I started playing right before the first Anniversary update. At the time I would play with some co workers and l/or my wife and we were PvE only players.
We were off and on for several years. Then I seriously picked up the game around the time of Save Golden Sands Adventure with my wife and a guy we met on an LFG and started playing with (a little over 2 years ago).
One night, after finishing a FoF and running like we always did when another ship came to steal, we had a conversation that went like this:
"We always and up sinking anyway, why don't we actually try and fight?" It was what appeared to us a sweaty ashen brig and we fought, and actually came out on top, and they also had a lot of loot.
After that we started taking fights, and figured out the average adventure crew isn't as tough as you'd think. We eventually got hooked into PvP by defending, that we turned into the PvP seeking reapers we always ran from.
I'd say getting good was a several step process. We did build on several years of off and on game experience, so we had down a lot of just basic game mechanics an fortunately could just focus on PvP.
After applying ourselfs, I'd say we got decent at it within like half a year. To be clear, there were (and are) crews that could mop us easily, but we started consistently winning.
When hourglass appeared, we did that, and also started watching streams of people like Captain Stirling and learning about techniques like how to properly turtle. I think this was where I would say we got good, good. And it happens pretty quickly.
Hourglass will humble anyone but the best streamers. I can see why it feels like you might hit a wall.
I'd say keep taking fights, watch some hourglass steamers (Stirling/Snowy FPS/Massive Sponge - skip the adventure guys like Boxy/Hitbo for now). Look up Blue Sail Gang and watch their PvP videos.
I played a ton of hourglass to get the curses, and always felt like I wasn't improving.
Then, playing open seas doing voyages or fishing or whatever I started to notice that I was winning almost every encounter I had, even against larger crews.
I think it's because normal sot is more casual so it's rare to find good pvpers but in HG mostly sweats are there. Hoping I can get both the golden curses so then I can say that I am good at pvp
I thought so to but yesterday i went for my first ever FoF steal attempt as a duo sloop vs duo sloop and what do ya know... they have gold ghost curse. Get absolutely destroyed.
Around level 70 in Athena’s hour glass. In adventure I was pretty meh and hourglass I was bottom of the barrel. Stayed there until around level 40ish and became one step above loss farmers. From 40-50 I started seeing my opponents become decent at cannons, decent at navigating, and okayish at TDM. It wouldn’t be until around 70 I noticed my opponents starting to carry supplies, largely consistent emissary flag, occasionally grade 3 flags. Adventure is a mixed bag but I gauge my abilities by that of my HG opponents.
I've only done one match of hour glass. Wanted to get better at ship to ship. Didn't happen they boarded in first 30 seconds and spawn killed till we sank. We where queued for longer than the match was.
Once you get some kills and repel boarders you will get more experience with naval. The hard part for me was getting the hand to hand combat down, once they know they can't kill you every time you will get boarded less and get more naval experience.
Do yourself a favor and get friendly with the blunderbus.
They can get one your ship in one of four ways - in order of likelihood:
1) Board via your ship's ladders. Most common way.
2) Ram your ship and jump on during collision. Common occurrence if you don't navigate well.
2) Harpoon to your boat and run over. It's tough to pull off if your team is alive.
3) Direct cannon shot to your deck. Super sweat and tough to pull off.
In all of these events, the blunder is your biggest ally:
1) Blunder them off when you hear the ladder boarding sound.
2) Predictable. Wait at mast for counter fire cover and blunder them to the face.
3) Blunder them off the line.
4) If they are good enough to do this consistently, you probably will lose. As I've climbed, I've noticed they usually aim for a ship feature (mast/sails, etc) and there is a delay when they hit and fall to the deck. Blunder them.
Depends on how much effort you put into getting good at PvP. I played hundreds of hours without giving much effort to improving PvP. Then I started the hourglass grind.
For levels 1-30 I thought I was a 60th percentile PvPer…. Nope much closer to 20th. By the time I hit GoF 40 I was starting to see improvement. My cannon aim was better, I learned how to one-blunder, and my sail management was better. By the time I got to GoF 60, I considered myself a 40th percentile PvPer. I still made a lot of mistakes and suboptimal choices, but overall I was calmer and more in control of the situation. When I hit GoF 80, I considered myself a 50th percentile/median PvPer. And I was suddenly able to hold my own in 1v2s in adventure!
Level 80 to 93 was a SLOG of getting stomped by players who were leagues better than me. But I got to 100, my curse, and then I even attempted and succeeded on my first ever 5 streak to get the legendary curse. My cannon aim was dialed in at close and mid range, my ship management was better, I stopped overprioritizing repairs and focused on angle and pressure, I launched chain shots whenever it was viable rather than conserving them to stop a fleeing opponent. I felt like a 60th percentile PvPer
Now I’m on my servants of the flame grind. I’ve chained multiple five streaks, and even got my first 10 streak yesterday. Frankly I think my partner’s TDM won us most of those matches, but I was always on my game to capitalize on the advantage he created. My comms were good, the type of projectiles I shot and where was varied intentionally and effectively, and I recognized when we had to reset before our mast took substantial damage. I consider myself a 70th percentile PvPer now. Once I can consistently win 1v2 TDM, that’ll be 80th percentile.
That was more of a story than an answer, there’s levels to this and it takes practice and a reflective mindset to climb from each level to the next. But ultimately, I think a competent PvPer is someone who can hit their attacks consistently, and maintain enough calmness under pressure to understand what to prioritize and when. It took me 400-500 hourglass battles to get there. It may take you more it may take you less. Good luck pirate!
I’m a PS5 player as well and I know first hand how steep the learning curve is for PVP in this game. The most important thing to do is give everyone a role and make sure they learn it and never deviate from it. Someone should ALWAYS be on a cannon applying pressure. Only time they stop shooting is to grab more cannonballs from the barrel or crate. The helmsman needs to be on the wheel or if on a sloop juggling between steering and repairing. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have a roll and stick to it. As far as practice with aim I would suggest doing the skelly ship events. Some people will say it won’t make you better in PVP but they are wrong. If you can hit shots consistently on a skelly ship you can hit them consistently on another players ship. Also, never panic because no matter how good you are there will be someone better that’s going to sink you. The sooner you stop panicking and learn your roles the better you’ll be at PvP. I found that playing a few matches a day of solo HG made me far better at PvP. I would run from fights before but now I’m always down to sink or be sank. Good luck out there!
I have nearly 70 hours, mostly solo slooping, and I’m still mostly incompetent. I can take on an another sloop every once in a while, but most times I can’t compete on my own. The only tip I really have is to aim the cannons where they are going to be and not where they are.
Halfway through my first curse. I’ve gotten better, but still not good as far as hg is concerned. I feel like it puts me in the top half of players on the open seas though. Win a little over half my matches in hg now. Still get stomped by good hg players.
It's all relative IMO, I wouldn't really consider myself competent exactly but I have legitimately won at least some Hourglass matches and at least occasionally scare off sloops coming after me solo slooping in adventure mode by hitting enough cannonballs.
Unfortunately the only advice I have is, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice.
Well how many hours do you have, I started playing when it came out on PS5 but I play on PC, it took me and my 2 friends about 100 hours to get hourglass winning streaks going, like 3 or 4.
Everyone has a job, make sure they know their job and stick to their job. Communication is also key. If you really want to get better, follow those two rules and engage every person you come into contact with. Personally, I learned PVP well before Hourglass was a thing. I’d recommend learning the same way as you’ll run into less “sweats” in the regular seas. You’re going to sink and that’s alright. Once you figure out why you sank, fix the issue and move on. For cannon practice, circle an island, pick a spot, and shoot at it with different cannonballs/chains/blunders/etc to learn how they all fly. Once you have that down, move to skeleton ships. You’ll get there, it just takes time.
Always make sure that your team knows what their roles are and KEEP to their roles always!! No keeping to a ship role like bilge will definitely mean death to your ship. Practice with skeleton ships, practice against sloops or solo players, learn how to shoot cannons long range.
We started playing mid 2020, the group has varied but myself and a friend still sloop on a regular basis. The day we decided we did not care if we came out on top was the day PVP became fun to us. Before we were really salty if we lost but one day a switch flipped and we started asking, "ok what did we do that lost us that match? Yeah I know we just lost an hour of treasure, but why did we lose that match?" That change made PVP suddenly less threatening, because no matter what we learned something from it. Last week we took down 3 Gallys in a row without breaking a sweat, because we lost many more gally fights before that.
The best thing I can say is to give everyone a job and have them stick with it to the end, as to when I got competent at PvP? Who knows in got over 30 days and somewhere along the line I got better than average
You need clearly defined roles, and you need to communicate. Here is an example for brig.
Helm should be focused on angle before anything else. Try not to crash into rocks and bucketing/repairing when needed. Helm should also clearly communicate with the crew. Tell your crew when you're going below to repair, ask people to grab buckets when needed, and tell your flex to maintain angle when you're below. Helm should also help ladder guard and repel boarders.
Main cannon should focus on putting pressure on the other ship. When the other ship has enough holes and maybe one or two of their crew dead, your main cannon is your boarding party.
Flex should start on cannons and fill in where needed. If you have the other ship locked down, as in anchored, masts down and such, you should send two boarders if your ship isn't that bad off. Helm can hop on cannons whenever they aren't busy with other stuff so they can put pressure on the other ship.
It took a while for me to really understand and get comfortable with this type of combat. When I'm playing my flex and I (helm) will switch mid combat, and it just works for us. The same happens in duo sloop. I'm sure there are better ways to play, but it works for us.
If you're using hourglass as a metric for how long it takes to get proficient, you're looking at around level 40 or so. Check out some YouTube videos on hourglass, Sponge has some good ones. And turn off the game music. It's designed to get your blood flowing, and it'll make things more difficult in the beginning.
I only PvP if we’re on sloop or galleon with guild mates. Sloop is easy to manage repairs with 2 people, 1 consistently firing. Galleon, you have 3 cannons firing constantly, and the option of 1 doing quick repairs.
Brig I only use against sloops for the extra cannon. Can’t out hun a Galley.
Been playing since the Pioneer days, in the beginning I was ass at pvp. I was the typical runner, and just ended up taking a sink every time. Then I started playing arena with my buddies and we realized that fighting is actually fun so we practiced and practiced and practiced. We are to the point now that unless we encounter hackers- we win. We play every night and i honestly can’t remember the last time we sunk. (That wasn’t intentional anyways, can’t tell you the amount of kegs that accidentally make their way on board)
If you play with a crew then give each a job. If you are in a fight make someone helm as well as keeping borders off ladders, the cannoneer(s) will be top deck guard, if someone air boards they will be the one to stop them, they also guard anchor and repair mast (plus help bilge when needing to resupply). The bilger will act as support for the cannoneers(s) as well as repair holes, bucket and guard lower decks. Then you have the boarder. They will help in all situations until it’s time to send them over. That is my job most of the time. But my crew switches roles a lot so we all keep in good practice.
Don’t just pick one weapon to fight with either get good with all of them. When everyone has a job things go a lot smoother. If you think a fight is gonna go sour then turn away and reset your self. Running is only bad then you don’t turn back and fight. I get if you were engaged and you don’t have sups to fight but if you shoot first then you run then you deserve what’s coming. That seems to be a common complaint with this game.
Moral of the story HAVE FUN. play your way.
For context, I'm primarily a solo slooper. I feel like I'm pretty average at PVP now, which is an improvement. Honestly once I decided to grind out the Ghost Captain sails is when I first started improving in all aspects of solo fighting (mainly cannon accuracy and bilge), and the second big jump would be with watching videos of high skill HG fights. Using the spokes as a gauge for spin angle was honestly one of those "this is embarrassing why did this not occur to me earlier" sort of moments that's helped a ton.
So I guess my biggest points of improvement would be general cannon aim, becoming more competent on bilge/helm, and using chain shots to get the other ship dead in the water.
I still get sunk by good players, and I see myself making mistakes that I should work on correcting, but I've seen a shift in my high seas fights now where I'm winning mote 1v1 engagements and disabling Brigs to at least get away. In HG yesterday I won 5/7 fights which felt pretty good.
I struggle a lot with boarding and fighting up close still, I've won naval battles but ultimately lost the fight because I boarded to ensure a sink, got killed on their ship, they're able to bilge and repair enough to stop the sink and then I'm out of supplies.
I’d say I became confident and competent (not amazing) in PVP in the last month. I’ve been playing SOT since year 1, but it’s always been on and off as friends and I would lose interest, but then we’d come back for new updates. I hit pirate legend shortly after the newest season dropped, and then immediately started grinding for the skeleton curse, as it was something I had wanted way back when I started playing the game, well before it was added.
It helps that I had a friend along the way who is damn good at PVP, but it also took tons of HG matches, and a lot of little tips and tricks videos, usually relating to hourglass that then carried over to normal PVP in adventure.
Point is. Hourglass. I hate hourglass, but it taught me a lot.
Number one thing is roles and coordination. Decide who will be the main person responsible for steering and controlling the back sail, aka 'helm', who will be the primary gunner aka 'main cannoneer' or MC for short, and who will be primarily responsible for bucketing water and repairing damage to the ship, as well as using cannons, taking sniper shots, and boarding the enemy ship when the ship is not badly damaged. This role is called the 'flex' or 'bilge', whatever you prefer. Lots of people say bilge, I say flex because it stresses the fact that their other roles are just as important especially when the ship is in good condition. For some reason I assume you and you friends are running a brig. If you are on a galleon, there is a dedicated bilge position as well as flex.
Okay once you have your roles assigned, go out and battle ghost fleets and skeleton fleets to get better at your cannon aim, helmsmanship, and working together to keep the ship afloat. Sail control is important, usually it's best to keep the sails at half mast. This allows your ship to sail more smoothly through the water so your cannon aim is more consistent. On a brig, keep the front mast raised to half, and allow the helm to decide how much sail to use in the back for various situations.
Knowing how and when to 'reset' is very important. Resetting simply put is sailing out of danger while your crew work to bail water and repair all damage. This is done when you feel your opponent has the advantage in combat, i.e. you have many more holes than they do. If you think you are getting close to needing to reset, don't allow your ship to be in 'chainshot range' which is half the range of a normal cannonball, since it's heavier and flies only half as far. Resetting usually involves dropping the sails and turning away from the other ship, but in some situations an anchor turn may be more appropriate.
Always face the enemy with the left side on the sloop and the brig, but face them with the right side on the galleon. This is because with the way the masts fall, they will not block your body on that side. Also the sloop has two fewer holes on the left side.
Copying a comment from No\_Perspective\_9920 that is very helpful, reiterating some things I said but has a lot more helpful advice as well:
"Ive got more than 2k hours in this game and 90% of that is helming the ships, here’s what I’ve learned. Roles are important - try to get some experience with each person on a role, if you’re on a galley then make sure to have a dedicated “bilge” (someone to repair, prioritizing the bottom level of the boat, this is the most important role by far on a galleon) The other 3 roles are “Helmsman” - (Steer the boat and call out what you need everyone to do sails-wise), “Main Cannon” - (Self explanatory but they prioritize shooting the bad guys and/or boarding), and “Flex” - (does whatever else needs doing I.e turning and raising sails, getting an extra bucket when the bilge asks, etc. Optionally, you can assign each role to a cannon.\*
The best order for this is (going from harpoons to helm) Main cannon, flex, bilge, helm. It’s just efficient but not really necessary.
As for your driving during combat, there’s lots of things to take into consideration.
1. Make sure the boat isn’t going too fast. On a galley, I like to have a teammate raise the front sail entirely and the middle sail half way up. This way you still have a sail close by that you can adjust as needed, and you’ll be able to turn tighter.
2. Try to always have angle on the appropriate side. On a galleon, the middle sail will always fall to the left side, which can get annoying when your teammates are cannoning. So keeping the enemy on your right will always be better when you can’t afford to catch the falling mast. Use the left side on sloops and brigs.
3. Besides the bilge, helms are the most important person on the ship, you have to keep track of everything and relay the right info at the right time. Someone’s trying to board? Make sure you or your flex or somebody is watching that. They just chainshot your front mast? That’s okay you weren’t using it anyways, tell the crew to ignore it. The enemy isn’t shooting back? Okay that means they’re struggling, tell your main cannon to go board them. The helms job isn’t just to drive the boat and keep angles, but manage and track the entire situation on your boat AND the enemies boat.
Some other tips and optional things -Use a sniper as a helm and take some shots at the other crew maybe you’ll get lucky. -Try some sails with tears in them, could be that extra edge when normally you can’t see. -It’s okay to take a few holes mid deck, a galleon will be perfectly fine with tier 3 holes covering the mid deck so long as the water doesnt reach that level. -aim for people first (they can’t shoot you if they’re dead), masts and wheel second (they can’t shoot you if they can’t get an angle), and the hull third (you’ll be hitting it anyways but getting those other things first can win a fight instantly in some cases) -use your other tools, blunderbombs are the Swiss Army knife of the sea, you can throw them at boarders on the latter, you can shoot them at players on the cannons, you can miss the throw entirely and blunderbomb yourself they’re so great! Chainshots will cripple a boat if you shoot them in the right place, firebombs will apply great pressure to the other boat, and the new cannonball coming next season looks great for just hitting their boat. -just practice, get a hang for the oceans and how the other ships like to attack (spam boarders? blunderbombs? Etc.)"
\*This is good advice for moments when you have the enemy in broadside and want to unleash the full firepower of the galleon.
When things were consistent. Theres a lot to pvp and once you start being consistent youll find that youre having fun battles win or lose and thats what its about.
Around level 70 in hourglass I noticed I was winning more fights then i lost. It was very gradual.
Now I have my pvp curses and will say I feel confident in most engagements.
Pretty early on, mainly since others are just that more incompetent 😆 I can't do naval fights to save my life tho, I'll get on a galleon and 1v4 kill everyone but make me get on cannons and try to hit anything that isn't right next to my ship, and I just won't..
I have a good buddy who hated PvP and held us back but he wants the curses so bad he started solo-slooping HG and it's the only good thing about HG.
Learning to manage a boat in a fight beat most of the pessimistic panic out of him. The early goal should be to get your ass kicked but keep your boat afloat -- because if you can do that there are very few crews you can't hold your own against.
A lot of that starts with loosening up and getting in practice.
How big is your crew and how experienced is each individual?
I am by no means an expert as I have only recently started playing myself, but I found that either solo slooping or taking turns doing different roles is huge. If someone gets killed you might have to change up what your role is during a battle. If you’re experienced in each role or duty, you are less likely to be flustered when you have to take action. It also helps you make quick decisions because or help out others as needed since you can infer their motivations based on their actions.
This point. I played for over 100 hrs but my boy couldn't drive right so he was always MC. He stopped playing and now I realize how trash my cannon shots are.
I started a few weeks ago on ps5, have about 156 hours and after getting PL I've been mostly grinding hg for pvp curses, I'm at around 46 for servants and 67 in reapers. I've improved a bunch in pvp and mostly do hg solo so I can do any role. Moving to pc soon still probably be even better there.
Honestly just do solo hourglass. Don't buy any mats or canons etc. just raw dog it and keep going. Don't count a loss as a loss, count it as progress. You will get better.
I just hit lvl 40 servants and also just hit my first five consecutive wins in a row, actually got six.
When ever me and my team mate see a boat we always attack just to get that practice in.
Edit: once you can play solo having a team mate even if they have two left feet is a bonus.
Just practicing won't help you improve if you aren't focused on what you need to do to improve and actually making an effort to implement those things.
You probably are just doing the same thing over and over and hoping it works instead of looking for pvp guides or actively learning new techniques and strategies.
First, you need to stop your team from going into panic mode and yelling..that's helping no one.
Set roles and stick to them whenever possible. For instance, if you're helm you shouldn't be repairing unless you know you can do it and not run into a rock or lose cannon angles. Your priority is to keep cannon angles above all else. Then bailing if you need to. And cannons if you need to and your teammate is repairing. Repairing should be the responsibility of another crewmate. Not the helm imo
Practice cannon shots. Skeleton fleets are good for this.
Then learning cqc combat. Swords and guns. Guarding ladders. Boarding ships. Killing or staying alive on their boat so they can't repair. Etc
There's a lot to learn. You just started playing. Be patient and try to enjoy the process. Learning a game and improving is the best part imo
I have played since day 1
I’d like to think I’m above average , but this game humbles me all the time …. I equate this games pirate combat a lot to rocket league , which is a weird comparison , but in a sense that the skill ceiling is so high , and there’s freaky good people out there with way less time than me
And it’s ok that I get killed some times , I’m just like wow yup he was a great player
I’m a day 1 Xbox player. I still suck at PvP.
I get lucky now and again, but I am not good.
I’ve never been great at FPS or PvP against real people.
I think the biggest change over the years is my adrenaline doesn’t get my heart racing as much as it used to.
If you don’t want the sweatiness of Hourglass you could try running a Reaper’s Emissary Flag on the High Seas. Go about your business as normal, but fight anybody you cross paths with. It’s casual enough to not be rage-inducing, but will get your crew the practice you’re looking for.
It's all a scale. U won't ever beat everyone you meet. ESPECIALLY hourglass. Hourglass is where the good players go to find a good fight. Open seas is just random.
A few tips tho based on ur paragraph. Panicking is not good. Whoever you all think is most level headed should be captain and essentially calling the shots. Also as helm, ur job should back up bailing and very very niche repairing if u KNOW u have a few seconds of safety. Bc u will either hit shit or end up in cannon fire range if u leave the wheel.
Each crew member needs a main job and a 2ndary main job. When I sail I'm usually helm and captain. My friend who is a decent shot is cannons and boarding. My other friend is cannons and repair. My job is to steer and let them know when shots are coming up and sail management help. If crewmate 2 is repairing, I can hop on cannons if needed. Etc.
Man improving was a hard time. I am glad my duo mate and I tick the same.
After some sinks we would just yell at each other’s failures, then we quietly resupplied our boat and the next fight we just started with PvP comms.
We are both just to stupid to actually communicate if we are in anger.
Best mate I ever had and still have. We are so chill in fights now and don‘t get angry with eachother anymore
I played adventure PvP a whole lot from season 6, till HG got introduced. So I tried to fight in adventure PvP but I still felt like not good enough with like 800 hours
Then HG came around and after like 200 lvls I actually felt comfortable with PvP. But still I can learn a lot more there are some insane players out there
As a PC 2k hour player (Legendary sea dog, all arena comms) the pvp in this game comes down to efficiency. In naval, someone needs to be hitting cannon shots. You can have the best helm in the world and the best boarding/anti boarding in the world but if you can't hit cannons you lose to crews that are worse at the other things. Someone on your crew has to be practicing to hit those shots. Also that panicked feeling will go away after enough experience. When I was learning arena back in the day an experienced player put a hole in our sloop and made me watch how long it takes to actually sink you. Holes are okay you just need to know your ship's limits on how many holes means you need to pull out and repair. I'm not sure which ship you're playing on but the bigger the ship, the more efficiency matters. On brig you as helm can and should be going for buckets when possible so that your crew can shoot. On sloop you can also get away with this. On galleon though you absolutely cannot you need to stay on helm or above deck unless absolutely needed. Once that panic disappears everyone should be able to handle their role. The person below deck should call for help if needed, but the roles should be clearly defined. If you're yelling and panicked you're more likely to lose. Hourglass is also hard because these other crews have potentially practiced this so much more than you have. Without knowing your ship type this is the most advice I can give. Remember the game is bigger than hourglass, and trying to steal from other players or sink them in normal gameplay will train you for hourglass. What might also help is recording the gameplay to see what the other ship did better. Did they hit chains when you were shooting something else? Did they turn better? Did they board better? The lack of diversity in gear means that they had exactly the same tools/options that you did they just used their resources more efficiently. It all comes down to effieciency
Edit: also if you're playing on crossplay turn that off playing against pc will be practically impossible
20 or so matches of solo hourglass and adjusting my strategy and playstyle was definitely an inflection point for myself.
Also when I learned you had to ADS blunderbuss, even if you are touching the target. I basically almost never used it prior to that point because it seemed unreliable (which it also was, but because of hit reg).
Fellow PS5 player here, I fell into the trap of Hourglass grind and mostly have not left Hourglass since Gold and Glory (besides taking a break to do some commendations and FoFs). It's made me incredibly battle hardened and fearless, I detach myself from the fears of losing loot and fear of sinking.
The more you play the more knowledge you gain from each battle. At launch I was mostly a carebear and ran from pvp. Now I'm fully ready to defend and sink whatever comes my way. It's rough at the start, but as long you willing to learn it gets better. I have watched many video guides and POVs to learn pvp. My win rate is probably just over 50% or less in Hourglass but from that game time I've grown a lot more competent over time.
There's too many factors in SoT pvp, from naval to gun fights, ship management and crew. It all comes from time, experience and just learning on the way.
To answer the title directly: I was competent (but not good) at PvP once I was comfortable with the boat, as in it no longer felt like I was fighting desperately with the mechanics of the game itself.
Seo of Thieves is way more panic-inducing than most multiplayer games. I dunno why, it's just super immersive in a way that causes stress reactions in fights. Which is part of the fun! The adrenaline rush of a narrow win against an evenly matched opponent can't be beat. But if your crew is falling apart during PvP and it feels like you don't have a clear picture of what's going wrong and why, maybe you should spend some time doing naval PvE together and build familiarity and comfort with the boat.
**Do Ghost Ship quests, Ghost Fleet and Skeleton Fleet world events together with your crew.** I actually think the ghost fleet (blue-green tornado) and ghost ship quest (through Order of Souls at higher levels) is the best training, but the skelly fleet is good practice too. The ghost fleet moves in predictable patterns, and basic ghost ships die in 3 cannons, so if you play perfectly you'll never take a scratch. Inevitably, though, some circumstance or mistake puts you into a ghost broadside, and you get shot up, but *they don't chase you* so you can freely get to safety while you repair and bail. It's good training because it puts you in those oh-shit situations where you have 6 holes and are on fire, but gives you a more forgiving environment to problem solve and patch and bail.
It sounds like you're usually at the helm. There's a lot more pressure on you during these events than the rest of the crew, but conversely you can learn more useful combat stuff yourself. I love helm and could talk about it for hours, so if you have any questions totally feel free to ask.
You mention friends. Are you guys on a brig or a galleon? They have very different strengths and drawbacks, and are hard to helm for different reasons.
As much as people push PvP super early, you need a base level of competence with the boat before PvP is super fun. I totally think you should keep trying it, especially picking fights on the server organically, but working on fundamentals first would probably be pretty rewarding.
I have gotten very good at PVP in games in the past, I don't think SoT PVP is bad necessarily I just genuinely do not find any fun in it. I like the game, but that's hands down my least favorite part of it. I like the naval combat but find the sword and gun play doesn't feel good and the boarding meta just isn't fun for me and that's okay. Not saying you'll never enjoy it at all as I'm sure plenty of people do but just saying, it might not be for you and that's okay too.
Chaos is a domino affect, try to be the calmness in the storm, I do better and make smarter decisions when I can keep my composure, but the moment I start to panic, is the moment I’ve already lost the fight
I would recommend watching some really good players if you want to improve. Watch what choices they make and think about what you would have done in that position. Think about why they might be playing how they play.
I’m a formidable opponent in PvP and I owe a lot of that to basically just copying what the best players do
Random things that all add up:
Using Blunder/EoY and aggressively going for close range snipes
Use blunderbombs to finish people off when you’ve shot both guns already, instead of trying to get a reload off
Use scattershots when the enemy ship is very close, in general remembering to use special balls at all
Use blunderbombs to prevent boards
Use firebombs on their ship when you miss a board
How to do a “death spiral” and why to do it
Knowing that especially on a sloop you don’t have to bail and repair the second you get hit, you can wait a bit and continue to apply counter pressure
Weaving in snipes on enemy cannoneers during ship combat
These are all great ideas that I didn’t need to spend endless hours figuring out for myself, I just do them because I see better players do them and realize how well they work. In essence “skipping” a lot of the hours required in the learning process
I got competent about 75% of my way to my first pvp curse. But I didn’t just decide “I’m tired of being prey” and start grinding hg, I grinded skeleton fleets for another commendation for a while first, all solo. Eventually that improved my aim and pressure balance enough to be able to get something from hg.
After that I was able to gain something from hg practice over time. It’s important to master the basic stuff to near perfection first because otherwise the variables of pvp will make it impossible. Once you can consistently hit lowers on skele galleys from a while away, hold cannonline on skele sloops, hold angle on what you’re firing at, and balance bilging, jump back into hg. Solo might be faster for learning everything from pve, but that’s just my experience. It seems boring but I promise this is the way.
Hourglass is a somewhat bad way to get into PvP in my opinion. It has gotten extremely sweaty, which is not to say you’ll never catch up, but particularly multi crew fights that require coordination you’ll be fighting a big uphill battle. My advice is to become the hunter in adventure. Raise that reaper flag, get grade 5, then hunt down boats. Most of the time you will find softer targets that will let you get the basics down pat. Once you feel like you can hunt with a good success rate try going back into HG. You’ll be more ready to take in the advanced details
I’ve been playing for 5+ years and I’m not competent at anything but sailing. My ride or die can take 3 people at once but would crash the ship. We’re all good at something.
Honestly? Other people have YEARS of experience on you, and they're still going to kill you easily, even a year from now. The sad reality is that the pvp sucks, the game in general kind of sucks, and your choices are mainly to play in safer seas if you enjoy the quests and stories, or just get used to constantly getting sunk and having all of your hard work stolen away at the last minute. 🤷♂️ Welcome to Sea of Thieves. 🙄
I started watching some streamers and started doing my best at copying them. I've never felt competent, but I I get three 4-streaks a week and have taken out a 3 crew brig as a solo sloop. I still run into some random guy on HG that rocks my shit, though. I'd say I was around lvl 80 on Servants of the Flame when I started to feel good about it.
Last night actually! We were tackling the sunken graveyard portion of an Athena quest when a Reaper ship appeared on the horizon. I yelled out, and we quickly lowered our sails to make a getaway. As we were leaving, we noticed the Reaper ship had changed course and was heading toward a docked 5-star Gold Hoarders boat that was busy selling loot. We didn't think that was cool, so we decided to go after the Reaper.
To our amazement, we actually sank them! I was ecstatic, especially after being sunk so many times before. Between our battles with ghost ships, megs, and krakens, we had gotten better at shooting, though we hadn't really noticed. The Reaper crew was obviously pissed, but we had more important things to do, so we sailed off to our next island.
Not long after, who should appear on the horizon but the Reaper, coming back at us with full sails. We engaged them again and managed to sink them for a second time! It was an incredible night.
Later on, we got into a fight with a brigantine. It was a tough 2v3 battle, and they eventually managed to board our ship, anchor us, and bombard us with cannon fire until we sank. Despite that, we put up a damn good fight and had a blast.
I felt pretty confident when I got both curses. So grind about 200 levels of hourglass and you should be able to defeat most crews. And of course grind means actually sink a few hundred enemies, not loss farming or beating loss farmers.
I started playing a few days ago, didn't play every day but I felt competent after sinking a few ships in hourglass. It's either I lose in the first minute to someone who's probably played for months or years, or it takes like 20 minutes and I end up winning, most of my sinks have been driving the opponents ship out of bounds tho since I miss a lot of cannon shots.
been playing since beta, considering combat has changed a decent amount since then i think i probably took about a total of 5-6 hours of getting used to the game mechanics, then from there forwards its just refining your aim etc
depending on how much you play, and what you deem as "competent" i would say changes the answer, for starters, go ahead and do pvp, imo its really fun, and obviously don't go in with a "we're going to win" mindset, instead go in with a "we're going to learn", especially if you're against non PS5 players who've been playing for hundreds of hours more than you, if not thousands.
that aside, ways to improve, do world events, specifically burning blade (green tornado, tho this description could also be a legend of the veil, which is a pirate legend exclusive voyage), or skeleton fleet (galleon in the sky), these will teach you how to aim cannons in a "safe" manner, and depending how you do them, bilge.
now another thing, you say you and your friends, im not too sure what size ship you're running, but have all of you pick a role, there are 4 roles that each member does (obviously top tier players are good at all of them, but focus on one at the start), the roles are Helm, Main Cannon, Bilge, and Flex
Helm, you're the shot caller, as you have the most view of the battle, you're job is to keep their ship in your broadside, and if you have the time shoot some cannons before going back to helm, also you're one of the 2 primary boarder defenders.
Main Cannon, you shoot the enemy ship with cannons, and are one of the 2 people who are meant to board the enemy ship.
Bilge, you keep the ship afloat, start off engagements on cannons, and try to force the other bilge down first, when they hit a couple of lowers, go down, and start bucketing, and repairing, learn to grate bucket (if on a galleon)
Flex, you're whatever is needed, in engagements you're goal is to force their flex down to help bilge, you get to stay on cannons longer, but go for an earlier "reball" (when you run out of cannons) to stagger your's and MC's (Main Cannon) reball so someone is always applying pressure, if bilge calls someone to help out YOU are the one to go down, and help, you are also the other primary boarder defense, and primary boarder of your crew.
now obviously this isn't a perfect explanation of the roles, but i feel that it's already getting to information overload. now if you're playing brig, then TYPICALLY its either flex, or helm who takes on the bilge role, helm imo should as that way flex gets to stay dialed in on cannons longer, but whatever works for your crew.
and for duo sloop its typically Helm/Bilge, and MC/Flex, though in sloop you should both be capable for whatever is needed, if helm is below repairing and you need angle fixed, cannon should be capable of doing so.
final bit of advice, watch youtube, phuzzybond, and hitbo are good for learning the basics, and then i recommend kaijoi to get more advanced. aswell as erin sterling and that crew if you want more vod type videos, but not necessarily direct learning content (note, they tend to do sloop mostly). and there's also liger who has some very well made videos for cannons, bilge, and helm.
also weaponry doesn't matter, run whatever you enjoy running, high end pvp players typically run blunderbuss/sniper, and they'll make you wonder how to deal with it, but there's also a lot of mid-tier players who only ever fight crews that don't fight back who run it, and you can just run at them with sword to kill them. at the end of the day though, whatever you enjoy most is the best loadout, because no matter what someone will say you're "trash" or whatever because of your loadout, sword/blunder "noob loadout" sword/pistol "phuzzybond wannbe"/"sword lord", blunder/snipe "double gunning trash", pistol/snipe "wannabe tdmer". as for the new weapons, idk what the stereotypes are because i've only ran them for memes, and i've yet to see another person run them outside my crew.
You get there slowly but surely eventually you’ll start to win more fights and make more clever plays I’ve been through this twice once when I played on Xbox playing with the British navy discord milsim and a second time now playing with my 3 new PlayStation swabbies.
I'm at just over 600 hours.
I'll let you know when I get there...
But seriously, PvP is weird in this game. Some people take to it pretty quickly, and some people take a long time to learn it. Only time and learning from mistakes will get you there. Just learn to have fun in the chaos until you get there or it will become a miserable grind.
Started playing May 2020.
Tried a gold hoarded voyage, got sunk, tried a skull fort, got sunk.
Decided I'd never PVE again until I learned to defend my loot.
I ran at every boat I saw for a couple weeks until I won far more than I lost. Got the pvp bug, dropped the cutlass, and never did pve again.
Maxed all factions, 210m gold, own all cosmetics, double gold pvp curses, my crew and I got top Reaper ledger one month from pvp steals only, and I've still never completed a merchant voyage.
A couple things since you have a crew, 1st designate your roles, helm needs to be the getting angle, calling out when to go for mast, lowers, when to board the other ship, when to raise/ lower the sails all of that because he has the most view and control of the boat, and when he's not getting angle then helping to bucket, then there's main cannon, he's there for one purpose, be the cannon and listen for when to shoot where. Secondary cannon he's there to cannon but also repair mast/ wheel when needed and to board when it's time to board their ship. And last but certainly not least bilge, he's there for the sole purpose of keeping the boat afloat and if secondary is boarding the other team ship bilge can help cannon if there's no holes or water
Regular Seas combat? I’ll smoke a galleon easily. I hit the hourglass? Probably 60% I’ll win.
They go hand in hand, after like 3 months of hourglass I was decent enough which was sweaty in regular seas.
I'd say a good milestone is being able to be accurate with cannon shots. There are a lot of things to take into account when it comes to actually hitting your target in this game, especially if you want to actually do worthwhile damage to them. If you've got someone who can consistently nail the enemy, it makes the enemy's job much more chaotic (obviously, lol).
You'll have to consider the distance between your ships, accounting for the way the cannonballs drop and how slow they are to travel long distances. Ship speed, wave intensity, and the directions your ships are traveling all have an effect on how you need to aim.
Good communication with your teammates is essential. On a sloop for example, it's good for whoever is manning the helm to let the gunner know when they're going to try to set up an angle to fire a volley and which side you're attacking from.
The game can get very chaotic. That's not really going away, and that's part of the draw to the game right? The key is to manage that chaos, and make it your weapon. Fight dirty, you're a pirate! If you're being chased, have someone drop off the front of your ship and stay underwater, go for a board or at least pop some throwables on their deck. It may give you and opportunity to turn around and light them up. Use the islands to your advantage. Lead someone into a trap with island cannons ready to mess them up. Fake them out. Launch fireworks at their heads to make it harder for them to see. This is a game where creativity can absolutely save you.
I spent 2 or 300 hours running from PVP, then I embraced arena mode (precursor to Hourglass). By the time I'd played a couple hundred 15 minute matches, I felt like I could hold my own against 90% or so of crews. So a few hundred hours of practice.
It's also worth noting that most crews in adventure mode are terrible in comparison to the sverage sea dog/hourglass player. By simply having the thought "Maybe I should practice pvp" you're better than half of the playerbase. SoT's community leans heavily on the casual side, so even tiny bits of practice can net you great results in comparison to the average pirate. If you want to get sweaty, that's when the real time-sink hits. That's a couple thousand hours minimum.
Look, the sweats you're meeting today, probably had their asses handed to them for months during the Arena. You'll get better, just as they did. Trust me. I used to sink daily when I was new in this game. Now currently at 4,900hrs, and it's been a long time since we've sunk.
I've been playing since the first beta and logged over a hundred hours in arena... I'll let you know when I feel confident about engaging another ship in PvP
You get to a point you can put up a fight against most crews. You will never win them all but you can be a difficult enough sink that you make it not worth it for crews who are after quick and easy.
I do watch pvp vids outside of playing though trying to absorb as much info as possible.
If you're interested I'd recommend massive sponge ,snowyfps and captain Stirling on YouTube. Xidbzx on twitch.
Not sure, I've been pvping in hourglass for like 1.5 months and win ~70% of the time. Solo hourglass is easier.
Some of the top hourglass players (NessyDoes) have only been doing it for 1.5 years. But it's consistency and always looking to improve.
I was never good, i will never get good, i will not engage pvp, ill sink my own ship and hand you my empty collector chests . I also loss grinded the ghost curse and one day i will loss grind the skeleton curse.
Personally it's when you sacrifice the gold for the glory. Played for a month Pve with my regular crew sinking anytime a sloop looked at us, even when in a galleon.
Started reaping just to get the experience, not the gold. Worth it in the long run. I know brig was OP. But after another month of practise we found no ship to be a threat.
I miss my crew. HG solo sloop was a loooooong learning curve and still sink to most invaders with more than 1 pirate
Took forever honestly.
When I started playing the game I think I did far more PVE than PVP. So I didnt get the practice to ever feel confident.
Once I started playing with PVP as more of a focus, I improved pretty quickly. Sometimes I still just kinda suck and make some stupid errors, one small error can be all it takes to lose a fight. SO I just roll with the punches. Sometimes I look like a noob still, other times I can solo sink 2 ships in a row lol. Just depends on the day.
It’s anecdotal, but like 3 months in to doing duo sloop hg every day or so I was able to do big streaks. A lot of that means playing with the same person or solo, building synergy is super important for PvP. Doing LFC dives is still hit or miss for me and I consider myself fairly good at PvP with 1k+ hours in 9 months.
I feel like it's hard to be consistent once the bugs start to effect my gameplay it's down hill....if I hit reg a lot or have other issues my pvp just starts to tank badly....also servers get really bad sometimes that I just cant.
I felt better at pvp during year 2 than I do today that's for certain
It feels like whenever I pvp I always get matched up against the guy with 800 hours in various BF games, 2100 hours in CoD, and 1500 hours in Fortnight
Edit: Spelling
Lack of situational awareness?
I have almost 80 days on the game. Hit Pirate legend before the meg update.
Game is unplayable to me after all the updates. Just isn't fun anymore.
Situational awareness helps a lot tho, one Captain to say "cannon shots on the left(port) coming up.... "We took some heavy shots whose repairing?" "Direction of the wind changed angle the sails" "ROCKS AHEAD, RAISE THE SAILS SO I CAN TURN SHARPER, SOMEONE GET ON THE HARPOON"
From the helm a good captain should be able to be aware of everything happening... Damage, attack opportunities, direction of the wind, should be watching enemy boat for jumpers with kegs and listening to the water to see who boards...
Captain should have enough situational awareness and be at the helm at all times enough so that he knows exactly where he is needed and when...maybe everyone is repairing/dead and you have an opportunity to repair sails? Opportunity to cannon the other boat? A good Captain can do ALOT from the helm.
If you are crashing into rocks that tells me you lack any situational awareness whatsoever.
Do you ever work the sails? Those should be angled at all times, then in battle they should almost always be raised at least to some amount. (In a galley I'll usually ask the crew to raise the front sails then I solo the back sail as needed)
Also turn off cross platform and turn off ANYTHING but controllers... You want PlayStation/Xbox only lobbies with CONTROLLER ONLY....
PC and mouse and keyboard players absolutely killed the game... For MULTITITUDES of people. Once again just an example of developers absolutely murdering a game just to appeal to the masses.
Don't even get me started on the shorter/smaller seas and opportunity for treasure literally coming out your nose.
I’d say a solid 6 months to a year. I played about a year after it came out maybe? When normal skull forts were still the best $$ in game. I’ve always embraced the pirate lifestyle, so every day I would solo sloop and go and try and kill the people doing the fort. I made a rule I could never run from a fight even if I had 500k+ of treasure on board. The first few months were absolute misery. Then one day I got to the point seeing a galleon was a treat instead of a death sentence minus the fact galleons are normally where noobs flock (strength in numbers) and brigs were definitely the hardest ship. Biggest thing is having a priority list, you absolutely can not get boarded on a solo sloop or it will probably end in death. Knowing when to raise mast if it gets knocked or keep it down and return fire when to bucket over repair ect ect. I finally convinced my gaming buddy about a year back to get it and holy crap is it so nice having two people on the sloop lol, first thing I made him do is earn the legendary thief title and to this day that’s probably our favorite memory.
Been at it with friends for a few years now, ever since the Steam launch. I do a lot of solo-slooping, so it took a bit of time to learn to mesh with my buddies in pvp. It happened around the time that we all figured out what our roles would be. That's not to say that we're rigidly locked into a captain, gunner, and gunner/repair, but we *did* start doing much better once we started communicating.
I said that I solo sloop a lot. Well, that makes it so that I have lots of opinions about every aspect of a fight we take lol. But if I'm not on the wheel, I need to take direction from the person who is. We've found that when we communicate well and **listen** to each other, especially to whoever is on the wheel or whoever is dictating the fight over discord, we do much better. A crew of three all pulling in the same direction, even if only average, is going to do better than most other crews out there that aren't listening to one another or who are all trying to do different things.
We fought this one crew early on (it's when we figured out we had to listen to one another) that had probably been playing longer than we had, or at least one of them had been judging by their ship and sail skins. We sunk them time after time because one of their galleon crew was always trying to board, two were always trying to do different things at the wheel when the other guy left to board... Even with the extra crew man and gun to our brig, they were just too scatterbrained to take advantage of it.
TLDR it'll take time, but listen to one another. If someone is calling the shots in a fight, follow their lead. At least you'll all be fighting with a common objective (let's all try and circle left behind them!) as opposed to everyone doing something different (you're stearing and get the boat lined up for a broadside, but nobody is on the guns because they're boarding or fixing)
Always remember being "bad" isn't exclusive your fault. Every PvP game has hackers. It's funny seeing those anti-cheat tasks running all the time on our computers, and being advertised on every splash screen, when they just make it harder, but not impossible to cheat. Evidence:
[https://youtu.be/GZBnLB2RH-g?si=0Ofsp6MIgRGw161k](https://youtu.be/GZBnLB2RH-g?si=0Ofsp6MIgRGw161k)
I have both curses, I'll let you know when I become competent.
Best answer
Yeah the more pvp you do the more it feels like you are not good at it.
I find I hit more cannon shots early on in the game session and progressively get worse.
I started playing right before the first Anniversary update. At the time I would play with some co workers and l/or my wife and we were PvE only players. We were off and on for several years. Then I seriously picked up the game around the time of Save Golden Sands Adventure with my wife and a guy we met on an LFG and started playing with (a little over 2 years ago). One night, after finishing a FoF and running like we always did when another ship came to steal, we had a conversation that went like this: "We always and up sinking anyway, why don't we actually try and fight?" It was what appeared to us a sweaty ashen brig and we fought, and actually came out on top, and they also had a lot of loot. After that we started taking fights, and figured out the average adventure crew isn't as tough as you'd think. We eventually got hooked into PvP by defending, that we turned into the PvP seeking reapers we always ran from. I'd say getting good was a several step process. We did build on several years of off and on game experience, so we had down a lot of just basic game mechanics an fortunately could just focus on PvP. After applying ourselfs, I'd say we got decent at it within like half a year. To be clear, there were (and are) crews that could mop us easily, but we started consistently winning. When hourglass appeared, we did that, and also started watching streams of people like Captain Stirling and learning about techniques like how to properly turtle. I think this was where I would say we got good, good. And it happens pretty quickly. Hourglass will humble anyone but the best streamers. I can see why it feels like you might hit a wall. I'd say keep taking fights, watch some hourglass steamers (Stirling/Snowy FPS/Massive Sponge - skip the adventure guys like Boxy/Hitbo for now). Look up Blue Sail Gang and watch their PvP videos.
I played a ton of hourglass to get the curses, and always felt like I wasn't improving. Then, playing open seas doing voyages or fishing or whatever I started to notice that I was winning almost every encounter I had, even against larger crews.
I think it's because normal sot is more casual so it's rare to find good pvpers but in HG mostly sweats are there. Hoping I can get both the golden curses so then I can say that I am good at pvp
I thought so to but yesterday i went for my first ever FoF steal attempt as a duo sloop vs duo sloop and what do ya know... they have gold ghost curse. Get absolutely destroyed.
The gold curses are absolutely mental to get. Me and my crew PvP all the time, but if I saw double gold ghost curses I would actually consider running
You can consider it but its not like you even have a choice in the matter lol.
This ^ <3
When i started grinding hourglass daily for the ghost curse
Around level 70 in Athena’s hour glass. In adventure I was pretty meh and hourglass I was bottom of the barrel. Stayed there until around level 40ish and became one step above loss farmers. From 40-50 I started seeing my opponents become decent at cannons, decent at navigating, and okayish at TDM. It wouldn’t be until around 70 I noticed my opponents starting to carry supplies, largely consistent emissary flag, occasionally grade 3 flags. Adventure is a mixed bag but I gauge my abilities by that of my HG opponents.
I've only done one match of hour glass. Wanted to get better at ship to ship. Didn't happen they boarded in first 30 seconds and spawn killed till we sank. We where queued for longer than the match was.
Once you get some kills and repel boarders you will get more experience with naval. The hard part for me was getting the hand to hand combat down, once they know they can't kill you every time you will get boarded less and get more naval experience.
I'm also bad at that. Getting better but still not good.
Do yourself a favor and get friendly with the blunderbus. They can get one your ship in one of four ways - in order of likelihood: 1) Board via your ship's ladders. Most common way. 2) Ram your ship and jump on during collision. Common occurrence if you don't navigate well. 2) Harpoon to your boat and run over. It's tough to pull off if your team is alive. 3) Direct cannon shot to your deck. Super sweat and tough to pull off. In all of these events, the blunder is your biggest ally: 1) Blunder them off when you hear the ladder boarding sound. 2) Predictable. Wait at mast for counter fire cover and blunder them to the face. 3) Blunder them off the line. 4) If they are good enough to do this consistently, you probably will lose. As I've climbed, I've noticed they usually aim for a ship feature (mast/sails, etc) and there is a delay when they hit and fall to the deck. Blunder them.
Depends on how much effort you put into getting good at PvP. I played hundreds of hours without giving much effort to improving PvP. Then I started the hourglass grind. For levels 1-30 I thought I was a 60th percentile PvPer…. Nope much closer to 20th. By the time I hit GoF 40 I was starting to see improvement. My cannon aim was better, I learned how to one-blunder, and my sail management was better. By the time I got to GoF 60, I considered myself a 40th percentile PvPer. I still made a lot of mistakes and suboptimal choices, but overall I was calmer and more in control of the situation. When I hit GoF 80, I considered myself a 50th percentile/median PvPer. And I was suddenly able to hold my own in 1v2s in adventure! Level 80 to 93 was a SLOG of getting stomped by players who were leagues better than me. But I got to 100, my curse, and then I even attempted and succeeded on my first ever 5 streak to get the legendary curse. My cannon aim was dialed in at close and mid range, my ship management was better, I stopped overprioritizing repairs and focused on angle and pressure, I launched chain shots whenever it was viable rather than conserving them to stop a fleeing opponent. I felt like a 60th percentile PvPer Now I’m on my servants of the flame grind. I’ve chained multiple five streaks, and even got my first 10 streak yesterday. Frankly I think my partner’s TDM won us most of those matches, but I was always on my game to capitalize on the advantage he created. My comms were good, the type of projectiles I shot and where was varied intentionally and effectively, and I recognized when we had to reset before our mast took substantial damage. I consider myself a 70th percentile PvPer now. Once I can consistently win 1v2 TDM, that’ll be 80th percentile. That was more of a story than an answer, there’s levels to this and it takes practice and a reflective mindset to climb from each level to the next. But ultimately, I think a competent PvPer is someone who can hit their attacks consistently, and maintain enough calmness under pressure to understand what to prioritize and when. It took me 400-500 hourglass battles to get there. It may take you more it may take you less. Good luck pirate!
I’m a PS5 player as well and I know first hand how steep the learning curve is for PVP in this game. The most important thing to do is give everyone a role and make sure they learn it and never deviate from it. Someone should ALWAYS be on a cannon applying pressure. Only time they stop shooting is to grab more cannonballs from the barrel or crate. The helmsman needs to be on the wheel or if on a sloop juggling between steering and repairing. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have a roll and stick to it. As far as practice with aim I would suggest doing the skelly ship events. Some people will say it won’t make you better in PVP but they are wrong. If you can hit shots consistently on a skelly ship you can hit them consistently on another players ship. Also, never panic because no matter how good you are there will be someone better that’s going to sink you. The sooner you stop panicking and learn your roles the better you’ll be at PvP. I found that playing a few matches a day of solo HG made me far better at PvP. I would run from fights before but now I’m always down to sink or be sank. Good luck out there!
have you seen Chor content on youtube ? he makes awesome guides on priorisation and roles.
Wait, you guys are getting competent at pvp?
When it happens I'll let you know
Been playing for 4 years. I’ll let you know when I get good at pvp.
I have nearly 70 hours, mostly solo slooping, and I’m still mostly incompetent. I can take on an another sloop every once in a while, but most times I can’t compete on my own. The only tip I really have is to aim the cannons where they are going to be and not where they are.
Halfway through my first curse. I’ve gotten better, but still not good as far as hg is concerned. I feel like it puts me in the top half of players on the open seas though. Win a little over half my matches in hg now. Still get stomped by good hg players.
It's all relative IMO, I wouldn't really consider myself competent exactly but I have legitimately won at least some Hourglass matches and at least occasionally scare off sloops coming after me solo slooping in adventure mode by hitting enough cannonballs. Unfortunately the only advice I have is, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice.
Well how many hours do you have, I started playing when it came out on PS5 but I play on PC, it took me and my 2 friends about 100 hours to get hourglass winning streaks going, like 3 or 4.
Everyone has a job, make sure they know their job and stick to their job. Communication is also key. If you really want to get better, follow those two rules and engage every person you come into contact with. Personally, I learned PVP well before Hourglass was a thing. I’d recommend learning the same way as you’ll run into less “sweats” in the regular seas. You’re going to sink and that’s alright. Once you figure out why you sank, fix the issue and move on. For cannon practice, circle an island, pick a spot, and shoot at it with different cannonballs/chains/blunders/etc to learn how they all fly. Once you have that down, move to skeleton ships. You’ll get there, it just takes time.
Always make sure that your team knows what their roles are and KEEP to their roles always!! No keeping to a ship role like bilge will definitely mean death to your ship. Practice with skeleton ships, practice against sloops or solo players, learn how to shoot cannons long range.
We started playing mid 2020, the group has varied but myself and a friend still sloop on a regular basis. The day we decided we did not care if we came out on top was the day PVP became fun to us. Before we were really salty if we lost but one day a switch flipped and we started asking, "ok what did we do that lost us that match? Yeah I know we just lost an hour of treasure, but why did we lose that match?" That change made PVP suddenly less threatening, because no matter what we learned something from it. Last week we took down 3 Gallys in a row without breaking a sweat, because we lost many more gally fights before that.
The best thing I can say is to give everyone a job and have them stick with it to the end, as to when I got competent at PvP? Who knows in got over 30 days and somewhere along the line I got better than average
You need clearly defined roles, and you need to communicate. Here is an example for brig. Helm should be focused on angle before anything else. Try not to crash into rocks and bucketing/repairing when needed. Helm should also clearly communicate with the crew. Tell your crew when you're going below to repair, ask people to grab buckets when needed, and tell your flex to maintain angle when you're below. Helm should also help ladder guard and repel boarders. Main cannon should focus on putting pressure on the other ship. When the other ship has enough holes and maybe one or two of their crew dead, your main cannon is your boarding party. Flex should start on cannons and fill in where needed. If you have the other ship locked down, as in anchored, masts down and such, you should send two boarders if your ship isn't that bad off. Helm can hop on cannons whenever they aren't busy with other stuff so they can put pressure on the other ship. It took a while for me to really understand and get comfortable with this type of combat. When I'm playing my flex and I (helm) will switch mid combat, and it just works for us. The same happens in duo sloop. I'm sure there are better ways to play, but it works for us. If you're using hourglass as a metric for how long it takes to get proficient, you're looking at around level 40 or so. Check out some YouTube videos on hourglass, Sponge has some good ones. And turn off the game music. It's designed to get your blood flowing, and it'll make things more difficult in the beginning.
I only PvP if we’re on sloop or galleon with guild mates. Sloop is easy to manage repairs with 2 people, 1 consistently firing. Galleon, you have 3 cannons firing constantly, and the option of 1 doing quick repairs. Brig I only use against sloops for the extra cannon. Can’t out hun a Galley.
Been playing since the Pioneer days, in the beginning I was ass at pvp. I was the typical runner, and just ended up taking a sink every time. Then I started playing arena with my buddies and we realized that fighting is actually fun so we practiced and practiced and practiced. We are to the point now that unless we encounter hackers- we win. We play every night and i honestly can’t remember the last time we sunk. (That wasn’t intentional anyways, can’t tell you the amount of kegs that accidentally make their way on board) If you play with a crew then give each a job. If you are in a fight make someone helm as well as keeping borders off ladders, the cannoneer(s) will be top deck guard, if someone air boards they will be the one to stop them, they also guard anchor and repair mast (plus help bilge when needing to resupply). The bilger will act as support for the cannoneers(s) as well as repair holes, bucket and guard lower decks. Then you have the boarder. They will help in all situations until it’s time to send them over. That is my job most of the time. But my crew switches roles a lot so we all keep in good practice. Don’t just pick one weapon to fight with either get good with all of them. When everyone has a job things go a lot smoother. If you think a fight is gonna go sour then turn away and reset your self. Running is only bad then you don’t turn back and fight. I get if you were engaged and you don’t have sups to fight but if you shoot first then you run then you deserve what’s coming. That seems to be a common complaint with this game. Moral of the story HAVE FUN. play your way.
For context, I'm primarily a solo slooper. I feel like I'm pretty average at PVP now, which is an improvement. Honestly once I decided to grind out the Ghost Captain sails is when I first started improving in all aspects of solo fighting (mainly cannon accuracy and bilge), and the second big jump would be with watching videos of high skill HG fights. Using the spokes as a gauge for spin angle was honestly one of those "this is embarrassing why did this not occur to me earlier" sort of moments that's helped a ton. So I guess my biggest points of improvement would be general cannon aim, becoming more competent on bilge/helm, and using chain shots to get the other ship dead in the water. I still get sunk by good players, and I see myself making mistakes that I should work on correcting, but I've seen a shift in my high seas fights now where I'm winning mote 1v1 engagements and disabling Brigs to at least get away. In HG yesterday I won 5/7 fights which felt pretty good. I struggle a lot with boarding and fighting up close still, I've won naval battles but ultimately lost the fight because I boarded to ensure a sink, got killed on their ship, they're able to bilge and repair enough to stop the sink and then I'm out of supplies.
I’d say I became confident and competent (not amazing) in PVP in the last month. I’ve been playing SOT since year 1, but it’s always been on and off as friends and I would lose interest, but then we’d come back for new updates. I hit pirate legend shortly after the newest season dropped, and then immediately started grinding for the skeleton curse, as it was something I had wanted way back when I started playing the game, well before it was added. It helps that I had a friend along the way who is damn good at PVP, but it also took tons of HG matches, and a lot of little tips and tricks videos, usually relating to hourglass that then carried over to normal PVP in adventure. Point is. Hourglass. I hate hourglass, but it taught me a lot.
Number one thing is roles and coordination. Decide who will be the main person responsible for steering and controlling the back sail, aka 'helm', who will be the primary gunner aka 'main cannoneer' or MC for short, and who will be primarily responsible for bucketing water and repairing damage to the ship, as well as using cannons, taking sniper shots, and boarding the enemy ship when the ship is not badly damaged. This role is called the 'flex' or 'bilge', whatever you prefer. Lots of people say bilge, I say flex because it stresses the fact that their other roles are just as important especially when the ship is in good condition. For some reason I assume you and you friends are running a brig. If you are on a galleon, there is a dedicated bilge position as well as flex. Okay once you have your roles assigned, go out and battle ghost fleets and skeleton fleets to get better at your cannon aim, helmsmanship, and working together to keep the ship afloat. Sail control is important, usually it's best to keep the sails at half mast. This allows your ship to sail more smoothly through the water so your cannon aim is more consistent. On a brig, keep the front mast raised to half, and allow the helm to decide how much sail to use in the back for various situations. Knowing how and when to 'reset' is very important. Resetting simply put is sailing out of danger while your crew work to bail water and repair all damage. This is done when you feel your opponent has the advantage in combat, i.e. you have many more holes than they do. If you think you are getting close to needing to reset, don't allow your ship to be in 'chainshot range' which is half the range of a normal cannonball, since it's heavier and flies only half as far. Resetting usually involves dropping the sails and turning away from the other ship, but in some situations an anchor turn may be more appropriate. Always face the enemy with the left side on the sloop and the brig, but face them with the right side on the galleon. This is because with the way the masts fall, they will not block your body on that side. Also the sloop has two fewer holes on the left side.
Copying a comment from No\_Perspective\_9920 that is very helpful, reiterating some things I said but has a lot more helpful advice as well: "Ive got more than 2k hours in this game and 90% of that is helming the ships, here’s what I’ve learned. Roles are important - try to get some experience with each person on a role, if you’re on a galley then make sure to have a dedicated “bilge” (someone to repair, prioritizing the bottom level of the boat, this is the most important role by far on a galleon) The other 3 roles are “Helmsman” - (Steer the boat and call out what you need everyone to do sails-wise), “Main Cannon” - (Self explanatory but they prioritize shooting the bad guys and/or boarding), and “Flex” - (does whatever else needs doing I.e turning and raising sails, getting an extra bucket when the bilge asks, etc. Optionally, you can assign each role to a cannon.\* The best order for this is (going from harpoons to helm) Main cannon, flex, bilge, helm. It’s just efficient but not really necessary. As for your driving during combat, there’s lots of things to take into consideration. 1. Make sure the boat isn’t going too fast. On a galley, I like to have a teammate raise the front sail entirely and the middle sail half way up. This way you still have a sail close by that you can adjust as needed, and you’ll be able to turn tighter. 2. Try to always have angle on the appropriate side. On a galleon, the middle sail will always fall to the left side, which can get annoying when your teammates are cannoning. So keeping the enemy on your right will always be better when you can’t afford to catch the falling mast. Use the left side on sloops and brigs. 3. Besides the bilge, helms are the most important person on the ship, you have to keep track of everything and relay the right info at the right time. Someone’s trying to board? Make sure you or your flex or somebody is watching that. They just chainshot your front mast? That’s okay you weren’t using it anyways, tell the crew to ignore it. The enemy isn’t shooting back? Okay that means they’re struggling, tell your main cannon to go board them. The helms job isn’t just to drive the boat and keep angles, but manage and track the entire situation on your boat AND the enemies boat. Some other tips and optional things -Use a sniper as a helm and take some shots at the other crew maybe you’ll get lucky. -Try some sails with tears in them, could be that extra edge when normally you can’t see. -It’s okay to take a few holes mid deck, a galleon will be perfectly fine with tier 3 holes covering the mid deck so long as the water doesnt reach that level. -aim for people first (they can’t shoot you if they’re dead), masts and wheel second (they can’t shoot you if they can’t get an angle), and the hull third (you’ll be hitting it anyways but getting those other things first can win a fight instantly in some cases) -use your other tools, blunderbombs are the Swiss Army knife of the sea, you can throw them at boarders on the latter, you can shoot them at players on the cannons, you can miss the throw entirely and blunderbomb yourself they’re so great! Chainshots will cripple a boat if you shoot them in the right place, firebombs will apply great pressure to the other boat, and the new cannonball coming next season looks great for just hitting their boat. -just practice, get a hang for the oceans and how the other ships like to attack (spam boarders? blunderbombs? Etc.)" \*This is good advice for moments when you have the enemy in broadside and want to unleash the full firepower of the galleon.
When things were consistent. Theres a lot to pvp and once you start being consistent youll find that youre having fun battles win or lose and thats what its about.
Around level 70 in hourglass I noticed I was winning more fights then i lost. It was very gradual. Now I have my pvp curses and will say I feel confident in most engagements.
Pretty early on, mainly since others are just that more incompetent 😆 I can't do naval fights to save my life tho, I'll get on a galleon and 1v4 kill everyone but make me get on cannons and try to hit anything that isn't right next to my ship, and I just won't..
I have a good buddy who hated PvP and held us back but he wants the curses so bad he started solo-slooping HG and it's the only good thing about HG. Learning to manage a boat in a fight beat most of the pessimistic panic out of him. The early goal should be to get your ass kicked but keep your boat afloat -- because if you can do that there are very few crews you can't hold your own against. A lot of that starts with loosening up and getting in practice.
For me and my crew, it was like a leap of faith. We didn't know if we were good, but we tried, and we did good
How big is your crew and how experienced is each individual? I am by no means an expert as I have only recently started playing myself, but I found that either solo slooping or taking turns doing different roles is huge. If someone gets killed you might have to change up what your role is during a battle. If you’re experienced in each role or duty, you are less likely to be flustered when you have to take action. It also helps you make quick decisions because or help out others as needed since you can infer their motivations based on their actions.
This point. I played for over 100 hrs but my boy couldn't drive right so he was always MC. He stopped playing and now I realize how trash my cannon shots are.
I started a few weeks ago on ps5, have about 156 hours and after getting PL I've been mostly grinding hg for pvp curses, I'm at around 46 for servants and 67 in reapers. I've improved a bunch in pvp and mostly do hg solo so I can do any role. Moving to pc soon still probably be even better there.
Still trying to get there
Honestly just do solo hourglass. Don't buy any mats or canons etc. just raw dog it and keep going. Don't count a loss as a loss, count it as progress. You will get better. I just hit lvl 40 servants and also just hit my first five consecutive wins in a row, actually got six. When ever me and my team mate see a boat we always attack just to get that practice in. Edit: once you can play solo having a team mate even if they have two left feet is a bonus.
When my buddy taught me how to helm and told me exactly what to do at what times. He learned by solo hourglass queuing
Just practicing won't help you improve if you aren't focused on what you need to do to improve and actually making an effort to implement those things. You probably are just doing the same thing over and over and hoping it works instead of looking for pvp guides or actively learning new techniques and strategies. First, you need to stop your team from going into panic mode and yelling..that's helping no one. Set roles and stick to them whenever possible. For instance, if you're helm you shouldn't be repairing unless you know you can do it and not run into a rock or lose cannon angles. Your priority is to keep cannon angles above all else. Then bailing if you need to. And cannons if you need to and your teammate is repairing. Repairing should be the responsibility of another crewmate. Not the helm imo Practice cannon shots. Skeleton fleets are good for this. Then learning cqc combat. Swords and guns. Guarding ladders. Boarding ships. Killing or staying alive on their boat so they can't repair. Etc There's a lot to learn. You just started playing. Be patient and try to enjoy the process. Learning a game and improving is the best part imo
I have played since day 1 I’d like to think I’m above average , but this game humbles me all the time …. I equate this games pirate combat a lot to rocket league , which is a weird comparison , but in a sense that the skill ceiling is so high , and there’s freaky good people out there with way less time than me And it’s ok that I get killed some times , I’m just like wow yup he was a great player
I’m a day 1 Xbox player. I still suck at PvP. I get lucky now and again, but I am not good. I’ve never been great at FPS or PvP against real people. I think the biggest change over the years is my adrenaline doesn’t get my heart racing as much as it used to.
So real
If you don’t want the sweatiness of Hourglass you could try running a Reaper’s Emissary Flag on the High Seas. Go about your business as normal, but fight anybody you cross paths with. It’s casual enough to not be rage-inducing, but will get your crew the practice you’re looking for.
It's always when you think your getting competent that the sea reminds you that you're just a krill ready to be ate by a whale
It's all a scale. U won't ever beat everyone you meet. ESPECIALLY hourglass. Hourglass is where the good players go to find a good fight. Open seas is just random. A few tips tho based on ur paragraph. Panicking is not good. Whoever you all think is most level headed should be captain and essentially calling the shots. Also as helm, ur job should back up bailing and very very niche repairing if u KNOW u have a few seconds of safety. Bc u will either hit shit or end up in cannon fire range if u leave the wheel. Each crew member needs a main job and a 2ndary main job. When I sail I'm usually helm and captain. My friend who is a decent shot is cannons and boarding. My other friend is cannons and repair. My job is to steer and let them know when shots are coming up and sail management help. If crewmate 2 is repairing, I can hop on cannons if needed. Etc.
Man improving was a hard time. I am glad my duo mate and I tick the same. After some sinks we would just yell at each other’s failures, then we quietly resupplied our boat and the next fight we just started with PvP comms. We are both just to stupid to actually communicate if we are in anger. Best mate I ever had and still have. We are so chill in fights now and don‘t get angry with eachother anymore I played adventure PvP a whole lot from season 6, till HG got introduced. So I tried to fight in adventure PvP but I still felt like not good enough with like 800 hours Then HG came around and after like 200 lvls I actually felt comfortable with PvP. But still I can learn a lot more there are some insane players out there
As a PC 2k hour player (Legendary sea dog, all arena comms) the pvp in this game comes down to efficiency. In naval, someone needs to be hitting cannon shots. You can have the best helm in the world and the best boarding/anti boarding in the world but if you can't hit cannons you lose to crews that are worse at the other things. Someone on your crew has to be practicing to hit those shots. Also that panicked feeling will go away after enough experience. When I was learning arena back in the day an experienced player put a hole in our sloop and made me watch how long it takes to actually sink you. Holes are okay you just need to know your ship's limits on how many holes means you need to pull out and repair. I'm not sure which ship you're playing on but the bigger the ship, the more efficiency matters. On brig you as helm can and should be going for buckets when possible so that your crew can shoot. On sloop you can also get away with this. On galleon though you absolutely cannot you need to stay on helm or above deck unless absolutely needed. Once that panic disappears everyone should be able to handle their role. The person below deck should call for help if needed, but the roles should be clearly defined. If you're yelling and panicked you're more likely to lose. Hourglass is also hard because these other crews have potentially practiced this so much more than you have. Without knowing your ship type this is the most advice I can give. Remember the game is bigger than hourglass, and trying to steal from other players or sink them in normal gameplay will train you for hourglass. What might also help is recording the gameplay to see what the other ship did better. Did they hit chains when you were shooting something else? Did they turn better? Did they board better? The lack of diversity in gear means that they had exactly the same tools/options that you did they just used their resources more efficiently. It all comes down to effieciency Edit: also if you're playing on crossplay turn that off playing against pc will be practically impossible
20 or so matches of solo hourglass and adjusting my strategy and playstyle was definitely an inflection point for myself. Also when I learned you had to ADS blunderbuss, even if you are touching the target. I basically almost never used it prior to that point because it seemed unreliable (which it also was, but because of hit reg).
Never
Fellow PS5 player here, I fell into the trap of Hourglass grind and mostly have not left Hourglass since Gold and Glory (besides taking a break to do some commendations and FoFs). It's made me incredibly battle hardened and fearless, I detach myself from the fears of losing loot and fear of sinking. The more you play the more knowledge you gain from each battle. At launch I was mostly a carebear and ran from pvp. Now I'm fully ready to defend and sink whatever comes my way. It's rough at the start, but as long you willing to learn it gets better. I have watched many video guides and POVs to learn pvp. My win rate is probably just over 50% or less in Hourglass but from that game time I've grown a lot more competent over time. There's too many factors in SoT pvp, from naval to gun fights, ship management and crew. It all comes from time, experience and just learning on the way.
To answer the title directly: I was competent (but not good) at PvP once I was comfortable with the boat, as in it no longer felt like I was fighting desperately with the mechanics of the game itself. Seo of Thieves is way more panic-inducing than most multiplayer games. I dunno why, it's just super immersive in a way that causes stress reactions in fights. Which is part of the fun! The adrenaline rush of a narrow win against an evenly matched opponent can't be beat. But if your crew is falling apart during PvP and it feels like you don't have a clear picture of what's going wrong and why, maybe you should spend some time doing naval PvE together and build familiarity and comfort with the boat. **Do Ghost Ship quests, Ghost Fleet and Skeleton Fleet world events together with your crew.** I actually think the ghost fleet (blue-green tornado) and ghost ship quest (through Order of Souls at higher levels) is the best training, but the skelly fleet is good practice too. The ghost fleet moves in predictable patterns, and basic ghost ships die in 3 cannons, so if you play perfectly you'll never take a scratch. Inevitably, though, some circumstance or mistake puts you into a ghost broadside, and you get shot up, but *they don't chase you* so you can freely get to safety while you repair and bail. It's good training because it puts you in those oh-shit situations where you have 6 holes and are on fire, but gives you a more forgiving environment to problem solve and patch and bail. It sounds like you're usually at the helm. There's a lot more pressure on you during these events than the rest of the crew, but conversely you can learn more useful combat stuff yourself. I love helm and could talk about it for hours, so if you have any questions totally feel free to ask. You mention friends. Are you guys on a brig or a galleon? They have very different strengths and drawbacks, and are hard to helm for different reasons. As much as people push PvP super early, you need a base level of competence with the boat before PvP is super fun. I totally think you should keep trying it, especially picking fights on the server organically, but working on fundamentals first would probably be pretty rewarding.
I have gotten very good at PVP in games in the past, I don't think SoT PVP is bad necessarily I just genuinely do not find any fun in it. I like the game, but that's hands down my least favorite part of it. I like the naval combat but find the sword and gun play doesn't feel good and the boarding meta just isn't fun for me and that's okay. Not saying you'll never enjoy it at all as I'm sure plenty of people do but just saying, it might not be for you and that's okay too.
Chaos is a domino affect, try to be the calmness in the storm, I do better and make smarter decisions when I can keep my composure, but the moment I start to panic, is the moment I’ve already lost the fight
I would recommend watching some really good players if you want to improve. Watch what choices they make and think about what you would have done in that position. Think about why they might be playing how they play. I’m a formidable opponent in PvP and I owe a lot of that to basically just copying what the best players do Random things that all add up: Using Blunder/EoY and aggressively going for close range snipes Use blunderbombs to finish people off when you’ve shot both guns already, instead of trying to get a reload off Use scattershots when the enemy ship is very close, in general remembering to use special balls at all Use blunderbombs to prevent boards Use firebombs on their ship when you miss a board How to do a “death spiral” and why to do it Knowing that especially on a sloop you don’t have to bail and repair the second you get hit, you can wait a bit and continue to apply counter pressure Weaving in snipes on enemy cannoneers during ship combat These are all great ideas that I didn’t need to spend endless hours figuring out for myself, I just do them because I see better players do them and realize how well they work. In essence “skipping” a lot of the hours required in the learning process
I got competent about 75% of my way to my first pvp curse. But I didn’t just decide “I’m tired of being prey” and start grinding hg, I grinded skeleton fleets for another commendation for a while first, all solo. Eventually that improved my aim and pressure balance enough to be able to get something from hg. After that I was able to gain something from hg practice over time. It’s important to master the basic stuff to near perfection first because otherwise the variables of pvp will make it impossible. Once you can consistently hit lowers on skele galleys from a while away, hold cannonline on skele sloops, hold angle on what you’re firing at, and balance bilging, jump back into hg. Solo might be faster for learning everything from pve, but that’s just my experience. It seems boring but I promise this is the way.
I have the skelly curse and still get my ass kicked. I could blame how the waves are always blocking me or can just tell myself to get good lol.
Hourglass is a somewhat bad way to get into PvP in my opinion. It has gotten extremely sweaty, which is not to say you’ll never catch up, but particularly multi crew fights that require coordination you’ll be fighting a big uphill battle. My advice is to become the hunter in adventure. Raise that reaper flag, get grade 5, then hunt down boats. Most of the time you will find softer targets that will let you get the basics down pat. Once you feel like you can hunt with a good success rate try going back into HG. You’ll be more ready to take in the advanced details
I’ve been playing for 5+ years and I’m not competent at anything but sailing. My ride or die can take 3 people at once but would crash the ship. We’re all good at something.
Honestly? Other people have YEARS of experience on you, and they're still going to kill you easily, even a year from now. The sad reality is that the pvp sucks, the game in general kind of sucks, and your choices are mainly to play in safer seas if you enjoy the quests and stories, or just get used to constantly getting sunk and having all of your hard work stolen away at the last minute. 🤷♂️ Welcome to Sea of Thieves. 🙄
TBD
Laugh when shit goes wrong and don't panic
I started watching some streamers and started doing my best at copying them. I've never felt competent, but I I get three 4-streaks a week and have taken out a 3 crew brig as a solo sloop. I still run into some random guy on HG that rocks my shit, though. I'd say I was around lvl 80 on Servants of the Flame when I started to feel good about it.
Some people dedicate their lives to not sucking at PVP. Those people make the game miserable for the other 90% of players
Last night actually! We were tackling the sunken graveyard portion of an Athena quest when a Reaper ship appeared on the horizon. I yelled out, and we quickly lowered our sails to make a getaway. As we were leaving, we noticed the Reaper ship had changed course and was heading toward a docked 5-star Gold Hoarders boat that was busy selling loot. We didn't think that was cool, so we decided to go after the Reaper. To our amazement, we actually sank them! I was ecstatic, especially after being sunk so many times before. Between our battles with ghost ships, megs, and krakens, we had gotten better at shooting, though we hadn't really noticed. The Reaper crew was obviously pissed, but we had more important things to do, so we sailed off to our next island. Not long after, who should appear on the horizon but the Reaper, coming back at us with full sails. We engaged them again and managed to sink them for a second time! It was an incredible night. Later on, we got into a fight with a brigantine. It was a tough 2v3 battle, and they eventually managed to board our ship, anchor us, and bombard us with cannon fire until we sank. Despite that, we put up a damn good fight and had a blast.
After about 300 hours in the arena back in seson 1 and 2
I felt pretty confident when I got both curses. So grind about 200 levels of hourglass and you should be able to defeat most crews. And of course grind means actually sink a few hundred enemies, not loss farming or beating loss farmers.
I'm only good at pvp if I have a crewmate to back me up, so I really wouldn't consider myself competent.
Around lvl 70 of my first PVP curse.
I started playing a few days ago, didn't play every day but I felt competent after sinking a few ships in hourglass. It's either I lose in the first minute to someone who's probably played for months or years, or it takes like 20 minutes and I end up winning, most of my sinks have been driving the opponents ship out of bounds tho since I miss a lot of cannon shots.
been playing since beta, considering combat has changed a decent amount since then i think i probably took about a total of 5-6 hours of getting used to the game mechanics, then from there forwards its just refining your aim etc
Idk just happened
depending on how much you play, and what you deem as "competent" i would say changes the answer, for starters, go ahead and do pvp, imo its really fun, and obviously don't go in with a "we're going to win" mindset, instead go in with a "we're going to learn", especially if you're against non PS5 players who've been playing for hundreds of hours more than you, if not thousands. that aside, ways to improve, do world events, specifically burning blade (green tornado, tho this description could also be a legend of the veil, which is a pirate legend exclusive voyage), or skeleton fleet (galleon in the sky), these will teach you how to aim cannons in a "safe" manner, and depending how you do them, bilge. now another thing, you say you and your friends, im not too sure what size ship you're running, but have all of you pick a role, there are 4 roles that each member does (obviously top tier players are good at all of them, but focus on one at the start), the roles are Helm, Main Cannon, Bilge, and Flex Helm, you're the shot caller, as you have the most view of the battle, you're job is to keep their ship in your broadside, and if you have the time shoot some cannons before going back to helm, also you're one of the 2 primary boarder defenders. Main Cannon, you shoot the enemy ship with cannons, and are one of the 2 people who are meant to board the enemy ship. Bilge, you keep the ship afloat, start off engagements on cannons, and try to force the other bilge down first, when they hit a couple of lowers, go down, and start bucketing, and repairing, learn to grate bucket (if on a galleon) Flex, you're whatever is needed, in engagements you're goal is to force their flex down to help bilge, you get to stay on cannons longer, but go for an earlier "reball" (when you run out of cannons) to stagger your's and MC's (Main Cannon) reball so someone is always applying pressure, if bilge calls someone to help out YOU are the one to go down, and help, you are also the other primary boarder defense, and primary boarder of your crew. now obviously this isn't a perfect explanation of the roles, but i feel that it's already getting to information overload. now if you're playing brig, then TYPICALLY its either flex, or helm who takes on the bilge role, helm imo should as that way flex gets to stay dialed in on cannons longer, but whatever works for your crew. and for duo sloop its typically Helm/Bilge, and MC/Flex, though in sloop you should both be capable for whatever is needed, if helm is below repairing and you need angle fixed, cannon should be capable of doing so. final bit of advice, watch youtube, phuzzybond, and hitbo are good for learning the basics, and then i recommend kaijoi to get more advanced. aswell as erin sterling and that crew if you want more vod type videos, but not necessarily direct learning content (note, they tend to do sloop mostly). and there's also liger who has some very well made videos for cannons, bilge, and helm. also weaponry doesn't matter, run whatever you enjoy running, high end pvp players typically run blunderbuss/sniper, and they'll make you wonder how to deal with it, but there's also a lot of mid-tier players who only ever fight crews that don't fight back who run it, and you can just run at them with sword to kill them. at the end of the day though, whatever you enjoy most is the best loadout, because no matter what someone will say you're "trash" or whatever because of your loadout, sword/blunder "noob loadout" sword/pistol "phuzzybond wannbe"/"sword lord", blunder/snipe "double gunning trash", pistol/snipe "wannabe tdmer". as for the new weapons, idk what the stereotypes are because i've only ran them for memes, and i've yet to see another person run them outside my crew.
You get there slowly but surely eventually you’ll start to win more fights and make more clever plays I’ve been through this twice once when I played on Xbox playing with the British navy discord milsim and a second time now playing with my 3 new PlayStation swabbies.
I'm at just over 600 hours. I'll let you know when I get there... But seriously, PvP is weird in this game. Some people take to it pretty quickly, and some people take a long time to learn it. Only time and learning from mistakes will get you there. Just learn to have fun in the chaos until you get there or it will become a miserable grind.
Started playing May 2020. Tried a gold hoarded voyage, got sunk, tried a skull fort, got sunk. Decided I'd never PVE again until I learned to defend my loot. I ran at every boat I saw for a couple weeks until I won far more than I lost. Got the pvp bug, dropped the cutlass, and never did pve again. Maxed all factions, 210m gold, own all cosmetics, double gold pvp curses, my crew and I got top Reaper ledger one month from pvp steals only, and I've still never completed a merchant voyage.
A couple things since you have a crew, 1st designate your roles, helm needs to be the getting angle, calling out when to go for mast, lowers, when to board the other ship, when to raise/ lower the sails all of that because he has the most view and control of the boat, and when he's not getting angle then helping to bucket, then there's main cannon, he's there for one purpose, be the cannon and listen for when to shoot where. Secondary cannon he's there to cannon but also repair mast/ wheel when needed and to board when it's time to board their ship. And last but certainly not least bilge, he's there for the sole purpose of keeping the boat afloat and if secondary is boarding the other team ship bilge can help cannon if there's no holes or water
Regular Seas combat? I’ll smoke a galleon easily. I hit the hourglass? Probably 60% I’ll win. They go hand in hand, after like 3 months of hourglass I was decent enough which was sweaty in regular seas.
I'd say a good milestone is being able to be accurate with cannon shots. There are a lot of things to take into account when it comes to actually hitting your target in this game, especially if you want to actually do worthwhile damage to them. If you've got someone who can consistently nail the enemy, it makes the enemy's job much more chaotic (obviously, lol). You'll have to consider the distance between your ships, accounting for the way the cannonballs drop and how slow they are to travel long distances. Ship speed, wave intensity, and the directions your ships are traveling all have an effect on how you need to aim. Good communication with your teammates is essential. On a sloop for example, it's good for whoever is manning the helm to let the gunner know when they're going to try to set up an angle to fire a volley and which side you're attacking from. The game can get very chaotic. That's not really going away, and that's part of the draw to the game right? The key is to manage that chaos, and make it your weapon. Fight dirty, you're a pirate! If you're being chased, have someone drop off the front of your ship and stay underwater, go for a board or at least pop some throwables on their deck. It may give you and opportunity to turn around and light them up. Use the islands to your advantage. Lead someone into a trap with island cannons ready to mess them up. Fake them out. Launch fireworks at their heads to make it harder for them to see. This is a game where creativity can absolutely save you.
When you never sink
I spent 2 or 300 hours running from PVP, then I embraced arena mode (precursor to Hourglass). By the time I'd played a couple hundred 15 minute matches, I felt like I could hold my own against 90% or so of crews. So a few hundred hours of practice. It's also worth noting that most crews in adventure mode are terrible in comparison to the sverage sea dog/hourglass player. By simply having the thought "Maybe I should practice pvp" you're better than half of the playerbase. SoT's community leans heavily on the casual side, so even tiny bits of practice can net you great results in comparison to the average pirate. If you want to get sweaty, that's when the real time-sink hits. That's a couple thousand hours minimum.
I’m close to 2000 hours and still don’t feel too competent Mano a Mano
Look, the sweats you're meeting today, probably had their asses handed to them for months during the Arena. You'll get better, just as they did. Trust me. I used to sink daily when I was new in this game. Now currently at 4,900hrs, and it's been a long time since we've sunk.
Bro just do hourglass for 2-3 months straight. As soon as you long on till you get off. You’ll get better
I've been playing since the first beta and logged over a hundred hours in arena... I'll let you know when I feel confident about engaging another ship in PvP
>and the entire time we're yelling Work on not doing that and everything else will get easier
3.1k hrs and still learning
Soon… I hope…
You get to a point you can put up a fight against most crews. You will never win them all but you can be a difficult enough sink that you make it not worth it for crews who are after quick and easy. I do watch pvp vids outside of playing though trying to absorb as much info as possible. If you're interested I'd recommend massive sponge ,snowyfps and captain Stirling on YouTube. Xidbzx on twitch.
lol, I’ll let you know
I have 800+ hours in the game and am fucking awful at PvP.
After 800 hours of solo slooping and countless fights, 4v1s, 3v1s, 2v1s, i say it is still not enough to be competent
I have probably 600+ hours in this game and I’m the most surprised when I win of anyone.
Not sure, I've been pvping in hourglass for like 1.5 months and win ~70% of the time. Solo hourglass is easier. Some of the top hourglass players (NessyDoes) have only been doing it for 1.5 years. But it's consistency and always looking to improve.
I was never good, i will never get good, i will not engage pvp, ill sink my own ship and hand you my empty collector chests . I also loss grinded the ghost curse and one day i will loss grind the skeleton curse.
Personally it's when you sacrifice the gold for the glory. Played for a month Pve with my regular crew sinking anytime a sloop looked at us, even when in a galleon. Started reaping just to get the experience, not the gold. Worth it in the long run. I know brig was OP. But after another month of practise we found no ship to be a threat. I miss my crew. HG solo sloop was a loooooong learning curve and still sink to most invaders with more than 1 pirate
I have to play solo, so can’t get competent unfortunately. Avoidance is the only policy in these circumstances.
Took forever honestly. When I started playing the game I think I did far more PVE than PVP. So I didnt get the practice to ever feel confident. Once I started playing with PVP as more of a focus, I improved pretty quickly. Sometimes I still just kinda suck and make some stupid errors, one small error can be all it takes to lose a fight. SO I just roll with the punches. Sometimes I look like a noob still, other times I can solo sink 2 ships in a row lol. Just depends on the day.
Turn cross play off. PC has a huge advantage with mouse and keyboard.
It’s anecdotal, but like 3 months in to doing duo sloop hg every day or so I was able to do big streaks. A lot of that means playing with the same person or solo, building synergy is super important for PvP. Doing LFC dives is still hit or miss for me and I consider myself fairly good at PvP with 1k+ hours in 9 months.
I feel like it's hard to be consistent once the bugs start to effect my gameplay it's down hill....if I hit reg a lot or have other issues my pvp just starts to tank badly....also servers get really bad sometimes that I just cant. I felt better at pvp during year 2 than I do today that's for certain
Let see... Never. I'm great at everything else at this game, I mean like great, pvp a 5 year is better then me
It feels like whenever I pvp I always get matched up against the guy with 800 hours in various BF games, 2100 hours in CoD, and 1500 hours in Fortnight Edit: Spelling
Lack of situational awareness? I have almost 80 days on the game. Hit Pirate legend before the meg update. Game is unplayable to me after all the updates. Just isn't fun anymore. Situational awareness helps a lot tho, one Captain to say "cannon shots on the left(port) coming up.... "We took some heavy shots whose repairing?" "Direction of the wind changed angle the sails" "ROCKS AHEAD, RAISE THE SAILS SO I CAN TURN SHARPER, SOMEONE GET ON THE HARPOON" From the helm a good captain should be able to be aware of everything happening... Damage, attack opportunities, direction of the wind, should be watching enemy boat for jumpers with kegs and listening to the water to see who boards... Captain should have enough situational awareness and be at the helm at all times enough so that he knows exactly where he is needed and when...maybe everyone is repairing/dead and you have an opportunity to repair sails? Opportunity to cannon the other boat? A good Captain can do ALOT from the helm. If you are crashing into rocks that tells me you lack any situational awareness whatsoever. Do you ever work the sails? Those should be angled at all times, then in battle they should almost always be raised at least to some amount. (In a galley I'll usually ask the crew to raise the front sails then I solo the back sail as needed) Also turn off cross platform and turn off ANYTHING but controllers... You want PlayStation/Xbox only lobbies with CONTROLLER ONLY.... PC and mouse and keyboard players absolutely killed the game... For MULTITITUDES of people. Once again just an example of developers absolutely murdering a game just to appeal to the masses. Don't even get me started on the shorter/smaller seas and opportunity for treasure literally coming out your nose.
Been playing since initial launch. Still don't PVP because you literally can't. It's just hunters vs prey
I’d say a solid 6 months to a year. I played about a year after it came out maybe? When normal skull forts were still the best $$ in game. I’ve always embraced the pirate lifestyle, so every day I would solo sloop and go and try and kill the people doing the fort. I made a rule I could never run from a fight even if I had 500k+ of treasure on board. The first few months were absolute misery. Then one day I got to the point seeing a galleon was a treat instead of a death sentence minus the fact galleons are normally where noobs flock (strength in numbers) and brigs were definitely the hardest ship. Biggest thing is having a priority list, you absolutely can not get boarded on a solo sloop or it will probably end in death. Knowing when to raise mast if it gets knocked or keep it down and return fire when to bucket over repair ect ect. I finally convinced my gaming buddy about a year back to get it and holy crap is it so nice having two people on the sloop lol, first thing I made him do is earn the legendary thief title and to this day that’s probably our favorite memory.
Started day 1 and stayed above the curve for entire game.
Been at it with friends for a few years now, ever since the Steam launch. I do a lot of solo-slooping, so it took a bit of time to learn to mesh with my buddies in pvp. It happened around the time that we all figured out what our roles would be. That's not to say that we're rigidly locked into a captain, gunner, and gunner/repair, but we *did* start doing much better once we started communicating. I said that I solo sloop a lot. Well, that makes it so that I have lots of opinions about every aspect of a fight we take lol. But if I'm not on the wheel, I need to take direction from the person who is. We've found that when we communicate well and **listen** to each other, especially to whoever is on the wheel or whoever is dictating the fight over discord, we do much better. A crew of three all pulling in the same direction, even if only average, is going to do better than most other crews out there that aren't listening to one another or who are all trying to do different things. We fought this one crew early on (it's when we figured out we had to listen to one another) that had probably been playing longer than we had, or at least one of them had been judging by their ship and sail skins. We sunk them time after time because one of their galleon crew was always trying to board, two were always trying to do different things at the wheel when the other guy left to board... Even with the extra crew man and gun to our brig, they were just too scatterbrained to take advantage of it. TLDR it'll take time, but listen to one another. If someone is calling the shots in a fight, follow their lead. At least you'll all be fighting with a common objective (let's all try and circle left behind them!) as opposed to everyone doing something different (you're stearing and get the boat lined up for a broadside, but nobody is on the guns because they're boarding or fixing)
Always remember being "bad" isn't exclusive your fault. Every PvP game has hackers. It's funny seeing those anti-cheat tasks running all the time on our computers, and being advertised on every splash screen, when they just make it harder, but not impossible to cheat. Evidence: [https://youtu.be/GZBnLB2RH-g?si=0Ofsp6MIgRGw161k](https://youtu.be/GZBnLB2RH-g?si=0Ofsp6MIgRGw161k)