Sky Kiwi
Pirate Master
I've noticed some people don't quite understand how Treasure Sense works, so I felt I should make a post on it.
You might be asking who am I? What do I know about anything? I am a lover of the sea. I fell in love with POTCO the moment I saw it. My little brother was sailing, and I knew I had to do it. So I did, and I ended up doing it for quite some time. In fact, I was in the top 25 leaderboards for PvE sailing somewhere around 2008, maybe into 2009. So with my history of sailing in mind, let's dive in shall we?
For starters, you need to understand how cargo crates actually work. For the sake of simplicity, we're going to only talk about Royal Chests here, but know they all follow the same rule set.
If you check the Cargo page of the wiki you will see Royal Chests can contain one of three different gems - Emeralds, Rubies, and Diamonds.
You'll notice that the higher value gems are worth more, but they also have lower probability. Makes sense.
Why is this relevant to treasure sense though? Well I'll tell you, billy bob! People believe Treasure Sense makes enemy ships drop Royals more often. I believe this is wrong. It could do that, I'll admit, I haven't seen the code, but that is not the primary mechanic of Treasure Sense as I believe it.
How Treasure Sense works is when you port and the "gems" inside the Royal Chests are calculated, Treasure Sense increases the probabilities of the higher tier gems. How exactly it influences these numbers I couldn't honestly tell you I know.
One theory is it's multiplicative. In the Royal Chest example, that would mean level 5 Treasure Sense (25% increase) would raise Diamonds to 6.25% (0.05 * 1.25) and Rubies to 18.75% (0.15 * 1.25).
My other theory is it calculates the gems normally first, and then gives each one a 25% chance of upgrading. That would give each type a much higher probability than the other theory, and the "upgrading" chance coincides with my usual drop rates and the description of treasure sense.
"That's all well and good, Sky Kiwi, but we need some harder evidence than that!".
Well I've got some. Remember how before they said they adjusted Treasure Sense as it wasn't scaling properly? Well, you might not know this, but that was a massive nerf. It was warranted, because Treasure Sense was way too overpowered. How overpowered? Well, take a look at this.
Notice all those drops are the best possible item from each cargo type, and I didn't get a single item of lesser quality? (Despite having 111 cargo crates!)
At the time I thought it was like this for everyone. In fact, I asked a couple people but nobody really responded, or had any idea what I was talking about. But when they fixed Treasure Sense I later realized that it only happened to me because I maxed treasure sense.
Now, with all that out of the way, there's a couple important points I need to get across here.
Notice that Treasure Sense doesn't actually increase the chances of better types of cargo crates from sinking an enemy (treasure chest vs royal chest, for example). Also, if you're unaware of this already, not everyone gets the same gold / materials from the same chests. For example, if we port with 5 Royal Chests, I might get 3 emeralds and 2 rubies, where you get 2 emeralds, 1 ruby, and 2 diamonds. Each person has their own "values" generated. This is important. What does all this combine to?
The Captain having Treasure Sense does NOT benefit the rest of the crew at all.
"What?! Ridiculous! I know it does!" ~ You, maybe. Look up "Confirmation Bias". You might think you get more royals when your captain has treasure sense, but you probably don't. You just think you do, because you notice it more often when it coincides with what you believe.
However, this isn't bad news! In fact, for you cannoneers, it's very very good news! How so? It means Treasure Sense will benefit you, even if you are not the one sailing. It will ALWAYS benefit you. You can sail on a Light Frigate with a level 3 captain who can't even have Treasure Sense if he wants to, and you will still benefit from it if you put points in it yourself. Every single time!
So for those of you who hate taking the wheel (which is blasphemous to me, by the way), but you enjoy being on a cannon or you love cutting planks into strange shapes, you should get your sailing to at least level 17 and max out your Treasure Sense (hint: save your skill points from level 12 onwards). You'll make more money the rest of your time on the seas!
Thanks for reading my wall of text!
TL;DR: Your captain having Treasure Sense doesn't help you. If you want the extra gold, YOU need Treasure Sense, even if you're on cannons.
Additional theory: There is a very important benefit to all this. Notably in the form of sailing items (even though they don't work yet). For those of you that have items with treasure sense boost on it, you do not need to wear it for the full run, only when you port. Theoretically. Emphasis on the fact that this is a theory. I don't believe loot is calculated before you port, so this should work. If this is true, this means everyone should get level 1 TS just so boosting items work on it.
You might be asking who am I? What do I know about anything? I am a lover of the sea. I fell in love with POTCO the moment I saw it. My little brother was sailing, and I knew I had to do it. So I did, and I ended up doing it for quite some time. In fact, I was in the top 25 leaderboards for PvE sailing somewhere around 2008, maybe into 2009. So with my history of sailing in mind, let's dive in shall we?
For starters, you need to understand how cargo crates actually work. For the sake of simplicity, we're going to only talk about Royal Chests here, but know they all follow the same rule set.
If you check the Cargo page of the wiki you will see Royal Chests can contain one of three different gems - Emeralds, Rubies, and Diamonds.
You'll notice that the higher value gems are worth more, but they also have lower probability. Makes sense.
Why is this relevant to treasure sense though? Well I'll tell you, billy bob! People believe Treasure Sense makes enemy ships drop Royals more often. I believe this is wrong. It could do that, I'll admit, I haven't seen the code, but that is not the primary mechanic of Treasure Sense as I believe it.
How Treasure Sense works is when you port and the "gems" inside the Royal Chests are calculated, Treasure Sense increases the probabilities of the higher tier gems. How exactly it influences these numbers I couldn't honestly tell you I know.
One theory is it's multiplicative. In the Royal Chest example, that would mean level 5 Treasure Sense (25% increase) would raise Diamonds to 6.25% (0.05 * 1.25) and Rubies to 18.75% (0.15 * 1.25).
My other theory is it calculates the gems normally first, and then gives each one a 25% chance of upgrading. That would give each type a much higher probability than the other theory, and the "upgrading" chance coincides with my usual drop rates and the description of treasure sense.
"That's all well and good, Sky Kiwi, but we need some harder evidence than that!".
Well I've got some. Remember how before they said they adjusted Treasure Sense as it wasn't scaling properly? Well, you might not know this, but that was a massive nerf. It was warranted, because Treasure Sense was way too overpowered. How overpowered? Well, take a look at this.
Notice all those drops are the best possible item from each cargo type, and I didn't get a single item of lesser quality? (Despite having 111 cargo crates!)
At the time I thought it was like this for everyone. In fact, I asked a couple people but nobody really responded, or had any idea what I was talking about. But when they fixed Treasure Sense I later realized that it only happened to me because I maxed treasure sense.
Now, with all that out of the way, there's a couple important points I need to get across here.
Notice that Treasure Sense doesn't actually increase the chances of better types of cargo crates from sinking an enemy (treasure chest vs royal chest, for example). Also, if you're unaware of this already, not everyone gets the same gold / materials from the same chests. For example, if we port with 5 Royal Chests, I might get 3 emeralds and 2 rubies, where you get 2 emeralds, 1 ruby, and 2 diamonds. Each person has their own "values" generated. This is important. What does all this combine to?
The Captain having Treasure Sense does NOT benefit the rest of the crew at all.
"What?! Ridiculous! I know it does!" ~ You, maybe. Look up "Confirmation Bias". You might think you get more royals when your captain has treasure sense, but you probably don't. You just think you do, because you notice it more often when it coincides with what you believe.
However, this isn't bad news! In fact, for you cannoneers, it's very very good news! How so? It means Treasure Sense will benefit you, even if you are not the one sailing. It will ALWAYS benefit you. You can sail on a Light Frigate with a level 3 captain who can't even have Treasure Sense if he wants to, and you will still benefit from it if you put points in it yourself. Every single time!
So for those of you who hate taking the wheel (which is blasphemous to me, by the way), but you enjoy being on a cannon or you love cutting planks into strange shapes, you should get your sailing to at least level 17 and max out your Treasure Sense (hint: save your skill points from level 12 onwards). You'll make more money the rest of your time on the seas!
Thanks for reading my wall of text!
TL;DR: Your captain having Treasure Sense doesn't help you. If you want the extra gold, YOU need Treasure Sense, even if you're on cannons.
Additional theory: There is a very important benefit to all this. Notably in the form of sailing items (even though they don't work yet). For those of you that have items with treasure sense boost on it, you do not need to wear it for the full run, only when you port. Theoretically. Emphasis on the fact that this is a theory. I don't believe loot is calculated before you port, so this should work. If this is true, this means everyone should get level 1 TS just so boosting items work on it.
Last edited:
