What can/can´t solo sloopers do?

Hi. Solo slooper here. I'm a-social and player interaction makes my hands shake so bad I have to stop playing for a good hour before I can be useful again.

There is soooooo much you can do solo. Most of it depends on how efficiently you cam dispatch pve elements. I can clear a FotD solo. If you leave me alone long enough lol.

Learn to avoid players and interpret/predict their behavours to protect your cash in.

cash in often

Learn and manipulate your strengths and the games' inequities.

Time is your frienemy...

@mrestiercol Ahoy, solo slooper here.
I also like a lot to PvP. I do sink brigs and gallies quite frequently on my own, but most of the times they are clearly inexperienced players or competent but not yet used to PvP.
When I do fight those ships and their crew have already some PvP experienced, usually my fate is written and my sloop ends up underwater. Which is fine. I'm more than used to that.

So there are plenty of PvE content we can do, ofc. You can do everything really. But specifically regarding World Events, I can do skelly crews quite comfortably (depending on the type of curse cannoballs it can be more challenging or not,), Ashen Winds takes me around 20-25, normal skelly fort usually I don't do it because I find it boring but it would take around 30-40 min and FoF and FOTD... forget. FOTD would be probably 30-40min also but there's a big chance you'll get contested during or right after. For the bosses, cannon them if you have the balls or use the Disney sticks.

Regarding FoF and FOTD my strategy is to try to steal them, not to do them. If you want the completion, you need to tuck, because it counts too. It's easier on FoFs because of the towers. But even on FOTD, if they don't suspect a thread a lot of crews do carry megakegs.. and then you know what to do ^^

As a solo slooper, You can do the real content of the game. Player interaction.

Tuck on ships, Play Flameheart lines with your soundboard while tucking. Crash into a ship while yelling "THIS IS THE GREATEEEESSSTTT PLAAAAANNN". Board a ship and pretend like you came from open crew ( You would be suprised how many times it worked for me), Roleplay you are from the Navy, Kidnapp an AFK dude and sell them to an another crew, Play fa*t Noises while tucking to make the crew fight each other, Use the mask of Deceit emote on ships and say nothing. That really scares people.

The possibilites are endless.

@mrestiercol

As a solo sloop you can do anything and defeat any type of ship, but not necessarily every ship.

The ship you're fighting determines your tactics, to an extent, but whether you win or not depends on the skill level of the crew you're up against.

Equal skill or more skilled than you? The numbers will win unless you get lucky.

Less skilled? You're in the toughest and most manouverable ship, the advantage is yours.

The trick is about applying pressure. Give them extra things to think about. Break their capstan and wheel with chain shot. Someone needs to fix those, 3 crew becomes 2 for however long that takes. Set them on fire. 2 crew becomes one until they've doused the flames. Bait a boarder into taking a swim, they're down a man until they catch a mermaid, and so on.

Ideally you want this to all happen at once, so they're caught off guard when their ship starts filling with water. Try to get their crew each hyperfocused on a particular task, bailing, repairing, sailing, putting out fires, getting the anchor raised etc, and the chance that they'll miss critical damage or be unable to return fire increases exponentially.

The other day, I was solo farming sea forts and I've been passed by 2 other sloops and a brig without any interaction at all.
I was also grinding the cannons fired milestone, so I wasn't even quiet about it. :)
They must have thought I was mad, shooting at a fortress for minutes on end. :D

You can do pretty much anything a bigger crew can do, if you're willing to accept that it will be more challenging. Never go in expecting to lose but don't beat yourself up if you fail. Remember that everything is progress.

Well, seems that is not that difficult to do stuff with the sloop.

The new spawn buffs and two chainshoots Buff is really good.

Is anyone using the buried chests maps? I have a lot of things to do and I was thinking on starting with this, seems pretty easy to combine with sea forts

You can do anything others can do. You not really limited or restricted. Only real restrictions is the player and what they allow themselves.

@MrEstiercol I play solo for probably at least half my play time, partially because it’s at night in an environment where I can’t use a mic and partially because I enjoy the freedom and the challenge. Now this is only my experience (though I’m on the US East Coast so I suspect mine is not uncommon) but I spend many enjoyable hours sailing smart and doing whatever I want. I’ve had some fun PvP, some unpleasant PvP, some PvP that was over so quickly I never knew what hit me. I don’t do FoF or FotD because the time/risk/reward balance is way out of whack for my skill level but I pretty much do everything else.

You’ll get a very strong opinion on the state of the seas here on the Forum, but I’d strongly encourage you to go in with an open mind and a positive attitude and form your own opinions about whether solo’ing is going to work for you.

With that said, I also immensely enjoy sailing with my crew (which happens to be my two kids). I’d say that it’s a totally different game; not better, not worse, just a completely different experience. If you can, you should crew up sometime and give it a shot.

@da-german420 fleets are doable solo, though there is a luck-of-the-draw element to the cursed balls you end up facing. I’ve been solo’ing them recently trying to rack up 500 skelly sinks for the commendation. They are at least great practice for naval combat, and tons of fun if you like that kind of thing.

@mrestiercol I used to do a lot of maps but the quality of the loot was generally pretty low for the work. You might have better luck sailing around looking for random skelly captains (look for a dark-colored skelly out in the water near an island); you’ll get a skull, some gold, and a map that generally has higher-quality loot. The voyage is better payoff but you have to deal with 4 captains as well as waves of underlings (maybe you can buy an easier captain’s version? Haven’t solo’ed since the season started.

Also try a lost shipment voyage from the Merchants, or a Mermaid Shrine. Both of those involve abandoning your ship to go underwater, which can be a little stressful at first, though the loot you collect in a shrine is stored safely by the mermaids so even if you get sunk you can retrieve it later, and the lost shipment can be pretty quick, especially if you eat while drowning so you can stay under to collect loot. It will definitely build up your nerve under pressure 😁

Good luck and don’t give up!

@sn0kanon Yeah I got 500 by taking any server with a roaming skeleton sloop nearby. If that wasn't available, I'd look for the fleet. If I didn't see either, hop. It goes pretty quick. Skeleton ships are probably the quickest, easiest loot and a very easy way to level up your emissary grade.

I solo most of the time.

The Spanish Fortresses are good for fast, decent loot.

For world events, Ashen Winds and Skeleton Fleets are pretty manageable solo, and don't take too long. Skull Forts take a bit longer and sometimes the payout just seems tedious to transfer, although with the Sovereigns it's faster to sell now. Fort of Fortune is doable solo, but unless you are well-stocked on mermaid tridents (and even if you are) it's a slog. I have trouble soloing it in under and hour. Fort of Fortune I've never done solo.

Siren Treasuries don't take too long and have decent payout, pretty easy to solo. I did pretty much all of the treasuries and shrines solo.

If you're Pirate Legend, the Legend of the Veil quest is very doable solo and doesn't take too long. I usually sell before I get to the final stage just because you're most likely to get sank, either by the ghost garrisons or people trying to steal your Chest of Legends.

Any questions on anything let me know!

I've done both, sometimes I play with others sometimes I do solo. There are 2 things in this game that are absolutely annoying to do if you solo sloop. 1 of these things u already figured it out, it's the FoF world event, the other is the fort of the damned. FoF in my opinion, should have never been added to the game, it's just a mash up of 2 or 3 other world events, doesn't add anything truly new and fresh to the gameplay, and is just annoying with the amount of things that gets thrown at you at a given time. It's not impossible to do, but be prepared for it to take forever, it was obviously not designed for solo sloop play. The other is the Fort of the Damned, FOTD is a pain because of the amount of time it takes to prep, activate, and then actually fight while the skull beacon attracts everyone else out in the game. With that said, everything else is designed with solo in mind (Just be weary that difficulty in this game is based on how many players are in a crew, and choosing a sloop is already considered hard mode) so ultimately you can do everything else functionally well.

If you are interested in story telling, you have tall tales, if you want. a quick and easy npc fight you have fortresses, if you want a challenge and higher risk of pvp you have all the other world events, if there are no other world event you have the kraken and meg random boss events, if you don't have any event active you have the under water shrines and treasuries, if you want to do missions with a bit of adventuring, exploration, and fighting, then you have the different types of voyages, and if you just want to be a pirate feared by all, then you can try to hunt for other ships at sea.

@sally-kraken said in What can/can´t solo sloopers do?:

Mermaid treasuries and shrines are a good one to do for a solo sloop.

Even if someone sinks your boat your loot is still protected in the mermaid statue until you retrieve it.

You can uses one of the Pirate's Life portals and it will even follow you to the new server 😀😉

With most of my 400 hours on the seas playing solo, i struggle against galleons when solo, but i havnt fought many solo so thats just lack of experience considering i have seen many solo sloopers take on galleons just by being very cautious and using mostly stationary cannons, and especially kegs. Against brig and sloop, you can win just fine as long as you have good aim and dont try to board constantly, when solo, your cannons are your best friend, and boarding is only the final nail if needed.

Functionally when solo you can do just about everything any other ship can just as well as they can, just through different means, it just depends what you have practice with, and how long you solo for, its a totally different experience solo slooping than the old duo or galle arena.

I´ve been doing some cargo runs on Devil´s Roar for the commendations (I want to end with that zone and never come back, damn volcanos) and just faced 1 brig on 4 hours.

Seems like mornings are more chilling than afternoons or players are avoiding PvP encounters. Well, is not that bad as I was thinking, solo sloops is fun.

Road to Level up GH from 72 to 75 without diying on the attempt

1. Don't run emissary. The grind is slower, but you don't get spotted on the map.
2. Get a captained ship to make selling loot easier.
3. Sell often. Then you at least make some progress and don't lose everything when attacked.
4. turn lanterns off, and use dark sails (black sails are the cheapest). This makes you harder to spot at night.
5. Be vigilant, and turn away from other ships when you see them, to avoid fights.

TLDR: Be sneaky and smart, and you should stay alive long enough to make progress.

@mrat13 said in What can/can´t solo sloopers do?:

4. turn lanterns off, and use dark sails (black sails are the cheapest). This makes you harder to spot at night.

I'm going to add to this one...once you develop "sloopervision" dark cosmetics don't matter. I can still very clearly see the outline of your ship up against that island at night.

Works against newbies, but not the dangerous ones...

Yeah, I’m not sure the cosmetics matter at a distance. All ships look the same. By the time someone is close enough to not see you because of the black sails, they’ve probably already been watching you for a few minutes (or they’re oblivious and therefore prolly harmless). If you turn off the lights, make sure you get the ones in the cabin too, not just the deck ones. Also (I guess?) keep the loot below deck to hide the glow? I used to do this but it didn’t seem to make any difference and was kind of a hassle; maybe others can chime in on the success of that tactic.

@sn0kanon said in What can/can´t solo sloopers do?:

Yeah, I’m not sure the cosmetics matter at a distance. All ships look the same. By the time someone is close enough to not see you because of the black sails, they’ve probably already been watching you for a few minutes (or they’re oblivious and therefore prolly harmless). If you turn off the lights, make sure you get the ones in the cabin too, not just the deck ones. Also (I guess?) keep the loot below deck to hide the glow? I used to do this but it didn’t seem to make any difference and was kind of a hassle; maybe others can chime in on the success of that tactic.

Glows out of the grate.

Oh, and you can safely run emissary as long as you’re watching for Reaper Vs religiously. Keep a Pirates of the Caribbean checkpoint so that if a Reaper shows up you can server hop and keep your flag. Running an emissary flag doesn’t make you more visible to anyone but Grade 5 Reapers, who can also portal hop, but unless you get really unlucky and have one drop in next to you there should be time to sell and run (or get ready to fight).

@wolfmanbush Except, sadly, when you get the other factions maxed (like me) and have to start working on Reapers. I almost always run some emissary flag unless I totally don’t care about loot or progression; finding that a challenge while trying to hit 75 in Reapers. On the flip side, it’ll polish both my PvP skills and my not-quite-stiff-enough upper lip.

@wolfmanbush I like the skelly fleets very much though my performance is still very inconsistent; not much room for error there as a solo 😉

Totally unrelated to this thread (but directly related to skelly fleets, so maybe ok?) but made me feel good so I have to share: got sunk last night doing the last ship in the fleet and spawned halfway across the map. By the time I got back, a couple of dudes on a sloop were sailing through and shouted “friend or foe?” I replied “friend”, ditched my boat, and boarded theirs. They were kinda drunk and having a blast; they were clearly new to the game, we passed the gally loot and they were amazed at how much was there. They were wowed by the Ashen keys (“what do these unlock?”) and the “golden skulls” (captain’s). They were gonna swim all the stuff back til I turned the ship to harpoon it. Sailed on with them to the next stop on their voyage, where I semi-intentionally let myself get killed by a skelly captain (I was already looking down the barrel of a 4-hour-sleep-night); the last thing I heard was “oh… uh, he’s dead. Revive him?” “I can’t”.

I’ve only been playing since December but have already gotten kind of jaded, I guess; these guys’ friendliness, enthusiasm, and sense of wonder will stick with me for a long time. Dudes, I hope y’all successfully completed all your voyages and got all your loot sold.