Weird Behaviors on the High Seas

I don’t have THAT many hours on the Sea of Thieves, but I’ve played enough to see plenty of weird things. Pirates are curious creatures, however they sometimes act in ways that don’t make much sense.

The first weird behavior is floating in the middle of the ocean with your anchor completely lowered and your sails down. It is the sign of a newbie, but I’ve seen Dark Adventurer ships do this. Leaving your anchor and sails down is probably the worst thing you can do. If you are parking your ship, you should ALWAYS keep your anchor raised and just have your sails raised instead. This way, if someone approaches you, it is WAY faster to just lower your sails and speed off than it is to raise your anchor. But we’ve seen plenty of people do this in the middle of the ocean, with nothing else around. I get that there are shipwrecks and underwater shrines, however those can be done in ten minutes max. Why do people hang around empty spots though and, more importantly, why are they there for so long?

The same question can be said about people who are at outposts for hours at a time. While doing Gold Hoarder Vaults and sailing from island to island picking up map pieces, I’ve seen people sat at an outpost for so damn long. I understand that it takes time to gather supplies and set off, especially if you go to the Pirate Legend Hideout, but there’s only so much you can do on one outpost. What are you doing there?

Plenty of people also just run away, and will do so for hours on end if they have to. There’s this idea that people just chase you for the loot, but people also chase you because they like to chase you and want to sink you. Emissary flags are also very valuable. Even if you dump your treasure overboard, an emissary flag is much more desirable, especially to a Reaper’s Bones Emissary. There’s also the idea that the chasee is wasting the chaser’s time, but many chasers simply enjoy chasing. There’s something thrilling about slowly catching up to someone and hunting them down. After getting caught though, some people just sink themselves, rather than fighting, and all I wonder is why didn’t they just sink themselves in the first place if they’re just going to give up?

One other weird behavior I’ve seen is scuttling your ship when you’re about to lose. As far as I’m concerned, if you’ve already invested in the battle, you might as well fight until the end. There’s always a chance you can come back. Scuttling just guarantees your loss. At most, you save ten seconds of bucketing or wood supplies. But I’ve seen this happen to ships that have attacked us first. Like, they attack us, realise they can’t win then scuttle themselves because… well, maybe they’re cowards? Seems like a waste of effort to me.

However, the weirdest behavior I’ve seen is from a level 5 Guild Emissary. Having a Guild Emissary flag is pretty hard, and only competent and oft-playing guilds can get one, with the best way being via Hourglass. So having a rank 5 Guild Emissary flag means that you’re at least somewhat competent. This ship we saw was a brig, with the Hydra sails, Legendary Guardian ship title and a fancy hull, so we assumed they’d be good at PvP and would be willing to fight us. After all, Legendary Guardian is a reward for a high Hourglass rank. However, these guys immediately ran, heading out to the edge of the map, before turning and briefly fighting us. However, their cannons stopped firing and Bacxaber went and boarded them, only to find no one was on board. The ship was empty. So we sank the ship and took their loot. It’s as if they just gave up and logged out! Too bad for them, we got to rank 5 from their loot alone. But why did they give up, especially since they had way more supplies than we did?

People are weird, and on the Sea of Thieves, people are even weirder. Still, at least these people are all fun to sink.