In a new video (#24 of the “Official Sea of Thieves Inn-Side Story” series), the Sea of Thieves team shares a talk between senior software engineer Tom Berry and senior designer Andrew Preston about an exciting emergent system: Skull Forts.
There are multiple skull forts in the game, but only one is active at a time. Players may see a huge plume of smoke in the shape of a skull, indicating a fort is now active.
After you make your way through the skeleton grunts outside, you head into the fort stronghold. Inside the skull fort are enough skeleton enemies to make an ant hill look underpopulated, headed by a skeleton captain. “That’s when the music gets at its most intense as well,” Preston commented.
You’ll have to defeat them all to access their vault, featuring a ton of loot. Then you’ll have to fight your way out, since the skeleton grunts on the beach respawn. Once the captain is killed, the skull in the sky dissolves: the curse is lifted.
But it turns out that big smoke signal in the sky serves another purpose: it signals to other pirate crews that someone may be there actively working on grabbing the booty… meaning other pirate crews can simply wait outside and attack the victors, grab their loot and run.
Or, since the vault is opened by a physical key, any other crew can jump you for the key to the vault while you’re running your hardest to try and beat them to the punch. Once you’ve used the vault key, the vault door is open for anyone, marking yet another opportunity for you to get ganked.
“We intentionally put more loot in there than one crew can carry,” said Peterson, “so you’ve got to choose to make multiple journeys back and forth between your ships to collect all of that reward.” Peterson pointed out that it’s not all about the crying: crews could also choose to share the rewards if they’ve shared the risks as well.
“As with everything in Sea of Thieves, we’re going to keep adding content to make that emergent sandbox more and more rich, so you might even start seeing new types of skeletons in the future,” Peterson teased.
What’s more nerve-wracking, defeating the skeleton army or trying to make it back to base while a slew of hostile pirate crews chase after you determined to come after your lucky charms? I guess we’ll find out when Sea of Thieves releases on Mar. 20. (In the meantime, check out the Kraken. The Kraken!!!!)
Are you the “battle the skeleton army” kind of pirate, or are you “steal the skull fort loot from another, harder-working crew” kind of pirate? You’re all valid. Feel free to let us know your thoughts on the Skull Fort system in our comments section below.
