I have some questions about the Skeleton Forts, vaults and loot. ( my raid took place on Crow's Nest Fort for future reference) But let me set up the scenario first...
So, I and a friend have been playing for maybe a week now; couple days have been rough with some pretty bad luck with being sunk by aggressive players... most days have been ok! Today though was just absolutely depressing and morale shattering. We 2 and our sloop teamed up with a couple of guys on a brigantine and took on Crow's Nest with no idea what we were actually doing. We didn't know what the goal was, what was going to happen, they just asked for an alliance and we said sure! Well... not that long in to wave 3 maybe 4 of the skeletons once we were inside something happened to their ship and it was sent flying! ( literally, I mean I wish I had grabbed screen shots of this cause it was blasted into the air and cleared the whole island) This meant when they died they were sent somewhere and we don't know where. They never returned.
My friend and I continued with the waves still with no idea what we were doing. Luckily, around wave 9-ish we had a friend join our discord call and was looking stuff up for us on our behalf. That's when she read to us what we were to expect. OH! Sweet, it's kinda like a raid! Cool, so we did what we could and just the two of use managed to take down the Mutinous Helmsman. We took a moment to gather the few skulls from the bosses into one place so we wouldn't lose them and what do you know we lost the vault key in the process. It took us a moment to find the key, maybe a solid couple of minutes, and then I happened upon it and popped it into the lock to then be greeted by a sight for sore eyes. That was a pretty magnificent haul... well it would have been... had it not been for the following chain of terror that occurred as soon as we set sail with out haul.
We turned for Ancient Spire Outpost and not even 60 seconds into our voyage back home did a skeleton crew arise to try and shred us to pieces. We'd already fended off 4 of the ships this day ( in the span of 6 hours mind you and 2 more of them managed to kill us earlier in the day cause one spanned WITH a Kraken!) We had no urge to fight anymore we were so tired and just wanted to turn our stuff in and log off for awhile. This is not what happened. So we manage to half sink them, blow up their powder keg, and then lost them among some high rocks. This took us far off course and we decided to hit Plunder's outpost instead only to immediately see another sloop behind up with one of those MASSIVE red long billowing pennant like flags that we've come to fear wholly and completely. The aggressive PvP'rs. So we sped to the outpost as fast as the wind would let us in hopes to be able to turn in at least a couple of our rewards. I had my crew mate grab something and jump off ship while I circled the island with the sloop on my tail. Ultimately we had to turn and fight and while we fended them off mostly ok and managed to turn in a couple more things... the time spent re-spawning gave them ample time to sink our ship forcing us to spawn some where else and we lost our haul. It shattered us and of course turned out moods sour.
So my questions are...
Was it just coincidence that the skeletons spawned? Or does the rate of their spawn increase with the more treasure in your hull?
Did some of the treasure mark us on the map? How did those notorious pirate find us so bloody fast?
Were we legitimately just unlucky in our run ins today or were there some unknown/unseen numbers or details that I don't know about since i'm new?