Sloops are the most agile ships in the Sea of Thieves, with their small size they can both out-maneuver and at times out run enemy ships. Here is a guide on how to successfully Solo Sloop in the Sea of Thieves.
First, a Word From the Author
ChimneySwift11 here! I'm a Sea of Thieves Partner and stream Sea of Thieves 4 days a week on my Twitch Channel! I love helping new players learn the game, so be sure to check out my streams HERE.
The Basics of Solo Slooping
Can you Solo Sloop?
YES! A lot of people struggle with the thought or idea of even trying to play Sea of Thieves Solo. The truth is, playing Solo is very beneficial and at times far more rewarding than playing with groups. As a solo player you get to play on your time, do what you want, and even just go to the bathroom when needed. Solo slooping also is the ABSOLUTE fastest way to learn all the mechanics in Sea of Thieves, as it forces you to learn every aspect of the game. Plus, on top of all that, if you’re someone who enjoys the extra challenge of facing adversities on your own then the reward of a successful voyage feels much more fulfilling.
Downside to Solo Slooping
First things first, when you are sailing the Sea of Thieves solo it’s important to know that just about every crew you come across will outnumber you. It’s also imperative to accept the fact that YOUR SHIP WILL SINK. This may seem like a hard fact to swallow, but it’s important to learn this lesson now then to not expect it and then become upset when it does happen.
Just because your ship has sunk doesn’t mean its the end of your thieving career. Your ship will be returned to you in it’s original state, but will not have any of those shiny goodies you’ve gathered since you last left the outpost. This soft reset may hurt, but using the information below can help make the loss of your ship easier to handle or avoid it all together.
Golden Rule to Solo Slooping
The absolute BIGGEST thing to remember when on a solo sloop is to TRUST NO ONE!
You will encounter the occasional “nice” pirate, but for the most part just expect that everyone wants to kill you and take your stuff. This is the Sea of Thieves after all, and stealing from others is the name of the game.
Making Gold as a Solo Sloop
To some, the main goal of this game is to gather loot and turn it in to earn gold. When playing Solo, most Voyages and Events can be completed by yourself but not every quest or activity is going to be the best choice for you if you want to make the most gold. Here’s my list of the BEST quests to make gold when you’re sailing solo.
Merchant Cargo Runs
Merchant Alliance Lost Shipment Voyages
Skeleton Hunt Voyages from Order of Souls
Buried Treasure Voyages from The Gold Hoarders
How to Sail Your Solo Sloop
Keep your eyes UP!
Probably the most important thing while playing is to check your horizon as OFTEN as possible, both on land and at sea. It’s amazing how quickly an enemy ship can sneak up on you when you’re not paying attention your surroundings.
Unfortunately, enemy ships are not the only danger that lurk in these waters. Objects like rocks or islands can also damage your ship so keeping a keen eye on your surroundings and not dozing off at the helm will help prevent unnecessary damages.
Parking Your Sloop
Here are a few easy sailing tips to learn that will help to prevent you from taking damage, and making it easier for you to get away from an island when unfriendly players may be approaching. The first tip is to NEVER leave your ship anchored at an island. Instead, as you approach the island raise your sails fully to come to a complete stop. When leaving, it is much faster to drop your sails than having to lift the anchor when sailing solo.
This may take some practice to perfect, but once you get it down you will find that this strategy is much easier and safer when approaching and leaving an island. If you’re someone who likes using the anchor, you can use it to make a quick stop; just ALWAYS make sure you raise the anchor before you get off your ship. With your anchor and sails up, you can rotate your ship around making it easier to position your sloop.
Positioning Your Sloop
Once you’ve parked your ship, the next task to position your ship so that you can collect loot the fastest and get away if needed. A mistake people tend to make is pointing their ship straight towards the island so they can use both harpoons to collect loot, but this leaves you with no quick escape and extremely vulnerable if an enemy approaches.
The best strategy is to park parallel to the island, leaving one harpoon facing the island if you’re collecting loot, or facing away from the island for an easy escape. Best practice is to even make sure the wind is to your back so if you have to make a quick escape you have some wind ready for your sails.
How To Fight in Your Solo Sloop
When fighting solo, you need to remember that you’re in charge of everything. This includes managing steering, sails, cannons, repairing, bailing water, defending your boat, etc. It can be a lot, but learning to juggle these things will improve your chances of survival in a fight.
Here’s a quick tip to get you started: always keep your cannons loaded! This will save you time when you enter a fight and will cut down on the overall number of tasks and things you need to remember while fighting.
PVE Fights
Fighting against PvE targets in Sea of Thieves is easier than squaring off against another player. Sloops are very agile and are easy to maneuver. However, this can still be challenging when sailing solo, especially during combat. Each PVE encounter is different, and while there are solid tactics for fighting each encounter, I’d like to encourage you to find what works best for you.
To get you started with some strategies, if I encounter the Megalodon and plan on killing it, I’ll just pull up my sail and sit there while I fire my cannons as it circles my boat. While fighting a Skeleton Ship I’ll usually sail in a straight line, usually with a half sail, as I pummel it with cannons. Once it sinks, I’ll circle back around to scoop up the loot.
PVP Fights
When facing off against another player, or a group of players, it can be quite difficult to take them down if you’re in a solo sloop. If another ship attacks you, it’s almost a guarantee that they probably aren’t alone on their ship. Being outnumbered can definitely be a problem, and this only gets worse when fighting larger ships as a full galleon with 4 players is a lot to take on if you’re solo.
One of the most dangerous things that can occur when fighting against another player or a group of players is if they board your ship and take you down from the inside. Keep a keen eye on the enemies, and watch your ladders to make sure they don’t try to sneak aboard while you’re not looking. Being alone always makes fights more difficult, but it IS possible to take down other ships alone.
A quick tip to consider just before fighting another player’s ship, check their crow’s nest with your spyglass. Most players, if they’re carrying a gunpowder keg on board, will store it up there.. If you’re able to get a clean shot on their powder keg, it will destroy their mast which will stop their boat dead in its tracks. Keep in mind, this also applies to you so make sure if you decide to carry these dangerous death boxes that you keep them safe.
An important thing to remember when sailing alone, don’t be afraid or ashamed to run from a fight or even go out of your way/path to avoid other ships. ANYONE can be an enemy, so why risk your loot or your ship if it’s not necessary?
Keeping your Solo Sloop Floating
Making sure your sloop doesn’t sink is priority #1 and to do this you’ll need to keep up with repairing holes and bailing out water if your ship takes damage. Keep in mind that depending on the amount of damage your boat has, this can be quite difficult if you’re sailing solo. In order to make things easier for you, we’ve included some information below showing all the locations on your sloop you need to pay attention to make sure your ship doesn’t sink.
Sloop Repair Locations
There are several locations to check when you start taking on water, so make sure you don’t cover up a possible hole location with loot as it may cause an unnecessary delay.
Bottom Deck
The bottom deck has only 9 damage locations, but because these holes are on the bottom deck where your ship is in the water, they will flood your ship faster than the ones in the mid deck. This means you need to prioritize repairing these bottom deck holes!
Mid Deck
The sloop’s mid deck has a total of 10 damage locations, and most are around the map table but a few are located closer to the quest table. Try to avoid placing treasure chests in front of these holes as they may block you from repairing your ship.
Top Deck
Your sloop won’t sink from any damage done to the areas on the top deck; however, damage to the areas listed below will slow you down and make sailing a much more difficult task if not repaired quickly.
Wheel
The wheel on a sloop can be damaged up to 4 times, and each time it receives damage it’ll become harder and harder to turn your wheel to steer your ship. You’ll notice the difference with just 1 damaged piece, and if you leave it unattended and it receives full damage then you won’t be able to steer at all. With this in mind, be sure to repair a damaged wheel as soon as possible.
Capstan
The Capstan (or anchor as I like to call it) can be damaged up to 2 times. When it’s damaged the first time the capstan becomes slower to use, thus taking longer to raise the anchor. If it’s damaged twice, you won’t be able use the anchor at all. I’ve put off repairing my capstan while at sea with just one damage because the wood was needed elsewhere, but don’t procrastinate these repairs for too long.
Mast
The mast has 3 locations where it can be damaged, and it’s imperative that you repair the mast as soon as you can. After it’s damaged 3 times it will fall over and your ship will be dead in the water until it’s repaired. Keep in mind that if an enemy chain shot hits your mast it will do full damage and knock your mast over as chain shots deal full damage to a mast.
Important for solo sloops: A fully damaged mast is one of the most dangerous situations to be in as you only have 1 sail. Preventing a fallen mast or repairing one as soon as possible is VITAL to your survival!
Step 1
Interact with the Sail Length found on either side of the sloop.
Step 2
Pull “down” on the rope as if you were trying to lower the sails.
Step 3
REPAIR
REPAIR
REPAIR
Sloop Bailing Technique
Water around your ship is good, water in your ship…not so much. You’ll feel your fate starting to sink in if you allow these H2O nerds onto your ship for too long. The fastest way to remove water in your sloop is to grab your bucket and begin moving between the mid and lower deck stairs.
From here you can easily descend into the lower deck, scoop water out, and then move to the mid deck where you can easily throw it out the side window or toss it over the mid deck stairs past the top deck and out into the ocean.
Best Practices
Here are a few things to try to remember when playing as a solo slooper.
Rowboats
Rowboats are easily one of the best advantages to have on your ship, as being able to take these small boats onto shore to turn in your loot can be a huge time saver. The best option for doing this would be to use a Harpoon Rowboat, where you can use the harpoon to drag the rowboat onto land making loot drop offs even quicker.
While rowboats are great, it’s important to remember that they aren’t the best place to store your loot while sailing. Storing all your loot on your rowboat can make it far too easy for other pirates to sneak onboard your ship, detach your rowboat, and take everything you have in a matter of seconds.
Rowboats are also susceptible to damage from enemy cannons, so if it breaks and all your loot is stored there then you risk losing everything. If you’ve used your rowboat to bring treasure back to your sloop, be sure to take the extra step to move that loot from your rowboat onto your ship before you set sail.
Visit Outposts Often
Occasionally you may be tempted to acquire a large amount of treasure so that you can max out your profits from your emissary bonus. This isn’t always a bad idea, and honestly the more you play and the more experience you get with the game the easier this may be to pull off. However, for newer players and especially if you’re sailing solo.
I recommend visiting the outposts as often as possible to turn in your loot. If you do manage to encounter an enemy pirate crew, or get taken out by the Kraken, it’s a lot easier to accept the loss of a few treasures than to lose your last 3 hours of loot that you didn’t take the time to turn in when you had the chance.
Final Tips from ChimneySwift11
Here are a couple general Sea of Thieves tips to give you a slight advantage when being in a solo sloop.
Go into your settings and change your Field of View (FOV) to 90. 90 is the widest possible FOV, and it’ll allow you to see more on your screen.
In a sloop, any time you cannot catch the wind with your sails, you need to square your sails up straight forward (the same way they look when your boat spawns in for the first time). I know this doesn’t make any sense, but people have actually tested this and found that squaring up your sails on a sloop when you don’t have the wind will help you travel faster than if they were turned. It has something to do with in-game sailing mechanics, sailing penalties, etc. It’s a bit complex but just remember this rule on a sloop if you can’t catch the wind.