PvP as a solo-slooper – what do I need to learn?

Everything! Hahaha.

As a solo slopper, you will need to know your boundaries and in which fights you want to engage or not. Knowing your enemy it's also crucial.

There're some clues that will show you your foe's level: lights on, sailing with no course, just roamming around, no guarding ladders... not always but the default ship skins and the Rolly Roger flag are hints of new/noob players.

There're many ways to fight a ship that you'll learn step by step. It depends on many factors, starting with which ship you are fighting: sloop, brig or galleon. Other factors are the wind, a near island or fort, if you have cursed cannon balls, kegs, a rowboat, etc.

But here are some general tips:

• As a solo slooper, you need to be as much fishy as you can. Never give them the advantage. Even against a sloop the fight will take you longer than if you'd have a mate.
• Don't care much about your ship. When you are sailing solo, you gotta be creative and know that most of the fights are a only-chance.
• Having supplies will not make you win but will help you. Jump over every island or floating barrels you sail by, to grab as much supplies as you can (meat, pinneaples, mangos, cursed cannon balls, chainshots...).
• Never drop your anchor, with a few exceptions (if you are in a storm or for a quickly stop-by).

To be defensive:

• Sail 100% into the wind with the sails stratigh. This way you can abandon your sloop with no fear to vary your course.
• If you way is clear of obstacles, jump on the water and try to board them to earn some time, or even crash their ship against a island or spawn camp them till they give up. Also check their crow nest for kegs.
• Carry always a rowboat on board to load your loot and fool them turning on an island or rock. Use the ship as a bait while you get away on the rowboat.
• You can also sail by an Outpost and sell one item per time.

To be offensive:

• Choose well your victim. If they are parked at a big island, you have good chances to catch them unaware.
• Use the surprise factor. Hide your ship and use a rowboat or swing to sneak on their ship. Kegs will make things easier.
• Sail again into the wind, and once you have some distance, rise sails, turn and await them with chainshots or anchor ball. This only works if they sail towards you instead of taking angle to shot you. But 70% of the players do such mistake.
• Sail by a fort and use the kegs or the cannons on the island.

If you are unlucky and run into a very skilled crew, no matters what you do, you will probably lose. Don't get mad and accept the lost. If you don't want to surrender your loot you can always sail into the borders of the map so they can't take it either.

There're a lot of Youtubers/streamers you can learn from. One is PhuzzyBond with a lot of guides-gameplays on solo slooping, SummitG1 or FreeMasonLive sail solo very often. Pace22 and Hitbotc are very good at PVP as well, but usually sail with a crew. You can learn how to fight on board by watching them.

Get a crew in Arena to improve your PVP and learn to take always good decisions. This is more important than having a good aim or landing all your shots.

@theseventeas It's good to hear a new player talking in a positive way about losing fights. Yes... it's just that. I used to lose all my fights when the game came out... now I'm able to take down a galleon (if they are not very good) or a sloop with just fire and kill respawn until they sink.

@theseventeas dijo en PvP as a solo-slooper – what do I need to learn?:

So the plan is: keep finding different situations, improvising, seeing what happens, and learning what I can. Also, finding opportunities and the timing for sneak attacks around islands.

This is really the key. Different situations will require different approachs and strategics. The thing is to make fast and good decision acording to the situations.

You'll end up learning little things, to mention one, like boarding while they are turning, wait 1min in their ladder so they think you missed the board, and so on. And always remember, it's a game. If you get frustrated, log out and wait until you feel confident to play again.

1. Rule as a solo slooper, dont rely on other, because theres literally no one.

2. Resist the urge for constantly going for a board

3. The first 2 are all i can think of right now.

@theseventeas Learn to sail really well, take the time to practice maneuvering full sail through gaps in rocks and islands. Challenge yourself to change directions while doing it. Get good at sailing through storms.
Know the seas like the back of your hand. Knowing where you are at all times without looking at the map will give you an advantage whether you are attacking or the one being attacked.
Fight Skellie ships to learn how to manage your ship and use your resources while getting those important shots.
Be aware; know what ships are on your current server, where they are and where they are going. Their manner of sailing will tell you a lot.
Practice soloing the brig and galleon, then you will know more about what those ship types are capable of and what their weaknesses are.

Sail with a spyglass in your hands, and always have a plan B. :-D

Maneuvering: you will make sharper turns with your sails raised, so don't be afraid to lift and lower your sails a bit to get advantageous angles

Being chased: if you have better or equal wind (this means a direct headwind with the sails forward, in a sloop) you're not at much risk of getting caught. If they follow directly behind you, you have some easy opportunities to board or to drop kegs for them to run over

Chasing: getting good wind will usually help more than following them tightly. The closer you are, the more susceptible you are to boarders and kegs, as mentioned above. EoR is your friend in this scenario; you might kill one, or you might at least distract them enough that they run into something. If you're really lucky, they might have a visible keg for you to shoot

Naval combat: practice your cannon shots, especially with different spins on your boat. PhuzzyBond has a guide called "Curved cannonballs" or some such that will help you a lot. Also get familiar with the different ball types. I won't go over curse balls here, but know that cannonballs are mostly for ship damage, blunderbombs will knock the crew around and can knock the boat off course, and firebombs will set fire (obviously :P )

On-deck combat: Blunderbombs are your friend. They do solid damage and can knock an enemy off of the boat, buying you valuable time. Don't be afraid to raid the enemies' storage for supplies when you have a second

Sinking: if you're definitely going to sink, load up your pockets with all of the supplies you can before your ship goes down. If they're in your personal inventory, you'll keep them when you die, which will help with stocking up your new ship. This is especially handy if you have a lot of curse balls or good food

Galleons are easy to farm. Enemy Sloops, even duos, are reasonably balanced fights. Brigantines are your biggest threat, avoid them at all costs.

@theseventeas

Watch Beardageddon on YouTube. He makes a lot of solo sloop videos and has gotten very good at taking out galleon crews as a solo. Watch what he does and learn why he does certain things so that you know what to do in this situations. Don't just copy him and hope for the best, understand why he does those certain things, like why he chose to shoot a chainshot instead of a cannonball first, or why he went for a blunderbomb instead of swording someone to death, and see as to why he's doing all of that.

Now, solo slooping is hard because at the end of the day you're going to take holes and you have to know when it's okay to keep cannoning and when you have to repair / bail. It can get hectic at times. Here's a video of me showing you when and where you should repair / bail, you don't need to watch the whole thing, but start at 4:48 and you can see for several minutes our boat constantly has holes in it but instead of going for repairs we just keep bailing so that we can be on cannons whenever we have shots. Then at 6:20 you can hear my teammate repairing the boat, but he doesn't repair EVERY SINGLE hole down below, he just repairs a couple then starts raising the mast so that we can start moving. If he has decided to keep repairing down below we would've been stuck and wouldn't of been able to move. So it's situational, but you have to figure out when you need to repair, and when you can just get away with bailing water and keeping your boat afloat.

Video: https://youtu.be/s_gDG9u03UM?t=288

Another thing that makes solo slooping SO difficult is the fact that you can rarely board other players. You have to constantly be cannoning people and you have to spend so many resources to sink someone. If you are a duo, trio, or even quad you can send people to board them to stop them from repairing, but as a solo you don't have the luxury of being able to cannon out and board somebody, because if you die then they can repair all the damage that was just done and you're back at square 1. You have to have plenty of cursed cannonballs and use them to your advantage, eventually you're going to fight some good crews, and the only way that you can defeat them is by sleepballing / jigballing / blunderbomb them to stop them from repairing / bailing, as since you can't board them to stop the bailing, you have to stop them some other way.

Another thing you have to be careful for is boarders, here's what I would recommend when dealing with boarders. Carry blunderbombs and when they try to board your boat and are at the top of the ladder, just throw a blunderbomb at them and they will get knocked off and will be swimming in the water for a while. If you get a direct hit with a blunderbomb then try to snipe them when they get in the water. If you can kill them then that's 30 seconds the enemy ship doesn't have an extra player. You want to throw the blunderbomb first because you don't always have time to get to the ladder and sword them / blunderbuss them, but a blunderbomb can be thrown from anywhere, and you can even throw it from below deck if you know the spot to throw it at, and knock them off from belowdeck.

A big thing in SOT is the driving. It sucks seeing so many good crews getting rolled because they all want to board the enemy ship and they have no idea how to drive. When you face a galleon, all they have to do is get you in their broadside and you're dead. But as a sloop you can't afford to take that fight of broadside vs broadside, you have to get either infront or behind their cannons. Beardagedden is very good at this, and he ALWAYS keeps his sail down a little bit. You never want your sail to be all the way up because if someone is swimming they can keep trying to board you because you aren't moving, but if you always keep the sail down just a little bit then they have 1 chance to get on your ladder, if they miss then they have to get a mermaid.

PvP fights as a solo sloop (against larger crews) are difficult if you take the first damage! Presumably the conclusion to draw is that solo sloops should try to only pick fights where they have an advantage: e.g. the element of surprise, or the enemy is busy/damaged already, or also sailing solo, etc. At least, until lots of practice makes you capable of holding your own against two-pirate crews.

Obviously any fight will be easier if you are attacking a weakened opponent, but it is not always needed. You just have to know how to engage and you'll be fine. Cursed cannonballs are your best friend and will make attacking people much easier.

On a related note, it seems to me that in a chase involving two ships of the same type, the one being chased has something of an advantage. They can pick the moment to engage, whether to close the range, etc., and manoeuvre proactively rather than reactively. Does that sound right? Feeds into the point above about being selective with which fights you pick.

Yes, and along with what you were saying, you can also keep going for board attempts. If you're being chased just jump off your ship and try to board them, if you can get their anchor down it will take them a while to catch back up to you, and if you die then there's no problem because your boat is still running away.

It also strikes me that a big portion of success in naval combat in SoT depends on manoeuvring so you can bring your cannons to bear, while hopefully staying out of your opponents firing arcs. A couple questions on that: 1) Is there any guide to good manoeuvring in combat that my fellow pirates might recommend? 2) Is it worth going after skeleton fleets and Flameheart to practise that?

I don't know of any good maneuvering guides, but there is a guide on wind speeds and the best way to turn your sails depending on the wind. It's not to difficult, the only thing you need to know is if the wind is blowing directly at you, turn your sails forward (dummy sails) And if you are a sloop, it is actually faster to always have your sails turned forward (dummy sails) unless you have max wind. Basically, on a sloop, if you don't have max wind, then do dummy sails.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaHT0ZLeMdU&t=1s

As for flameheart, yeah it would be good practice for learning how to get in front of a galleon without them being able to hit you, and it also good practice for knowing how fast you need to go in order to always stay slightly ahead of a ship as so that you aren't in their cannon range.

@theseventeas said in PvP as a solo-slooper – what do I need to learn?:

That's funny – I find myself kinda terrified of galleons and their broadside. But have recently seen Beardageddon (?) on Twitch explaining his 'drop their masts in open water, sail circles around them while bombarding them with cannonballs' approach; is that what you mean?

Partly what I meant. Galleons are big and most of the time slow (avoid the wind being to your back).

However, I'm also talking about the fact Galleon crews tend to be a bunch of randoms, who couldn't find their own a$$ in the dark with flashlight and written instructions. And since a Galleon requires the most teamwork of any ship, I'm sure you can imagine how easy it would be to seal club those players.