Guide Misha's Guide to the High Seas: Ship Runs

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Misha

Site Founder
Hey there folks, so it has come to my attention that, even in this day and age, some people do not understand the Specifics of Material Runs and Loot Runs, so I will do my best to clarify and show what to look for to identify each.

MATERIAL RUNS
Material Runs (dubbed Mat Runs) are the more common variant of public sailing, and is what you'll find when going onto many Public Ships on populated Oceans. "Mat" runs are primarily used to stock ship materials found in the pouch of your inventory, see below.

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While not always obvious from the start, a few key things to note that differentiate mat running from loot running is where the captain goes. Most ships looking to quickly get in and out with a haul of materials will attempt to search for the Ship Cluster, which is typically found on the most populated ocean between Padres Del Fuego and Port Royal, however as of recently many ships will wander toward the more dangerous areas in the high seas to look for nasty opponents to bump up their wanted level, found in the middle of the ship's hull indicator.
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This meter has five stages to it, technically four discluding the first.

#1: During this point, you will not see a flag above the ship's status. Any ships that belong to the Royal Navy or EITC will not attack you whatsoever, until Stage 2..
#2: Stage two includes a skull void of any crossbones or items, this signifies that ships have been alerted to a pirate presence, and and will pursue you if you get too close. (Do note, that once you have this ships in your vicinity will shoot on sight regardless of if you fire or not.)
#3: This stage is the middleground between the second and fourth which includes a single bone behind the skull. This affects nothing, and everything continues to follow the logic of the second phase.
#4: The fourth phase to this includes a Skull and Crossbones (pictured at the top) and has essentially put a kill bounty on your head. What this means is that Bounty Hunters will begin pursuing you, and will stay on you until their deaths or your own.
#5: Upon reaching phase 5 of this meter you will be considered criminally indisputable by the Royal Navy, in which they will begin sending their prized Warships after you once again until death. As well, once this phase has been achieved you will not be able to port just anywhere, in which a designation will appear under your compass telling you where you are able to port. Beware, this changes every so often so pay attention!

Some question "Why are Bounty Hunters & Warships so important?"
Well, to you, let's refer to their plunder. Upon sinking a Bounty Hunter, players have a guaranteed chance to obtain a "Ship Material" chest into their ship's cargo hold. This can drop the common variants of materials being Oak, Iron & Canvas. These ship materials are superbly harder to find when just sinking normal ships. The next being Warships, which can drop "Rare Ship Material" boxes which contain any number of the following materials: Pine, Steel & Silk. As well to note, Rare Ship Materials are near impossible to find from normal ships in the Caribbean, so if you need a surplus of a certain kind, these'd be your best bet. (If you'd like to know what you need for a certain type of ship upgrade, refer to my guide here.)

Next, here is how to identify if a ship is full. Just the sheer capacity saying it's at 100% does NOT Necessarily mean that this is the case. For this, I've taken two screenshots of runs that I've done, here is the example of a run that is nowhere near complete:

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"Well, it's at 22/22, it's full, right?" WRONG.
During sailing, the following types of plunder can be upgraded.
Loot Chests
Loot Pouches
Treasure Chests
Cargo Crates
Royal Chests


These five items can be upgraded and completely traded out. These however, Cannot:
Loot Skull Chests
Ship Materials
Rare Ship Materials

This is an example of a Mat Run that has been completed.

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If you take nothing else from this guide today, that is all I want you to remember for the future.

LOOT RUNS

Done commonly in private, these runs are called exactly as they seem. This whole ideology behind this type of ship running is to gather Loot Skull Chests in order to stockpile loot for port. During this type of run, it is IMPERATIVE that you do not tag Bounty Hunters or Warships unless specified by the captain. As we discussed earlier their loot cannot be removed from the ship's cargo. (Be warned, these style of runs often take vastly longer than the latter, and are overall much more time consuming with the methods used.) During this run, Captains may request avoiding cannon fire by his or her crew to group a large number of ships together. Like the previous, it is always good to sink bigger, nastier ships as their Loot Skull drops are marginally better than light or standard class ships.

Below is an example of a complete Loot Run done by the generous @Trauma.
13_skulls.PNG


I hope that this guide was able to clarify anything that was confusing. If you have any questions, I can answer in the replies below. Thanks for reading!​
 
Misha, you got the pine and oak mixed up.
Pine is common mat, oak is rare.
Nice guide tho!
 
I still don't understand "full". Your first examples says it's 22/22, but I only count 17.....
Probably just an example ;P
He means that whenever you're full for mat runs or loot runs, you go for specific chests (Ship Materials, and Rare Ship Materials) Instead of having a cluster of random chests that will not give you anything.
Same thing for loot runs, you go for the "Loot Skull Chests" instead of random chests :)
 
I still don't understand "full". Your first examples says it's 22/22, but I only count 17.....
So basically, although your cargo is technically full, alot of the cargo (crates, loot pouches etc..) arent worth much and take up alot of room. So lets say you're full and you sink another ship and get a skull chest, basically that skull chest replaces the least valuable loot (loot pouches for example) and that crappy loot gets thrown overboard. So to get the most out of your run, keep sinking ships untill you have only the best loot (skull chests, rare skull chests, mat chests, rare mat chests etc...) Hope this helped ☺️
 
So basically, although your cargo is technically full, alot of the cargo (crates, loot pouches etc..) arent worth much and take up alot of room. So lets say you're full and you sink another ship and get a skull chest, basically that skull chest replaces the least valuable loot (loot pouches for example) and that crappy loot gets thrown overboard. So to get the most out of your run, keep sinking ships untill you have only the best loot (skull chests, rare skull chests, mat chests, rare mat chests etc...) Hope this helped ☺️
There are three types of loot that can't be replaced in your hold: loot skull chests, mat chests, and rare mat chests; all others can and will be replaced if you do a "full" run.
 
Top Loot hierarchy as follows;

Loot Skull Chest - top loot, replaces all royal chests, loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests. Does not replace rare or common ship material chests (wish it did...)
Rare Ship Material - top ship mat, replaces all royal chests, loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests. Does not replace common ship materials or loot skulls
Common Ship Materials - replaces all royal chests, loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests. Does not replace rare ship materials or loot skulls

Those are the three "ultimate" loot chests while sailing. Any one of those cannot be replaced by something else. When your cargo hold, regardless of size, is full of those 3 chests, you are "Full", as in you can no longer add any loot to your haul.

All royal chests, loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests can be replaced by the top 3 loot chests mentioned above.

If your cargo hold is full of these -> (all royal chests, loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests), you can keep sailing and adding loot to your hold.

Royal Chests are the top chests of replaceable loot (as in NOT Skull Chests, Rare or Common ship materials, which CANNOT be replaced). Royal chests can replace all loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests.

Loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests and cargo crates are full of junk and can and should be replaced by better loot, listed above. (Just sayin')

So, in conclusion, and I wish Misha knew how to communicate this properly, but alas, it is Misha, that the top loot you ideally want to get while sailing are the following,
Loot Skull Chests, Rare Ship Materials, Common Ship Materials (none of which can be replaced) and the not so hot Royal Chests, which can be replaced by the aforementioned 3.

Burn the rest, toss it overboard or whatever you have to do to eliminate it.

Happy Sails to you!
 
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Top Loot hierarchy as follows;

Loot Skull Chest - top loot, replaces all royal chests, loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests. Does not replace rare or common ship material chests (wish it did...)
Rare Ship Material - top ship mat, replaces all royal chests, loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests. Does not replace common ship materials or loot skulls
Common Ship Materials - replaces all royal chests, loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests. Does not replace rare ship materials or loot skulls

Those are the three "ultimate" loot chests while sailing. Any one of those cannot be replaced by something else. When your cargo hold, regardless of size, is full of those 3 chests, you are "Full", as in you can no longer add any loot to your haul.

All royal chests, loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests can be replaced by the top 3 loot chests mentioned above.

If your cargo hold is full of these -> (all royal chests, loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests), you can keep sailing and adding loot to your hold.

Royal Chests are the top chests of replaceable loot (as in NOT Skull Chests, Rare or Common ship materials, which CANNOT be replaced). Royal chests can replace all loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests, cargo chests.

Loot chests, loot pouches, treasure chests and cargo crates are full of junk and can and should be replaced by better loot, listed above. (Just sayin')

So, in conclusion, and I wish Misha knew how to communicate this properly, but alas, it is Misha, that the top loot you ideally want to get while sailing are the following,
Loot Skull Chests, Rare Ship Materials, Common Ship Materials (none of which can be replaced) and the not so hot Royal Chests, which can be replaced by the aforementioned 3.

Burn the rest, toss it overboard or whatever you have to do to eliminate it.

Happy Sails to you!
So, if your cargo hold is say, 20, how does the ship decide how many main 3 chests to hold? Is it conceivable to have 20 skulls?

When your cargo hold, regardless of size, is full of those 3 chests, you are "Full", as in you can no longer add any loot to your haul.

What dictates what is 'full' of non replaceable chests?
 
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