Tips on beating/surviving skeleton Galleons?

@eridanfresh
Skelleons can't fire their cannons when your ship and theirs are grinding together side by side. If you have one spawn on you, you can always turn into it, ramming their ship with yours. This will put a hole in your ship that you will need to keep. Once your ship and theirs are positioned together, you will then continuously bucket water from your ship to theirs. The faster your ship is taking water, the faster you can toss it over to them. They won't shoot cannons, but they will shoot blunderbuss and eye of reach. Manage your sails to stay next to them and keep your wheel turned into them while you bucket. If you want commendation credit for sinking them, make sure to hit them with a single cannonball. If you have a chest of sorrow, don't forget to hop over with it and drop it on their deck. Hopefully that blind spot will help you. Even if you don't intend to sink them that way, doing that for just a minute can help give you time to bucket, repair, heal, and replenish ammo.

@eridanfresh said in Tips on beating/surviving skeleton Galleons?:

Recently came back to the Sea of Thieves and I've been loving everything except skeleton galleons. In the last two days, they sunk me 5 times. I'll mention three situations.

1. We were a pretty strong Brigantine, we sunk 4 other player ships, even won 1v2 situation against two sloops. Nothing could stop us. Until we met a Skele Galleon. We tried our best. Shot almost all our cannonballs, tried to board them, tried to light them up. Eventually, they sunk us. After no player could do it AI did it.

Ballastballs and emote curseballs are your best bet. Barrelballs can be effective too. Setting fire to their middeck is also useful.

Above all else, stay out of their broadside as the Skelly Ships got a huge buff a few updates ago and are aimbotting like crazy towards players.

If you have a supply crate, against normal good practice, keep some supplies in it on deck.

If you're not confident, or lack supplies, your best bet is actually just to run. They'll give up and despawn eventually.

2. Again Brigantine, different crew. We sold our treasure and thought we'd just mess around with the nearby skeleton ship. We had 300 cannonballs and over hundred planks. They sunk us. We fought them for 15 minutes and lost. Those two guys with me were fairly experienced pirate legends who navigated the game like pros.

Same response as part 1 really.

3. Sloop 15 minutes ago. I decided to run some cargos as a peaceful merchant and everything went fairly smooth until Galleon emerged on me from nowhere and sank me in under 30 seconds. I couldn't do anything. I tried to repair immediately, got shot out twice from the planks and boom my ship was done. Just like that. I lost 20 cargos and alt+f4d the game without shame.

A skalleon shouldn't spawn on a sloop... but I have seen it happen... that's very bad RNG. Your best bet is to run.

If you have to fight, get in really close so they can't cannon you. Rub your ship against their hull to create holes and try to stay locked in that position while bailing water onto them. Just be careful to watch your health if snipers are hitting you.

I have several hundred hours in this game I have no idea how insanely difficult this has to be for new players... But I'm not a whiny type I don't cry for nerfs. But can you please give me some tips on how to handle them? Especially as a solo sloop, it felt utterly impossible.

It's not impossible but it's far from easy in some instances. I've had a few run ins with Kraken + Skoop lately and I've about an 90% success rate in that scenario, where others would say it's impossible. Take it from me, I'm not particularly good either.

Your biggest enemy is overconfidence, that can lead to mistakes. Just try to stay calm and learn to prioritise issues. That one tier 1 hole is not an instant problem, for example, but it could become one if you let your health gets so low that you get one shotted.

As I mentioned above, the skelly ships really have become aimbots, so I would suggest not staying on the cannons too long and focus on staying out of their broadside where you can. If you are on the cannons, try to take out their cannon skellies first before focusing on the lower deck. Fire can help in this regard.

All this said, there are moments you are going to lose and, as much as it seems unfair, you just got to pick yourself up and learn from the experience.

As mentioned earlier. Run into them, keep creating holes, bucket your water onto their ship. Harpoon them and keep rubbing. Sail towards the rocks. Skeleton ships are terrible about sailing around rocks and run into them. We defeat fleets by using the rocks to our advantage. Sit in the center of the rocks and turn your ship so you have the advantage and they can only hit you from certain angles.

the only possible reason you didnt sink them in the scenario you described is that you guys werent putting your shots below the water line. skellies cant bail. mid-deck shots are the only logical conclusion to reach.
two guys on cannons pumping 20 balls below the waterline will always sink a skelly galleon.