5. Loot & Rewards
Loot
Loot drops from fishing and from defeating enemies in Pillage, including other players if they were carrying anything when you sent them to the bottomless depths. Loot appears as a glowing treasure chest that you sail over to pick up, and any ship can pick up any chest, doubloons included.
Current values:
- The floating chests near the map center drop 250 Doubloons each
- Enemy and boss kills drop 1,000 Doubloon chests; a world boss such as the Kraken sheds several as it dies
A chest earned by a kill belongs to the crew that earned it for the first 60 seconds. After that, it is anyone's.
Doubloons in the hold take cargo space like any other haul: every 250 doubloons aboard fills one cargo unit. Doubloons can be used across the game, and every one you earn writes into event currency as long as you have the energy for it that day.
Encounter points
Loot during a pillage is split according to encounter points, assigned to everyone aboard a ship when an encounter is completed. An encounter is anything from defeating a monster, to landing a fish, to selling a hold of cargo. Each player's encounter points appear at the end of a pillage as a star, and the share of the loot they receive is set mainly by their portion of the total.
By default the captain of a ship earns 50% of the encounter points per encounter, and the crew split the remaining 50%.
Read this before you complain about a split If you leave a ship, you forfeit 75% of your encounter points. What remains is mailed to you in game.
The 50/50 split is per encounter. If people join and leave your ship during a pillage, the final ratio will not look like a clean 50/50, because some share was lost to leavers or earned by the captain before the crew came aboard.
Sinking
When your ship is sunk in Pillage, 75% of your loot drops in a chest for whoever is nearby. The other 25% stays with you. This is the risk half of the mode: a full hold is worth sailing carefully with.
Extraction
The way to keep everything is an extraction portal, at your faction's port island. Reaching one banks 100% of what you are carrying. A cautious captain who extracts twice usually beats a bold one who sinks once.
Fishing
Fishing is a reliable way to fill a hold and does not require winning a fight. Every catch lands as sellable goods, and the species tells you what you caught: a copperfish is copper ore, a linenfish is linen cloth, and so on. Players who go deeper into the more dangerous parts of the arena haul up better fish, and the goods from deeper tiers sell for many times more at a trade post.
Rarity
All items have a rarity, generally tied to how hard they are to get. There are six, from commonest to rarest:
- Common
- Uncommon
- Rare
- Epic
- Legendary
- Artifact