(Sunken Shrines) When a ship sinks/scuttles, release all the loot its loot siren held.

@matroos-mens I fail to see your issue here. The smart play is to swim or row out with a keg, tuck, and wait for them to start harpooning their loot from the water.

Sure sailing up and parking, waiting for them to return and then ambush them won't work, but when has that ever worked if they didn't already have the loot available in the first place?

You say you can dig, but how is that possible on larger islands? Common dig spots on Thieves Haven, you mean the 30+ locations?! I hardly doubt you have them all memorized for all islands, regardless of play time.

@kommodoreyenser said in (Sunken Shrines) When a ship sinks/scuttles, release all the loot its loot siren held.:

@matroos-mens I fail to see your issue here. The smart play is to swim or row out with a keg, tuck, and wait for them to start harpooning their loot from the water.

Sure sailing up and parking, waiting for them to return and then ambush them won't work, but when has that ever worked if they didn't already have the loot available in the first place?

You say you can dig, but how is that possible on larger islands? Common dig spots on Thieves Haven, you mean the 30+ locations?! I hardly doubt you have them all memorized for all islands, regardless of play time.

That's literally the tactic I did yesterday, until a Sloop far in the distance spooked them and sank them before they ever popped the siren. That same brig came back 2 more times, sank 2 more times, and then they left the server.

@matroos-mens said in (Sunken Shrines) When a ship sinks/scuttles, release all the loot its loot siren held.:

@kommodoreyenser we were talking about the final athena emmisary mission, the one that gives a guaranteed athena chest. That one spawns on, IIRC, only one out of 3 islands, and the dig locations on each island are almost always the same. The clear indicator is if when someone's doing Athena but doesn't have an Athena mission on the table.

My mistake, he mentioned "Athena Run" which to me meant the Athena Run of Thieves Haven. Still, no guarantee you would be able to find the right island and the correct dig spot before they could respawn and get there. Sure there is a chance, but it is a much greater chance by changing your tactics to the situation presented. Just like with the current sunken kingdom areas.

@matroos-mens said in (Sunken Shrines) When a ship sinks/scuttles, release all the loot its loot siren held.:

@kommodoreyenser There's only a handful of islands the Athena Chest spawns on, so that's not hard to guess where they were headed. But yeah, emphasis being on; 'there's a way to'. Whereas the loot siren is flat-out impossible to hijack.

Also, them CBAing to complete the Athena emissary voyage, doesn't disable anyone else from doing it either. While here, you refusing to pop your loot siren, disables anyone else from doing the Shrine later on, until you cash it in (which won't happen if they see any player ship within their render distance), or flat out leave the server (resulting in all the loot being void to any of the ships that contested for it).

While it might be a problem if crews can indeed lock up a shrine if the siren mechanic is shrine specific and not crew specific, your fix doesn’t really take into account the scenarios that can happen which will result in no one doing the shrine/treasuries in the first place to steal from.

The risk that would be present in your system is not worth the 10-12k gold you get from a full siren treasure haul compared to let’s say a 100k gold lost shipment haul you could do in the same time with far less risk.

Honestly for me the shrines aren’t about the loot but just grabbing the journals and dipping. If I want loot, I’d rather do an event once I have a coral bottle for the breath of the sea.

@matroos-mens
So if I row up to an unmanned ship with 3 kegs, tucc and wait until the crew returns to ship and I immediately set off kegs, is that a fair 'ambush'?.
They wouldn't have time to check for tuccers.
People who are doing these vaults are at a disadvantage, especially solo sloopers. They either have to leave 1 person on ship as lookout, which means 1 person doesn't get to the journals.

@matroos-mens Then you haven't outsmarted them. You haven't done a good job at baiting them into a false sense of security. It's theoretically even easier now with the expansion because you can back off MUCH sooner than the red sea is. If they've hit Mermaid's Hideaway and are still headed west, you know what's going to happen. It's time to back off if you haven't already.

I'm not saying try hiding behind any of the large islands on the very perimeter of the map. That's too obvious. You're going to have to head more inward. Inward of where the outpost is because that's what they're trying to get to most of the time. Then, it's about pouncing at the right time.

Again, it's not always going to work, but it has worked...and it's better than chasing them to where you know that 100% of the loot is unrecoverable.

To the topic at hand, if you want the loot that the crew is putting into the collection mermaid, you're going to have to bait them into a false sense of security, which should be pretty easy if you're a patient hunter.

@matroos-mens said in (Sunken Shrines) When a ship sinks/scuttles, release all the loot its loot siren held.:

and ANY player on ANY crew can dig an 'x marks the spot', not just the mission's crew.

This is 100% false. The only crew members that can dig the Athena (or any X marks the spot/riddle) are those who own the voyage and those who are allianced with those who own the voyage.

This is going in circles. Read the room. If this was on Twitter, I believe it would be called being ratioed. Bad idea is bad.

@sweetsandman You certainly can. Back in season 1 I was doing an ashen vault, and the music suddenly changed to that of an Skeleton Captain voyage. That immediately gave away the hint an OOS ship was headed to where I was, even when they were still quite a distance away. They just need to have been near it to activate it.

Similarly too in that same season I was doing a GH Emmisary quest, and I had a dig location that kept 'clanging' when I dug, despite me having no maps indicating that same spot again. I accidentally dug 2 extra Captain Chests from someone else's quest.

@matroos-mens That's just not true. It is possible for you and another crew to have the same dig spot (which happens a lot at Thieves Haven if someone is doing a TH run), but unless you're allied, you cannot dig their loot no matter how close they are.

Case in point, just the other week I came across some new players with a riddle and some 'X's at Crooks Hollow. They didn't have mics and couldn't hear me (I think they were in a party chat)...so I kept having to type my instructions out, which got tedious but I soldiered on. I helped them with the riddle and when it got time to dig, I would plunge my shovel into the ground and get nothing, but then they dug in that same spot I had instructed them to dig and they got their loot. Same thing happened with the 'X's...I would show them where to dig by actually digging, I would get grubs and they would get the loot.

I'd be happy to hop into a private server on Insiders with you and prove this.

@kapitein-kater Skeleton crews, absolutely you can fight if it's another crew's voyage and they're near enough to trigger it.

But, Riddles and X marks the spot...you 100% absolutely cannot dig up their stuff unless you're allied.

@sweetsandman Read my edit, I had just added something. I accidentally dug up 2 extra captain's chests from a GH emissary mission that weren't on any of my maps.

Likewise in confirmation to @matroos-mens's claim about Athena, I did end up digging someone's Athena's Run on Thieves Haven stuff when I spotted they were split-crewing the mission and killed the one that stayed on the Island.

@kapitein-kater Maybe you had a bottle quest, barrel quest, or skeleton captains orders with duplicate dig locations to your voyage.

I'll make the same offer to you as a fellow Insider. I'll happily join you on a private server on Insiders and prove I'm right.

@sweetsandman I have insider still installed, so sure!

@matroos-mens
So solo players shouldn't do shrines? In case a tuccer is ready to 'ambush' them with kegs as soon as they return to ship?
Or 1 player has to keep searching for a coral bottle to get the vault they need to get the journals?

Let's say a normal vault, part of the crew are inside but then a lookout spots an incoming ship. They decide to leave all loot inside the vault and the door closes. Should that loot spawn if the attackers sink the ones doing the vault?
Absolutely ridiculous idea.

You had an idea that most seem to disagree with.
With not a care about solo players or people who want or need to get the journals to complete commendations, just to appease players who want free easy loot.
You never answered about the part where a tuccer could make a keg play, you think that's fair?

@thrownbacchus to be fair, a lot of comments here are made under the direct assumption that the defending player has had no ability to observe, react or defend against their ship being sunk. This doesn't cover all the playing fields in which PvP encounters occur, just only the petty ones.

The point he tried to present on repeat (but also which got ignored in repeat), is that even in fully fair fights, in which both ships have had enough time to prepare, make a plan, and either fight or disengage, the Defender is still ruled victorious no matter what outcome.

@sshteeve I had not read that, apologies, and yeah that does raise a fair point. There is however an ability for the game to recognize a shrine is complete.

Also, uh, I think you tagged the wrong person for that latter comment?

@galactic-geek Nope, the shrines and treasuries are considered 'islands'. PvE encounters such as Krakens, Skeleton Ships, and Megalodons, don't spawn on a ship stationed at an island.

@callmebackdraft

Can confirm Shrine of the Coral Tomb can have Flameheart spawn on it too (at Lone Cove).

Happened to us last night and sank us while were below. We heard the cannonfire, including the shriek of a wraithball, but got to a mermaid statue a little too late.

But, hey, that's Sea of Thieves... we're used to the bad RNG rolls sometimes!

@matroos-mens said in (Sunken Shrines) When a ship sinks/scuttles, release all the loot its loot siren held.:

@sshteeve The shrines were on insider for a while and it hadn't been found there because nobody PvP's. Nobody knew if other players were able to contest you for the loot because the relevant scenario rarely occurs there. So "2 days in", is a moot point to make. It's just an issue raised from a scenario that hadn't happened/tested yet, and is now.

Strange, seeing someone talking about Insider outside of Insider by someone who hasn't the Insider tag … alt-account or removed from Insiders ?

@lem0n-curry With lots of services (like recently with minecraft) forcing you to make a new microsoft account to merge with, or with people using consoles, it's not weird for people to use different accounts ingame than they use on sites.

@kapitein-kater said in (Sunken Shrines) When a ship sinks/scuttles, release all the loot its loot siren held.:

@sweetsandman I have insider still installed, so sure!

Thanks for hopping on and science-ing that!

@matroos-mens we can confirm that (barring any bugs) you cannot dig up another crew's voyage if you are not in an alliance.

Anyone should be able to retrieve loot from the mermaid.

The statues should make noise down below to alert players if another person is getting close up above.

Problem solved, PvPvE balance maintained. Loot isn't yours until you sell it again.