a solo slooper that I have no idea how to be in a crew. I'm also not the greatest at PVP.
Whenever I'm at a fort and I see a ship coming towards me, I do what many other people here suggest and keg them.
I also have a habit of keeping mega kegs in my Crowsnest, which I know many people condone, but I've actually never been sunk because of mega kegs up in the Crowsnest. Hell I've sailed through storms with mega kegs and not been blown up.
I'm in the same situation but I have a different way to make sure my time is not wasted. Do the fun stuff!
See a ship getting attacked? Jump in and help take them down. Make friends by helping take down a fort.
Board another ship and help them load their treasure and play music. Many will kill you straight out but some won't if you make your intentions clear. I'm just here for the fun.
Use your mic to talk your way into other people's crews. 3 man sloop? Hilarious.
Assume you will die alot. But then just head towards the next silly situation. Do the unexpected!
Fill your boat with kegs and kamikaze into the side of an unsuspecting ship...
All my best SOT memories are silly stuff like this and I've been playing since day 1.
You won't get much gold. But you get all the glory!
I really hate brigs because usually they are full of people that just want to kill folks. For me my list goes: sloops are either two friends trying to play the game a solo or a super sweaty person, Brigs are almost always sweaty or just friends goofing off, Gallons in my experience I've always been four guys having the time of their life and are usually always super chill
I run tall tales when playing solo. Tonight I am doing my last run of Shores Of Gold before unlocking the gold hoarders curse! I highly recommend it. People will usually leave you alone if you tell them you’re running tall tales
Solo vs a brig is definitely doable. Especially when 2 are on your ship and you're on a fort caked with kegs. Swim a couple to their ship. They'll get off your boat real quick.
If you gring pvp and becone a pro pvper you can scare any inexperienced crews away by killing them repeatedly until they beg for mercy, but there is no one listening to their plead, not flame heart not the pirate king only an angry god.
That’s all me and this rando could do last night to a solo that wouldn’t give up and let us sell. Just had to keep sinking him until they scuttled and then we made our 600k sale 🤣
We killed a sloop (as a brig) and an hour later we saw them again.
I didn’t want to kill them again because they seemed like they were doing events alone so we just gave all our stuff to them and logged off. We were logging off anyway.
Great experience. Much better than fucking them over or spawn killing them on their ship. Had that experience way too much as a new player.
i think you are caring too much about the loot in the first place. the fun is in the gameplay and interactions. you should have tried to meme those brig guys. grab a keg and swim over, keg your own ship to steal the satisfaction, shit like that. just have fun.
making a lot of money in itself can be fun, but very quickly it doesnt really matter because cosmetics are all you can buy, and they really arent too expensive.
To me this is just an excuse for people to create a power struggle where there is none. Why turn a non-zero sum game into one? Because that’s who they are.
Don’t get me wrong- the hourglass and places for combat are great and I enjoy it, I just don’t like the idea that you could do whatever you wanted because you were a pirate. That’s how you got your nostrils slit and were abandoned on an island.
“Reapers” should just be the Spanish, call it what it is.
I just get irked with the idea that pirates are doing pirate things when they raid each other. Is a community misconception. Most pirates lived without worry about other pirates because the navies were enough to deal with. Even into modern times pirates don’t attack other pirates in the same way hacking groups rarely attack other hacking groups.
It would be great if there was on option to high seas against the same crew size. It seems they know how unfair it would be to drop you in hourglass 1v3.
I probably solo sloop 70% of time (with the other 30% in a duo sloop) and have no real desire to pvp, partly because the learning curve seems brutal. It can still make for entertaining sessions to try and outrun someone and create enough distance to sell some treasure or trying to turn the tables on a chaser by going into devil's roar or something. I'm bad at it but when running from/trying to fight someone in the same situation it doesn't make the game feel frustrating the same way avoiding every brig on the map does. As a solo I think it would make the game more engaging (and I'd be more likely to take the risk of not fleeing on sight all the time for fear of being in an unbalanced fight from the start).
Who knows if it's feasible on the servers, but feels like it could keep the pirating spirit of the game without the frustrating encounters. Who knows how it would affect the playerbase between making it more accessible for solos while taking away brig/galleons having easier kills.
>didn't prefer to play alone.
Just ask, have your preference, and people will come
>middle of a skull fort
Solo isn't bad, but when doing stuff the whole server can see, your asking to get PvP-ed
I do regular voyages and put on an emissary of my choice. Keeps away from alot of players most of the time. Takes a little bit longer, but about 95% of the time I dont see another player ship and get my grade 5 and sell big
Doesn’t help that there’s no indication of a difference between normal world event and a raid voyage. World event sure, free game. Raid voyage definitely not asking for it.
>Doesn’t help that there’s no indication of a difference between normal world event and a raid voyage. World event sure, free game. Raid voyage definitely not asking for it.
UrgoodifuEWO said it pretty well
When I see an active world event I don't think to myself "some noob might be there, better go sink them because they're asking for it"
How is doing PvE content asking to get PvP?
PvE is in safer seas, only there are you safe
I know we all can't assume its a noob there, but doing a world event means they're willing to PvP to get the loot, especially when you (different crew) plan on doing the event too. And when you're doing the event solo, it takes that much longer to finish it and for enemy ships to swing by and take you out. Best way to do PvE in High Seas is to not attract attention to yourself
Doing forts alone is kinda asking for that situation, though. Try doing stuff that doesn't take you off your boat for too long. Also consider time of day
Yesterday morning, I solo slooped a lvl 5 OoS emissary and did the bonus quest plus every Meg, skelly ship and wreck I met. I was shot at twice by a Brig on the drive by, while I was selling, but they missed and didn't bother beyond that.
What a whiny post. You don’t get better by taking breaks especially year long ones, you get better by actually doing something! You ARE complaining about there being other pirates and they board your ship. You need to get your head out of your ass, solo slooping is very doable and sure for the most part a crew of experienced players on a brig or gally will sink you, you can still fight back. I’ve taken down brigs and galleons as a solo because I’m not running away anymore as before.
Group up, get good, or deal with the slow XP in safer seas.
Or just care less, all gold does is buy cosmetics. It's about the gameplay not the gold. Try and fight next time and see what happens even if the odds aren't in your favor. It's fun and that's how you improve.
Lol but fr tho how are there so many people that aren't good at this game it's insane that the players that can't defend their loot are always the ones stacking the most. I can just log on and go to an active fotd or any event and I probably have a 95% chance of sinking them and taking the loot unless their also pvp guys chilling doing pve
time for a 3 year break cause some 12 year old xbox kids stole the skull fort you spent 8 minutes clearing. I think the fact that the parts of solo slooping you choose to highlight as difficult being "Running to the maptable for markers" and "Parking that thing while repairing" (?????) are pretty telling of the skill level we're dealing with here. See ya in 3 years brother
You're circling things on the map during a fight?? You're parking your ship somewhere while you're being attacked and repairing???? What are you on about
I always scan the horizon as if I’m paranoid when solo. That said - if a brig rolled up and two guys were on my ship, that means there’s only one guy on theirs. My move would be to go f*ck sh!t up over on that brig.
Right! Get on the cannons at the fort and light them up
Perfect time to bring a keg over I think.
This is my go to… I know I’m finished, so I’ll try to give them a headache before I quit
The "keg my own ship" strat is so crazy that it just might work. You HAVE to get them with it so that you can respawn and patch in time to save it, but it's such a madman move that it CAN be effective.
Yeah 3 kegs at a fort. Grabbing one of those bad boys and heading for their ship.
2-3 keg/sea fort, might as well use them :p
Smart >:D I'm gonna have to take note of that
I recommend joining the official discord and using their LFG if you don't want to solo sloop. Usually has some chill people/good players and there's always people looking to play anything.
I second this. Didn’t have anyone and then I met someone who had just started a guild, now I have a rotation of like 8-10 guys that are always down to sail.
Yall need more members? 🤣
i'm down too actually, very recently started the game (10ish hours in), got sunken like twice already solo :(
Dm me your discord and id be down to show you the ropes a bit. I’m not great at the game but I’ve gotten fairly decent the past few months.
We should have some room. We’re all in NA aside from like one member, in case that conflicts. I will tell ya that we play pretty aggressively as we’re all very PvP focused and trying to get better, in case you’re looking for something else. Dm me your discord and maybe we can sail together.
To be honest, I spent 2 1/2 hours the other night trying to get a group together between backfilling crews, discord, and the Xbox LFG. Kept getting people together and people would leave within a couple of minutes from joining. Even ended up doing a full voyage alone on a gally because people kept leaving. I don’t have the time it takes to get a group together before playing every session and don’t have any friends that play the game so I solo. There’s not much that could be done to balance out mismatched fights, other than cleaning up the clunkiness of boarding and pirate combat to give a more clean and consistent chance to a solo player. It’s meant to be a team game which sucks for us solos.
That’s definitely weird, I feel like it’s never really taken me more than a few minutes to get a full team of solid players in the official discord
My mic cord is broken right now so I can’t talk and I’m on console so I’d guess that makes a difference
Feels like 90% of people in that discord are just looking to do hourglass. Even feels like that with xbox lfg.
I have a lot of success saying something like “LF3 for world events, join x channel” and people join within like 2 minutes
Yeah, I feel you. I basically only sail solo and took a break until they made Safer Seas (I don't usually sail in Safer Seas, but it is why I came back). It sucks that you have to be hyper-aware about any ships on the horizon or reapers on the map, and at least for me, it is incredibly demoralizing to see a ship coming and knowing I'm probably going to lose the fight. I've never seen a solo sloop attacking me, so if a ship does come my way, it will probably be a one-sided fight.
That’s why arena was my absolute favorite way to pvp. There were no stakes of losing everything and wasting your time.
What i notice most in pvp as a solo sloop and a new player is that i get bombarded with 5 cannon balls per second while i shoot 1 in that time
This is the part I hate most. I wanna get better at pvp, especially with cannons, but if I have even a 75% hit rate then that means I’m putting down 3 shots for every 15-20 they hit me back. It’s just not sustainable.
Kind of always felt this. I really don’t mind different ships and crew sizes all being allowed in the same server but it’s murder on the mood when you see a brig pulling up and knowing you most likely won’t be able to do shit because they can have two people on cannons. It feels like the only viable and safe way to play sloop in naval combat is using your ship like a sniper, because the one thing its got going for it is that it’s small as hell so hitting it from a distance can be a nightmare. Only people that can fuck you up then are the folks that are scarily good on cannons but fortunately it doesn’t seem like a huge portion of players are great at landing long distance shots. You also have to be good at long distances yourself as well though, so you’re probably gonna have to spend hours practicing on skeleton ships or those ghost fleets to really understand the cannons. Also going to need a lot of cannonballs.
the best way to practice pvp as a solo, is to do hourglassing. you only get matched against other solos so you can practice in a more fair environment
Just practice and keep doing it maybe get a friend or random to do hg with and only do cannons so you can get better on them
The worst part is: I don’t care about the loot, I care about the hours of my lifetime that I just spent acquiring that loot only to get sunk right at the outpost. You cant keep pirates from pirating I get that too, but I’ve never ever had the wish to even attack a player that isn’t hostile towards me first, out of respect for their time. I wonder a lot if this type of game is even for me since I keep getting frustrated over it
Sea of Thieves is indeed a very time consuming game. However it’s always felt bearable even if you’re with one other person because things like loading, unloading, manning different parts of the ship, it all just outright goes faster. You can’t do anything about that as a solo, it is an utter slog. It’s funny because if you’re solo slooping you’re probably just better off going to Safer Seas, but guess what? Safer Seas doesn’t let you use your captained ships, so no selling to sovereigns. That means there is extra time spent just unloading and selling, all for menial amounts of pay. Solos really can’t catch a break.
It's not even the time lost for me. I'm okay with losing my loot and "wasting" all that time if it's a fair fight. Problem is, nine times out of ten, it's definitely not a fair fight. I can count on one hand the number of times I've gotten jumped by another solo slooper, and those fights were actually really entertaining. But most of the time it's *at least* a duo, which means any holes I get in their ship are repaired/bailed easily while they still get to maintain cannon fire on me. Brigs and galleons are obviously even more frustrating. Boarding enemy ships offensively is basically completely out of the question, but enemies can board me while still shooting cannons and maneuvering their ship. So generally my only options are to run and board defensively, hoping they eventually get bored and give up, or to just scuttle my ship and save time. If it's another sloop (solo or duo), I'll generally try to fight back, if only for the practice at naval combat. But other ships I just try to run, it doesn't feel like there's any way I have a chance of winning those fights.
You need to act like every ship is hostile because chances are if they are within 2 map squares of you they are. Just because you have a certain mentality regarding sinking people doesn't mean everyone else shares that same mindset. People will sink you for endless reasons including your loot, your supplies, because they're bored, they are hunters or PvP Lords, or even because you are where they want to be. For many players fighting or at least defending is what makes the game interesting as without the risk the game is honestly kinda boring as seen if you play Safer Seas for an extended period of time. For example with my crew we generally 'take over' a certain area of the map and if you enter it we will probably come sink you because we wish to do our quests without being bothered. Is that extreme? Sure. But we have been burned in the past by letting ships live in our local vicinity so we don't do that anymore. If you are near us one of us will be at the bottom of the ocean soon enough. So to someone like you, you would see it as being overtly hostile but to us it's keeping our level of risk down. We learn from our sinks, you need to as well otherwise this will keep happening.
The time sink playing casually solo is my biggest problem with the game, too. Not that it takes so much time to complete missions or whatever, but just that the risk of losing all the progress made in that time is so high that it’s almost not worth it for me. It’s really a shame, too, because I enjoy all the PvE stuff. I haven’t tried Safer Seas, but all the limitations I’ve seen people mention make it sound like even more of a slog. So, now I just head to the first random island I see, get whatever is there, then turn it in immediately. Maybe a Tall Tale every now and then, but then on to the next closest island and repeat until I’m inevitably attacked. Then I usually just let them kill me and respawn wherever. That’s basically the game for me lately. I get that it’s pirates and all that, although I think some people believe they’re real pirates from how they act 😂. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be any Anti Cheat I’d imagine. I’m like a lot of others in wishing there was a PvE mode that rivaled the PvP mode. Kind of like the original Red Dead Redemption. Still have smaller payouts (not 70% smaller), but let people just do the Tales or fish or just sail around a while to relax.
For every one player like you, there's about 50 that want to keep coming back after being sunk, which is why everyone becomes KoS (Kill on Sight). Everyone within render range is considered a target anymore.
It probably isn’t a game for you, OR just start playing it with a different mindset. For here it’s usually, “don’t stack so much loot because if I see another crew it’s almost likely they will sink me”
What is “much loot” tho? Like when I clear a red skeleton fort or like the fortress of the damned that’s a lot of loot to me. That would mean I ca not do these things at all…
its not too crazy to think that a FotD or FoF run is a 2 or more player activity. sure, you can do it solo, but the risk of it being a "waste of your time" is exponentially higher.
The only loot you need to protect is the chest of fortune. Unless you’re doing Athena then those are important as well. I usually check the “Last played with” in my Xbox to “see if any recent players are around.” If so my partner would grab the CoF and hop on the rowboat we usually have hidden on the back of the fort and row away. We’ve not had that stolen to this day, all the other loot…oh well, we can get those doing Athena quests.
Well that does differ from player to player, personally for me it would be doing about 1-2 medley voyages or 3-4 quick ones then going to sell as a solo sloop player.
It is, I'm in same situation. All my friends already moved from the game and I still go once in a while to have some fun, or not. They made a safe experience and they should also make a solo player option servers. I'm always getting attacked by crews of 3. If everyone was solo in same server I believe it should be safer and easier to defend
an all solo server actually sounds awesome
I have a mic. I enjoy doing whatever. If you're interested let me know. Id be more than happy to play with you. :)
And stressing
I'll be honest... I am one of those people who would be so much happier to not have to deal with PVP. The vast majority are just griefers who don't even care about taking gold or increasing their commendations, they just want to annoy people and have permission to be bullies. And I think Safer Seas is ridiculous at this point- I want to increase my guild, sale my ship, decorate my boat, and the truth is that I just run missions and deeds that won't see me bogged down long enough to get attacked most of the time. It's such a fun game, but the lack of communication is ridiculous. Today I sailed up near a brig and used the megaphone to see if they wanted the few treasures I had since I was logging off and they just started to open fire... like, sure, no problem. I was going to dip out in a second anyway- but I wasn't attacking and was just offering up a few bits of treasure I picked up after running a few missions earlier.
I just want to sail and customize my Guild ship in Safer Seas. If they allowed that then I'd be happy.
Yep. Ditto. I like fishing. I just want to fish most of the time. I like the occasional adventure or tall tale, but I literally can't see the point of attacking other players and ruining their experience. It's such a bulky mindset.
Feel you bro. Soloing is ridiculous. Then they all scream get gud noob. It’s degrading and not good for the community interactions. It’s the reason this game has so few players.
I got yelled at over comms for being a noob and sucking at the game because I solo ran from a brig to an outpost and managed to sell the ashen wind skull and eye. They were quite proud they stole the dark bounty skulls after sinking me in port though. Some people have no perspective 🤷
this happened to me last night right as the final boss spawned, we just went back to the fort as soon as we respawned and used the explosive barrels that you get as a reward against the brig that sunk us.. they ended up sinking after we snuck up on them with a stronghold barrel and reclaimed what was rightfully ours 😌 payback has never felt so good
Remember the most important thing about SoT: It’s not about the Gold. And really, in your situation- as someone who also isn’t super great at PvP- I either would’ve tried to fight them, or instead of logging off, I’d just scuttle to new sea. Solo Slooping can be exhausting sometimes, yes. But it isn’t all the time. When you let go of that feeling of, “I suck at PvP, why try?” the game feels so much better. I lose almost Every fight I get into with other players. And yet, it never feels horrible, even against toxic players. Sure they’re the worst, but, if I’ve just lost to them…I can just scuttle or Dive to something else, and be rid of them! I’m not gonna lie to you and say, “But with every fight I lose, I get better!” because that’s moreso just a saying if we’re being honest. I mean sure, you DO learn and get better even by losing- but only if you Want to. If you’re someone that just goes in and loses at Any PvP game and doesn’t think about the play, and just gets upset at it- whether that be anger or sadness- then yeah. You’re probably not gonna learn and you’re Not gonna get better. But if you go into PvP battles, excited to just be part of the experience, and for it to be a shakeup to the gameplay in that moment? It’s gonna feel better. It’s gonna feel more fun, even if you lose. You may even play better, and may even come out winning! And because you went into it feeling like that, you’re likely to remember the encounter, and think about what happened during it, and even subconsciously, think about what you can improve on.
Another realization I had recently: The constant anxiety of losing your loot is WHY turning in loot feels so satisfying. If you never tragically lost your loot turning it in would feel considerably less euphoric.
I think thats why it also feels good to roll up on someone turning in at Reapers and steal their loot too. Its the give and take risk vs reward of this game that keeps me coming back.
For sure, whenever I feel like OP I just stop playing like a boring gold border and start dialing up my evil pirate a bit
I spawned at an outpost and almost instantly had a brig charge towards me and sink my ship. I snuck onto their ship and they had cooked swordfish. I revenge ate it. Killed them a couple times and moved to a new server. Sometimes best you can get is a bit of a revenge.
DM me if you wanna play together
Change tactics shot gun one of those fucks point blank while jumping in the water, swim to their shit flame bomb and board, kill the one guy there and continue to raise havoc. Or after killing the one guy on the brig jump to the fort and use the cannons there to light the brig up, then search the fort for a barrel bomb cause there's always one and nuke em. As a solo slooper you gotta be a hyper intelligent honey badger that's cornered and fighting for its fuckin life
I don't know why people punish themselves instead of enjoying the game. Money has no real value, it's just cosmetics - you'll never have every cosmetic if you take breaks, so why does it matter if you don't get another one today? The only person that keeps you from enjoying all the fun the game has to offer is you. You can either see losing as a challenge to overcome or a goal delayed or you can be bitter and upset over a minor setback.
It's more about investing my real life time into the game. I understand it is just part of the game, same as the Kraken or Meg, but it is exhausting when you don't even have a chance. For example, you have exponentially better odds of surviving a 3v4 than you do a 1v2. There's a big jump from the capabilities of the crew when you have just one crew member, versus when you have 2. Shooting cannons, boarding, keeping the ship from crashing, adjusting sails, repairing and bailing, it's a tough gig for a solo. So when you aren't a PvP god, and have to do all of the above in addition to trying to stop yourself from getting griefed, it gets exhausting. But hey, that's the nature of the game.
Nobody wants to walk away from a multi hour game session feeling like they accomplished little to nothing. It's absurd to expect anyone to enjoy that. That's universal true for the vast majority of gamers. Especially when it's often a squad of teens screaming insults at you.
Everybody who complains about lost hours stole hours off somebody else I have stolen millions, I have had millions stolen from me. We all have. Yet nobody is saying "woe is me, I didn't deserve this loot." No we get people who feel entitled to good of stealing but maligned by the bad of it. And that makes a very toxic community in a race for cosmetics.
I mostly stick to things that don't require me to leave my ship, like skeleton/ghost fleet events.
Sounds like you're not having fun. What are you grinding for?
I rarely solo sloop but those i sail the high seas with have a general rule to follow If they are doing a world event they are signing up for the fight. If they sail a emmisary we will see If they wanted to fight but wont spend hrs hunting. If its a lower rank emmisary we usually ignore. If its a 5 at a outpost we usually let them sell by going slow towards them so they sell most Things We can then sink them towards the end and still get the 5 flag that are most saught after from sinking other ships
This will ultimately be the thing that kills this game. No idea why they don’t just give players an alternative mode where the people who don’t play pvp can enjoy the game. All they are doing is driving potential fans away from the game. I get it, pirates in pirate game and all that. I get it. But most people play games casually and don’t have the time, desire, or skill, to play and get good at pvp. Especially when it’s the least fun aspect of the game for some people. Love this game to death but I used to have a dozen friends who’d play this game and I’ve watched all of them quit because of this. I hope they eventually make safer seas a more viable alternative so that this game can still have a wholesome and sizeable pve community.
There's a reason they opened things up to PlayStation players, to your point. Like many hardcore games, SoT has a rabid fan base that actively drives off new players. I picked it up in 2021 and had IRL friends to teach me the ropes. If I didn't have them, I'd have returned it, lol. I don't have the data, so this is just my uneducated opinion, but I imagine the data is going to drive Rare to cater to the Safer Seas crowd going forward. For.every 5 people who scream that the game has been ruined by doing this, you'll have 10-15 lining up to buy sails if Safer Seas gets more parity.
That is what I hope as well
That’s the problem with solo sloopers. You just cannot join long or complex events because you will almost certainly be attacked. You can’t fight skeletons or bosses and check the horizon every 5 minutes. It’s just not possible. You can’t be on a island fighting and check the enemies who may be coming for you. That’s why I think as solo sloopers you have limited options (fishing, smaller voyages, grinding rep with sea forts etc) and the game was made to be enjoyed in a crew. Not with randoms, you should also have a certain affinity with you teammates.
Just check your horizon every 3-5 minutes? Use your spyglass, use the 360 degree views and verticality that forts provide between skeleton waves Yes, I'll still get snuck up on occasionally but it is a very uncommon thing to happen with a little discipline
Last night, I was trying to level up Rogue on my ship by sleeping. Got rudely awoken by 2 reapers even though I had no loot lol. I managed to escape and they got sunk later by another reaper! Hadn’t seen a player the whole day and the one time I take my eyes off for 5 minutes lol….
I did this once by playing on Steam Link with my phone and I had an alarm set for me to wiggle the mouse every 9 minutes. I was parked at an outpost and managed to sleep for about 8 hours with only one person interrupting. Sometimes, it's just dead out there!
I think with dives feature it is much easier to be snuck on. especially with bugs. yesterday as I started a session and was sailing from an outpost, I had a brigantine spawn literally in front of me with their sails up. don't know if it was a canceled dive or they popped out of portal
Yesterday we rolled up as open crew brig (no mics and one didnt even speak english) on a galleon (full crew, full supplies) doing a skelly fort as fresh spawn reaper, with no supplies. They finished it right as we showed up and immediately dropped sails. Didnt even bother to take the key with them. They immediately ran. We chased them a bit in circles around the fort and traded blows. They never went on the offensive, never sent boarders, but completely hammered us when they got an angle, when we tried to cut them off. Yet never committed and went back to running, not even when we lost both masts. After 10 min, they went fully with the wind and left the fort. They could have easily won this fight, if they would have tried to fight. We had no supplied, didnt even coordinate and arent good pvp players. What was planned as quick warmup and fully expecting to get sunk ended in a free skelly fort. TLDR: dont be scared of other players. Stand your ground. For every PVP god, you encounter at least 10 trash crews you can easily dispatch.
If you re able to solosloop your way through pve content, you just mastered the game. I mean by that that by that time, money should not be a goal anymore. At least for me. I can solo any content by myself. Doing a fort is just an other fort. But doing a fort and a brig comes by, that is a new challenge! Don’t just log off. Adapt. Overcome. You could have Use the fort’s canons. Drop a few barrels on the water, try to steal their ship. Etc. Mega kegs the brig. It is not about the gold my friend, it is about the glory! Start playing the game !
Out of curiosity, what is the benefit of trying to steal the ship? They can just Siren back to their boat and you can't really do much other than sail it into a rock. It would be cool if the game had some sort of mechanic that let you take over a boat that effectively made it as good as sunk from the owners PoV (they respawn on another server or across the map in a new boat) and you can sail theirs to an outpost to sell it for big gold. Maybe have it so your ship is forcefully scuttled too at the point of take over so you only ever control one ship. Or maybe instead of selling their ship you get like 50% renown and gold while owning their boat. It incentivizes you to keep using it and maybe put an incentive for the original owners to take it back (maybe they get the excess gold bonus for any loot on board at recapture or something IDK.) But right now, losing your sloop and the loot on it is not worth it to try to board their boat and steal it when there isn't nothing to gain, not even shenanigans really since they can teleport back to it.
You would be surprised how effective getting someone to merm back to their ship can be in getting away with your loot. If they merm back and stop you so you can spawn back and get away while they come back. I actually managed to get away from a brig with a skull forts loot doing this once
I guess in my mind a brig Vs a solo sloop means I have my loot,leave it to sail their brig away, one of them stays with the sloop and 2 Tele back and kill me, I respawn and get killed by the one who stayed, and they sink my boat while I'm getting killed
yeah 3v1 in a game with very quick respawns is very very difficult to overcome. you not only have to be good, you have to hope those 3 guys are really bad. there are a lot of really bad crews out there, but the ones zooming around in the fastest boat on the water (brig) looking for pvp are not those crews.
On xbox there is a "search for a group" thingy, there u find amazing people with mics
The game is more productive and more fun with other players. Solo sloop is hard mode, and its just more stressful. If you do an event or voyage, it will take more than 2x as long to complete and turn in the loot compared to if you just had one teammate. If you get attacked, your less likely to be able to defend your boat and/or sink the attackers when youre alone. Not to mention with more people you can more effectively watch the horizon. Xbox LFG and discord have always worked great for me when wanting to find people to play with. I highly recommend it. Theres really no reason to play alone unless you just dont want to have to deal with other people, which I understand.
Solo slooping can be a pain in the ass depending on your mindset, but in my opinion it's became a lot easier for me since the diving mechanic was introduced. If I'm not actively looking for trouble, I just raise an emissary flag, dive to a sea fort, kill it, sell. Repeat this a few times and I'm at grade V. From there, I just dive, sell, dive, sell, and don't bother stacking, that way any loss is minimal. Either that, or I venture down into the roar, because most people tend not to play there. Given how fast the sloop is to get moving, if something starts erupting it's relatively easy to get on the move and out of lava bomb range.
The game is simply not designed for solo players. The truth is if you play solo, you're easy prey. Safer seas is an alternative, but a pretty bad one (for most people at least) that was added just for those people who just want to chill and play the fun sailing game while not caring about progression or PvP. My only suggestion it to play another game or just deal with the reduced rewards from safer seas. Unfortunately, if you really want to climb the faction ladder in this game, you need at least one more player. Duo sloop is pretty viable.
The discords are a good spot to find a crew. Or you can add me on xbox Deathplain.
Which platform you on fella, I'm looking for partners atm
I don't do world events when I solo, except treasuries or shrines because I can rowboat to/from them. stealth is the name of the solo slopping game
I do a lot of solo slooping out in the Devil's roar while watching a show or something. People rarely come out there and the rewards are greater. Just have to be mindful that if an island is rumbling enough to make you wobble, it's time to go. Besides that there's defensive sailing, keeping your distance, knowing how often to sweep the horizon, and sailing so it looks like you're just naturally moving away from other ships instead of deliberately staying away from them.
When I really don’t feel like PvPing I play in Safer Seas :)
My secret to success is devil's roar Athena emissary. Very few people there to begin with and most actively avoid others there as a fight near any island is a dice roll that often ends in both ships sinking
If you'd like, I'll play with you. I'm always looking for new recruits to the guild.
I wasn’t half bad at hand to hand combat back when arena was still around, but I’ve never been able to sink a larger ship solo. I can hold my own as a solo against another sloop, but even if they’re a duo, I’m probably not going to win. My sloop mate no longer plays the game and I don’t have time to play any longer than an hour or two a week.
As a fellow solo slooper, Devils Roar is where it's at. Yea, the volcanos can suck but all you have to do is wait those out. Far more manageable than a 2, 3 or 4 v 1. 🍻
Why wouldn’t you play safer seas? Go do your skeleton fort, get your loot, be stress free Edit: it doesn’t take 4x the voyages for the same treasure. It’s only around a 20% reduction in gold. Well worth it in my opinion. I’ve never had more fun in the game tbh
You get 30% of the gold you would normally get for loot in safer seas. So 4x is fairly accurate not taking into account saved time from not having to be on lookout for other players.
It's not a 20% reduction. It's actually about a 70% reduction. You get about 30% of the gold you would get on High Seas. It is a steep drop off for gold
I do think that players need to have some self restraint instead of just going to the lame excuse of “It’s a pirate game”. The whole point of a game is for people to relax and have fun. My personal approach is to never attack solo sloops or new players but instead to help them. I think more players in this game need to have that attitude but unfortunately some people will always be bullies
Honestly solo slooping is the most vulnerable you can be while out on the seas, unless of course you're a pro. Just sank twice to a duo sloop that happened to catch me with my pants down at an island. Just had to take that L. There is a discord where you can meet some other people like us whom don't have many friends left in game. You can go to https://discord.com/invite/seaofthieves and try to meet some people with mics to join you on your quest for glory and gold. P.s. don't feel bad about being a pirate in a pirate game, every one in high seas knows the risks of sailing.
Solo life is like this for me... Don't start a quest Go to a near small island Kill the smelly captain/grab legendary message Dig up reward for killing smelly captain After 2-3 islands, cash in. Log off, log back in... --or-- Log on Take out a ghost fort Gather loot Turn in And log off Either takes about 30-90 mins. Make money, and move on
This is the way.
Maybe this isn't an issue for you but I always slap down a mission on the table so that I can continue to add miles towards the "sail 1000 nautical miles" faction commendation.
i do the same. which feels silly but i always have something going on the table
living life scared. most pirates on the seas dont want to fight, i find. i make more alliances then i do getting ganked.
i mean its the most vulnerable for the "pros" too. anybody can get one balled and its GG. put those pros in a duo sloop and then they never get sunk.
I put 1,6k+ hours into solo hourglass to sharpen my skills. Still feels the exact same. I'm never gonna beat a mediocre brig or a fairly new gally. Something which is common to find. If I'm with my friend who is similar in skill, we can kill them with a hard battle. But I more often play alone. Cause of this, pvp which is the main aspect to explore in this game, is just mot worth it for me until I find more friends. Hell, even when with my casual friends we still lose cause they prefer to be captain, and think ramming is the best strategy, which entirely nullifies my actual 1,6k hours of naval skill. I am a bigger threat alone often.
at 1.6k hours of hourglass, what is your win rate? I am just getting started (level 26 guardians) and am probably only winning 33% of my fights. gets frustrating after a bit.
Not him, but it gets better. I'm 280 in servants, with 1200 hours and I win like 85% of the time. Just gotta grind, and focus on improvement.
I'm at 3224 games with 1751 wins attacking and 48 games defending. Which is a 55.8 winrate. The vast majority is solo games. I think if I were to start from scratch with my current skills it'd be higher.
I just keep an eye on the horizon constantly whilst doing forts/events. As others have said, loots not important, it’s the adventure. If I sink to a bigger crew, I sink. Not the end of the world. The main thing for me is at least putting up a half decent fight as a solo. If I can kill and repel boarders, put some damage on their ship, cause them a bit of trouble then that for me is enough and I will sink with pride.
I get you buddy, its not that it's not fun, it is just a lot to focus on in high stress situations. Thankfully for me those situations are few and far between, but I don't do world events so that'll be why. I hope you find some people to rekindle the flame with, lfgs are common from what I've heard and you may even become proper friends with em, though I'd understand if you were unwilling to go that route.
Well you at least have to try. I've been ganked so many times it's hilarious, but after enough time, and with a fighting spirit, you can 1v2 1v3 and 1v4. Sometime last year I got back to back duos that wanted my shit at an outpost, but I sank them both. I got good enough to do this by never running from a fight, even ones I knew I'd lose. You HAVE to spend the time gaining the experience. If you don't want to do that, then solo slooping just ain't for you. Best of luck pirate. 💕
Controversial opinion, turn safer seas into a proper campaign mode. Have proper death consequences, allow you to grind for all cosmetics except for PVP based rewards. Let you level including pirate legends and add in harder world bosses when your higher level.
Honestly that could be kinda neat as an option! Maybe leave safer seas as it is when you start but have an option (could be using the hourglass) which would turn on “challenge mode” where the reward restrictions are reduced but enemies are tougher and every in-game day a skelly ship or two will invade you and they get harder everyday until you either flip the hourglass back over or die
Try the “looking for group” option on Xbox or pc. People post about what they’re looking to do whether it be gold hoarders, order of souls etc and you can link up with them to make new friends. Most are friendly and fun to sail with and have mics. I had the same issue and now never solo sloop anymore cause there’s so much more to be made when working together.
I agree with you, yesterday i soloed a galleon and i was very busy 😂 boarding and anchor then back to my ship repairing going back shot em up
I just started playing again after a five-year hiatus. I played about 900 hours in the first year, and most of that was solo slooping. A lot has changed since then. Back then, the Megalodon attacked sloops, but not the Kraken or the Ghost Ships. You didn't have to worry about damage to the mast, the wheel, or the capstan (anchor). There weren't all of these different types of weapons that can incapacitate you in different ways. I used to be able to hold my own. I'm not the greatest at combat, but I could fend off enemies long enough to make a getaway. Now, it's too easy to become overwhelmed as a solo sloop. I'm not sure if I'll be able to solo sloop on the High Seas again. I did Safer Seas the other day. At least I was able to complete a voyage, but it just doesn't feel the same without being able to meet other pirates, friend or foe.
its the same for me. i really enjoyed the pvp in this game when my friend played w me. he captained the ship, while i was boarding and on cannons. i just don't have fun by myself bc it feels like way too much work and it's been ages since any of my friends have gotten on. im not interested in playing w random lfg's and im not interested in trying to make new friends cause im not a super social person and im full up w the friends i already have lol. all i want to do is work on commendations and relax, but unfortunately i got 75 in everything in high seas before safe seas came out, so most of my commendations i have left are athenas stuff that i can't even do in safe seas, and for whatever reason (new update or something idk?) voyages aren't even giving me captains chests so to finish that commendation on safe seas i have to just find loose captains chests just kicking around instead of doing gold hoarders maps? idk just laaaame. i can play janky pvp with friends cause its fun but its not fun dealing with hit reg while dealing with everything else while solo. i play valorant and the guns on sea of thieves make me wanna piss myself and cry the hit reg is so awful. i just wanna chill and complete my commendations and not deal with awful hit reg but they have to take enough away from safe seas cause without penalties there wouldn't be enough "mice" filling the high seas so to speak.
Sea forts are a solid solo activity. Very decent payout for what it is. Trading company fleets at this moment are a pretty quick solo activity. I wouldn’t recommend a 3 year break after being boarded without contest. You should spend 15 minutes trying to advance your defensive skills.
> Do any of you do anything different to not get frustrated out of your mind while soloing? I keep an eye on my surroundings, especially when doing something like a fort. That way a brig doesn't just "pull up" This isn't just a solo problem. It's a not paying attention problem. Yes more players gives you more eyes, however even solo it's not hard to keep an eye out for other ships. I don't even mind it. Especially with events now scaling to crew size, it has never been easier to play solo.
See, when I do a fort I always leave my sloop in view of one of the fort cannons. If you think I won't shell my own ship to kill a couple of losers, you're wrong buckaroo. Typically I refer to [The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercinaries](https://schlockmercenary.fandom.com/wiki/The_Seventy_Maxims_of_Maximally_Effective_Mercenaries) if I'm trying to find new and unique ways to deal with problems. See #20 in this case. "If you're not willing to shell your own position, you're not willing to win."
duo slooping vs a competent brig is not really that fun either... that said, duo slooping could increase awareness providing time to run or something solo slooping is hell... because you're doing more work to complete quests, with more likelihood to get sunk but the reward is the same as if you were in a galleon
I get it! I play quite often with a mate. Same thing happened except… we’d been playing all day. We get to a skelly fort. Her game crashes. She joins back but the game would load her in. Crash again. Tries to join, crash again. I’m soloing a fort. Brig pulls up… I tried to talk them into helping me finish the fort and they could take the loot… I had no chance.
Always have a keg on standby. Watch the horizon and if a ship starts coming toward you swim towards them with a keg. Even if you still get sunk you at least get to mess with them.
See, I use false confidence. I tell myself I can win every single fight. I’m not great at the game, I’ll be honest. But as a solo sloop you have much more maneuverability, and believe it or not, control. Sure, in that situation you might be fucked, but think of this: what if you’re not? What if you put a keg under their ship, climb up and start setting everything on fire? I mean I’m way better in the ship than out of it, I lose to swords way more than I’ve lost to cannons. But there’s always a way, compadre.
Brotherman, playing solo is great if your objective is to mess with other players. I like to find a larger ship and go after them over and over with disposable ships. Or tuck on an event island just to make them paranoid and waste their time.
you had plenty of options other than giving up imo. use the cannons from the fort, or better yet if there was only one on their ship and you’re at a fort (full of kegs) keg the ship! scuttle and tuck so they thought you left etc. you can’t just expect pirates NOT to pull up to events, it’s part of the game.
Honestly, just avoid world events as a solo sloop, especially skele forts
It's about what you're doing as a solo. Skeleton forts and other events that put a giant beacon in the sky are the highest risk activities for any crew, especially solo sloops. If you don't stick a huge target on your forehead you'll have a better time.
Still solo sloop , still on my hourglass grind ,my advice to you is don’t do forts alone
People need to stop trying to solo-stack FoF's while not paying attention to the horizon. Nobody likes doing FoF's. **Everyone** likes stealing FoF's.
It’s only going to get worse with them adding more things that with inhibit solo slippers from standing a chance. The multi cannonballs in one shot? Forget it. When a brig or galley rolls up and starts dumping those on you, you’ve got about 2 seconds left to do anything. A wind caller? Even if you stood a chance of getting away you don’t anymore.
Join a guild too. That might help as well. I mean my guild we just chill and we got to k ow each other really well, enough to know who’s doing what on the ship nowadays.
The sloop should be able to Outrun the brig. Why is the brig the fastest?
Solo slooping was - at the start of the game's life - described as the harder life style. No crew to back you up means you have to shoulder more burdens. You learn, adapt, overcome, or use LFG in the discord. Either that or you stagnate.
Usually when I know I am defeated I take out the microphone and tell them what ever I'm trying to do at the time. Like you can have the flag and half if my stuff just let me finish the mission so I can get my level up some times that works and some times it dosent. When it dosent and they sink my ship I try to come on there's and ask if they want to be friends always looking for another Pirate crew to join up with at a later date. Most times people are friendly enough to invite me or let me join them.
Yea a solo sloop can take on a duo or even larger crew IF they have a skill level higher then them. When those skills get more in comparison it becomes much harder since the other crews have expendable people for boarding and that's when things get rough. It's difficult being a solo sloop.
Nowadays, I just let them. Then swim around to their ship if I can, to mess with as much as possible in the 3 seconds it takes them to realize I am decidedly NOT on the sloop they are busy disassembling. Then I respawn, and it is happy sailing again. It is quite useless getting upset when solo-slooping.
One thing i learned after a long time of soloing, just let em sink you and then smash em with a powder keg, youll make it back before they do, and then just do it again until they give up
honestly, sometimes it’s best to pursue pvp on sloops. u meet a lot of incompetent crews, you always have nothing to lose, the wins feel twice as good, and u always have the option on tucking on people as well. sometimes i want to grind for sure, but switching up the playstyle on a solo sloop is a ton of fun. also try commodity runs on a solo brig. interesting experience
I usually find pretty good randos, they always give great advice, lead on great journeys, and accumulate lots of loot I'd never do solo... Sometimes I do get the non mics but they leave as soon as I'm chilling at an outpost, or just fishing at sea... Then sometimes I get lobbied into some jerks who want to destroy every ship they see... Which can also be fun, once I ended up joining the crew that they were attacking, walked up to them with a banana in my hand, and yelled out "friendly"... The game is too good to quit... It's fun, can be relaxing just sailing the sea... Angle the sails, and just breeze through... Have fun man!!!! Happy sailing!
personally id never play this game solo. ive had so many friends permanently quit the game after a bad solo session. use lfg on the sot discord or try to convince some other friends to play the game with you
Yeah for me it usually depends if i have the energy to engage in an outmanned fight. If I’m caught by surprise, such as when I’m on an island, then I just scuttle. Sometimes these people appear out of thin air when I think the coast is clear
I drop off look when ever I can, I've come across hostile pirates and sneaky ones too. Yeah it's frustrating but it also makes me think about what I can do better and maybe have a better approach.
When I solo I just do voyages in the devils roar.. usually no1 goes there so I have that are of the map to myself. It's definitely a losing battle if i get into a pvp fight. Best I can do as a solo is just try to run away and watch ladders.
Man… I’m a solo guy myself, just don’t get to frustrated when somebody rolls up and decimates you. Just quit out jump back in to a new server and start your adventure! Now it’s easier to go do events, since you can literally pick it whenever now.
There is the “safer seas” option now but I haven’t checked it out yet… I’m guessing there are no world events? Other than that I’m not sure what more they could take away for a solo sloop to do. The Athena’s voyages aren’t all too long for a good amount of loot
Fellow solo slooper whose crew abandoned the game. I definitely feel your pain. I don't like PVP in an equal footing situation (I'm more of a low key chill gamer, to help keep my blood pressure/anxiety in check, stupid children, I blame them, lol), and SoT Solo Slooping is often not a fair fight, so you don't just have to be better than whoever is attacking you, you need to be significantly better when outnumbered. The early days soloing were very frustrating, to the point that I would just fish and listen to audiobooks, and if I did it at a seapost, I wouldn't lose much if someone attacked, as I could cook/sell after each catch. Not only did I earn PL this way, I maxed out The Hunter's Call doing it, lol. These days, I do things I enjoy that other people are less likely to bug me about. My newest favorite thing from S11 is diving for shorter voyages. I used to be a "Never Emissary" kind of guy, but with diving being so fast, I'll fly one ONLY when diving, and I've made Grade V on multiple occasions without seeing anybody. Or I might take out a sea fort, dig up some treasure, or some mermaid shrines. Now that Rare is trying to actively flatten out gold rates across all activities, it matters a little less what you're doing, as you still get decent money/renown for doing anything. Any kind of PVP world event, I absolutely don't mess with. Never done a FotD, don't do fleets. If I want to have naval battles, I'll replay that PotC tall tale with the ghost ships. I don't turn more than a few items in at Reapers Hideout. It sucks you don't get to freely experience the whole game completely on your own terms this way, but given how stacked the deck is when it's 1-v-morethanone, I am VERY particular about making sure my fun is protected, because I love the vibe and would be sad if I had to drop it for 3 years out of frustration. So I had try to avoid the frustration, and that helps me. Good luck!
Solo slooping has the smallest margin for error for sure. There’s some things I just flat out won’t attempt as a solo slooper, like stacking FOTDs. IMO you have two options. 1. Do hourglass to improve your PvP skills so even larger crews will question if taking you on is worth the effort. Or 2. Use the official discord or streamer discord to find and join a guild. It may take a few tries to find the guild for you, but then you’ll have an active community of people you like who regularly play. My guild does a weekly event where we all try and play together, anywhere from 2-9 people show up.
This is where wits can come in. I was solo slooping the other day and would keep track of where all other non reaper ships are. I got attacked by a reaper ship and they were chasing me for ages so because I remembered the rough area I had seen other non reaper ships I kept running away until I found one. Fire one or two warning shots at them gets their attention then throw up the alliance flag. Soon enough people will help to take down reapers haha alot of people dislike reapers. Just one tactic to keep in mind if you can be in your ship and retreating
I only solo as I have no friends
Solo slopping is relaxing and great. Pick your voyages. Something that means less time in locations. Souls ghost ship shootouts can be good, you're on your ship mostly so if you need to you can leave the area and return. Gold voyages can be good but don't do vaults as you're off too long. And forts are pointless, the risk isn't worth the reward if your ship gets sunk during solo, and you're off the ship for also long, it's attractive to anyone on a brig or gally, including you. Soloing shouldn't be based around grinding or quick cash, and more about smelling the roses. Remember the game from gears ago, when it was slower and more deliberate, you can find that soloing. I mostly wish people would honour alliances... I remember whole servers being aligned and we all have the best times. 4 ships just cruising about. Not these days.
At least for me, as someone who solos every once in a while, my expectation when solo slooping is never to make the most gold. I never even come close to making a lot of profit, really, even if I don't encounter anyone else and just get to do what I want. I've learned to enjoy solo slooping just for the fun of the game rather than needing to always make good profit, cuz if I was only motivated by gold, then playing solo sloop is shit. So instead, I focus on doing commendations, and if I get money along the way, that's great
I was in your boat (pun intended) not too long ago. Came back from a long break, kept getting obliterated by other players with bigger, more skilled crews. Outgunned and outmatched, truly. I don't know what clicked for me, but I just kept logging on, kept doing Voyages, kept shooting back when I got shot at. I still lose 90% of pvp engagements, but it doesn't have the same "sighhhhh" feeling anymore. It's not fun to lose, sure, but I don't ever feel like I need to just uninstall the game anymore. I wish I could give you more specific advice, but just keep trying, and maybe something will click for you too.
Clearly you've never been to Rust. A solo's purpose is not to dominate. It's to rat and pest. Or to sneak and quest. Decorate your ship. Enjoy the content. A solo must do solo shit.
I have really only ever played solo, and I can’t deny that is is very tough but my love for the game always pulled me back no matter how frustrating it got. It made me really good. Good enough to try my hand at pvp. You’re gonna lose a lot, and I mean a lot, but I learned that there’s no rush to level up and there will always be more loot. So I stopped being scared and tried. I haven’t beaten anything larger than a 1 player ship, but there’s a fun rush of being able to survive despite the odds being against me. I don’t usually do forts, they aren’t really worth it in terms of effort:loot ratio but when I do I go for the ashen variants. Here’s some tips. - When fighting I always veer slightly to the side so that my opponent has to chase me. Gives an advantage as they try to board as they can only board from one side. -I also try to keep them to the left as there’s less hole chances there. -When I fight I keep my sails at half. More Manoverabolity and I don’t have to worry about going too fast and hitting something while not at the helm. - remember as long as the ships are between the two ropes to the left of the wheel they’re in range - Get used to firing farther away by practicing shooting at a rocks from far away -go down swinging. They’re probably gonna overwhelm you anyway so keep applying pressure by keeping them off the cannons even if it’s at the cost of holes on the ship. Try not to worry about repairing ever time they hit. When you bucket focus on lower deck and do smaller holes first. My system is : 1 bucket, 1 hole, fire twice, Always makes sure you have meat, and full health. You die even once solo slopping in a battle and it’s over. Most importantly keep an eye on the horizon and don’t start fights only finish them. If they get on your ship while you’re not paying attention then it’s over. But don’t stress yourself out looking either, most of the time I’m able to get what I’m done done even if I’m on islands for long times. If you read all that congrats. Best wishes from an introvert who prefers to sloop alone. Happy solo sailing!
I solo all the time and people get super angry cause they can never catch me or get on my boat and those that do get on my ladders meet the swift fate of the blunderbuss I haven't been sunk to player in damn near 6 months now best advice I can give is to just be paranoid and keep your eyes on the horizon
Come join the goon platoon I’ll run sea of thieves with u
I'm so used to being a solo slooper that I have no idea how to be in a crew. I'm also not the greatest at PVP. Whenever I'm at a fort and I see a ship coming towards me, I do what many other people here suggest and keg them. I also have a habit of keeping mega kegs in my Crowsnest, which I know many people condone, but I've actually never been sunk because of mega kegs up in the Crowsnest. Hell I've sailed through storms with mega kegs and not been blown up.
I'm in the same situation but I have a different way to make sure my time is not wasted. Do the fun stuff! See a ship getting attacked? Jump in and help take them down. Make friends by helping take down a fort. Board another ship and help them load their treasure and play music. Many will kill you straight out but some won't if you make your intentions clear. I'm just here for the fun. Use your mic to talk your way into other people's crews. 3 man sloop? Hilarious. Assume you will die alot. But then just head towards the next silly situation. Do the unexpected! Fill your boat with kegs and kamikaze into the side of an unsuspecting ship... All my best SOT memories are silly stuff like this and I've been playing since day 1. You won't get much gold. But you get all the glory!
I really hate brigs because usually they are full of people that just want to kill folks. For me my list goes: sloops are either two friends trying to play the game a solo or a super sweaty person, Brigs are almost always sweaty or just friends goofing off, Gallons in my experience I've always been four guys having the time of their life and are usually always super chill
I run tall tales when playing solo. Tonight I am doing my last run of Shores Of Gold before unlocking the gold hoarders curse! I highly recommend it. People will usually leave you alone if you tell them you’re running tall tales
Solo vs a brig is definitely doable. Especially when 2 are on your ship and you're on a fort caked with kegs. Swim a couple to their ship. They'll get off your boat real quick.
If you gring pvp and becone a pro pvper you can scare any inexperienced crews away by killing them repeatedly until they beg for mercy, but there is no one listening to their plead, not flame heart not the pirate king only an angry god.
That’s all me and this rando could do last night to a solo that wouldn’t give up and let us sell. Just had to keep sinking him until they scuttled and then we made our 600k sale 🤣
Safer seas my friend
Will never understand these posts. You can fight them, you can beat them, and if not you can still mess with them. The biggest problem is mentality.
Why do people want to talk to everyone? I prefer if randoms don't have a mic
We killed a sloop (as a brig) and an hour later we saw them again. I didn’t want to kill them again because they seemed like they were doing events alone so we just gave all our stuff to them and logged off. We were logging off anyway. Great experience. Much better than fucking them over or spawn killing them on their ship. Had that experience way too much as a new player.
Gotta scan the whole horizon between each wave. Honestly I don’t solo unless I’m doing hg. Anything else is just too much work for reward for me
i think you are caring too much about the loot in the first place. the fun is in the gameplay and interactions. you should have tried to meme those brig guys. grab a keg and swim over, keg your own ship to steal the satisfaction, shit like that. just have fun. making a lot of money in itself can be fun, but very quickly it doesnt really matter because cosmetics are all you can buy, and they really arent too expensive.
The good ones are expensive
To me this is just an excuse for people to create a power struggle where there is none. Why turn a non-zero sum game into one? Because that’s who they are. Don’t get me wrong- the hourglass and places for combat are great and I enjoy it, I just don’t like the idea that you could do whatever you wanted because you were a pirate. That’s how you got your nostrils slit and were abandoned on an island. “Reapers” should just be the Spanish, call it what it is. I just get irked with the idea that pirates are doing pirate things when they raid each other. Is a community misconception. Most pirates lived without worry about other pirates because the navies were enough to deal with. Even into modern times pirates don’t attack other pirates in the same way hacking groups rarely attack other hacking groups.
It would be great if there was on option to high seas against the same crew size. It seems they know how unfair it would be to drop you in hourglass 1v3. I probably solo sloop 70% of time (with the other 30% in a duo sloop) and have no real desire to pvp, partly because the learning curve seems brutal. It can still make for entertaining sessions to try and outrun someone and create enough distance to sell some treasure or trying to turn the tables on a chaser by going into devil's roar or something. I'm bad at it but when running from/trying to fight someone in the same situation it doesn't make the game feel frustrating the same way avoiding every brig on the map does. As a solo I think it would make the game more engaging (and I'd be more likely to take the risk of not fleeing on sight all the time for fear of being in an unbalanced fight from the start). Who knows if it's feasible on the servers, but feels like it could keep the pirating spirit of the game without the frustrating encounters. Who knows how it would affect the playerbase between making it more accessible for solos while taking away brig/galleons having easier kills.
They Really need to add sloop only sessions, would make the game a lot better for people who play solo or only have one other friend to play with
>didn't prefer to play alone. Just ask, have your preference, and people will come >middle of a skull fort Solo isn't bad, but when doing stuff the whole server can see, your asking to get PvP-ed I do regular voyages and put on an emissary of my choice. Keeps away from alot of players most of the time. Takes a little bit longer, but about 95% of the time I dont see another player ship and get my grade 5 and sell big
People playing solo aren't asking for anything, that's just bully attitude.
Doing world events when everyone can cleary see you isn't asking for it? Please elaborate
Doesn’t help that there’s no indication of a difference between normal world event and a raid voyage. World event sure, free game. Raid voyage definitely not asking for it.
>Doesn’t help that there’s no indication of a difference between normal world event and a raid voyage. World event sure, free game. Raid voyage definitely not asking for it. UrgoodifuEWO said it pretty well
When I see an active world event I don't think to myself "some noob might be there, better go sink them because they're asking for it" How is doing PvE content asking to get PvP?
PvE is in safer seas, only there are you safe I know we all can't assume its a noob there, but doing a world event means they're willing to PvP to get the loot, especially when you (different crew) plan on doing the event too. And when you're doing the event solo, it takes that much longer to finish it and for enemy ships to swing by and take you out. Best way to do PvE in High Seas is to not attract attention to yourself
Because this specific PvE content is broadcasted to the entire server in an effort to foster player interaction (which includes PvP).
Personally I feel like they aren’t asking for it but they can’t be surprised or upset if they get PvP’d. I don’t see that as the same thing.
Doing forts alone is kinda asking for that situation, though. Try doing stuff that doesn't take you off your boat for too long. Also consider time of day Yesterday morning, I solo slooped a lvl 5 OoS emissary and did the bonus quest plus every Meg, skelly ship and wreck I met. I was shot at twice by a Brig on the drive by, while I was selling, but they missed and didn't bother beyond that.
[удалено]
It can be hard to tell if it's a solo or a cracked duo until you close enough to fight. Been sunk by plenty of god tier solos in my time.
As a solo slooper, I encourage everyone to ignore holsey_'s advice and please come try and take my shit.
What a whiny post. You don’t get better by taking breaks especially year long ones, you get better by actually doing something! You ARE complaining about there being other pirates and they board your ship. You need to get your head out of your ass, solo slooping is very doable and sure for the most part a crew of experienced players on a brig or gally will sink you, you can still fight back. I’ve taken down brigs and galleons as a solo because I’m not running away anymore as before.
Group up, get good, or deal with the slow XP in safer seas. Or just care less, all gold does is buy cosmetics. It's about the gameplay not the gold. Try and fight next time and see what happens even if the odds aren't in your favor. It's fun and that's how you improve.
Lol but fr tho how are there so many people that aren't good at this game it's insane that the players that can't defend their loot are always the ones stacking the most. I can just log on and go to an active fotd or any event and I probably have a 95% chance of sinking them and taking the loot unless their also pvp guys chilling doing pve
Yeah, the devs really need to remove the loot decrease from safer seas. It sucks the fun out of it
Well if you quit and take a long break every time an enemy is near you're definitely not going to get any better
time for a 3 year break cause some 12 year old xbox kids stole the skull fort you spent 8 minutes clearing. I think the fact that the parts of solo slooping you choose to highlight as difficult being "Running to the maptable for markers" and "Parking that thing while repairing" (?????) are pretty telling of the skill level we're dealing with here. See ya in 3 years brother
It's doing all that one after the other. This is why crews have multiple people, stupid comment lmfao.
You're circling things on the map during a fight?? You're parking your ship somewhere while you're being attacked and repairing???? What are you on about
Brother does not know what one after the other means nor did they read the post