Krakens and World Events
In the Sea of Thieves, there’s always some sort of event going on. By ‘event’, I mean a world event, a timed, optional thing you can sail to and do. These events are situated somewhere in the game world, and you tend to have to sail to them to do them. World events appear one at a time, and will disappear either after a crew has finished the event, or it times out on its own.
Skeleton and Ghost fleets feel like the most common world events, and generally take the longest to do. Both events involve fighting other ships, skeletal or ghostly, out in the open ocean. Skeleton fleets have less ships to sink, but generally need more damage before they sink. Then again, you need 24 direct hits on the final ghost ship boss in order to sink it, so it all kinda evens out. Ghost fleets generally have way, way more ships though. On the plus side, at least Ghost Fleets mark their treasure with floating wraiths. You can then sail up to the wraiths and harpoon everything on board. Skeleton Fleets on the other hand, you have to remember where they sank, as that’s where the loot will spawn. However, there’s no markers or anything, so it’s really easy to lose hard-earned treasure.
My favourite world event though is the Ashen Lord. A massive red tornado appears in the sky over a large island, and on it appears an Ashen Lord, a fiery, skeletal boss which can cause the sea to boil and have meteors falling from the sky, all the while summoning minions to make your life harder. These fights are chaotic and often rather enjoyable. Plus, on top of that, Ashen Lords actually have decent loot. Ashen stuff does sell for a pretty penny, but it does end up scattered on the island around where the Ashen Lord dies. So it’s easy to miss loot.
Skeleton forts are more land-orientated. A fort can become a Skeleton fort as a world event, and you can sail to that island to fight waves of skeletons. I quite like these, and you get some skeleton variants to fight. Forts of Fortune are basically normal Skeleton forts but harder. You can get more loot and treasure, but the fight will feature harder skeletons and the final boss is replaced by an Ashen Lord. Skeleton forts are definitely fun, but you need to keep an eye out for enemy ships, because there’s a massive skull above these events, which screams “THERE’S LOOT HERE!”. Still, if you have a guard on your ship, the risk is lessened.
But during those down times, there’s something that lurks beneath the waves. During the short gap between world events, the Kraken has a chance to rise from the waves and attempt to pull your ship under. The water goes black and toxic, your boat comes to a standstill and massive tentacles with mouths shoot out of the water, with the ability to suck people up off the ship. Tentacles can also wrap themselves around the ship, causing a bunch of damage.
Now, I absolutely hate Kraken attacks. They’re tedious and completely random, and you can’t really run away from them. They’re not even that interesting to fight, you just shoot the tentacles, hopefully with a cannon. And the whole fight takes way longer if you’re playing on a galleon. It’s more tedious than anything else, and the loot from defeating the Kraken isn’t amazing. You mostly just get some meat. What annoys me the most though is that there is no way to actually avoid the Kraken. It just picks a ship at random, and if it happens to be you, tough luck.
World events are generally alright, even though they can attract unwarranted attention. But that’s way better than a Kraken attack, which is tedious at best. Stupid thing isn’t even a real cephalopod either. It has a skeleton, which means it’s some sort of vertebrate, not your traditional squid-like horror.