You get a reward for playing for at least an hour each week, but it's not 'Here is this week's reward'. It's more like climbing a ladder - you start at the bottom and each week you play, you go up one rung to the next reward on the list.
Most weeks are gold but there are special ship cosmetics, weapons and clothing thrown in there (every fifth week initially, but the ones added to the top more recently are more regular). I'm 17 weeks away from the complete Silver Blade ship set, which you can only get from Insiders…
Playing last night, we took on the Athena's Run of Thieves' Haven (I think that's what it's called?). Started as emissaries, but lost that at level 2 when I made a silly mistake involving a skeleton with a gunpowder barrel.
We managed to avoid any player entanglements or Reapers along the way, but the number of enemies spawning was genuinely bonkers - we fought 2 skeleton sloops, a Shadomaw megalodon, and the kraken, along with more skeletons, ghosts and ocean crawlers than I could count.
So that was was fun, even if we made disappointingly little progress in terms of rep, and hardly any money.
Athena quests annoy me, but I understand the thinking behind it. There are only 20 levels in Athena as opposed to the 75 in Hoarders, Order, Merchant and Reaper (or 50 in Hunters or Sea Dogs), so the obvious way to ensure you can't blitz through it is to make the missions harder (read: more enemies that take more hits to kill and move faster) and the reputation value of items infinitely small. It also doesn't help that Athena items aren't guaranteed - you're just as likely to dig up a regular Captain's chest or a mermaid gem than you are anything of worth to the Mysterious Stranger. Using emissary levels to increase the value of items you do get is all well and good, but Athena emissaries are like honey to Reapers… you did well to avoid any PVP conflict, for sure, especially given that the Thieves Haven runs are uber predictable and leave you wide open to attack.
We've only done one run, and we hated it because the enemy spawn rate combined with the number of hits it takes to kill one enemy is ludicrous. Plus, Thieves Haven is a horrible island to find dig spots on, so it takes ages to complete. We generally stick to regular Athena quests, usually in the Roar so we're less likely to be spotted. We rarely run emissary so Reapers can't see us. Right now, we're both Lv9 Athena, so nearly halfway… but that's after over a year of playing as Pirate Legends. Yikes.
I'm going to assume the skeleton with the gunpowder barrel was carrying an Ancient Keg of Black Powder as opposed to a usual boom barrel… when you see those, you really need to try and take out the legs to keep the barrel intact. Those are worth a good chunk of gold and rep (relatively speaking compared to the value of other items). That said, they're also insanely powerful when they explode and can sink a galleon in seconds… risk/reward and all that.
No, regular gunpowder, but I tried to be clever sniping it while it was ambling on the shallows right next to the sloop. Sarah was halfway across the island, so the holes and fire had done for the ship before she could get to it.
We did the new adventure last Monday. It's… fine? A very small slice of content, which explains why it's only available for two weeks - it disappears next Thursday, I believe. Doesn't take long to do, unless you're an absolute bellend like me who accidentally sells the item you need to be holding to complete the adventure, rather than talking to Belle about it first. We had to do the whole second stage of it again because of that. Gah.
I'm interested to see where this is going to go. We've avoided doing anything more on Insiders to prevent being spoilt, though we have dabbled in the upcoming sea forts which are nice, but appear to be broken for now.
Why didn't we do the adventure as soon as it launched, you ask? Because everyone else was busy doing it, meaning no-one spotted us sailing around with an Athena's Fortune emissary flag, grabbing lots of rare loot, that's why. Hurrah for misdirection!
Season 6 starts on Thursday, Ninchilla. Adventure #2 is good fun! Not so convinced by the S6 Plunder Pass, so I won't be buying it. But forts are great, the music is awesome.
Got stuck into the Gold and Glory weekend, managed to stay away from people enough to get up to grade 5 Athena's Fortune emissary three times in two days (and an extra grade 4 once). Ended up getting caught when we go too greedy and tried to stack emissary quests, but we still managed to lower the flag and cash in 90% of the loot before someone killed and sunk us. Six hours well spent. Went up two full levels of Athena, so I'm two thirds to 16. That'd be great, except they're increasing the max level to 30 soon… I'm only just over halfway. Damn it.
Sarah's sister has started playing this recently, so we've been Brigging is about on the seas this last week or so.
Hopped on last night, not intending to be long; two skeleton ships, a kraken in a storm, a shipwreck, two megalodons, and a frustratingly persistent (non-reaper) galleon pursuit later, we hadn't manage to finish a single one of our Order of Souls bounty maps, but we were still rank 4 emissaries - so that was fun!
Even with the addition of the new sea forts, I dunno how you can be quick playing Sea of Thieves.
We've taken to just doing emergent stuff as we sail around, rather than doing specific missions. The only exception is when it's Gold & Glory, like it was this weekend, where we focus on the only things we still need Reputation for. Right now, we're concentrating on Athena - today, we did three Devil's Roar Athena missions, got up to Grade 5 Athena twice and picked up two sets of emissary quests. Thanks to five Chests of Legends and a multitude of Athena crates, kegs, trinkets and skulls, we went up over two levels today alone… currently sitting at 18 and a half. So close to 20! Except they're increasing it to 30 early in May, dammit.
I'm still only rank 3 Athena. Even doing their voyages seems unreliable in terms of getting anything much of use, and given that we only have ever have 2 hours to play, realistically (even if it often turns into 3, as a result of pursuit or emergent stuff), it's hard to get much of a head of steam up.
Athena is very much the equivalent of trying to carve rock with a plastic spoon. Having only 20 levels makes it seem easy but, as you said, the loot collection is unreliable and the value for reputation is so tiny. At least this upcoming Legendary voyage is confirmed to be able to get you to grade 5 emissary in one outing…
Ninchilla, if you attempt this at some point, we're happy to server hop to try and find you so we can help with the final summoning bit (you need five pirates). Just shout when you're likely to be on and we'll try to align.
We did it, at last. It's epic when you can actually get it started, but that's a big sticking point. The whole thing saw us having to alliance with a crew of kids (!) which then led to us playing with them for the entire session, including having to protect them from a scummy galleon crew who thought they'd make an easy target to steal a fort from. Fun, but one of the kids was annoying as hell and ruined the whole thing right at the end by calling my partner a 'b***h'.
Ah. I don't know when we'll be able to attempt it; one of our regular trio is based in New Zealand, which makes organising things a bit more tricky, especially midweek. It'll be Saturday (at the earliest) before we can give it a go, I suspect.
Ah. I don't know when we'll be able to attempt it; one of our regular trio is based in New Zealand, which makes organising things a bit more tricky, especially midweek. It'll be Saturday (at the earliest) before we can give it a go, I suspect.
I watched the leaked footage of Skull and Bones yesterday - sadly, the link's been disabled now. Ugh. I can see what they're going for, but I don't think it's for me. They're going for ultra-shiny, uber realistic visuals with boats crammed full of people (all AI). Everything just looks so… Ubisoft videogame.
When it eventually comes out, I'll know for sure but right now, no thanks.
Gah… I'm out at a party. BUT. We don't intend to stay late and we're already an hour ahead… I'll post here if we get back at a sensible hour, or check on Xbox to see if you're on.
I've not played this for ages. I've heard the game has found it feet now which is cool. With season passes and stuff. I always loved the idea behind it. The story's me and a friend created made me cry with laughter. I really should jump back into it to be honest. Anyone played grounded? That's a game I want to try, but I get put of games as a service.
Yeah, it's a far cry from where it was, there's so much stuff to do now. We regularly spend five hours just sailing around doing emergent stuff, taking on events and other stuff as we happen across it rather than having specific missions in mind. It's our main game, for sure.
Grounded is the 'Honey, I Shrunk The Kids' game? Not played it, but it looks interesting.
So we summoned the four other megalodons required as a precursor to the Advertised Ghost, but had a server jump on the way back from the last one, which reset all the others. Seems like it's really designed to have multiple crews working on it together from the off, fetching different Meg effigies and regrouping for the finale.
If you've placed the four effigies, then those deeds are done now. My suggestion would be to do some server hopping next time you play (have you and your partner log into separate servers to cover double the ground) and check the horizon. If all four effigies are on the table, there's a blue beacon in the sky to let people know. Hop until you find a server where the beacon is lit, jump in together and head on over to it, then hope for another crew.
We're in full 'help other crew' mode for it, so we can always look to try and jump in if we're free.
It's literally just starting and restarting. Choose your setup (ship type, closed or open crew), hit Set Sail and when you've loaded in, run outside and take a look. Check the tables for emissaries (especially Reapers), look at the sky and see what the world event is. If the conditions meet what you're aiming for - so, when we do Athena, we look for a server with no Reapers or other Athena - then the other person joins on you using the Xbox friends menu. If not, quit to the title screen and do it again.
It's how we'd look to join you if you end up doing the event: you'd tell us where you are exactly and what the world event is, then raise your Reapers Mark flag on the ship. We jump into servers and if there's a Reapers Mark flag raised exactly where you've said you are with the same world event, we've found your server. If it's not there, we try again. That can be a bit laborious, but it works…
Portal hopping is something completely different: you can use the checkpoints from the Pirate Life Tale 2 or 4 to generate portals that take you to the alternate realm. When you get through, you simply cancel the tale and it sends you back to a different server. You get to keep all the resources you were carrying (food, wood, cannonballs), as well as your emissary flag if you're flying one, but you need to cash in all loot before you go or it'll be lost. It's a good way of escaping to safety if you're being harassed by a rival crew, but you don't want to quit playing.
Twice this weekend, Debs and I have set off the Fort of the Damned. Not because we want to do it, but it means we can then sit right by it and fish for Battlegills. Worked fine yesterday, but it bit us in the arse today when someone came over pretending to be friendly, then kegged us because they wanted our supplies (which were abundant, to be fair). We scuttled immediately so they got nothing.
Weird thing was, they did the fort while we poottled around doing other bits. When they were done, the two Reapers chests inside… vanished. So when the coast was clear, we went back to check - they'd just buried them immediately to stop us tracking their boat. Yoink.
We've managed to get on a server where some of the Megs had been done, and grabbed the remaining two; if anyone is able to server-hop in now for credit/assist, please feel free!
I'll try and remember to edit this post once it's done/we've given up.
EDIT: Done! Managed to find another crew willing to play the song, at least, then we somehow survived the actual encounter.
I hate ghost ships.
Then, right as we were finishing up, a Reaper galleon rocked up and took all the loot. Ah well, primary objective completed, at least!
Yay! Glad you managed it. Staying afloat is a challenge, especially when you're fighting the meg, then ghost ships, then the meg AND ghost ships. But it's all pretty epic, from the moment she comes flying out of the water right by the boat to when Pendragon comes storming in on the Blackwytch to help out. And that music! Great stuff.
The loot from the event is pretty balls, so you didn't lose much. Just glad you got it finished in time!
Some of the stuff coming up that's general game as opposed to limited time content is getting me quite excited. The Roaring Clive shall sail once more!
Only if you know the game. The hat and some other bits give it away.
Spoiler - click to showIt's DeMarco, one of the two sibling Sea Dogs that used to run the Arena before the mode got shut down. When Arena closed, you could find him lounging around outside it, half-cut on grog and talking about going off on an adventure. But it appears he's been… MOIDERED.
The mysteries mix up stuff in and out of the game, so I guess I need to go find him in-game to see if there are any clues about what happened to him. The map bundle might come in useful…
Found him. Apart from the option to 'inspect' the body, there's nothing there and nothing to do. Went to the Arena to see if there were any clues or if his sister was around, nothing. I'm really quite disappointed, I was hoping there'd be clues to find or a trail to follow, but it's nothing more than was already in the video. So bah.
The announcement video contained a bunch of letters in the background that spelled out NEWS; whether that's a reference to cardinal directions, or a hint that there's something in the news page, I'm not sure.
Out of curiosity, I checked the news post announcing the start of the thing. The word "Mystery" is mentioned in the post 5 times, and is followed by one of these words: "with", "which", "and", "is", and "begins". (note: originally I thought this was more significant because I made a mistake and thought the pattern repeated twice…)
EDIT: you can rearrange those words into "Begins with which is_and". Missing L in island? Probably stretching. Gonna have to buy some red string.
