How Viable is Safer Seas?

[BrokenG3ars]

Hi there! I briefly tried playing Sea of Thieves about 5 years ago and while I LOVE the pirate theme, ship and treasure hunting mechanics, general world and all that, I really disliked the forced PvP. To be clear I love PvP games, but PvP in SoT felt incredibly clunky and like a huge waste of time. I have limited time and am only interested in doing the cool pirate tales, getting ship cosmetics and chilling in the world so it was a pain in the ass to have to waste time running from some players or just sit there and let them kill me to get it over with.

SO my question is as someone looking to come back because again I LOVE the world and sailing and such, is Safer Seas a viable alternative to enjoy the game? I would only be playing solo or sometimes with my partner.

And to head them off, this isn't a "git gud" or "dont play a PvP game" thing. When I played years ago I was more then capable of holding my own and killing, even 1 vs 2. I just didn't at all find it enjoyable due to the game's clunky mechanics. If I want a PvP fix I'll go play dedicated PvP games.

[HaqRet]

Safer Seas is enjoyable and relaxing for sure. You can enjoy the game without watching your back all the time. You can complete all the tales. Only disadvantage is that you earn less gold, you cannot achieve Pirate Legend, etc. For someone who do not like PvP, Safer Seas is a great alternative. I personally play it occasionally, when tired of constant fighting.

[PrplGrl]

Absolutely! Safe seas is fantastic for being able to enjoy the game, when having the objective of just wanting to do your own stuff, because pvp is completely disabled in there, nor are there any players in there with you, except for the ones that join your closed crew. So you can do anything you like, without any rude interruptions from players. It's just you and the npcs in there. I've never enjoyed the pvp aspect of this game myself, but ever since going into safe seas, I've been having much more fun than I've ever had, when public servers used to be the only way of playing. Now I can get more out of my time when trying to complete my own quests, which, the majority of the time, players were not making possible.

Thought I should mention the restrictions that come with safe seas, though; there are certain things that are restricted or disabled in there, such as; (they don't take away from the gaming experience or anything, except for one, which I'll mention in a sec), just something to know about:

-Reduced earnings; you don't earn as much money from loot as in high seas (public servers), but this really isn't an issue, because you can still earn a stack, I still easily earn up to 30-40k gold in any run, in the safe seas.
- Faction level caps; for factions like merchant, gold hoarders, merchant, ect., you can only reach level 40, then it reaches a 'cap,' and, from there, the only way to keep levelling is to go to the public servers (high seas). All of the other restrictions, I can understand, but not this one; I think it's completely unnecessary, because the whole point of a private server was supposed to be a way of getting away from the pvp, while still being able to progress with at least the factions, I don't like that they still force you to have to go back to the pvp environment to keep doing that.
- Reaper's Bones and Athena's reputation is disabled, you can only level up these factions in high seas; kinda makes sense, since these are 2 factions designed for pvp purposes, with the Athena and Reaper factions being in opposition to each other.
- You can't use captained ships; this one isn't really a biggie, just means you can't do things like earning milestones or get commendations for your specific ship, but you can still earn them for your actual pirate, on a normal ship.
-Raising emissary flags of any kind is disabled; another one I find understandable, because the purpose of raising emissaries is that you get increased earnings when selling, but only because of putting yourself at risk by doing so, it's a pvp thing.

But, yeah, aside from those things, safe seas, imo, still gives a far more engaging and rewarding experience than high seas. Pvp encounters in this game just waste too much time, especially when you're just trying to do un-related things to voyages, like tall tales. I would definitely recommend checking it out, it's worth playing in that mode! :)

[Fail]

The above comments have pretty much got it summed up.
If chill sessions are what you're after most then I think Safer Seas will deliver.

[BrokenG3ars]

Awesome thanks for the detailed comments guys! I'm downloading the game right now and will definitely give it a shot.

Regarding High Sea's, is it still very PvP focused? Such as high traffic and you see lots of players frequently and the majority of players will chase you? Since progression is capped on Safe Sea's at some point I will have to give High Sea's another try I guess.

[HaqRet]

Originally posted by BrokenG3ars:

Awesome thanks for the detailed comments guys! I'm downloading the game right now and will definitely give it a shot.

Regarding High Sea's, is it still very PvP focused? Such as high traffic and you see lots of players frequently and the majority of players will chase you? Since progression is capped on Safe Sea's at some point I will have to give High Sea's another try I guess.

On high seas, there is still a lottery in case of players that you meet. Sometimes you can do multiple forts without problems. Sometimes you become attacked 5 times in a row. Then been chased soon after respawn. All depends on the server and your luck. Unfortunately, 90% of players try to kill you and steal your loot. They also kill you just because they've got a bad day and need to take it out on someone...

[Fail]

Originally posted by BrokenG3ars:

Awesome thanks for the detailed comments guys! I'm downloading the game right now and will definitely give it a shot.

Regarding High Sea's, is it still very PvP focused? Such as high traffic and you see lots of players frequently and the majority of players will chase you? Since progression is capped on Safe Sea's at some point I will have to give High Sea's another try I guess.

As HaqRet mentioned, it's a mixed bag.
However his "90% of players try to kill you" is just nonsense. On average most will be happy doing their own thing. If you're going to do world events or Fort of the Damned or something, you've got to expect aggressive crews to show up.

[Keyrala]

It's not viable to farm gold, it's good for everything else.

[cl656]

Just do Higher Seas.

Safer Seas is only going to burn you out from the lack of progress you make.

[konstantynopolitaneczka]

I was more then capable of holding my own and killing, I just didn't at all find it enjoyable due to the game's clunky mechanics

And you think that pve had improved? Skeletons and phantoms are still clunky as always.

Originally posted by Sir Fail-A-Lot:

Originally posted by BrokenG3ars:

Awesome thanks for the detailed comments guys! I'm downloading the game right now and will definitely give it a shot.

Regarding High Sea's, is it still very PvP focused? Such as high traffic and you see lots of players frequently and the majority of players will chase you? Since progression is capped on Safe Sea's at some point I will have to give High Sea's another try I guess.

As HaqRet mentioned, it's a mixed bag.
However his "90% of players try to kill you" is just nonsense. On average most will be happy doing their own thing. If you're going to do world events or Fort of the Damned or something, you've got to expect aggressive crews to show up.

When I raise the flag of the reaper I feel like whole server is coming at me. Today I had 3 player ships in the same location, fighting each other for a treasure I had (which was also stolen from a guy that was there few minutes earlier). Pvp is a big mess. This video proves it in a fun way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjhN62d2kdU

[Jamie A. Rose]

Originally posted by BrokenG3ars:

Hi there! I briefly tried playing Sea of Thieves about 5 years ago and while I LOVE the pirate theme, ship and treasure hunting mechanics, general world and all that, I really disliked the forced PvP. To be clear I love PvP games, but PvP in SoT felt incredibly clunky and like a huge waste of time. I have limited time and am only interested in doing the cool pirate tales, getting ship cosmetics and chilling in the world so it was a pain in the ass to have to waste time running from some players or just sit there and let them kill me to get it over with.

SO my question is as someone looking to come back because again I LOVE the world and sailing and such, is Safer Seas a viable alternative to enjoy the game? I would only be playing solo or sometimes with my partner.

And to head them off, this isn't a "git gud" or "dont play a PvP game" thing. When I played years ago I was more then capable of holding my own and killing, even 1 vs 2. I just didn't at all find it enjoyable due to the game's clunky mechanics. If I want a PvP fix I'll go play dedicated PvP games.

It's not viable at all. You can't run your own ship, you can't fly a flag, you can't get credit past 40 rep and your money is cut by 2/3. It was designed to be not fun to play so that no one would play it.

SoT has a really terrible people on their dev team.

[P.Diddy's Baby Oil]

It's a tutorial to the game. It's not useful after 5-10 hours of play. If you're like me and not interested in the pvp gank fest where they have nothing to lose and you have everything to lose, then you gotta play a diff game--unless you like spending hours farming stuff for other people :p. This ain't it.

[Raft]

I agree with a lot of comments above.

If fast gold/cosmetic progression motivates you, then Safer Seas is a bad choice.

Otherwise, Safer Seas is a viable alternative. Most of the game play (naval, CQB, puzzles, voyages, tall tales, fishing, etc) is available in Safer Seas.

Certain competitive/prestige/commendation aspects are restricted to High Seas. So there is a trade off if these things are important to u.

I estimate 1 in 3 player encounters will be hostile. If you're willing to deal with these villain pirates every now and then, u might stick with High Seas. If you have zero tolerance for this and want a more chill experience, then stick with Safer Seas.

Keep in mind the afk time out still applies in both seas.

[Jamie A. Rose]

1 in 3 are hostile? More like 99 in 100.

[Raft]

Originally posted by Jamie A. Rose:

1 in 3 are hostile? More like 99 in 100.

My estimate was based on my experience in Asian servers. I wrote logs for a while - which tracked the number of friendlies/neutrals/hostiles. Many Asian pirates like to do boring farms. And if I spoke the same Asian language as them while doing pirate diplomacy, I'm automatically their ally. This was often how it worked. It was critical to use the spyglass to read the ship's name / captain's name, hear their voices, and use the correct language. But it's not a guarantee. Hence 1 in 3.

I noticed that your profile lists ur location as NA. When I played in NA servers (by joining NA crews through SoT discord), I experienced more hostile pirates. It seemed that NA pirates find it a lot more fun to fight. So I might agree with you - maybe 9 in 10 player encounters in NA servers are hostile.

[Ryzilynt]

Originally posted by BrokenG3ars:

Awesome thanks for the detailed comments guys! I'm downloading the game right now and will definitely give it a shot.

Regarding High Sea's, is it still very PvP focused? Such as high traffic and you see lots of players frequently and the majority of players will chase you? Since progression is capped on Safe Sea's at some point I will have to give High Sea's another try I guess.

There can only be a max of 5/6 ships on any given map, including yours. And it's a big map.

There are plenty of strategies you can use to minimize your interactions if it's a concern for you.