SoT Becoming Overly Difficult

I agree with @Tundra-793 , but i must admit that the real difficult thing is selling the loot. Did a 3 quests today, a short run, but had to sail from an hedge to the other of the map to find a safe outpost. There were always lurking griefers that patrolled the area..

@midnightramblr As someone with a pirate that plays strictly solo, I disagree. It is definitely hard and has gotten harder, but a couple of things:

1. Solo play was always meant to be the hardest thing to do.

2. It’s not impossible.

3. There are strategies for taking on the Kraken solo, and also for getting away from them. Nobody can kill it, you can only drive it back to the depths.

4. Skelly Ships are a pain when you are solo and low in resources - definitely. Cursed Cannonballs can help. But, the frequency of both the Skelly Ships and Megs should be turned down, IMO. That said, you can lose a Skelly Ship by forcing it to go one way around an island or rock and then quickly turning the other way. This will get you out of range and they will disengage.

5. The Roar is supposed to be hard - that’s why you get almost double the reward for loot there. Greater risk, greater reward.

There’s definitely some balancing tweaks that need to be done with Skelly Ships and Megs in terms of frequency, but stick to it. Solo play isn’t impossible, but is definitely a challenge - as it should be.

@bran-the-ent , i also sail solo, for now, and sometimes go hardcore with rowboat-only questing. About megs, if you don't attack them first and keep manouvering, they let you go. Until now, it worked for me. They're also an endangered species, leave them be.

While solo, if you're out of resources, board the skelly ship, and sacrifice your sloop. While being grappled to the ladder, you're invisible to skelly crew. They Will escort you near the nearest outpost, at times, being your insurance to cash in the most precious piece of loot. If they sink, well, it's time to swim.

As i always say, we're limited only by our fantasy in exploiting the game mechanics..

@midnightramblr ok trust me on this, i might sound rude but you just arent good at the game, especially if you are trying to say the kraken or a megalodon is near impossible to beat alone. like holy moly solo sloop kraken is literally a care package, same as the megalodon on every ship. lol goodluck if you ever go onto any other ship. you will literally find it infinity impossible if you think solo sloop is near impossible. i litterally would love a buff for the kraken and megalodon. and skelly ships really arent that hard either. you reeally just need to spend more time on the game and actually learn how to play and then maybe it would be more enjoyable because you will probebly find everything is actually really easy

@midnightramblr

The bigger the crew the easier the game is. If you decide to play with a duo or solo there is nothing you cannot complete and defeat. It does have a learning curve that you need to overcome to feel safe all the time.

Keep in mind, from day one you are as powerful and capable as any of us. The difference is your experience, tactics and execution. It is what distinguishes a legendary pirate and this is more than just the title, from the aspiring pirates.

Learn the game mechanics, the fights, the capabilities of your pirate and the game is not as difficult. I have completed every challenge in the game solo and I am not the only one. Nothing is impossible even as a solo captain. The mastery of the seas is something that comes with time and practice. This game is about your journey to the mastery of the seas and the spoils will follow. Just keep at it and soon enough you will be one of these legendary pirates. Try to focus on the enjoyment of the battle and becoming a better pirate, as nobody can steal that from you, instead of the spoils, we play for enjoyment after all.

Hope you keep enjoying your journey to becoming a legend and master of the seas. The seas are a dangerous and mysterious play to adventure. Nobody ever said a pirate life was an easy one. There is a reason why the Pirate Lord is revered in the world.

@midnightramblr dijo en SoT Becoming Overly Difficult:

I've been compelled to find this forum to provide feedback that I believe Sea of Theives, one of my favorite XB1 games of all time, has become so hard that it is almost no longer fun to play. 90% of my SoT play time is aboad a sloop with 1 more crewmate or alone. I can barely make it to three islands in a voyage without encountering a megladon, ghost ship, or kraken (two of which are near impossible to beat alone). The skeletons have also become more frequent on islands and much tougher to kill. Add to that other aggressive online players, storms, and volcanoes in Devil's Roar, and you have almost completely taken the solo play option away, with the current level of difficulty, and the game is even exceptionally challenging for two players. The game is becoming more aggravating than fun to play. Please consider scaling back the levels of difficulty, at least the frequency of ghost ship, megalodon, and kraken sea encounters. Thank you~

Try to do a naval battle event in a solo sloop, then come back again... Those things you mentioned can be done solo. Kraken can be hard sometimes, but it's not impossible. You just need to know when to bail, when to repair and when to attack. Practice makes mastery.

i feel you should get a bonus reward when finishing a whole mission in solo play, since its much harder than even playing with 1 more friend. i personally dont have a lot of people to play with, so i usually end up playing on my own. i think it would be a high risk high reward thing if you at least would get more exp when playing solo, because right now its just unfair for ppl who pretty much have to play solo. i mean you get the same amount of exp and gold when playing with 4 people... why wouldnt you make it that the loot is split up when playing with multiple ppl??

OP, I recently recorded a solo session and uploaded it to YouTube. In that session I show that the game is indeed not impossible as a Solo player (much less a duo sloop, which is arguably the easiest thing to sail on the seas).

There is nothing fancy in the video. No commentary. Just me solo slooping.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQvpjZsWQ7k

I am uploading part 2 now and will share it with you in this same post when I am finished.

No megs, but I successfully deal with both krakens and ghost ships in both videos. I also engage in some light PvP.

Weird, I have made over 200K this week solo and had some great pve and pvp. Sharks and krakens are very easy solo. I spend a lot of time stocking up though. Ghost ships just take some stealth using big rocks. The only threat for me solo are skilled crews. And if they manage to sink me, good on 'em.

I tend to disagree on some of the remarks in regards to solo players.
There are just a ton of things that are lethal to a solo player which would not bother a crew of two or more. You just need to get knocked of the boat by a stray canon ball or the bite of a megalodon and your boat has a good chance of sinking /being boarded or what not before you get even back on your ship.
Being hunted by a bigger crew has the same problem, most of the tactics used in such a situation (i.e. boarding and dropping the anker) just do not exist if you are playing solo.

Add to that that the sloops only benefit is its agility which is basically killed 100% by magical cannonballs now, you are just screwed if you are interested in doing missions over multiply islands.

Its a bit of a different story if you just YOLO it and try to take out a bigger ship and do not really care if you succeed, in that situation I had some success solo, but for missions? Forget that. And that is extremely bad for this game. You basically breed bullies this way because there is no other point in playing it. That is already true for all crew sizes in my eyes but it is extremely obvious for solo players. There is just no point, you stuff will just get taken away way to often.

@hawk-anonymous

@hawk-anonymous said in SoT Becoming Overly Difficult:

I tend to disagree on some of the remarks in regards to solo players.
There are just a ton of things that are lethal to a solo player which would not bother a crew of two or more. You just need to get knocked of the boat by a stray canon ball or the bite of a megalodon and your boat has a good chance of sinking /being boarded or what not before you get even back on your ship.
Being hunted by a bigger crew has the same problem, most of the tactics used in such a situation (i.e. boarding and dropping the anker) just do not exist if you are playing solo.

Add to that that the sloops only benefit is its agility which is basically killed 100% by magical cannonballs now, you are just screwed if you are interested in doing missions over multiply islands.

Its a bit of a different story if you just YOLO it and try to take out a bigger ship and do not really care if you succeed, in that situation I had some success solo, but for missions? Forget that. And that is extremely bad for this game. You basically breed bullies this way because there is no other point in playing it. That is already true for all crew sizes in my eyes but it is extremely obvious for solo players. There is just no point, you stuff will just get taken away way to often.

If you say so.

@midnightramblr I play solo all the time.

kraken - you only have to kill two tentacles, literally can do this without taking any damage to a sloop. it actually needs to be buffed to make it harder.

megladon - er what ? sure it bites you every few rotations, but you can repair and pound it some more . another easy to beat event solo.

skelly ship - again, just lower your speed and stay close to the ship, its easy to beat solo.

PLEASE PLEASE developers, dont nerf these things, heck i even do the skelly ship waves event in a sloop. the kraken is way to easy since it got nerfed, it needs to be buffed now. please dont make everything else so easy that the game becomes a bore fest.

I used to be like midnightRamblr and moan about how hard it was, until i learned how to kill the damn things. if stuff gets nerfed, might as well remove the option to have two people on a sloop. its already doable solo. but if you have two. its gonna be the most boring game ever.

I came back to this game at the start of February and I agreed with a friend that when playing solo if a Kraken appeared he’d log out and start a new voyage.

I don’t feel that way now.

I’m actually happy to encounter a Kraken while solo slooping if I have enough wooden planks. Since it’s about damage management, then running up to the canons when you have a close enough tentacle. As soon as you hear the hissing, get below deck again. It’s a case of staying calm and riding the storm. Also don’t have full sail down or be turning the boat. You want steady shots for the tentacles.

For skelly ships I feel the same thing. I used to be upset about them being in the game but now I specifically go hunting for them.

I agree solo play is tricky, and multiple PVE elements are super hard like fighting a Meg and a Skelly ship at the same time, but that’s pretty rare. When you know you can outplay the Meg, Kraken and Skeleton ships as a solo player it puts a spring in your peg leg in the game.

Two weeks ago I didn’t feel like I do now, and it’s made the game better to have stepped up my skill level as a result.

Persevere, you will be victorious more than you will fail, but if you fail use that determination to not let the next battle overcome you.

Sloop is the challenge mode of playing, easiest target, and the slowest ship so they spend the most time at sea. Also devils roar is a high risk high reward area so its much harder than normal out there.

In a nut shell, Sea of Thieves is like getting a new unfamiliar job. The one where you don't know anyone, you can't remember their names & you have to remember 100 of them and they only have to remember 1, your boss gives you a super brief roundabout overview about policies and then throws you out there and tells you to get to work. At first it's nerve-racking, everything that can go wrong will, you will often find yourself in a situation where no one gave you a clue how to take care of it and you just hope someone that's been there a while comes and helps to bail you out and show you how to do it correctly. But, you learn each day and then, a few months later, you're waking up and headed to work like it's nothing. It's just going to be another day on the seas.

@midnightramblr It's not that it's difficult, it's just that the "challenges" aren't really challenging as much as tedious/uninteractive. Like many people have said the kraken is a joke if you just do the right stuff. You have to fight these things the same way they fight you: In a robotic, 1 dimensional manner. If this then that. If volcano erupts, you sail away. if kraken tries to suck you up, you go below deck. If ship takes dmg, you repair. If you get hit with CCB, you go watch a youtube video or something. The threats are wayyy too common. A meg/kraken/skeleton ship appearing should be a special and relatively rare occurrence(unless you look for it) not something that happens almost every stinking time you sail somewhere. The kraken used to be something special(even if fighting it is anything but), because it was so uncommon. Now if you see a kraken, meg, etc it's just: ".......sigh* again...?". This is partly because fighting them is so uninteractive(granted they are far better than skeletons), but it's also because they are so common AND random. If you instead very rarely encountered them randomly but could hunt them down if you WANT to fight them, the dynamic would be so much more interesting and better for everyone. People who don't want to fight them wouldn't be bothered so much by them constantly(which makes them dislike them even more), and when they do get attacked it will feel more special. People who want to fight them can do it consistently with an interactive hunting quests that makes them even more fun to fight. Skeleton ships are just horrible though.

The game keeps getting easier and easier and people are still saying it's too hard?

I guess some people actually need "hard mode" to show in actual on screen text.

Do these not help?

@freaktmonline said in SoT Becoming Overly Difficult:

@midnightramblr I play solo all the time.

kraken - you only have to kill two tentacles, literally can do this without taking any damage to a sloop. it actually needs to be buffed to make it harder.

For the kraken alone, I would mostly agree besides the stupid glitches (like getting sucked while being in the belly of the ship). I actually find the kraken on the galleon a lot harder than on a single player sloop but that is mainly because it seem to glitch the stairs sometimes making everyone unable to leave the bowl of the galleon.

megladon - er what ? sure it bites you every few rotations, but you can repair and pound it some more . another easy to beat event solo.

If your goal is to kill the megladon and you anker, that works most of the time. But you do not want to do the megaldon most of the time nor can you because half of the time it only shows up then you are already occupied with a kraken, another player, or even worse a ghost ship. And setting anker is the last thing you want to do if you encounter a ghost ship.

skelly ship - again, just lower your speed and stay close to the ship, its easy to beat solo.

I guess you haven't played since the introduction of magic canonballs? By now, ghost ship encounters usually go like this. Anker cannon ball. You are dead in the water, getting pappered, you repair the damage, you can finally move again, anker canon ball. Rince and repeat. Replace Anker with sail or similar. Wait until you run out of supplies which might take a while. Sink.

I think the main problem is the randomness in the encounters. And being solo on a sloop, this randomness gets extremely amplified (i.e. getting hit by lightning in a storm and getting knocked of the ship is mostly funny on a 4 man galleon but potential lethal on a solo sloop).
Same is true for glitches (multiple people mentioned that you can hide inside the ship and not get sucked by the kraken, I have been sucked right through the side of the ship multiple times already while repairing holes, either there is some glitch there or something else does not add up). Same is true for the abundance of double events (I have no clue how people think this is rare, its more like 50% of the cases, and it is extremely infuriating because most of the time the loot from the first encounter has already sunken then you beat the second one).
We need some more stability in my eyes.

@betsill said in SoT Becoming Overly Difficult:

@midnightramblr It's not that it's difficult, it's just that the "challenges" aren't really challenging as much as tedious/uninteractive. Like many people have said the kraken is a joke if you just do the right stuff. You have to fight these things the same way they fight you: In a robotic, 1 dimensional manner. If this then that. If volcano erupts, you sail away. if kraken tries to suck you up, you go below deck. If ship takes dmg, you repair. If you get hit with CCB, you go watch a youtube video or something. The threats are wayyy too common. A meg/kraken/skeleton ship appearing should be a special and relatively rare occurrence(unless you look for it) not something that happens almost every stinking time you sail somewhere. The kraken used to be something special(even if fighting it is anything but), because it was so uncommon. Now if you see a kraken, meg, etc it's just: ".......sigh* again...?". This is partly because fighting them is so uninteractive(granted they are far better than skeletons), but it's also because they are so common AND random. If you instead very rarely encountered them randomly but could hunt them down if you WANT to fight them, the dynamic would be so much more interesting and better for everyone. People who don't want to fight them wouldn't be bothered so much by them constantly(which makes them dislike them even more), and when they do get attacked it will feel more special. People who want to fight them can do it consistently with an interactive hunting quests that makes them even more fun to fight. Skeleton ships are just horrible though.

While I see this as an separate issue, I totally agree with you. One more thing to add.
Seeing kraken/ghost ship. Seeing how little supplies are left. Sighting, loading everything an the lifeboat. Just rowing to the next outpost instead of bothering with the hole situation...
Seems to be one of the more solutions, just not caring that your ship will sink because everything valuable is somewhere else already.

@freaktmonline said in SoT Becoming Overly Difficult:

PLEASE PLEASE developers, dont nerf these things, heck i even do the skelly ship waves event in a sloop. the kraken is way to easy since it got nerfed, it needs to be buffed now. please dont make everything else so easy that the game becomes a bore fest.

Rare, if you nerf these things, the terrorists win.

Think on that.

@yourenowontv said in SoT Becoming Overly Difficult:

Two weeks ago I didn’t feel like I do now, and it’s made the game better to have stepped up my skill level as a result.

Dude got gud.

I sailed solo in a brig grinding athena miles for like 30 mins. Absolutely nothing happened. Its just the luck of the draw

@cstrap i heard it was nerfed, and i havent noticed it being stronger so idk. might have to check the update logs for this but im pretty sure it was not buffed

@cstrap last time i fought it wich was sometime this week it was still pretty easy, i think i had even just came out of a skelly ship fight or a meg fight and it was still easy to kill the kraken solo. btw if you are on the brigantine the kraken is way harder same as on a galleon. the kraken for them is dif to the sloop kraken