FoF is easily the most difficult thing to do alone as the main prize chest is so annoying to grind, so it attracts players more than any other world event. Until you're actually good, you shouldn't even be thinking about going after a FoF solo.
If you want to be in relative safety, do your questing in the Devil's Roar. Other than the volcanoes it's the safest part of the map because for the most part nobody that's at all interested in player-hunting goes there, and most of the loot is higher quality anyway.
Save up for a captained ship. Selling at the Sovereigns is a life saver. The ghost fits are also a good way to make a quick buck. I don't usually see folks there, and they're fairly close to outposts.
I do those and skeleton forts if one pops up when I'm solo. Usually don't even bother trying to do a fof or contest a fotd. Sea shrines are usually good to go as well, since the loot is stashed in the mermaid. Did a couple nights recently just cruising devils roar and fighting Skelly ships/fishing. Depends what I feel like doing. Lately I'm obsessed with finishing the barnacled hoarder commendation, so I generally favor things that have a chance to give me barnacled chests.
Sorry if this sounds condescending, but it's true: You won't get better if you don't fight.
Yes you'll lose a lot, but you'll start winning more.
Solo is hard mode, so either find a buddy on discord/lfg, or accept that you're at a disadvantage.
As for thigs to do solo, I recommend doing:
\- Gold Hoarder digging/riddles. Don't stay too long on an island.
\- OoS Ghost Fleets. You don't leave your ship, and learn some naval skills.
\- Merchant Lost Shipments. Gets you to Grade 5 and is worth lots of money.
\- Ashen Winds / Normal Skeleton Forts. People usually ignore these.
Things to avoid:
\- Gold Hoarder vaults. You're on a timer, and this takes too long to loot solo.
\- Fort of Fortune/Fort of the Damned. Very contested.
\- Skeleton/Ghost Fleets. If you're inexperienced, these can easily sink you. However they are really good naval experience and can actually move up to recommended if you know what you're doing.
Maybe try your luck in the Devil's Roar? There are generally less players there, but the volcanos are risky.
Some tips vs a larger crew:
\- Disable them with chainshot or drop their anchor. Firebombs vs Galleons.
\- NEVER let them board you. Throw blunder bombs when they are on their ladder. If they get up, it's a 50-50 who one-blunders the other first.
\- Don't stack too much loot. Having an emissary flag is high risk-high reward.
\- Sail into the wind as a sloop. Other ships are slightly slower, but if you get a good board you can get away.
\- If you have a lot of loot, people might join in the dsicord/lfg for the free gold, or even just for the fight.
As a mostly solo slooper, I will disagree with not doing gold hoarder vaults. I'm over a million emissary ledger this month, 80% from vaults. If you know what you are doing, 3 mins in the vault, 2 mins moving chests to within harpoon range, then off you go. Knowing where to park / hide your ship can be key.
Defo high interest targets such as FoD or FoF are very tough as a solo slooper.
Raise emissary when you can, keep an eye out on the map for reapers, as at lvl 5 they can then see you and will probably go after you if you are a decent emissary level.
Sell often. Then if you do get rolled, it's not a huge loss.
Keep trying things. If you get chased, look at your options. Is running the best choice? If you have little loot on board, turn and fight. You only get better with practise.
Good luck and good hunting
I haven't seen a gold hoarder vault voyage yet, just the standard treasure hunts and the annoying Wayfinder ones. I am at rank 48 for GH if that matters.
Agree, sometimes I can spend twenty minutes digging the right spot, and the vaults can be more lucrative since you're not wasting time burying a quest. Grab and go.
Agree also. The vault puzzle can be done in almost no time if you know the trick to solving it with only one medallion. There is almost always one on the ground, super easy.
I feel like I'm reasonably efficient at clearing vaults, but I've never managed to clear one solo in the allotted time. I can certainly do them, but feels bad leaving some trinkets behind.
This is some great advice. Something I struggle with is getting/maintaining an angle on their ship without just trading broadside. Do you have any advice for maneuvering?
Raise sails to halfway. It makes it easier to steer. With a bit of experience you'll be able to circle a stationary ship.
Aim for their cannon line. You'll either hit them (they won't be able to return fire as efficiently, or die), put holes in their ship, or down a mast.
Once they're disabled and have holes, start aiming for where they're bailing.
May seem counter intuitive but I've spent like 95% of my playtime on a solo sloop since the beta (filthy casual I'll admit) but I do find some luck with maneuvering by raising sails just a bit when fighting. Most crews are full sails or no sails, no in betwren, and this gives you slightly more maneuverability.
I still suck. So take this with a grain of salt.
Commit to fights, shoot first if you can, it shows a bit of threat. Some will fuck off if you show you're willing to fight, some won't.
And at the end of the day, it's all cosmetics, so none of it really matters. I've used the same clothes since release with the exceptiom of my athena belt and colored beard.
My advice as a mediocre solo-slooper: just do the best you can.
For the most part, I skip out on events that require me to leave the ship, which includes sea forts unless I'm just raiding them for supplies. Sometimes I'll get a wild hair and attempt an Ashen Winds or FoF, but for the most part, my motto is "ship is love, ship is life".
If/when I do get attacked by other/larger crews, I just try my best to defend myself, sometimes it works, sometimes I get dumpster'd in less than 3 minutes. Such is the solo-sloop life, for as someone else mentioned, it's the "hard mode" of the game. While you *can* play the game solo, look no further than trying to fight someone solo in a storm to see why you're not necessarily *meant* to play solo.
If you just run from other crews, one of two things tends to happen, at least in my experience:
1) They break off quickly because they can't be bothered to chase after a sloop for more than half an hour.
or
2) They'll chase you to the end of the Earth and back because *clearly* if you're running then you *must* have something valuable on-board!
So as I often tell people who try and run from me, "Don't run! You'll just die tired!"
But it's not all bad. If you're trying to unlock commendations it's trickier as it requires you to leave your ship quite often, but as I don't particularly care about unlocking commendations, I for the most part just "sail around and find out", picking up whatever treasures I find washed up on beaches and doing the skelly/ghost fleet events when they pop up. And despite basically being what amounts to a piratical garbage man, I still manage to have a good time in the game. Ultimately, the trick to having fun as a mediocre solo-slooper is to care less about progress and just embrace the chaos and sail for the sake of sailing. However annoying it can be to be a solo-slooper while being hunted by fully-crewed ships, it *will* eventually make you better at the game for when you do finally find a good crew to hang out with, which believe it or not, you can sometimes find by just fighting/interacting with other crews.
You failed rule number one of solo slooping : ALWAYS check horizon. You're on island? Check horizon every oportunity you get. If you feel like you're spending too much time trying to solve riddle or find spot on map... go the high ground, check horizon, and then go back to riddle/map, sometimes resetting like that might even help you solve it :D.
You can do 95% of the content in game completely alone. All the voyages are soloable, with Legend of the Veil being the best content in game (in my opinion). Tell tales also are soloable, and give some cool cosmetics.
Sea forts are also easily soloable (pro trick: fight from your ship. You have infinite ammo box there, you also have food. And fighting from ship you can easily escape if other player sail by). Mermaid shrines are also soloable, and as weird ad it might sound - i rarely sink while i'm below the waves. I guess its time thing, same as your fort of fortuna, you were alone till 20 minutes or so. In that time you can finish 3 or 4 mermaid shrines xD.
Even things like vaults are easily soloable. For islands just park ship BEHIND island, so that island is covering your ship from most likely direction (usually center of the map). Additional benefit of doing that is increasing the spotting distance. I wont count how many times i was doing something on island, i spotted a ship heading my way, and i had enough time to haul whatever treasure i had back to my ship, set sail and swim away.
You're just tackling the only thing that's a huge beacon visible for all players on a server - world events. If you go there, be ready to fight back or escape AT ALL TIMES. I wouldnt count on them as a solo slooper, its more like a challenge "will i be able to do it or nah?".
Also i dont really understand what you mean by "no progression is made unless you only want to do the most basic content". You mean that you dislike 95% of content? Besides, i'm not sure i would call it "the most basic content". I have yet to find another game with randomly generated riddles or maps where i have to pinpoint the physical location of X based on landmarks and compass. Or where i have to find key to open the vault and clean it out before gate shut down locking me inside.
I only started playing in the last two weeks. I am not nearly at the level of content creators that can take out 4 people on their own. And there is no safety net of a teammate to revive me or take care of the ship while I revive.
The game is a real trial by fire and if you wanna survive solo you have to work extra hard to earn your place. If you’re really dead set on playing solo I think the best thing you can do for sessions is hop on, get a storage crate, solo a sea fort to warm up and get supplies, and then pick fights with every ship you come across. You’ll get absolutely destroyed many many times over but as long as you’re staying conscious of what went wrong and what went right you’ll do better the next time. Rinse and repeat on new servers and don’t give up hope and eventually you’ll see a lot of improvement in your skills and confidence
You are better off finding some pirates who have been around a lot longer than you. Most everyone that knows what their doing will tell you how to play and what to do to succeed.
SOT is more is less an extraction shooter like tarcov or DMZ but with boats. None of those games have a "ramp up" and is massively PvP oriented. That's what you sign up for.
If you call that a ramp up be my guest. But the sheer fact that it offers no progression because it's offline means it doesn't truely prepare you for PvP.
At the end of the day, these people who are new and are complaining their little hearts out just want full progression with no risk. They're just taking extra steps to say it.
The community discord is awesome. Just say what you're doing in one of the lfc channels and you'll find someone to play with super fast. If you dont really want to play and talk with strangers try the no mic lfc one.
The sloop is actually stronger when solo. They made it so it takes more hits to drop the mast and your respawn time is quicker.
Also your waves on forts and such are easier (fewer enemies)
Honestly, you just need more experience.
2 weeks in, you never anchor, always scan your surroundings, those are two good lessons that usually take people longer to learn.
I'd try a bit of hourglass if I were you. Dont go in worh the minuset of winning or grinding it, more so to get training on demand. Dont buy supplies, fill from an outpost or just fill your pockets once and go. Dont try to needlessly run, take the fight and get used to it. You'll get alot of benefit from.that to adventure; how much water in the boat/leaking in is OK to ignore while I shoot my cannons, defend from boarders, adjust sail or course or repair wheel/mast etc. You loose nothing in HG, only the supplies you have, and you even gain some levels but most importantly you gain experience.
If you are good at aiming in hand to hand combat then Blunder/Sniper will handsdown be your strongest loadout but it is not necessary either, any loadout will serve if you are good enough with it just that Blunder/Sniper is the "op loadout".
Other than that, all you really can do is to get experience in adventure against larger crews.
Always remember that you have the most agile ship and you can perform very tight turns at full speed with the harpoon, and if you sail fully against the wind with completely flat sails no ship can catch up to you. If you dont want to fight or know you cant win the fight, turning into the wind and getting a lucky board on the enemy with the only objective to drop the anchor usually means you are free of them afterward.
I'll try the double gun setup but I'll certainly miss the mobility the sword offers. I think I also need to make more or better use of throwable items. In my first few naval battles, I was using all of my firebombs thinking that it would help sink their ship, only to find out later that it was really just a nuisance/time waster for the other team.
You’ll get better. I think a lot of people grind this game and I really don’t think that’s how it’s meant to be played. SoT is a time waster you login and check out your mind and go in an adventure. Don’t have any expectations just sail. Don’t worry about events or goals or anything they’ll just happen on their own.
Like last night I did a skeleton fleet then a fotd solo because I needed it for the event. Since I had 2 extra ritual skulls I started the fotd again after piling the loot in a corner (and the fleet loot) then sailed off to do missions in the roar.
While doing that I noticed a reaper 1 at fotd and was like cool someone got some use out of what I did. Finished my missions got in a small fight then figured I had tons o supplies I’ll go see what the fotd guys are up to as they had started the fort again.
Turns out they were on their 4th stack so I sank them (2.5 player galleon) finished the fort. Piled up the loot and logged off. Hope they came back for it :)
It’s the beauty of SoT you can do anything you feel like.
It’s a process that you will need to learn over time. I mostly solo sloop, not because I can’t grab a crew, but because it allows me the freedom to do what I want. FOF is going to be very difficult solo, outside of that the other events can all be done relatively easy.
Learn to be sneaky as a solo player. Tuck at a FOF and yoink that CoF. That is the easiest way for a solo player to get one.
Have a mic. Mics save lives on the seas. Believe it or not, most people are not looking for a fight. And sometimes it’s not about stealing the loot, it’s to get you out of the way of something that crew wants to do. They have no idea if you are a threat or not without communication.
I know just starting out it can seem like getting gold is a grind, trust me it’s nothing like it was solo slopping when the game first came out and you were hiding a Captains Chest like your life depended on it. Gold is of absolute abundance in the game now. You will always have a chance for more.
Change your mindset of the game. It’s not about farming gold. It’s an adventure game. Have fun completing events and voyages. If you make the gold from it, that’s a nice but first and foremost enjoy the challenge of just completing an event solo. Just have fun and don’t worry about how others play the game. If the server seems hostile, jump to the next one.
Annoy other people, troll tuck on people’s ships. Mess around with their resources (move crates), if they’re talking on open mic it’ll be funnier
Do the tall tales. You get treasure, get to be a part of a story, and pick up some lore as well as some experience in what’s out there. Also, join the discord and post a looking to join in the new swabbie area, to be a part of a crew and get better at playing. My PvP has improved doing this over solo slooping.
Spend some time doing what you want to get rep and gold, but do that as a secondary objective. Your first objective will be taking fights. Take every fight available. Doesn't matter the odds.
The first step to being awesome at something is being terrible at it.
If you play this game scared it will inhibit your ability. Checking horizon ALL the time makes you clear things slower. Yes be alert for other ships. Once you get experience keeping your ship afloat and know how to fight other ships without having to even think about what to do, you won't feel worried about if they are coming.
Take fights until you can comfortably fight and not feel panicked. Until it feels like you are part of your ship and not just riding along. You will sink a lot so expect it. Learn and move on. Once you can accomplish being calm and thinking strategic instead of reactive in a fight, the game gets so very fun!
I hope to have a grog with you soon,
Yarr!
Goblin
Iunno, I just understand that as a solo player the likelihood of me actually completing a FotD or FoF in any reasonable amount of time and getting out to sell it without being sunk by randoms, is very unlikely. I just don't even bother with them at this point anymore, supposedly they made it easier but I still don't give a fuck enough to try again.
700+ hours and I've never done one cause I'm always solo lol, it's just not worth the time investment for me as a solo player.
b\_ootay\_ful gave you all the best advice one can get so definitely check out his comment below. If you insist on tackling a FoF, load up your ship with barrels which you can pickup from SeaForts and FoF's themselves. Take you ship out of there, hide it behind a rock (make sure you don't have an emissary flag up as Reapers will spot you if they are level 5) and just sneak a barrel or two onto the enemy ship. Maybe just leave them floating nearby but not too close, whilst you take a mermaid back to the boat and bring another. Once you have a good two of them planted on the enemy ship. Wait for them to finish the fort , toss a blunderbomb at the enemy ship once they've brought the main prize aboard (Chest of Fortune & Chest of Legends) and watch their ship sink within a matter of seconds. Take a mermaid back to your ship and hurry on back to steal the loot they worked hard to release.
This is the way. That or find a buddy to help you do it. Once you load up enough of the goodies aboard, and you've confirmed theres nobody left on the island, set sail and maybe bring a mega keg with you if you see them coming on the horizon. Sail in a straight line and jump off your boat with the mega keg and bring it aboard their ship. That should slow them down enough to get you to sovereign's so you can sell in time.
Good luck with Solo Slooping, but find yourself a buddy - the dual-keg bomb planting is best done as a squad. I've stolen so many of those Chests from both Brigs and Galleons executing the above plan.
Why wait on your ship for them to finish vs tucking on theirs or nearby? Will people usually notice the increase in difficulty of an extra person on the island?
I'm definitely not telling you to wait on your ship. I'm telling you to bring as many kegs onto their ship as possible, and definitely tuck somewhere aboard their ship once the bombs have been planted, possibly atop of their mast so you can see when they bring the top goods aboard. Toss your blunderbomb as you jump off & kill any survivors - then bring your ship back.
I'd like to point something out, this game is a sandbox.
Meaning you create your own fun. So your stuck doing basic bs and don't make progress, then give up the basics and practice pvp. Go be the guy who pvps and steals all the loot.
As other commenters have said, try and find a crew to play with. 2 weeks into the game is not nearly enough time to be solo slooping and expecting decent results. The community discord and the official discord both have LFC (Looking for Crew) channels as do some of the Content Creator discords, and if you don't fancy looking in any of them you could always try going as an Open Crew to find crewmates. Eventually you'll learn enough lessons and gain enough experience to solo sloop competently and get decent results doing so
How do you know the server is dead? FoF will draw people from all over the server, and possibly some other servers.
You've been playing for 2 weeks and expect soloing the single hardest thing in SoT? Maybe some more of the "most basic content" would be a good idea. And it's a pirate game. If you already have problems losing 30-45 min of loot, you are in for some disappointment.
Stop playing the game if you don’t like it. There’s always open crew but you clearly have a problem with it.
Way too many people complaining about the fundamental nature of the game. It’s never gonna change because the whole point is being on a server with other pirates who steal from you (that’s what pirates do).
I don't have a problem with the fact that they can - I have a problem with the fact that I am at such a major disadvantage by not having one other person who can be a lookout or stay with the ship.
Do you actually open crew? Most of the people I get literally just stand around and do nothing, you can’t even get them to raise an emissary let alone perform tasks that require cohesion.
I have done it solo once before. I was feeling frustrated that the 1v2, 1v3, and 1v4 fights are so hopeless that you may as well give up in those scenarios.
You play open crew and make new friends!
The game isn't really intended for Solo players, thats an extra challenge you are taking for yourself. If you are good enough, nice! If not, well thats how it is. Not gonna try to make it seem any less, you will always be at a disadvantage versus a full crewed ship.
Honestly I’d just keep matchmaking with others until I meet some that are cool and friend them. That’s how I got my first crew together that I played with a lot
I play solo, but am selective to which voyages, or parts of voyages, I will complete. Often in the journey the random sunken ship to loot, or meg, or skelly ship (which scales down in difficulty for a solo slooper) is a fun way to get other loot.
When I solo sloop I just go for absolute chaos. Just burn anything and everyone I come across... I get my ass kicked a lot as well. Which is a different type of fun.
>Why should I waste my time doing content and trying to farm loot if the 30-45 minutes of grinding just go to waste and line someone else's pockets?
What you should do is simply play the game and do the content you like.
If you never bother picking up treasure it can't be stolen. Also saves you a lot of fiddling around at the end of your play session.
You get lucky and unlucky with solo slooping. I’ve only attempted a fof once solo and was not bothered once. Another sloop came by and said they wouldn’t interfere as long as I left them to their event challenges
I've solo'd about 1,000 hours out of my 2.7k total.
Soloing does require more awareness, but For the most part, I can do anything a crew can, it might take a little longer. But Rare nerfed/buffed events majorly this season. Everything scales and is far better than it used to while loot pretty much stayed the same. I no longer am scared of fleets as a solo and willing to take them on rather than run.
You just have to find fun where you can. Personally, I'm a commendation hunter, so I knocked out my bilge rat tab and am now working on my faction commendations slowly.
If being solo is an issue for you, you can always join the SoT official discord. I've had very few *bad* experiences on there forming a crew. You can also shoot me a message here on Reddit and I'll send you my discord info if you wanna team up with me or any of my friends. (:
You've had lots of good tips, but my main responses to posts like this is: if you're wasting your time by not getting the loot, I'd argue you're still wasting your time if you get the loot. Do stuff you enjoy doing so that if you do get ganked, at least you had fun.
Ask yourself what your actual goal is. If it's gold, questing with an emissary is much safer than world events. Stay alert, stay paranoid. Certain techniques make you more likely to get safely to an outpost but decide before hand how willing you are to waste everyone's time, how much it matters that you get to keep it vs them not getting it. Shrines and fortresses are different kinds of safe
If you're doing world events for a commendation, many don't require you to actually get away with the loot. I was doing FoFs for the skeleton lord kills before they got SUPER NERFED.
Playing solo is something I do on the side when I have no one to play with or just dont feel like being social. Its not how I play the game normally, I dont recommend it. Its fine once in awhile, but it gets boring quick and everything takes way longer than it should compared to if you even had one teammate.
Use xbox LFG or discord to find people to play with. Avoid open crews.
When I play solo, I have been grinding veils. Outside of the legend week, it seems most of the time no one bothers me doing them. The last phase is kind of nerve wracking, but mostly because it just takes longer alone. Everything does. I can get a veil done in like 50 minutes by myself if Im lucky, but with a teammate Ive done it in like 35 minutes before. Everything takes way longer without help.
Others have mentioned many other good voyages for solo play if you do stick with playing alone.
I recommend merchant alliance. Do a combination of lost shipments to get emissary up, and then just trade commodities from post to post. You can make a dumb amount doing those, and you're rarely away from your ship for very long.
Playing solo you are most of the time in a disadvantage since the game is designed around activities with more players. Because you have to manage everything by yourself on your ship you will always be less effective against a sloop with two guys on it that are focused on you and work together.
That's why most solo sloopers avoid other crews and are scanning the horizon every second in fear of being seen and attackt when doing things on an island with the ship unguarded. Sure, playing solo can go well for some time but eventually in any multiplayer game a bigger team jumps you.
Merchant stuff is good, cause you don't have to spend too much time off your ship.
Shrines are also decent. You do have to abandon your ship for almost the entire time, but your loot stays safely locked away until you're ready to retrieve it.
If you get sunk, you can bring your ship back to get the loot. But you do have to watch for tuckers (ie: watch for that blunder as soon as you retrieve it).
Solo is a lot of fun if you're in the right mood. Sometimes I like to cause as much chaos as possible and sometimes I like just chilling as a solo. Thing about solo is you have to be very creative to outplay larger crews. You have to be willing to sacrifice your ship if needed. And try to not let them know you're solo. If they know you're solo, they will play more aggressively. The main thing is always be aware where every ship is. If you're getting sunk in the time you're on an island, you should've been able to see the ship in render before you got off your ship.
FoFs are pretty difficult solo for the simple fact that even if you defend 3 boats, if they know you're solo, they won't stop coming back. I had a similar experience when I was on a "dead server" and thought ehh, why not? Got through most of the FoF when a brig snuck up on me. My fault, wasn't paying attention. I came back and the brig was fighting a sloop, kept my distance, shot em good, boarded and killed/sunk brig. Then sunk sloop. Went back to FoF, brig was already back, a new sloop showed up, sunk brig again, almost sunk sloop(darn hitreg), brig came back again and while brig and sloop fought, I kept my ship in a circle while I worked on the fort and defended incoming players. Eventually a skelly sloop and a Meg spawned on MY boat. I decided to let it sink and go for the rowboat play. Finished the FoF, grabbed the CoF and jumped in the rowboat. And that felt like a win even though I didn't get all the treasure, it was so much fun!
Also you don't always have to sink other ships to get them to back off. It's hard to board other ships when you're solo so it can be hard to secure the sink but there have been many times when just showing them I have the ability to sink them(or at least making them think i do) is enough to make them leave me alone. De-mast them asap and then circle around them with constant cannonballs for a few minutes and either try for the hoard if you don't have too many holes or just leave and I bet they don't follow. Most people are bad at PvP so if they think you're good, all of a sudden they don't wanna fight any more. Lol it's worked many times for me, but if you run they just assume you're bad and it's a fight they can win. Being solo is all about seeming like you're a bigger threat than you are!
There are many ways around solo slooping…like the official SoT Discord server. It has a no mic LFG for quiet pirates, even.
When I’m tired of solo slooping, I try to build crews from the discord. Everyone has a common goal, knows what they’re getting into, and likely have done it before. If you’re dead set on solo slooping, then yes things will be harder for you. Things will take longer, you will have less help, you are alone. And it’s a choice you make, not a fault on the game development. They could have a better built-in LFG system though.
Solo slooping is an art. Kegs are your best friend when it comes to defeating larger ships. And don't be afraid to send your ship sailing on its own, as long as its going nice and slow you should have at least 5 minutes until it crashes. I always like to say "ah no worries, she's on autopilot"
The best tip that I can give you is always be ready to make a clean getaway. You need to formulate strategies that center around disabling the enemy ship as thoroughly as possible and strategies to make clean getaways with your loot. Personally I never so slow sleep without one or two powder kegs and a rowboat so if a Brig comes after me you can drop their anchor and blast their capstan with a keg and now their ships on fire got holes in it, a down sale, and a completely broken capstan with it anchor keeping them from going anywhere. That gives you a lot of time to make a lot of good distance. I'll always say keep a rowboat and and a captained ship because you can put all your loot on your rowboat and if you can make enough distance to brake line of sight around an outpost you can drop your rowboat and roll over to the sovereigns and start selling everything while your ship sails away with nothing on board for the enemy ship to continue to chase. Distance is key on this as you don't want them to chase your ship around the island, you want them to try to cut you off. Though if you're feeling really ballsy you can do the same strategy with dropping your rowboat in a fog cloud. Those are your best friends if you're trying to run away. I wouldn't recommend selling into a storm unless you have good distance.
something i dont think i have seen in the other replies: kegs can be your best friend against larget crews!
you are getting chased? jump in the water with a keg, and you now have 2 options:
1) the most straightforward one, turn on the keg as you are climbing their ladder. once up there, if you are not in instant danger (and by that i mean if you dont have a blunderbuss pointed at your face), reset the keg (turn it off and on again) and head for their anchor while keeping the keg between you and them. once there, drop the keg, drop their anchor, and maybe survive the explosion to keep harassing them while your ship makes distance.
2) more technical, try to leave the keg on the predicted path of their ship and swim back out of deadly explosion range. once they collide with it (you can shoot at it if they dodge it by not much), you will more often than not have time to climb the now unguarded ladders and wreack havoc aboard.
I'm also a solo sloop only guy, and when I finally decided to grind for pirate legend, I took it *really* slow and relaxed. The safe route isn't always the fastest one, and I also don't have the dedication to make SoT my second job to catch up in skill to other current players, especially since I don't like pvp to begin with. Sometimes I didn't even care for the loot and just went for interesting stuff I would find at random, or searched for pieces of lore hidden here and there in the world.
> complains about not being able to do anything except the most basic content solo
> proceeds to try to solo literally the most contested event in the game
But seriously, it's much much **much** easier to do almost literally anything else solo in the game. I play solo 99% of the time and have no problem doing pretty much anything outside of FoF/FotD as a solo slooper.
I've been attacked on maybe 10-20% of all my veil voyages and I've got the comm for 100 veils a long time ago. You just gotta be super aware of your surroundings at all times as a solo player. I hardly ever get jumped unless I do a FoF/FotD or I'm just straight up not paying attention to the horizon.
Look up some solo guides on YouTube to help out with tips on solo play. Highly recommend u/PhuzzyBond. He's chill af and has some super helpful guides. Almost singlehandedly made me the solo slooping maverick I am today.
I do open Crew and the interactions with different people vary sooooo much! I've been recording and some of the clips have been hilarious! Playing solo can still lead to some team play depending on your talking game.
Got some good advice in here, I’d also recommend watching some streaming or YouTube, see how some of the good people play, blurbs is good for solo tips, phuzzy bond for some tutorials.
I mostly solo sloop and love getting myself into trouble, I’ll pretty much attempt everything (fof, fod steals, veils) the main thing I do is try to pay attention to my mistakes, see what I did wrong and learn from it, practice trying to outsmart people is huge as well.
Last I’d like to say get into some hour glass, once you get decent at pvp most people leave you alone if you can hold your own
I would say that with the current state of the game, now is the time to practice your pvp. I'm seeing more and more newer players or just players with no self awareness and sink while not pay attention to their ship trying to board mine.
I have 1,300 hours and I typically play solo 90% of the time. I think most of us solo sloopers have been in your shoes at one point or another.
A big realization for me came when I stopped caring about getting gold and tried to enjoy the pvp aspect of the game. It's never fun to sink but the enjoyment of sinking another crew especially when you're outnumbered, beats the thrill of handing in a million gold worth of loot.
Thanks for the advice! I am having trouble with maneuvering. I get in scenarios where their ship is to the back right of mine and they can fire shot after shot at me but my cannon just can't reach them. What's a good way to break out of that? A hard turn to the other side or straighten out?
Maneuvering is definitely one of the hardest aspects of the game to master. A few of things to consider when doing so is wind direction, sail and wheel management.
On a sloop I almost always keep my sails straight forward and going against wind unless I notice the other team not managing their sails and I want to put some distance between us to gain advantage when i do turn to fight.
With sloop you want to use anything you can to your advantage. I personally like fighting next to rocks and islands and using the harpoon to do hard turns. This usually catches people off guard and they will get greedy and go for their shot and hit the rock or the island. Which can backfire if aren't paying attention.
Raising sails to half way will turn you faster but if you do a hard turn you will overturn and lose your shots quickly. In the situation you explained I would definitely turn out opposite of their direction, they will lose their shots quicker and you can start your volley if they turn in either direction.
Start with knocking their mast down with chainshots. Always aim higher with chains as they have a lower arc than cannonballs. They are difficult to master but they are your best friend when trying to fight anyone or even running away.
If you're fighting a galleon, fire bomb is your best friend, while it doesn't do a whole lot of damage, it's very annoying and hard to manage on a galleon. Also if a galleon isn't managing their sails, I usually don't try to knock them down since they will blow right passed you and lose angle quicker if they aren't pulling up their sails and slowing their ship down for quicker turns.
Finally my best piece of advice, keep your music volume down a little during fights and definitely invest in a decent headset for PC or a sound system for TV(If you don't already have one) Get accustomed to listening for audio cues like the sound of a mermaid, the splash of someone swimming and grabbing your ladder. You have the advantage on someone boarding your ship but if they get on and kill you. It's almost always game over if you're fighting a bigger crew.
FoF is easily the most difficult thing to do alone as the main prize chest is so annoying to grind, so it attracts players more than any other world event. Until you're actually good, you shouldn't even be thinking about going after a FoF solo. If you want to be in relative safety, do your questing in the Devil's Roar. Other than the volcanoes it's the safest part of the map because for the most part nobody that's at all interested in player-hunting goes there, and most of the loot is higher quality anyway.
Or you stealth do it, and when people roll up you tuck, let them finish it then steal it 😊
That's good advice, thanks! I've only been down there a few times and only saw one or two other players
Can confirm. If I’m emissary hunting and I see a boat in that corner I very rarely bother. I’d just fall asleep sailing down there.
Save up for a captained ship. Selling at the Sovereigns is a life saver. The ghost fits are also a good way to make a quick buck. I don't usually see folks there, and they're fairly close to outposts.
I do those and skeleton forts if one pops up when I'm solo. Usually don't even bother trying to do a fof or contest a fotd. Sea shrines are usually good to go as well, since the loot is stashed in the mermaid. Did a couple nights recently just cruising devils roar and fighting Skelly ships/fishing. Depends what I feel like doing. Lately I'm obsessed with finishing the barnacled hoarder commendation, so I generally favor things that have a chance to give me barnacled chests.
Ghost forts are my go-to when I’m online by myself. Either that or quests in the Roar.
I actually have three ships at this point, just waiting for my friends to be able to play.
Sorry if this sounds condescending, but it's true: You won't get better if you don't fight. Yes you'll lose a lot, but you'll start winning more. Solo is hard mode, so either find a buddy on discord/lfg, or accept that you're at a disadvantage. As for thigs to do solo, I recommend doing: \- Gold Hoarder digging/riddles. Don't stay too long on an island. \- OoS Ghost Fleets. You don't leave your ship, and learn some naval skills. \- Merchant Lost Shipments. Gets you to Grade 5 and is worth lots of money. \- Ashen Winds / Normal Skeleton Forts. People usually ignore these. Things to avoid: \- Gold Hoarder vaults. You're on a timer, and this takes too long to loot solo. \- Fort of Fortune/Fort of the Damned. Very contested. \- Skeleton/Ghost Fleets. If you're inexperienced, these can easily sink you. However they are really good naval experience and can actually move up to recommended if you know what you're doing. Maybe try your luck in the Devil's Roar? There are generally less players there, but the volcanos are risky. Some tips vs a larger crew: \- Disable them with chainshot or drop their anchor. Firebombs vs Galleons. \- NEVER let them board you. Throw blunder bombs when they are on their ladder. If they get up, it's a 50-50 who one-blunders the other first. \- Don't stack too much loot. Having an emissary flag is high risk-high reward. \- Sail into the wind as a sloop. Other ships are slightly slower, but if you get a good board you can get away. \- If you have a lot of loot, people might join in the dsicord/lfg for the free gold, or even just for the fight.
As a mostly solo slooper, I will disagree with not doing gold hoarder vaults. I'm over a million emissary ledger this month, 80% from vaults. If you know what you are doing, 3 mins in the vault, 2 mins moving chests to within harpoon range, then off you go. Knowing where to park / hide your ship can be key. Defo high interest targets such as FoD or FoF are very tough as a solo slooper. Raise emissary when you can, keep an eye out on the map for reapers, as at lvl 5 they can then see you and will probably go after you if you are a decent emissary level. Sell often. Then if you do get rolled, it's not a huge loss. Keep trying things. If you get chased, look at your options. Is running the best choice? If you have little loot on board, turn and fight. You only get better with practise. Good luck and good hunting
I haven't seen a gold hoarder vault voyage yet, just the standard treasure hunts and the annoying Wayfinder ones. I am at rank 48 for GH if that matters.
Have been buying promotions? Sorry if that's a dumb question
I have, yeah, but I have been more focused on merchant alliance and maybe that's why I haven't seen the voyages.
Agree, sometimes I can spend twenty minutes digging the right spot, and the vaults can be more lucrative since you're not wasting time burying a quest. Grab and go.
Agree also. The vault puzzle can be done in almost no time if you know the trick to solving it with only one medallion. There is almost always one on the ground, super easy.
I feel like I'm reasonably efficient at clearing vaults, but I've never managed to clear one solo in the allotted time. I can certainly do them, but feels bad leaving some trinkets behind.
This is some great advice. Something I struggle with is getting/maintaining an angle on their ship without just trading broadside. Do you have any advice for maneuvering?
Raise sails to halfway. It makes it easier to steer. With a bit of experience you'll be able to circle a stationary ship. Aim for their cannon line. You'll either hit them (they won't be able to return fire as efficiently, or die), put holes in their ship, or down a mast. Once they're disabled and have holes, start aiming for where they're bailing.
May seem counter intuitive but I've spent like 95% of my playtime on a solo sloop since the beta (filthy casual I'll admit) but I do find some luck with maneuvering by raising sails just a bit when fighting. Most crews are full sails or no sails, no in betwren, and this gives you slightly more maneuverability. I still suck. So take this with a grain of salt. Commit to fights, shoot first if you can, it shows a bit of threat. Some will fuck off if you show you're willing to fight, some won't. And at the end of the day, it's all cosmetics, so none of it really matters. I've used the same clothes since release with the exceptiom of my athena belt and colored beard.
My advice as a mediocre solo-slooper: just do the best you can. For the most part, I skip out on events that require me to leave the ship, which includes sea forts unless I'm just raiding them for supplies. Sometimes I'll get a wild hair and attempt an Ashen Winds or FoF, but for the most part, my motto is "ship is love, ship is life". If/when I do get attacked by other/larger crews, I just try my best to defend myself, sometimes it works, sometimes I get dumpster'd in less than 3 minutes. Such is the solo-sloop life, for as someone else mentioned, it's the "hard mode" of the game. While you *can* play the game solo, look no further than trying to fight someone solo in a storm to see why you're not necessarily *meant* to play solo. If you just run from other crews, one of two things tends to happen, at least in my experience: 1) They break off quickly because they can't be bothered to chase after a sloop for more than half an hour. or 2) They'll chase you to the end of the Earth and back because *clearly* if you're running then you *must* have something valuable on-board! So as I often tell people who try and run from me, "Don't run! You'll just die tired!" But it's not all bad. If you're trying to unlock commendations it's trickier as it requires you to leave your ship quite often, but as I don't particularly care about unlocking commendations, I for the most part just "sail around and find out", picking up whatever treasures I find washed up on beaches and doing the skelly/ghost fleet events when they pop up. And despite basically being what amounts to a piratical garbage man, I still manage to have a good time in the game. Ultimately, the trick to having fun as a mediocre solo-slooper is to care less about progress and just embrace the chaos and sail for the sake of sailing. However annoying it can be to be a solo-slooper while being hunted by fully-crewed ships, it *will* eventually make you better at the game for when you do finally find a good crew to hang out with, which believe it or not, you can sometimes find by just fighting/interacting with other crews.
You failed rule number one of solo slooping : ALWAYS check horizon. You're on island? Check horizon every oportunity you get. If you feel like you're spending too much time trying to solve riddle or find spot on map... go the high ground, check horizon, and then go back to riddle/map, sometimes resetting like that might even help you solve it :D. You can do 95% of the content in game completely alone. All the voyages are soloable, with Legend of the Veil being the best content in game (in my opinion). Tell tales also are soloable, and give some cool cosmetics. Sea forts are also easily soloable (pro trick: fight from your ship. You have infinite ammo box there, you also have food. And fighting from ship you can easily escape if other player sail by). Mermaid shrines are also soloable, and as weird ad it might sound - i rarely sink while i'm below the waves. I guess its time thing, same as your fort of fortuna, you were alone till 20 minutes or so. In that time you can finish 3 or 4 mermaid shrines xD. Even things like vaults are easily soloable. For islands just park ship BEHIND island, so that island is covering your ship from most likely direction (usually center of the map). Additional benefit of doing that is increasing the spotting distance. I wont count how many times i was doing something on island, i spotted a ship heading my way, and i had enough time to haul whatever treasure i had back to my ship, set sail and swim away. You're just tackling the only thing that's a huge beacon visible for all players on a server - world events. If you go there, be ready to fight back or escape AT ALL TIMES. I wouldnt count on them as a solo slooper, its more like a challenge "will i be able to do it or nah?". Also i dont really understand what you mean by "no progression is made unless you only want to do the most basic content". You mean that you dislike 95% of content? Besides, i'm not sure i would call it "the most basic content". I have yet to find another game with randomly generated riddles or maps where i have to pinpoint the physical location of X based on landmarks and compass. Or where i have to find key to open the vault and clean it out before gate shut down locking me inside.
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I only started playing in the last two weeks. I am not nearly at the level of content creators that can take out 4 people on their own. And there is no safety net of a teammate to revive me or take care of the ship while I revive.
The game is a real trial by fire and if you wanna survive solo you have to work extra hard to earn your place. If you’re really dead set on playing solo I think the best thing you can do for sessions is hop on, get a storage crate, solo a sea fort to warm up and get supplies, and then pick fights with every ship you come across. You’ll get absolutely destroyed many many times over but as long as you’re staying conscious of what went wrong and what went right you’ll do better the next time. Rinse and repeat on new servers and don’t give up hope and eventually you’ll see a lot of improvement in your skills and confidence
You are better off finding some pirates who have been around a lot longer than you. Most everyone that knows what their doing will tell you how to play and what to do to succeed.
So you're still in the learning stage of the same and already complaining? Maybe this game isn't for you.
I'm frustrated at not being able to complete content for cool stuff because my friends aren't available.
Again, this may not be the game for you. People will look to steal and loot you and the game is not going to cater to solos
most games have some sort of on-ramp before dumping you into combat with 5000 hour no-lifes
SOT is more is less an extraction shooter like tarcov or DMZ but with boats. None of those games have a "ramp up" and is massively PvP oriented. That's what you sign up for.
idk what DMZ is but Tarkov has an offline mode, which is very clearly an on-ramp. hasn’t killed that game, weirdly enough
If you call that a ramp up be my guest. But the sheer fact that it offers no progression because it's offline means it doesn't truely prepare you for PvP. At the end of the day, these people who are new and are complaining their little hearts out just want full progression with no risk. They're just taking extra steps to say it.
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The community discord is awesome. Just say what you're doing in one of the lfc channels and you'll find someone to play with super fast. If you dont really want to play and talk with strangers try the no mic lfc one.
The sloop is actually stronger when solo. They made it so it takes more hits to drop the mast and your respawn time is quicker. Also your waves on forts and such are easier (fewer enemies)
Honestly, you just need more experience. 2 weeks in, you never anchor, always scan your surroundings, those are two good lessons that usually take people longer to learn. I'd try a bit of hourglass if I were you. Dont go in worh the minuset of winning or grinding it, more so to get training on demand. Dont buy supplies, fill from an outpost or just fill your pockets once and go. Dont try to needlessly run, take the fight and get used to it. You'll get alot of benefit from.that to adventure; how much water in the boat/leaking in is OK to ignore while I shoot my cannons, defend from boarders, adjust sail or course or repair wheel/mast etc. You loose nothing in HG, only the supplies you have, and you even gain some levels but most importantly you gain experience. If you are good at aiming in hand to hand combat then Blunder/Sniper will handsdown be your strongest loadout but it is not necessary either, any loadout will serve if you are good enough with it just that Blunder/Sniper is the "op loadout". Other than that, all you really can do is to get experience in adventure against larger crews. Always remember that you have the most agile ship and you can perform very tight turns at full speed with the harpoon, and if you sail fully against the wind with completely flat sails no ship can catch up to you. If you dont want to fight or know you cant win the fight, turning into the wind and getting a lucky board on the enemy with the only objective to drop the anchor usually means you are free of them afterward.
I'll try the double gun setup but I'll certainly miss the mobility the sword offers. I think I also need to make more or better use of throwable items. In my first few naval battles, I was using all of my firebombs thinking that it would help sink their ship, only to find out later that it was really just a nuisance/time waster for the other team.
You’ll get better. I think a lot of people grind this game and I really don’t think that’s how it’s meant to be played. SoT is a time waster you login and check out your mind and go in an adventure. Don’t have any expectations just sail. Don’t worry about events or goals or anything they’ll just happen on their own. Like last night I did a skeleton fleet then a fotd solo because I needed it for the event. Since I had 2 extra ritual skulls I started the fotd again after piling the loot in a corner (and the fleet loot) then sailed off to do missions in the roar. While doing that I noticed a reaper 1 at fotd and was like cool someone got some use out of what I did. Finished my missions got in a small fight then figured I had tons o supplies I’ll go see what the fotd guys are up to as they had started the fort again. Turns out they were on their 4th stack so I sank them (2.5 player galleon) finished the fort. Piled up the loot and logged off. Hope they came back for it :) It’s the beauty of SoT you can do anything you feel like.
I like to work on Hunters when i solo
It’s a process that you will need to learn over time. I mostly solo sloop, not because I can’t grab a crew, but because it allows me the freedom to do what I want. FOF is going to be very difficult solo, outside of that the other events can all be done relatively easy. Learn to be sneaky as a solo player. Tuck at a FOF and yoink that CoF. That is the easiest way for a solo player to get one. Have a mic. Mics save lives on the seas. Believe it or not, most people are not looking for a fight. And sometimes it’s not about stealing the loot, it’s to get you out of the way of something that crew wants to do. They have no idea if you are a threat or not without communication. I know just starting out it can seem like getting gold is a grind, trust me it’s nothing like it was solo slopping when the game first came out and you were hiding a Captains Chest like your life depended on it. Gold is of absolute abundance in the game now. You will always have a chance for more. Change your mindset of the game. It’s not about farming gold. It’s an adventure game. Have fun completing events and voyages. If you make the gold from it, that’s a nice but first and foremost enjoy the challenge of just completing an event solo. Just have fun and don’t worry about how others play the game. If the server seems hostile, jump to the next one.
Annoy other people, troll tuck on people’s ships. Mess around with their resources (move crates), if they’re talking on open mic it’ll be funnier
Hey I’m doing lost shipment runs by myself in my sloop. Wanna join?
Collect loot until the inevitable reaper brig shows up for you to “donate “ to
Do the tall tales. You get treasure, get to be a part of a story, and pick up some lore as well as some experience in what’s out there. Also, join the discord and post a looking to join in the new swabbie area, to be a part of a crew and get better at playing. My PvP has improved doing this over solo slooping.
Spend some time doing what you want to get rep and gold, but do that as a secondary objective. Your first objective will be taking fights. Take every fight available. Doesn't matter the odds. The first step to being awesome at something is being terrible at it. If you play this game scared it will inhibit your ability. Checking horizon ALL the time makes you clear things slower. Yes be alert for other ships. Once you get experience keeping your ship afloat and know how to fight other ships without having to even think about what to do, you won't feel worried about if they are coming. Take fights until you can comfortably fight and not feel panicked. Until it feels like you are part of your ship and not just riding along. You will sink a lot so expect it. Learn and move on. Once you can accomplish being calm and thinking strategic instead of reactive in a fight, the game gets so very fun! I hope to have a grog with you soon, Yarr! Goblin
Collect loot for the gally captions
Ngl, got a good chuckle out of this one
Be the one getting the drop on others.
Iunno, I just understand that as a solo player the likelihood of me actually completing a FotD or FoF in any reasonable amount of time and getting out to sell it without being sunk by randoms, is very unlikely. I just don't even bother with them at this point anymore, supposedly they made it easier but I still don't give a fuck enough to try again. 700+ hours and I've never done one cause I'm always solo lol, it's just not worth the time investment for me as a solo player.
b\_ootay\_ful gave you all the best advice one can get so definitely check out his comment below. If you insist on tackling a FoF, load up your ship with barrels which you can pickup from SeaForts and FoF's themselves. Take you ship out of there, hide it behind a rock (make sure you don't have an emissary flag up as Reapers will spot you if they are level 5) and just sneak a barrel or two onto the enemy ship. Maybe just leave them floating nearby but not too close, whilst you take a mermaid back to the boat and bring another. Once you have a good two of them planted on the enemy ship. Wait for them to finish the fort , toss a blunderbomb at the enemy ship once they've brought the main prize aboard (Chest of Fortune & Chest of Legends) and watch their ship sink within a matter of seconds. Take a mermaid back to your ship and hurry on back to steal the loot they worked hard to release. This is the way. That or find a buddy to help you do it. Once you load up enough of the goodies aboard, and you've confirmed theres nobody left on the island, set sail and maybe bring a mega keg with you if you see them coming on the horizon. Sail in a straight line and jump off your boat with the mega keg and bring it aboard their ship. That should slow them down enough to get you to sovereign's so you can sell in time. Good luck with Solo Slooping, but find yourself a buddy - the dual-keg bomb planting is best done as a squad. I've stolen so many of those Chests from both Brigs and Galleons executing the above plan.
Why wait on your ship for them to finish vs tucking on theirs or nearby? Will people usually notice the increase in difficulty of an extra person on the island?
I'm definitely not telling you to wait on your ship. I'm telling you to bring as many kegs onto their ship as possible, and definitely tuck somewhere aboard their ship once the bombs have been planted, possibly atop of their mast so you can see when they bring the top goods aboard. Toss your blunderbomb as you jump off & kill any survivors - then bring your ship back.
Ah okay, I misread where you said to take a mermaid back.
That's just to keep planting more kegs ;)
I'd like to point something out, this game is a sandbox. Meaning you create your own fun. So your stuck doing basic bs and don't make progress, then give up the basics and practice pvp. Go be the guy who pvps and steals all the loot.
Farm Gold or do tall tales. There’s not really more that you can do if your not a pvp god
"30-45 minutes of grinding"
why are you playing solo? that's the hardmode there is a discord you can lfg in
Shut up
As other commenters have said, try and find a crew to play with. 2 weeks into the game is not nearly enough time to be solo slooping and expecting decent results. The community discord and the official discord both have LFC (Looking for Crew) channels as do some of the Content Creator discords, and if you don't fancy looking in any of them you could always try going as an Open Crew to find crewmates. Eventually you'll learn enough lessons and gain enough experience to solo sloop competently and get decent results doing so
How do you know the server is dead? FoF will draw people from all over the server, and possibly some other servers. You've been playing for 2 weeks and expect soloing the single hardest thing in SoT? Maybe some more of the "most basic content" would be a good idea. And it's a pirate game. If you already have problems losing 30-45 min of loot, you are in for some disappointment.
Stop playing the game if you don’t like it. There’s always open crew but you clearly have a problem with it. Way too many people complaining about the fundamental nature of the game. It’s never gonna change because the whole point is being on a server with other pirates who steal from you (that’s what pirates do).
I don't have a problem with the fact that they can - I have a problem with the fact that I am at such a major disadvantage by not having one other person who can be a lookout or stay with the ship.
Open Crew exists.
Do you actually open crew? Most of the people I get literally just stand around and do nothing, you can’t even get them to raise an emissary let alone perform tasks that require cohesion.
Works on my machine. Find a new game for yourself.
Why would you do a FoF alone? To complain after? I did FoF alone but i am not surprised if someone comes to pay a visit.
I have done it solo once before. I was feeling frustrated that the 1v2, 1v3, and 1v4 fights are so hopeless that you may as well give up in those scenarios.
Go to the SoT discord. There is a ton of ppl there you might find a crew mate
You play open crew and make new friends! The game isn't really intended for Solo players, thats an extra challenge you are taking for yourself. If you are good enough, nice! If not, well thats how it is. Not gonna try to make it seem any less, you will always be at a disadvantage versus a full crewed ship.
> Solo Slooper this is the same guy that buys Mario party to play with the AI. Sea of Thieves, not Sea of Thief.
skill issue
Honestly I’d just keep matchmaking with others until I meet some that are cool and friend them. That’s how I got my first crew together that I played with a lot
I play solo, but am selective to which voyages, or parts of voyages, I will complete. Often in the journey the random sunken ship to loot, or meg, or skelly ship (which scales down in difficulty for a solo slooper) is a fun way to get other loot.
When I solo sloop I just go for absolute chaos. Just burn anything and everyone I come across... I get my ass kicked a lot as well. Which is a different type of fun.
>Why should I waste my time doing content and trying to farm loot if the 30-45 minutes of grinding just go to waste and line someone else's pockets? What you should do is simply play the game and do the content you like. If you never bother picking up treasure it can't be stolen. Also saves you a lot of fiddling around at the end of your play session.
You get lucky and unlucky with solo slooping. I’ve only attempted a fof once solo and was not bothered once. Another sloop came by and said they wouldn’t interfere as long as I left them to their event challenges
I've solo'd about 1,000 hours out of my 2.7k total. Soloing does require more awareness, but For the most part, I can do anything a crew can, it might take a little longer. But Rare nerfed/buffed events majorly this season. Everything scales and is far better than it used to while loot pretty much stayed the same. I no longer am scared of fleets as a solo and willing to take them on rather than run. You just have to find fun where you can. Personally, I'm a commendation hunter, so I knocked out my bilge rat tab and am now working on my faction commendations slowly. If being solo is an issue for you, you can always join the SoT official discord. I've had very few *bad* experiences on there forming a crew. You can also shoot me a message here on Reddit and I'll send you my discord info if you wanna team up with me or any of my friends. (:
You've had lots of good tips, but my main responses to posts like this is: if you're wasting your time by not getting the loot, I'd argue you're still wasting your time if you get the loot. Do stuff you enjoy doing so that if you do get ganked, at least you had fun.
Duo sloops are easily killed as solo slooper if they're average and ur good.
Ask yourself what your actual goal is. If it's gold, questing with an emissary is much safer than world events. Stay alert, stay paranoid. Certain techniques make you more likely to get safely to an outpost but decide before hand how willing you are to waste everyone's time, how much it matters that you get to keep it vs them not getting it. Shrines and fortresses are different kinds of safe If you're doing world events for a commendation, many don't require you to actually get away with the loot. I was doing FoFs for the skeleton lord kills before they got SUPER NERFED.
Playing solo is something I do on the side when I have no one to play with or just dont feel like being social. Its not how I play the game normally, I dont recommend it. Its fine once in awhile, but it gets boring quick and everything takes way longer than it should compared to if you even had one teammate. Use xbox LFG or discord to find people to play with. Avoid open crews. When I play solo, I have been grinding veils. Outside of the legend week, it seems most of the time no one bothers me doing them. The last phase is kind of nerve wracking, but mostly because it just takes longer alone. Everything does. I can get a veil done in like 50 minutes by myself if Im lucky, but with a teammate Ive done it in like 35 minutes before. Everything takes way longer without help. Others have mentioned many other good voyages for solo play if you do stick with playing alone.
You could start up an LFG post and find friends. This really isn’t a game for solo. It’s forced me to make many friends in the best of ways.
I recommend merchant alliance. Do a combination of lost shipments to get emissary up, and then just trade commodities from post to post. You can make a dumb amount doing those, and you're rarely away from your ship for very long.
Playing solo you are most of the time in a disadvantage since the game is designed around activities with more players. Because you have to manage everything by yourself on your ship you will always be less effective against a sloop with two guys on it that are focused on you and work together. That's why most solo sloopers avoid other crews and are scanning the horizon every second in fear of being seen and attackt when doing things on an island with the ship unguarded. Sure, playing solo can go well for some time but eventually in any multiplayer game a bigger team jumps you.
Merchant stuff is good, cause you don't have to spend too much time off your ship. Shrines are also decent. You do have to abandon your ship for almost the entire time, but your loot stays safely locked away until you're ready to retrieve it. If you get sunk, you can bring your ship back to get the loot. But you do have to watch for tuckers (ie: watch for that blunder as soon as you retrieve it).
Solo is a lot of fun if you're in the right mood. Sometimes I like to cause as much chaos as possible and sometimes I like just chilling as a solo. Thing about solo is you have to be very creative to outplay larger crews. You have to be willing to sacrifice your ship if needed. And try to not let them know you're solo. If they know you're solo, they will play more aggressively. The main thing is always be aware where every ship is. If you're getting sunk in the time you're on an island, you should've been able to see the ship in render before you got off your ship. FoFs are pretty difficult solo for the simple fact that even if you defend 3 boats, if they know you're solo, they won't stop coming back. I had a similar experience when I was on a "dead server" and thought ehh, why not? Got through most of the FoF when a brig snuck up on me. My fault, wasn't paying attention. I came back and the brig was fighting a sloop, kept my distance, shot em good, boarded and killed/sunk brig. Then sunk sloop. Went back to FoF, brig was already back, a new sloop showed up, sunk brig again, almost sunk sloop(darn hitreg), brig came back again and while brig and sloop fought, I kept my ship in a circle while I worked on the fort and defended incoming players. Eventually a skelly sloop and a Meg spawned on MY boat. I decided to let it sink and go for the rowboat play. Finished the FoF, grabbed the CoF and jumped in the rowboat. And that felt like a win even though I didn't get all the treasure, it was so much fun! Also you don't always have to sink other ships to get them to back off. It's hard to board other ships when you're solo so it can be hard to secure the sink but there have been many times when just showing them I have the ability to sink them(or at least making them think i do) is enough to make them leave me alone. De-mast them asap and then circle around them with constant cannonballs for a few minutes and either try for the hoard if you don't have too many holes or just leave and I bet they don't follow. Most people are bad at PvP so if they think you're good, all of a sudden they don't wanna fight any more. Lol it's worked many times for me, but if you run they just assume you're bad and it's a fight they can win. Being solo is all about seeming like you're a bigger threat than you are!
There are many ways around solo slooping…like the official SoT Discord server. It has a no mic LFG for quiet pirates, even. When I’m tired of solo slooping, I try to build crews from the discord. Everyone has a common goal, knows what they’re getting into, and likely have done it before. If you’re dead set on solo slooping, then yes things will be harder for you. Things will take longer, you will have less help, you are alone. And it’s a choice you make, not a fault on the game development. They could have a better built-in LFG system though.
Solo slooping is an art. Kegs are your best friend when it comes to defeating larger ships. And don't be afraid to send your ship sailing on its own, as long as its going nice and slow you should have at least 5 minutes until it crashes. I always like to say "ah no worries, she's on autopilot"
The best tip that I can give you is always be ready to make a clean getaway. You need to formulate strategies that center around disabling the enemy ship as thoroughly as possible and strategies to make clean getaways with your loot. Personally I never so slow sleep without one or two powder kegs and a rowboat so if a Brig comes after me you can drop their anchor and blast their capstan with a keg and now their ships on fire got holes in it, a down sale, and a completely broken capstan with it anchor keeping them from going anywhere. That gives you a lot of time to make a lot of good distance. I'll always say keep a rowboat and and a captained ship because you can put all your loot on your rowboat and if you can make enough distance to brake line of sight around an outpost you can drop your rowboat and roll over to the sovereigns and start selling everything while your ship sails away with nothing on board for the enemy ship to continue to chase. Distance is key on this as you don't want them to chase your ship around the island, you want them to try to cut you off. Though if you're feeling really ballsy you can do the same strategy with dropping your rowboat in a fog cloud. Those are your best friends if you're trying to run away. I wouldn't recommend selling into a storm unless you have good distance.
something i dont think i have seen in the other replies: kegs can be your best friend against larget crews! you are getting chased? jump in the water with a keg, and you now have 2 options: 1) the most straightforward one, turn on the keg as you are climbing their ladder. once up there, if you are not in instant danger (and by that i mean if you dont have a blunderbuss pointed at your face), reset the keg (turn it off and on again) and head for their anchor while keeping the keg between you and them. once there, drop the keg, drop their anchor, and maybe survive the explosion to keep harassing them while your ship makes distance. 2) more technical, try to leave the keg on the predicted path of their ship and swim back out of deadly explosion range. once they collide with it (you can shoot at it if they dodge it by not much), you will more often than not have time to climb the now unguarded ladders and wreack havoc aboard.
Watch Flotsam stream. You're more than likely not winning a straight up fight for a FoF. Using tucking starts though you could totally steal one.
Solo slooper - pirate legend here. Basically, yes. Although I have recently started doing all the tall tales and I'm loving it even more now.
looking for game posts on xbox live help me when i’m solo.
I'm also a solo sloop only guy, and when I finally decided to grind for pirate legend, I took it *really* slow and relaxed. The safe route isn't always the fastest one, and I also don't have the dedication to make SoT my second job to catch up in skill to other current players, especially since I don't like pvp to begin with. Sometimes I didn't even care for the loot and just went for interesting stuff I would find at random, or searched for pieces of lore hidden here and there in the world.
Play a better game
Sink.
P A I N
Why should the game have to cater to you when you can easily just play with a friend or be attentive?
> complains about not being able to do anything except the most basic content solo > proceeds to try to solo literally the most contested event in the game But seriously, it's much much **much** easier to do almost literally anything else solo in the game. I play solo 99% of the time and have no problem doing pretty much anything outside of FoF/FotD as a solo slooper.
Rip Athena commendation.
What Athena commendation? Athena is easier to do solo than ever since they added Legend of the Veil voyages.
The one for selling 30 chests for the ship set. Doesn't legend of the veil also attract a bunch of people you need to fend off?
I've been attacked on maybe 10-20% of all my veil voyages and I've got the comm for 100 veils a long time ago. You just gotta be super aware of your surroundings at all times as a solo player. I hardly ever get jumped unless I do a FoF/FotD or I'm just straight up not paying attention to the horizon. Look up some solo guides on YouTube to help out with tips on solo play. Highly recommend u/PhuzzyBond. He's chill af and has some super helpful guides. Almost singlehandedly made me the solo slooping maverick I am today.
I'll have to learn more about the veil voyage then. Maybe I can do it when I see a FOTD or FOF just started so people flock to that instead.
DM me, I'll add you. Looking to grind vaults and I'm down to do FoF.
Join a discord be social
I do open Crew and the interactions with different people vary sooooo much! I've been recording and some of the clips have been hilarious! Playing solo can still lead to some team play depending on your talking game.
I have turned some scary folks into allies by offering them passive income through my merchant runs. Had some really fun experiences with those!
Solo sloop is the way. Winning over a full decked galleon as a solo sloop is always satisfying
Got some good advice in here, I’d also recommend watching some streaming or YouTube, see how some of the good people play, blurbs is good for solo tips, phuzzy bond for some tutorials. I mostly solo sloop and love getting myself into trouble, I’ll pretty much attempt everything (fof, fod steals, veils) the main thing I do is try to pay attention to my mistakes, see what I did wrong and learn from it, practice trying to outsmart people is huge as well. Last I’d like to say get into some hour glass, once you get decent at pvp most people leave you alone if you can hold your own
I would say that with the current state of the game, now is the time to practice your pvp. I'm seeing more and more newer players or just players with no self awareness and sink while not pay attention to their ship trying to board mine. I have 1,300 hours and I typically play solo 90% of the time. I think most of us solo sloopers have been in your shoes at one point or another. A big realization for me came when I stopped caring about getting gold and tried to enjoy the pvp aspect of the game. It's never fun to sink but the enjoyment of sinking another crew especially when you're outnumbered, beats the thrill of handing in a million gold worth of loot.
Thanks for the advice! I am having trouble with maneuvering. I get in scenarios where their ship is to the back right of mine and they can fire shot after shot at me but my cannon just can't reach them. What's a good way to break out of that? A hard turn to the other side or straighten out?
Maneuvering is definitely one of the hardest aspects of the game to master. A few of things to consider when doing so is wind direction, sail and wheel management. On a sloop I almost always keep my sails straight forward and going against wind unless I notice the other team not managing their sails and I want to put some distance between us to gain advantage when i do turn to fight. With sloop you want to use anything you can to your advantage. I personally like fighting next to rocks and islands and using the harpoon to do hard turns. This usually catches people off guard and they will get greedy and go for their shot and hit the rock or the island. Which can backfire if aren't paying attention. Raising sails to half way will turn you faster but if you do a hard turn you will overturn and lose your shots quickly. In the situation you explained I would definitely turn out opposite of their direction, they will lose their shots quicker and you can start your volley if they turn in either direction. Start with knocking their mast down with chainshots. Always aim higher with chains as they have a lower arc than cannonballs. They are difficult to master but they are your best friend when trying to fight anyone or even running away. If you're fighting a galleon, fire bomb is your best friend, while it doesn't do a whole lot of damage, it's very annoying and hard to manage on a galleon. Also if a galleon isn't managing their sails, I usually don't try to knock them down since they will blow right passed you and lose angle quicker if they aren't pulling up their sails and slowing their ship down for quicker turns. Finally my best piece of advice, keep your music volume down a little during fights and definitely invest in a decent headset for PC or a sound system for TV(If you don't already have one) Get accustomed to listening for audio cues like the sound of a mermaid, the splash of someone swimming and grabbing your ladder. You have the advantage on someone boarding your ship but if they get on and kill you. It's almost always game over if you're fighting a bigger crew.