Solo ancient meg fights

@burnbacon Sorry — I mentioned harpoons when I actually meant spears. In my language, we use the same word for both, which caused the confusion. Getting spears on a server, five at a time, basically means you can’t dive anymore. I tried the strategy of going to collect them after the megalodon has been located, but again, the time loss is massive.

If you happen to have one or two on you, great — but that doesn’t seem like a viable strategy for a solo player who also wants to limit exposure with their level 5 emissary, which is only useful for this one thing.

I never said the encounter should last ten minutes, or that it does. I said I lose the will to keep playing after ten minutes of repetitive, honestly not very engaging gameplay — and that’s after an hour or more of prep just to get there.

@burnbacon You clearly don’t feel concerned by the points I raised, and that’s perfectly fine. As I mentioned, I simply put this out there in case it might prove useful to others who are facing the same issue — ultimately, it’s about players who end up disengaging from that content, which is a bit of a shame for Rare as much as for the players. I must say, I’m not particularly convinced by your comments, which seem rather far removed from the essence of what I was trying to express. It feels a bit like we’re in the realm of “if it works for me, then there’s no problem,” with the added touch of calling things silly, as if to subtly suggest that the issue lies with others. That’s all right — let’s agree to disagree.

@xdragonman15558 I agree. I find it hard acknowledging the « fun » aspect of it. It’s a waste of supplies and a waste of time for basically the same gameplay experience we’ve had with other megs. Alright, there’s fire now, but it hardly justifies all that time and preparation just to do that. At least with two people one can repair and the other fight, soloing is a frustrating boring and ultimately kind of useless activity.

@el-cute tbh, i never used the poison darts and i have never had an issue fighting these megs solo (as long as there is no other ship nearby due to scaling.

Simply:

• get to the fighting area
• raise sails fully
• match rotation
• shoot cannonballs
• when its coming to bite shoot it with a cannonball or two to cancel attack
• match rotation again
• repeat
• 100 cannonballs later it dies

Yes sometimes you get bit and does a laughable amount of damage.

Besten quite a few of them and honestly its just boring to fight them, cool the first few times but otherwise not worth the supply sink in regards to loot obtained at the end.

When i am done with the comms i will most likely ignore them due to this supply sink to loot discrepancy

@keylessword4029 said in Solo ancient meg fights:

@callmebackdraft how are you both matching rotation and stopping rotation to shoot it on bite approach and then matching rotation again? sounds like you are missing the solo bit. as if you are in a rotation you are likely to miss the 2nd shot to cancel the bite. and when it comes in for a bite its literally not possible to stop your spin and be able to get off 2 shots at the same time.

When matching the rotation make sure the shark is leading it a bit, you can still hit it and when it turns to bit it will still be in the complete width of cannon mobility to shoot and hit it

No i didn’t miss the solo part, i solo quite a bit. And fought 20 of each solo at least, Redmaw is usually the tougher/more annoying fight since it seems to use speed alot more.

Another important thing, these sharks go ALOT closer to islands but their circle in that case is oblique and sometimes are quite close to the ship just circling and if it choses to bite that close there is no way to stop it.

Its not always possible to block all of its attacks.

while ive only attempted it once with plenty of supplies i went in not having looked up the fight and yea that didnt go well because 1 explosive bite and youre screwed trying to recover from that is rough and if you miss canceling the next bite? its all over. and sailing back to recover your supplies? literally impossible

Don’t panic with the fire, they don’t damage the ship that much in a solo fight (again important that there is no other ships nearby because if the fight scales up it is ALOT tougher)

Yes in these fights alot of stuff can be going on at once, fire, holes, damaged wheels, ocean crawler on board etc.
Prioritize stuff, for instance:

• fire isn't going to sink you right now, holes are.
• that ocean crawler isnt going to sink you right now, too many holes sre
• a broken mast isnt a death sentence an unturnable wheel is way more pressing

If i get bit and or if i block the attack my first move is, stop my turn, grab a bucket and patch one or two holes (if bitten) check to new rotation and start matching it, and attack, use water to extinguish in case of redmaw.

thankfully theres not really much for achievements tied to these and since they arent fun im just writting off the content adding it to the list of grinds that arent fun so not worthy of the time they require

@sweetsandman @CallMeBackdrafT @KeylessWord4029 Once again, I'm not questioning the feasibility of the old megs as a solo player, but rather the necessary adjustments to make this gameplay at least somewhat entertaining. I'm playing right now and I can share this example: You watched "The Sea Beast" yesterday, and you think, “What I really want to do is go destroy a creature with spears while epic music plays in the background.” So what do I do? I raise the Hunter’s Call emissary, so I can track megalodons. I start a fort plunder with loot I don't care about, time passes, followed by a Spanish fortress plunder, again with loot I’m not interested in. I finally reach emissary level 5, I check the map—no megalodon. I dive to another server—still nothing. Finally, on the third dive, I find a megalodon. What do I do? After all that effort, I head to the outpost to buy spears. ONE BY ONE, with three clicks for each, which I then have to manually load ONE BY ONE onto the ship. And guess what? By the third spear, the game’s loading time drags on forever. The game has been running on its own for 15 to 20 minutes now, stuck on the loading logo while I wait for my spear to be purchased. I can't exit the menu. I lose my patience, and everything I’ve done so far has been for nothing but wasting my actual lifetime, which only makes me less likely to try this content again in the future.

When I talk about “fun,” I mean: make the meg an event we can dive into directly, let us buy 5, 10, 15 spears directly from the shipwright and have them ready on the ship—no need to load items one by one and risk losing the whole session like I just did. I wouldn’t mind the event being difficult if I could easily choose to engage with it. But as it is, I just lost over an hour that led to absolutely nothing. My post isn’t saying the event is too hard—it's that it lacks a fun factor. Now, if I reload my session, I’ll either lose the emissary or get back on my ship, but either way I won’t risk buying more spears after what just happened. I'm saying all this and, right this second, I got kicked for "Lazybeard"—lost my emissary and my time. PS: After a while, I tried buyng spears on new server, the same issue occured. And that's only one example of the need to make the experience fun and engaging.

fun

@lem0n-curry that’s very good to know, thank you !! (It still needs a bit of fixing though for people less informed)

@sweetsandman Oh no, I completely understand and support your proposal — what I meant is that if we can’t make it more entertaining, we could at least make it more accessible, it was for me an immediate feedback to another failed attempt to enjoy the game. For solo players, it still feels like a huge energy investment that more or less leads nowhere. My comment is meant to complement yours, and you’re right — fun is subjective, which is why forums like this are so important.