So Much Loot that it Caused Performance Issues

The nice thing about Sea of Thieves is that every single outing has something different going on. The previous time I played, we had a sloop following us for several miles, playing a game of cat and mouse. This time however, we had, well, insanity on our hands. What started out as a normal Veil mission ended up in…

Well…

Uh…

I don’t know. It’s hard to describe.

We’d just finished our first Veil quest when this happened. The plan was to spend our day doing Veil voyages, getting progress towards one of the best hats in the game. And, funnily enough, our first quest turned out pretty well. Briefly. As we finished clearing everything up, we spotted a ship barreling towards us. Clearly, they wanted our loot, and were happy enough to come and steal it from us. I mean, that’s understandable, they were a Reaper and we were doing Athena things.

This Reaper charged at us like lunatic, sailing at top speed. Unfortunately, whatever their plan was, it was ruined by us, raining cannonballs on their small ship, and Bacxaber jumping on board their ship to finish them off. Our counterattack happened so smoothly that they didn’t get the chance to fight back. There was some attempt to still kill us, but with their boat disappearing under the waves, we all knew they were done.

And that there was pretty much where this story would have ended, but then Bacxaber spotted something big and dark in the water.

Somehow, there was so much loot in the water, that it was causing me to drop frames. It wasn’t just the spoils of a Fort of the Damned or a Veil mission, there was enough there that would have taken hours and hours of gameplay in order to collect. And all of this was hidden in one simple sloop, run by a solo player. In fact, this loot had been so well hidden that we didn’t notice it at first. After all, we’d just sunk a sloop, they’re small and normally don’t have room for so many chests.

Immediately, our game plan changed. Our Veil mission was put on hold while we spent, I kid you not, 10 minutes trying to pick up all the chests, gems and curiosities that were now floating in the water. Unfortunately, some of the loot faded into the abyss, but there was so much that we couldn’t do much about it. We got all the valuable stuff, at least. And then front half of our ship was now inundated with crates.

Once everything had been picked up now, we needed to be super careful. After all, we were still emissaries, and now we were most likely the biggest target in the server. Not only was there a chance of retaliation from the sloop we destroyed, but there were other ships on the server as well. Pretty much any of them could have come by to take what we had so easily claimed. And with the fucky framerate from all this loot, we also had to be careful and not crash or anything.

We needed to get to an outpost and fast. So we decided to go to the second closest outpost, hoping that if the reaper sloop came back, they’d be waiting at the closer outpost and be none the wiser. The whole journey had an odd atmosphere, a large amount of confusion and amazement, as well as paranoia that someone could attack us at any moment. Well, I was paranoid. Bacxaber and Fox seemed pretty calm. Up until we reached the outpost. However, we didn’t immediately start selling. We spammed some voice commands, then ran across the island, checking for any potential ninjas or other players. After a good five minutes of checking, the coast was clear and it was time to sell.

And sell.

And sell.

It took fricking ages to sell all that loot. We also came away with 5 emissary flags, which we swiftly sold at the Reapers Hideout. None of them were particularly high, but 5 different emissary flags on one ship is still quite a lot. At the end of the day, we made nearly half a million gold. 500,000 gold, all salvaged from one tiny sloop.

Other stuff happened in our session, but, frankly, it was all pretty dull compared to the mass selling of stolen loot. After it was all over, I had over 5 million gold, which is a HUGE amount considering I’m not even a Pirate Legend yet.

BUT WHY?

While it’s awesome hearing about all this loot, there is a big question hanging in the air. Why did that sloop attack us, and why did they have so many chests and relics? The sloop attacked first, charging forward recklessly, we were just acting in self-defense. We all assumed they just wanted our freshly-finished Veil rewards. Where did they even hide it all? And, most importantly, why were they stacking loot? Everyone knows there’s a threshold where you want to sell, before you become too obvious a target. This sloop though, it’s all… pretty strange.

I guess we’ll never know.

Either way, sorry Reaper Sloop, you lost big time. And we got away with half a million gold.