Farming the skull cloud...

  • Seems few players go for the skull cloud. We went there as 4 crew galleon. Basically finished all the waves alone and took all the loot. Around 15000 gold worth.

    Log out to main menu.
    Start new session.
    Find next skull cloud.
    Rinse, repeat.

    If there is no skull cloud then simply log out and restart.

    Is this intentional? Seems highly exploitable.

    Even if there are someone at the fort why fight? Just log out, start new session, find an untouched fort.

    Thought?

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  • Me and a m8 are doing this as we speak I found this out as well myself on my own seem strange but I guess it is meant to be like that but think they throught more people would go for it

  • @ghroznak Yeah it only takes us 10 to 15 minutes to beat these, and the payout is equivalent to 2-3 hours of play.

  • Clearly an exploit and I hope Rare not only fixes it but removes the gold/rep from anyone doing it.

  • @pir4te-roberts I really don't know how you would safeguard against this other than just making forts take 10 hours to spawn on average for a server, so it would be very rare to see one when just loading in.

  • Any safeguards or attempts to "shape" the rate at which people can farm forts will probably backfire. Don't worry about it, what they're doing has literally zero effect on you so just leave them to it.

  • @cpt-kazuto said in Farming the skull cloud...:

    @pir4te-roberts I really don't know how you would safeguard against this other than just making forts take 10 hours to spawn on average for a server, so it would be very rare to see one when just loading in.

    A loot timer, once you have looted one you can continue to farm them but get no loot or potentially diminishing returns for each you do in a certain time maybe

  • Me and my m8 were doing it sail from place to place doing them seems strange I think they way there meant to work just guess is like timed server event kinda of thing like in eso skyhooks come down the hole server runs there for good loot but this remined me of that with out the limited time or placements? and the fact that the servers are small as well i.e not many people to run into there easy to farm?

    Hope it gets fixed made harder or less money?

  • @ersatz-nihilist said in Farming the skull cloud...:

    Any safeguards or attempts to "shape" the rate at which people can farm forts will probably backfire. Don't worry about it, what they're doing has literally zero effect on you so just leave them to it.

    Except getting pirate legend faster than most, have better cosmetics than most. And as that is the only progression i'd say it counts.

  • I think it's perfectly acceptable for the highest risk activity to give the best payout.

  • "highest risk activity" me and my m8 sat on are ship and shot the Hell of the fort then walked on took the loot? while this as literally zero effect on other players just aid us get better cosmetics than most faster still seem little bad. maybe cool down timer or something lock it to quest that you can do once a day.

    At the moment were almost able to get good ship part in first day I thought would take me a week?

    Issue could be fixed by making more people spawn near it then make them fight for the loot.

  • @pir4te-roberts said in Farming the skull cloud...:

    @ersatz-nihilist said in Farming the skull cloud...:

    Any safeguards or attempts to "shape" the rate at which people can farm forts will probably backfire. Don't worry about it, what they're doing has literally zero effect on you so just leave them to it.

    Except getting pirate legend faster than most, have better cosmetics than most. And as that is the only progression i'd say it counts.

    It's not progression. It's just different stuff for digital dress-up. You'll get there eventually and you're sure as hell not going to be first anyway because you've got time to post on a forum.

    Just relax. It'll be fine.

  • I mean this is more just a case of not having other players show up. It's not really an exploit that you're getting lucky in the fact that other players aren't showing up at the forts you are going to. I did one earlier today where there were 3 other crews that showed up. Eventually we all worked together to finish the raid and then at the end it was a free for all where we fought to see who got the loot. This culminated in a ship chase and battles on the sea where my crew won and got the majority of the loot. They're supposed to draw players in, just sometimes people don't show up so you get the loot for yourself.

  • @shofficer The payout is great. The timer is also good. It seems to take 3-4 hours for them to spawn. What isn't fine is rematching over and over to keep refreshing them. But there's no real solutions that I can think of. How would a loot timer work when crews can mix and match?

  • @shofficer what risk?

  • There is no end game. Play how you want. Doesn't affect your abilities when coming into contact with enemy players so I don't care what anyone does to get gold

  • And posting it here for all to see... hmm...

  • We just did it twice in a row without relog. it just spawns so often...
    and as 4 man crew with 5 small boats on the same server there was no risk to do it. 6 crews per server is just too little.

    But everything is too easy to archieve. we just played for one hour and fighted the sea monster once and did the skullraid twice. thats kinda awkward.

    btw i didnt get paid for the second charge because of "releaseday problems"

    (sorry for my english skills)

  • Ah HA! found the culprits to the server issue problem. :P

    Thought I'd finally get to play, and ran into a server issue. Go figure, everyone wants to play, but a bottleneck at the player sorting portion of the game should have been addressed before launch and made larger since it's the slowest part of queuing players.

  • @captain-surgee

    The risk inherent to carrying a huge payload out of a location with a server-wide beacon

  • @shofficer dunno how it is now since I wasn't able to get in since launch, but in beta I never met any player resistance there. Even soloed one fort...wasn't easy but doable.

  • @captain-surgee

    The reward probably isn't high enough if no one else on the server cares about it.

  • Not so much an exploit as it is revelation that some think the game is simply about the gold. I enjoy variety in gameplay. If you have 20 hours to waste in a day farming forts, go for it. I enjoy snagging them on the side and running missions, sinking ships and exploring reefs and wrecks.

    Last fort I hit we had a heck of a galleon duel and sank the enemy twice before they gave up.

    Play your way folks.

  • @shofficer Last one we did we each got around 15,000 Gold for about 15 minutes of shooting skeletons with cannons, sniper rifles and using the explosive barrels all over the fort itself.

    It's low effort for respectable payout. Especially when you can keep doing this 'ad nauseam' by simply logging off and starting again in a new session. You even get your cannonballs replenished with the new ship you get as you log into new session.

    I can't say if this is right or wrong.

    But I felt it would be prudent to bring this to attention though, both to hear what others think as well as making RARE aware of it in case this is something that needs to be tweaked.

    The Forts are great if people go there and fight eachother, but it's just so much easier to just start a new session and find an empty Fort ripe for the taking.

  • Does this constant switching have effect on servers? Just a question.

  • @ghroznak jea i think this the goldfarming-meta. but after 3 or 4 runs it gets boring. exploring digging sailing and so on makes a lot of more fun. but the reward for that is so f****ing low

  • With the forts in thr game there is less reason to do any voyages, you get way more gold and especially reputation by grinding the forts. Keep the amount of gold but remove the rep you get from turning in things that isn't part of a voyage.

  • We took on a fort as a 4 man galleon and it took ua nearly 40 minutes with constant response until I blew up a cannon skeleton who seemed glitches. Had to blow him away with a gunpowder barrel!
    For us it was worth it, but there's always the risk of your entire haul being pillaged as you try and get it to the ship or to the outpost!

    I stayed on ship cruising whilst my crew mates jumped overboard with the loot.

  • 15 minutes?! holy cow, I must be doing something wrong. It took the 4 of us an hour last night to finish one and we used every cannon ball etc.

  • Since it seems to be part of the games mechanic and as has been said anything that is part of the games mechanic is considered fair play, another words if the game allows you to do it then so be it.

  • As soon as the general population figure out it pays well, the competition will even it out. It's not an exploit, but if you do forts uncontested or alone, it pays really well.

  • since these things can be traced really easely via logs, im pretty sure banhammer will be struck, otherwise i will loose even more faith in this game. I took 7 skullclouds with my friend as 2 on our own, we defeated more then 7 galleons and 4-5 sloops on our own to win them everytime, if this exploit ruins my archievment because people just use tricks to make them simply not worth much im getting very angry. Hard work is what we put in, and those things simply ruin hardwork by making it worth nothing.

  • Seeing things like this in the Sea of Thieves Discord:

    Fort Grind

    So yeah... grinding / farming the fort is definitely becoming a thing.

  • @eam-samaraka sagte in Farming the skull cloud...:

    Hard work is what we put in, and those things simply ruin hardwork by making it worth nothing.

    Hi everyone, why is your hard work nothing worth?
    You still got your rewards from the fortresses. Am I right?

    I don't see the point why this should be bug or glitch abusing.
    If you like to farm goaldhoarder voyages do it!
    If you like to do merchant guild voyages only, do it!
    If you like to do skelett fortresses, do it!

    [sarcasm]Maybe they should remove gold from the game, so there cant be a fastest method to farm it.[/sarcasm]

    Greetings
    Cpt. Fen

    PS: no I don't farm fortresses.

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