5. Loot & Rewards
Loot
Loot drops from fishing and from defeating enemies at sea, 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, and a siren drops a 250 one
- A world boss such as the Kraken also sheds a 1,000 chest for every tenth of its health it loses, to the crew that has hurt it most
- Cutting off one of the Kraken's arms drops nothing, but wounds the Kraken itself
- The Kraken does not stay up. In each war room it surfaces for 10 minutes in every 90, the first time half an hour after the room opens, with a warning two minutes before. If nobody sinks it, it goes back under at the end of its window. While it is up, your chart shows it in purple with the time it has left
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 before its voyage ends, you forfeit 20% of your encounter points. The rest of your share is paid when the voyage ends, so if the ship then sinks, your share loses 70% along with everyone else's.
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, 70% of what she was carrying drops in a chest where she went down: 70% of each kind of goods and of the Doubloons, and 70% of any other items, picked at random. The other 30% is paid out to her crew as usual. If a crew sank you, the chest is theirs for the first 60 seconds, then anyone's.
What is at risk is what is aboard: this voyage's haul and anything loaded with Take Cargo. Doubloons left at the docks are safe. A captain who leaves mid-voyage loses the same 70%, because the ship is lost with them.
This is the risk half of the mode: a full hold is worth sailing carefully with.
Extraction
The way to keep everything is the extraction portal, a column of light on open water. One is open at a time, and sailing into it banks 100% of what you are carrying. Any number of ships can use it at once, and using it does not close it or move it.
The portal stays on its spot for eight minutes, then moves to another. On your chart it stands as a green doorway with the time it has left. For its last two minutes the spot it is moving to is marked NEXT, and with a minute left the portal fades and its time turns red. The arrow on your HUD points at the portal, unless you would not reach it at your current speed before it moves; then it points at the next spot, where it will be for another eight minutes.
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.
When a fish bites, click straight away to hook it. Miss the moment and that fish swims off, but the line stays in and another will bite.
Once it is hooked, hold the mouse button to lift the bar and let go to let it sink, and keep the fish inside the bar. The meter beside it fills while the fish is in the bar and drains while it is out. Fill it to land the fish; let it empty and the fish gets away. There is no clock, only the meter. Fish from deeper water dart and dive harder.
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