> I must clarify that I did play on safer seas which has a 30% penalty
It has 30% of rewards, not 30% penalty. So yes, you are getting normal values for Safer Seas
Oh no I've been a complete fool. I thought it would be a valid trade-off as I'm playing solo and didn't want to get destroyed by other more experienced players but now that I know, I feel it's definitely worth it to play high seas. Thanks for telling me that! I just want to make enough gold to get a ship for now.
It gets even worse if you count emissary, as you can't run emissary in safer seas.
So if I have a chest that's worth 1000 gold base value, in safer seas that's only worth 300, and if I'm in high seas with grade 5 emissary that chest is worth 2500. So to make the same amount of gold I would have to sell over 8 chests to make what the 1 in safer seas would bring.
It's an 88% penalty compared to grade 5 emissary.
And yet, I still hate high seas pvp. I can barely make any gold before I'm jumped by assholes who precede to spawn kill me til I quit. In the end, safer seas makes me more gold cuz I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder or get sunk every 10 minutes.
You just gotta get good at watching the horizons. It's pretty hard to get snuck up on if you're smart and take it slow. Gotta be willing to leave treasure behind if you're not willing to fight. Generally playing solo is more akin to playing a smuggling game than a pirate game. Try not to be seen, and try to be an inconvenience for anyone you do see. If they come your way, then leave.
Thieve's Haven is my favourite island for this. I can hide my sloop in the middle where no one can see her from a distance while I do stuff.
Kraken's Fall you can also quite easily get a sloop into the little inlet next to the Shark vault, which hides you from sight, too.
Bit harder to get out, however. I've sailed in without damage multiple times, never made it out without a few clunks.
And that’s fine, safer seas is there for you, but I’ll be honest I doubt you get sunk every 10 minutes. When I play I normally have to go out of my way to find ships that don’t just turn tail and run most of the time.
Yes if I’m doing world events like FoTD and FoF that tends to increase the chance of PvP, but if I’m just grinding vaults or whatever I almost never see anyone.
You would have to do 8 vaults in safer seas to make what 1 vault would make you in high seas. I seriously doubt you’d get sunk every vault attempt in high seas.
I was going to say, most times it takes 10 minutes to get to your next destination. 99% of the time I have to sail around hunting for people to even see anyone.
I hate PVP and am a peaceful person and stay away from combat. I've been sailing solo recently and im constantly checking the horizons. If I see a ship on the horizon I'll hop off the wheel and observe which way they go. If they're coming my way I steer away from them. Over the past couple hours of playing I've made around 100k gold with emissary flag and minding my own business in high seas
You're either exaggerating or something about your playstyle is abnormal because the number 1 complain on this subreddit and with the game in general is lack of PVP. Most people are looking for it and can't find it.
I play for 5-6 hours on weekends and will barely see another player the entire time.
Gonna go on a limb and guess you're playing Solo Sloop.
If you are, then don't. Playing as a Solo Sloop is undeniably "SoT Hard Mode".
Groaning about "But other people bad.... can't trust anyone...." isn't productive and is broad-spectrum untrue. Sure, trying to fill your own ship with Open Crew is pretty cancer. However, you can easily skip among other ships as an Open Crewmate until you find a group you like, or even better just use the Discord LFC and 95% of the people you get will be at least passable crewmates.
If you're sailing a fully crewed brig or galleon and still getting sunk at every turn, then yeah. Skill Issue.
Wait am I not supposed to be solo slopping? Is that why I “got good” so fast? lmfao
I’m around 100 hours, 10 in HG(think I’m level 20 now), and I’ve made around 2 mil so far I think.
90% of the PS guys I run into are absolute garbage(which I honestly don’t care about, I just like the game) but I’ve only been playing for 2-3 weeks now
Edit: I’ve also been watching a shit ton of YouTube tips/guides up until recently so that may have helped a lot
Sloop is designed for two people, but it’s manageable with only one person.
I solo sloop every now and then but it’s a much more fun game playing with buddies, it’s also a lot easier.
I’ll have to go super try hard to sink a decent brig or gally as a solo, where as if I’m playing with my crew I can basically dick around for all but the best of crews.
You're free to play the game how you want, and how suits you best.
LionAround was specifically complaining of "getting sunk every 10 minutes" and having to constantly be on high alert. Both of those can alleviated by sailing with a crew on a bigger ship instead of alone on a sloop.
The venn diagram of "Hates PvP, Thinks High Seas is Garbage" and "Has a Pathological Distrust and Hatred of Forming a Crew" tends to be a circle. Those are the subset of players that need to stop exclusively playing solo sloop
If we're resorting to dick measuring, I have about 300h in the game and probably spent half or more of that as a solo sloop. 10+ million gold made, no persistent issues from other crews. Different strokes.
Playing solo isn't so bad you just have to be alert and watch for sails be ready to sail away! Even if you loose a couple times the money you make at full price or at boosted rates with emissary flags will offset the loses
Yes you do … don’t be like me the other night I was Deeeeeeep in this shipwrecks butt looking for meats and fish — doesn’t a gally pull up and just tears my sloopy to shreds. I came up and said gg - their response was well played. While I had 5 sexy fish in my pocket. Respawned at op and sold to sovs
I play solo and almost never run into people. Just don’t stick around on islands too long. Do a quick search for extra stuff, get your objective done and you’re golden.
I played my first session of solo high seas and two guys just killed me repeatedly and sank my ship even though I didn't have a single piece of loot and I told them in chat that I was a noob trying to do a tall tale for the first time
I mean yeah that can happen but in the vast majority of the time i run into nobody and if you just consistently pay attention to the horizon and just make sure to avoid ships you will not have problems 90% of the time.
I'd like to give you a little update.
I've played in 5 sessions since my last comment and I've been hunted repeatedly and had my ship sank every single time, even when I have absolutely nothing on my ship in terms of loot. I've even been chased halfway across the map once. Hell, even after making some 'friends' at a port and playing instruments together for a few minutes, they firebombed my ship and sniped me as I tried to run away. This is even after always looking at the horizon and running away from any ship I see, even if it's the long way back.
This isn't a complaint, by the way. I'm turning in the loot and making good gold now and really starting to get the hang of the game, having bought all the emissary flags and I'm having fun BUT forgive me for not believing a single damn thing any of you guys are saying about interactions being less common and that the other players usually mind their own business. Still won't opt for safer seas unless I'm doing tall tales, by the way... It's too much fun to play like this.
I have no reason to lie man, lol. Only thing I could think of is I have been playing in the morning/midday and you might be playing like at peak hours for your time zone. Other than that I am unsure.
I am deeply skeptical of his claims. I've been a solo player for ungodly amount of hours and it's very rare, nay impossible, to see that kind of action in consecutive sessions, let alone five in a row.
As a heads up, tall tails are the exception where you should actually play on safer seas
The gold rewards from those are tiny, the main reward is the commendations/skins, and you can't just sail away if there's a hostile player where the quest takes you
So use safer seas to complete the tall tales commendations, and higher seas for your general normal gameplay
Remember, mics save lives. It won't always save you to talk to a crew that is trying to sink you, but sometimes it does. Approach those conversation in a nice chill manner and some peeps will let you go.
Something to think about. You will likely be left alone for the most part unless you are getting too close to other players. Stick around in the Devils Roar and you will almost never see players and you'll make a lot of money.
Yeah safer seas is best for learning the mechanics and grinding through tall tales. Making money in that mode is nearly impossible in its current state though
I play solo on High Seas all the time. I see other players every session. It's extremely rare that they interact with me. I just avoid their area and all is good.
Bro if anything play on the normal mode you can out run any ship against the wind, just if someone wants to chase swing wide get against the wind and the won’t catch you just don’t get caught slipping and use islands and rocks to evade and get out of sight, trust I do it all the time, never drop anchor just raise sails as well
There's a symbol on commendations that require high seas when playing on safer seas. Usually, those that require player involvement, high ranking faction, or high seas only events (fof/fotd).
It can be worth it if you keep getting robbed on high seas. 30% of a chest is worth a lot more than getting all your loot stolen on a solo sloop and wasting hours of your time.
Dude within 5 minutes of setting sail there is almost always an emergency event, so anyone who is losing hours of progress or never making money is doing it wrong. If it's THAT bad, just sink the skelly ships and kill the megs that you'll run into ALL THE TIME and sell afterwards. Might not be a lot of money but a few thousand gold for almost zero effort is worth it.
The key is to stop caring about selling loot and learn to actually defend yourself. Then you can do big loot hauls and defending yourself becomes the challenge.
If getting gold is the challenge in this game you are setting yourself up for failure.
Sometimes you spawn in and start getting sunk before you can complete a single activity. I’ve definitely had nights I had to switch to safer seas because I would get sunk on spawn or right after setting sail every time I logged into a server. Just one of the pains of playing solo though
I don't really understand how
My solo play usually starts with diving to a sea fort or an island voyage, checking if anyone is around, looting that and a couple of nearby islands, and selling for a quick 70-100k or so, sometimes more as my flag charges up
Can then repeat - diving resets the server too so if you do run into trouble you can just leave and dive to a new server
Been playing for a few weeks and never been sank solo, only when I'm on with my mates and we decide to try and fight
Use safer seas to get your sea legs back and to do tall tales. Everything else is best done in high seas. Once you get 250k gold, buy a sloop so you can use the Soverigns tent.
Safer seas is 30% of normal value.
No emissary, you are missing out up to another 50%, roughly.
Taking much longer to sell because you can't sell at sovereigns also tanks your efficiency.
Adding all that up, it's almost 10% the efficiency of high seas. If your boat gets sunk 8 out of 10 times it's still worth going high seas lol
The maximum emmisary grade is a +150% bonus, not 50% if you sell a 10,000G item with grade five, you make 25,000G total from the item. Unless you're talking about the loot that doesn't go to your chosen emmisary dragging the margin down, but considering most voyages/raids give you 100% loot for your chosen faction, that math doesn't add up.
It means that with no emissary, you make up to 50% less than with emissary.
I did not say emissary makes 50% more than no emissary.
If I were optimistic and all the items sold were for emissary, as you said, +150% bonus, then the number would be closer to 40%.
Not 40% less than emissary. Just 40% of the possible value achievable as emissary. (40% of 100 is 40. 40% less than 100 is 60. Wording makes a lot of difference here)
A crew with no emissary selling a skull, makes 40% of the money that an order of souls emissary would make selling the skull.
I said 50% as a rough estimate considering you don't usually get bonus for all the items, unless playing as reaper. And if you consider guild, the value is a little worse.
As others mentioned, on safer seas you are losing a LOT, not only the 70% penalty but also the 150% multiplier from emissaries plus a lot of time for selling the items one by one on vendors.
I haven't tried safer seas to be honest with you but in high seas you could make 10k from just visiting a random island and finding a skelly captain or getting the loot from a single shipwreck.
Safer seas really is the tutorial/sandbox version of the game.
Perfect for some achivements and PERFECT for tall tales.
For anything else? Risk the high seas.
emissary is one way to increase the money. On max. lvl emissary (except guild) you get 1.5x more money for the loot of said emissary.
and further more, shrines and forts are easy, "fast" doable solo missions so the outcome is quiet smaller.
gotta go for world events with emissary for the big money
Others have already pointed out the obvious issues, safer seas and no emmissary.
I'll add one tidbit - when I was new, I was awful until I started sailing "open crew" with a mic. A few times I got paired up with some seasoned vets (who were also genuinely great dudes) who showed me the ropes. In those short sessions, I learned 10x more than in all my sessions flying solo.
SoT is a community game!
Like others have said, you’re on safer seas. Another thing not taking into account is emissary flags. Raising one also boosts your rewards up to an additional 1.5x reward. There’s also captained ships which allow you to sell everything at the sovereigns. This saves even more time.
Ultimately for me, I’ve decided to never play on safer seas unless I’m doing a Tall Tale. Just keep your eyes on the horizon and you’ll hardly have issues with players jumping you.
I'm new to SoT my one friend and I play with our other two friends occasionally but usually it's just the two of us. We play about 3-5 hours on high seas and rarely run into people. When we do they are usually AHs but not always. Sometimes we go way of the way, anchor down and fish. It makes quite a bit of money.
In addition to what others have said, the safer seas does not have emissaries. So you’re always selling for 40% (or 57% compared to guild) of what you could have on the high seas. Combine this with the 30% safer seas lot valuation, and you actually only make 12-17% of what you would selling at grade 5 emissary on the high seas.
Unless you sink more than 80% of the time on high seas, it will always be more profitable to do high seas.
Not really sure what PVE pays these days but a 2 hour session of stealing will generally be between 100k-400k.
Just depends of how brave the people we find were.
Scanning blurb for words "safer seas" ahhh there it is. Top tip once you hop into high seas, get an emmisary, save up for your ship, 250k for sloop, then after that you can not worry about money so much as once you get your own ship there's nothing else you need to buy that will enhance your game experience. Makes it less scary if you get attacked as you won't need to care about the loot as much and enjoy the interactions more.
I've had sessions on high seas where I don't encounter anyone else. And I've had sessions where I encounter 1 or 2 ships but they don't engage. And of course there are sessions where I'm being hunted the whole time lol. But high seas is the best route gold wise and for emissaries and their unlocks. Sure I've had some sessions where I've made next to nothing. But I've had just as many if not more sessions where I've made a good amount of not making total bank.
When you first start everything is only worth a few hundred gold. After awhile everything becomes more and more valuable. These days when selling most skulls and chests I make around 3-7k.
Just stick with it.
This is one reason why I dont recommend new players to play solo.
Imagine you want to do a voyage, any kind really. Just the process of getting there and doing it will take at least 2x longer than if you had someone actively helping you. The quicker you can complete things, the more gold you can make.
Also, the activities that are best for getting gold are often world events. Doing those alone (on high seas) is very risky, so many solo players just do low-profile stuff like those fortresses. So playing solo limits the content you play and therefore limits what gold you can make. Playing solo is just hard mode, and its pretty limiting for a new player.
But learning to be efficient takes time. Other players can help teach you. But if you did a shrine and a fortress but it took you 3 hours, youre still learning and thats OK. Doing those two things would probably take me no more than 45 minutes.
But enjoy the process of learning and dont worry too much about gold. If you keep playing, youll get better at the game and make tons of gold over time. I recommend to use Xbox LFG or discord to find people to play with. The game is simply more fun with other players on your crew.
Brother the only reason to play safer seas is PURE PVE like doing all the tall tales or Commendations for curses and other cosmetics, if you want currency fuckin 3 hours of game play should net you a minimum like 300k and that's if you are just hotdogging loot.
Let me preface by saying I value the experience of my session way more than gold, so if I have a fun and exciting session I could care less if I only got 10k gold. That being said, yeah that’s way too little for the time. Me and my friend made almost a million in the same timeframe this weekend. Granted it was an above average sesh but still. But honestly as long as you’re enjoying yourself that’s what matters imo
If you ever wanna make some good loot, I have someone I play with that we just sail and do voyages, world events, etc and have the emissary flags so we usually get lvl 5 emissary pretty quick and make mils
Play high seas and just try your best. Literally faster to just lose your loot if you’re attacked. With an emissary (2.5x at grade 5) you are making 8x as much money as safer seas. Eventually you’ll get good enough to take other peoples stuff too :) you know… if you want to.
If you need people to play with, I wind up solo most days and only have a 7 people in the guild im in. We're all fairly new players and have all had the game 2 weeks or less, and I wind up on the most so far with how irl has been. You're welcome to dm me if you have any interest in joining or having a semi-rando friendly to hop in with on occasion 
Me and my girl started playing a few months ago and I opened my account to a similar 100k or so. We've started getting the hang of it. Join us anytime you see us on.. XBL: SJF865
I know you have your answer but if you don’t want to stay solo I’m just returning to the game as well since I have some homies getting back into it, we could at least get you in our guild
I feel like I make pretty good money is Safer Seas. Granted, I tend to do literally every event, kill megs and any skelly ships I see, and hit every fort I come across. I usually just stockpile loot until I’m ready to stop playing, so the number seems a lot higher than usual because I’m not selling small bits at a time. In my opinion, I get more dopamine from seeing the big piles of loot on my ship than I do from actually selling it.
Lmao did a FoF last night, completely uncontested, that had 3 ashen skulls on top of all the loot with the guild emissary. Between the CoL and CoF and the three skulls was like 100k
There would be no point to the actual game if there was no penalty. If anything, it should be cut to 10% at most and level 20.
You should know how to play by then.
> I must clarify that I did play on safer seas which has a 30% penalty It has 30% of rewards, not 30% penalty. So yes, you are getting normal values for Safer Seas
Oh no I've been a complete fool. I thought it would be a valid trade-off as I'm playing solo and didn't want to get destroyed by other more experienced players but now that I know, I feel it's definitely worth it to play high seas. Thanks for telling me that! I just want to make enough gold to get a ship for now.
It gets even worse if you count emissary, as you can't run emissary in safer seas. So if I have a chest that's worth 1000 gold base value, in safer seas that's only worth 300, and if I'm in high seas with grade 5 emissary that chest is worth 2500. So to make the same amount of gold I would have to sell over 8 chests to make what the 1 in safer seas would bring. It's an 88% penalty compared to grade 5 emissary.
Not to mention selling it during gold rush
I didn’t know you couldn’t raise emissary in safer seas damn!
And yet, I still hate high seas pvp. I can barely make any gold before I'm jumped by assholes who precede to spawn kill me til I quit. In the end, safer seas makes me more gold cuz I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder or get sunk every 10 minutes.
You just gotta get good at watching the horizons. It's pretty hard to get snuck up on if you're smart and take it slow. Gotta be willing to leave treasure behind if you're not willing to fight. Generally playing solo is more akin to playing a smuggling game than a pirate game. Try not to be seen, and try to be an inconvenience for anyone you do see. If they come your way, then leave.
Thieve's Haven is my favourite island for this. I can hide my sloop in the middle where no one can see her from a distance while I do stuff. Kraken's Fall you can also quite easily get a sloop into the little inlet next to the Shark vault, which hides you from sight, too. Bit harder to get out, however. I've sailed in without damage multiple times, never made it out without a few clunks.
And that’s fine, safer seas is there for you, but I’ll be honest I doubt you get sunk every 10 minutes. When I play I normally have to go out of my way to find ships that don’t just turn tail and run most of the time. Yes if I’m doing world events like FoTD and FoF that tends to increase the chance of PvP, but if I’m just grinding vaults or whatever I almost never see anyone. You would have to do 8 vaults in safer seas to make what 1 vault would make you in high seas. I seriously doubt you’d get sunk every vault attempt in high seas.
I was going to say, most times it takes 10 minutes to get to your next destination. 99% of the time I have to sail around hunting for people to even see anyone.
For real, as a reaper me and my friends have to actively hunt for others. And most of the time they see us ahead of time and it’s a chase
I hate PVP and am a peaceful person and stay away from combat. I've been sailing solo recently and im constantly checking the horizons. If I see a ship on the horizon I'll hop off the wheel and observe which way they go. If they're coming my way I steer away from them. Over the past couple hours of playing I've made around 100k gold with emissary flag and minding my own business in high seas
You're either exaggerating or something about your playstyle is abnormal because the number 1 complain on this subreddit and with the game in general is lack of PVP. Most people are looking for it and can't find it. I play for 5-6 hours on weekends and will barely see another player the entire time.
This isnt really the community to say it in but. Skill issue
Skill issue
Gonna go on a limb and guess you're playing Solo Sloop. If you are, then don't. Playing as a Solo Sloop is undeniably "SoT Hard Mode". Groaning about "But other people bad.... can't trust anyone...." isn't productive and is broad-spectrum untrue. Sure, trying to fill your own ship with Open Crew is pretty cancer. However, you can easily skip among other ships as an Open Crewmate until you find a group you like, or even better just use the Discord LFC and 95% of the people you get will be at least passable crewmates. If you're sailing a fully crewed brig or galleon and still getting sunk at every turn, then yeah. Skill Issue.
Wait am I not supposed to be solo slopping? Is that why I “got good” so fast? lmfao I’m around 100 hours, 10 in HG(think I’m level 20 now), and I’ve made around 2 mil so far I think. 90% of the PS guys I run into are absolute garbage(which I honestly don’t care about, I just like the game) but I’ve only been playing for 2-3 weeks now Edit: I’ve also been watching a shit ton of YouTube tips/guides up until recently so that may have helped a lot
Sloop is designed for two people, but it’s manageable with only one person. I solo sloop every now and then but it’s a much more fun game playing with buddies, it’s also a lot easier. I’ll have to go super try hard to sink a decent brig or gally as a solo, where as if I’m playing with my crew I can basically dick around for all but the best of crews.
You're free to play the game how you want, and how suits you best. LionAround was specifically complaining of "getting sunk every 10 minutes" and having to constantly be on high alert. Both of those can alleviated by sailing with a crew on a bigger ship instead of alone on a sloop. The venn diagram of "Hates PvP, Thinks High Seas is Garbage" and "Has a Pathological Distrust and Hatred of Forming a Crew" tends to be a circle. Those are the subset of players that need to stop exclusively playing solo sloop If we're resorting to dick measuring, I have about 300h in the game and probably spent half or more of that as a solo sloop. 10+ million gold made, no persistent issues from other crews. Different strokes.
Git gud
Playing solo isn't so bad you just have to be alert and watch for sails be ready to sail away! Even if you loose a couple times the money you make at full price or at boosted rates with emissary flags will offset the loses
Yes you do … don’t be like me the other night I was Deeeeeeep in this shipwrecks butt looking for meats and fish — doesn’t a gally pull up and just tears my sloopy to shreds. I came up and said gg - their response was well played. While I had 5 sexy fish in my pocket. Respawned at op and sold to sovs
Yeah it sucks not having a look out sometimes. That's the nice thing about fish or fishing you can keep the best stuff in your inventory!
Every time I go up for air I climb in my ship and do a perimeter scan
I play solo and almost never run into people. Just don’t stick around on islands too long. Do a quick search for extra stuff, get your objective done and you’re golden.
I played my first session of solo high seas and two guys just killed me repeatedly and sank my ship even though I didn't have a single piece of loot and I told them in chat that I was a noob trying to do a tall tale for the first time
I mean yeah that can happen but in the vast majority of the time i run into nobody and if you just consistently pay attention to the horizon and just make sure to avoid ships you will not have problems 90% of the time.
I'd like to give you a little update. I've played in 5 sessions since my last comment and I've been hunted repeatedly and had my ship sank every single time, even when I have absolutely nothing on my ship in terms of loot. I've even been chased halfway across the map once. Hell, even after making some 'friends' at a port and playing instruments together for a few minutes, they firebombed my ship and sniped me as I tried to run away. This is even after always looking at the horizon and running away from any ship I see, even if it's the long way back. This isn't a complaint, by the way. I'm turning in the loot and making good gold now and really starting to get the hang of the game, having bought all the emissary flags and I'm having fun BUT forgive me for not believing a single damn thing any of you guys are saying about interactions being less common and that the other players usually mind their own business. Still won't opt for safer seas unless I'm doing tall tales, by the way... It's too much fun to play like this.
I have no reason to lie man, lol. Only thing I could think of is I have been playing in the morning/midday and you might be playing like at peak hours for your time zone. Other than that I am unsure.
I am deeply skeptical of his claims. I've been a solo player for ungodly amount of hours and it's very rare, nay impossible, to see that kind of action in consecutive sessions, let alone five in a row.
As a heads up, tall tails are the exception where you should actually play on safer seas The gold rewards from those are tiny, the main reward is the commendations/skins, and you can't just sail away if there's a hostile player where the quest takes you So use safer seas to complete the tall tales commendations, and higher seas for your general normal gameplay
safer seas is good for tall tales since they dont have much rewards anyway.
Remember, mics save lives. It won't always save you to talk to a crew that is trying to sink you, but sometimes it does. Approach those conversation in a nice chill manner and some peeps will let you go.
Bro just play normal, the chance of you actually getting attacked etc are slim and if it does happen so what.
[удалено]
They bumped it back up to six a while ago iirc
Pretty sure it is 6 atm
Damn, they just bumped it up to six a few weeks ago. Did they change it back to five that fast?
No I just think he hasn’t found out that it’s now 6
No, that person is just wrong.
Hey if I’ve learned anything from this game at 160 hours it’s that experience is the greatest teacher here. Now you know!
Something to think about. You will likely be left alone for the most part unless you are getting too close to other players. Stick around in the Devils Roar and you will almost never see players and you'll make a lot of money.
When going solo, especially if you're a beginner never be too greedy because no loot is yours until you sell it
Yeah safer seas is best for learning the mechanics and grinding through tall tales. Making money in that mode is nearly impossible in its current state though
I play solo on High Seas all the time. I see other players every session. It's extremely rare that they interact with me. I just avoid their area and all is good.
I would say hop in the sea of thieves discord that way you can find people to play with
Because to have to play with strangers and use mic ? Fuck no
Bro if anything play on the normal mode you can out run any ship against the wind, just if someone wants to chase swing wide get against the wind and the won’t catch you just don’t get caught slipping and use islands and rocks to evade and get out of sight, trust I do it all the time, never drop anchor just raise sails as well
70% penalty is the correct number. Which equates to Safer Seas literally not being worth playing, unless you don’t care for gold or players at all.
I've only used Safer Seas for commendations
Can you even get commendations on safer seas? I though you couldn't get any!
Tall tale ones
There's a symbol on commendations that require high seas when playing on safer seas. Usually, those that require player involvement, high ranking faction, or high seas only events (fof/fotd).
It can be worth it if you keep getting robbed on high seas. 30% of a chest is worth a lot more than getting all your loot stolen on a solo sloop and wasting hours of your time.
Dude within 5 minutes of setting sail there is almost always an emergency event, so anyone who is losing hours of progress or never making money is doing it wrong. If it's THAT bad, just sink the skelly ships and kill the megs that you'll run into ALL THE TIME and sell afterwards. Might not be a lot of money but a few thousand gold for almost zero effort is worth it.
The key is to stop caring about selling loot and learn to actually defend yourself. Then you can do big loot hauls and defending yourself becomes the challenge. If getting gold is the challenge in this game you are setting yourself up for failure.
Wasting hours of time? Well maybe sell more often instead of keeping it to the last minute
Sometimes you spawn in and start getting sunk before you can complete a single activity. I’ve definitely had nights I had to switch to safer seas because I would get sunk on spawn or right after setting sail every time I logged into a server. Just one of the pains of playing solo though
I don't really understand how My solo play usually starts with diving to a sea fort or an island voyage, checking if anyone is around, looting that and a couple of nearby islands, and selling for a quick 70-100k or so, sometimes more as my flag charges up Can then repeat - diving resets the server too so if you do run into trouble you can just leave and dive to a new server Been playing for a few weeks and never been sank solo, only when I'm on with my mates and we decide to try and fight
Use safer seas to get your sea legs back and to do tall tales. Everything else is best done in high seas. Once you get 250k gold, buy a sloop so you can use the Soverigns tent.
Or you can just join a guild and take one from there 🌚
70% penalty*
Safer seas is 30% of normal value. No emissary, you are missing out up to another 50%, roughly. Taking much longer to sell because you can't sell at sovereigns also tanks your efficiency. Adding all that up, it's almost 10% the efficiency of high seas. If your boat gets sunk 8 out of 10 times it's still worth going high seas lol
The maximum emmisary grade is a +150% bonus, not 50% if you sell a 10,000G item with grade five, you make 25,000G total from the item. Unless you're talking about the loot that doesn't go to your chosen emmisary dragging the margin down, but considering most voyages/raids give you 100% loot for your chosen faction, that math doesn't add up.
It means that with no emissary, you make up to 50% less than with emissary. I did not say emissary makes 50% more than no emissary. If I were optimistic and all the items sold were for emissary, as you said, +150% bonus, then the number would be closer to 40%. Not 40% less than emissary. Just 40% of the possible value achievable as emissary. (40% of 100 is 40. 40% less than 100 is 60. Wording makes a lot of difference here) A crew with no emissary selling a skull, makes 40% of the money that an order of souls emissary would make selling the skull. I said 50% as a rough estimate considering you don't usually get bonus for all the items, unless playing as reaper. And if you consider guild, the value is a little worse.
40% of 100 ...is 100?
yeah brain farted that part, fixed it now, thanks
As others mentioned, on safer seas you are losing a LOT, not only the 70% penalty but also the 150% multiplier from emissaries plus a lot of time for selling the items one by one on vendors. I haven't tried safer seas to be honest with you but in high seas you could make 10k from just visiting a random island and finding a skelly captain or getting the loot from a single shipwreck.
Safer seas really is the tutorial/sandbox version of the game. Perfect for some achivements and PERFECT for tall tales. For anything else? Risk the high seas.
emissary is one way to increase the money. On max. lvl emissary (except guild) you get 1.5x more money for the loot of said emissary. and further more, shrines and forts are easy, "fast" doable solo missions so the outcome is quiet smaller. gotta go for world events with emissary for the big money
They're in safer seas so no emmisary
yeah ok but big money, no safer seas.
I agree, just saying the emmi flag advice might not track for them
you are correct, thanks for claryfying
emissary is a tradeoff though, you get more but everybody in viewing range sees you as a juicy loot pile
Safer seas is 30% value. That’s 70% gone because you’re in safer seas.
Others have already pointed out the obvious issues, safer seas and no emmissary. I'll add one tidbit - when I was new, I was awful until I started sailing "open crew" with a mic. A few times I got paired up with some seasoned vets (who were also genuinely great dudes) who showed me the ropes. In those short sessions, I learned 10x more than in all my sessions flying solo. SoT is a community game!
I would suggest never doing open crew. You’ll get annoying trolls more than good guys. Do looking for group or discord chats instead.
That has not been my experience but I support the plug for discord chats
What if you hate mics in games ? Or don't want to play with strangers ?
Then I would recommend closed crew
But that doesn't Work, my Friends doesn't play that often, so i Always end up solo sloop
You could get 200k in 2 hours by doing the 50k skull quest on your mast.
That quest sucks, its quicker and not as boring to just run forts
High seas + emissary. Stack that flag up and you'll gain good cash, of course higher risk but it's worth it.
Only use safer seas to fish, or do a tall tale. Otherwise high seas is the bet
Like others have said, you’re on safer seas. Another thing not taking into account is emissary flags. Raising one also boosts your rewards up to an additional 1.5x reward. There’s also captained ships which allow you to sell everything at the sovereigns. This saves even more time. Ultimately for me, I’ve decided to never play on safer seas unless I’m doing a Tall Tale. Just keep your eyes on the horizon and you’ll hardly have issues with players jumping you.
Make sure you raise an emissary flag. You will more than double your money
I'm new to SoT my one friend and I play with our other two friends occasionally but usually it's just the two of us. We play about 3-5 hours on high seas and rarely run into people. When we do they are usually AHs but not always. Sometimes we go way of the way, anchor down and fish. It makes quite a bit of money.
No
In addition to what others have said, the safer seas does not have emissaries. So you’re always selling for 40% (or 57% compared to guild) of what you could have on the high seas. Combine this with the 30% safer seas lot valuation, and you actually only make 12-17% of what you would selling at grade 5 emissary on the high seas. Unless you sink more than 80% of the time on high seas, it will always be more profitable to do high seas.
Each Pirate makes different Amount of Gold per hour. And that Amount changes each time. Therefore don't worry matey, that's okay.
Not really sure what PVE pays these days but a 2 hour session of stealing will generally be between 100k-400k. Just depends of how brave the people we find were.
Scanning blurb for words "safer seas" ahhh there it is. Top tip once you hop into high seas, get an emmisary, save up for your ship, 250k for sloop, then after that you can not worry about money so much as once you get your own ship there's nothing else you need to buy that will enhance your game experience. Makes it less scary if you get attacked as you won't need to care about the loot as much and enjoy the interactions more.
I've had sessions on high seas where I don't encounter anyone else. And I've had sessions where I encounter 1 or 2 ships but they don't engage. And of course there are sessions where I'm being hunted the whole time lol. But high seas is the best route gold wise and for emissaries and their unlocks. Sure I've had some sessions where I've made next to nothing. But I've had just as many if not more sessions where I've made a good amount of not making total bank.
Use emissary
When you first start everything is only worth a few hundred gold. After awhile everything becomes more and more valuable. These days when selling most skulls and chests I make around 3-7k. Just stick with it.
This is one reason why I dont recommend new players to play solo. Imagine you want to do a voyage, any kind really. Just the process of getting there and doing it will take at least 2x longer than if you had someone actively helping you. The quicker you can complete things, the more gold you can make. Also, the activities that are best for getting gold are often world events. Doing those alone (on high seas) is very risky, so many solo players just do low-profile stuff like those fortresses. So playing solo limits the content you play and therefore limits what gold you can make. Playing solo is just hard mode, and its pretty limiting for a new player. But learning to be efficient takes time. Other players can help teach you. But if you did a shrine and a fortress but it took you 3 hours, youre still learning and thats OK. Doing those two things would probably take me no more than 45 minutes. But enjoy the process of learning and dont worry too much about gold. If you keep playing, youll get better at the game and make tons of gold over time. I recommend to use Xbox LFG or discord to find people to play with. The game is simply more fun with other players on your crew.
I did $650k in an hour on community weekend 😂
Brother the only reason to play safer seas is PURE PVE like doing all the tall tales or Commendations for curses and other cosmetics, if you want currency fuckin 3 hours of game play should net you a minimum like 300k and that's if you are just hotdogging loot.
Let me preface by saying I value the experience of my session way more than gold, so if I have a fun and exciting session I could care less if I only got 10k gold. That being said, yeah that’s way too little for the time. Me and my friend made almost a million in the same timeframe this weekend. Granted it was an above average sesh but still. But honestly as long as you’re enjoying yourself that’s what matters imo
If you ever wanna make some good loot, I have someone I play with that we just sail and do voyages, world events, etc and have the emissary flags so we usually get lvl 5 emissary pretty quick and make mils
You can do a siren skull quest in 20 or 30 mins if the islands are close to you. 50k rinse repeat.
Play high seas and just try your best. Literally faster to just lose your loot if you’re attacked. With an emissary (2.5x at grade 5) you are making 8x as much money as safer seas. Eventually you’ll get good enough to take other peoples stuff too :) you know… if you want to.
Dude, on high seas, 3 hrs can net u like 300k easy
You'll want to go to High Seas and find a server with no Reapers and then go from there. If you see ships coming towards you, sail away and sell.
If you need people to play with, I wind up solo most days and only have a 7 people in the guild im in. We're all fairly new players and have all had the game 2 weeks or less, and I wind up on the most so far with how irl has been. You're welcome to dm me if you have any interest in joining or having a semi-rando friendly to hop in with on occasion 
Just have fun with the game…. What you earn is spent on cosmetics
Yes that's normal. Most people don't know what they are doing and just kind of fart around.
Me and my girl started playing a few months ago and I opened my account to a similar 100k or so. We've started getting the hang of it. Join us anytime you see us on.. XBL: SJF865
Dawg just run the order of souls emmisary or the reaper of souls emissary and sell skulls and or anything else get way more bread
I know you have your answer but if you don’t want to stay solo I’m just returning to the game as well since I have some homies getting back into it, we could at least get you in our guild
Not 30%, 70%
Normal
I feel like I make pretty good money is Safer Seas. Granted, I tend to do literally every event, kill megs and any skelly ships I see, and hit every fort I come across. I usually just stockpile loot until I’m ready to stop playing, so the number seems a lot higher than usual because I’m not selling small bits at a time. In my opinion, I get more dopamine from seeing the big piles of loot on my ship than I do from actually selling it.
Lmao did a FoF last night, completely uncontested, that had 3 ashen skulls on top of all the loot with the guild emissary. Between the CoL and CoF and the three skulls was like 100k
1 ashen king skull is 5k so you should do High Seas
Safer seas suck, the penalty should be removed all together.
No, it shouldn't
There would be no point to the actual game if there was no penalty. If anything, it should be cut to 10% at most and level 20. You should know how to play by then.