You might be surprised how easy it is to think you’re all alone on the ocean, only to have another vessel appear out of nowhere, bearing down on you and your precious cargo. It’s happened to me a couple of times, and I’m pretty damn vigilant.

Once you’ve noticed another ship, track its movement:

Okay, so, you’ve noticed another ship. Great. What do you do now? Well, it really depends. Is the ship sailing away from you? Is it sailing directly towards you? Or, is it sailing in roughly the same direction, with its port or starboard side facing you? Maybe its sails are raised and it’s right near an island, indicating that it’s probably docked.

These are important questions, because once you’ve noticed another ship (or ships), it’s critical to pay close attention to its/their behaviour. One factor that matters even more than an enemy vessel’s initial position is its expected trajectory. A ship’s trajectory usually betrays the crew’s intentions, and this matters greatly for Solo Sloopers, because it will govern how you, in turn, respond.

I feel like I could write a whole article about this one topic — there’s a lot you can discern just from paying attention to a ship in the distance, in terms of whether or not it has seen you, where it might be headed, and why (and, most importantly, whether or not it’s likely to be hostile to you). Regardless, never take your eyes off the horizon, and make sure to closely follow any spotted ships — you should be trying to do this even when you’re walking around an island (noting, of course, that your ability to check on the ship’s whereabouts might be limited or impossible).

Use the environment to your advantage while sailing

I’ve already discussed how important the environment is when thinking about docking your sloop. But it’s just as important — and potentially useful — when you’re out sailing on the high seas, especially if you find yourself encountering another vessel.

Learn to navigate tricky tight spots:

I’ve found this technique to be really useful, especially if I’m being pursued and I’m finding it difficult to outrun my enemy. There are several places in the world that contain large rocky outcrops which are not necessarily explorable islands, but which are clustered together and can fit a ship (at least, a sloop) in between them. In some cases, these outcrops can be as tall — or taller — than your ship’s mast.

Such locations are valuable as both a hiding place and a place to dock (as mentioned in the docking strategies section)— if you can do so without crashing — to protect yourself from an enemy ship. More intrepid crews might follow you into dangerous waters, but some will prefer to give up and move along, rather than risk serious damage to their ship. Knowing where these outcrops are — and learning to navigate through them — can be invaluable.

Storms can be your friend:

By their very nature, storms in Sea of Thieves are generally something to be avoided. They cause your compass — and your ship’s wheel — to spin in a wild frenzy, making it both tricky to navigate and physically control your direction. The wild darkness of storms also mean that visibility can be almost zero, and your ship can take damage from lightning strikes and/or may take on water due to heavy rain. Certainly, storms are themselves a kind of challenge.

However, if you’re being followed —and it’s looking like your pursuer is aggressively seeking your loot — heading straight into a nearby storm can be surprisingly helpful. All of the above challenges still apply, but there’s a chance you can lose the enemy crew, especially if they end up busily bailing out water or fixing damage caused by lightning strikes. Of course, finding your target with cannons or guns is also quite a bit more difficult in a heavy storm, so you can use this to your advantage.

Sailing under the cover of darkness:

Sea of Thieves operates on realistic day/night cycle with realistic weather conditions. This means, during any given voyage — especially longer, multi-stage voyages — you’ll find that several days might pass. I tend to prefer exploring islands during the day; it’s more cumbersome to swap between my lantern and other items at night, and it’s a lot easier to map out the potential location of a treasure in daylight where you can clearly see the geographical features around you. It’s also easier to spot other ships on the horizon during the day.

Conversley, sailing at night does seem to add the slightest element of stealth, especially if you turn off all the lanterns on your sloop (for the record, I never have my lanterns lit…even during the day, they make you extra-noticeable). If you happen to have custom sails that are coloured or darker than the standard white versions, you’ll be at an added advantage when sailing at night.

Striking from a distance

My final Solo Slooping Suggestion kind of caps everything off and folds in some of the previous strategies I’ve discussed here. If you’re keeping an eye out for enemies, navigating effectively, docking strategically, and so on, you’ve definitely got all the major tools required to go it alone. This final piece of advice is useful for player-versus-player, but I’ve primarily employed the tactic for fighting skeleton captains.

Killing skeletons with the Eye of Reach:

When I first played Sea of Thieves, I didn’t really look at the weapon options. I just kept using the cutlass and the pistol. At first, I didn’t even know there was a blunderbuss or a sniper rifle (in Eye of Reach form). It’s definitely true that each of these weapons have their own situational applications, but I’ve found the Eye of Reach to be especially helpful when taking out skeleton captains.

When you hunt skeleton captains, the formula is usually pretty similar. You go to the location where the captain is expected to be, and a couple of waves of skeletons spawn. Kill them, then kill the captain who spawns at the end…rinse and repeat.

At first, I was disembarking from my sloop and fighting the scurvy skeletons up close. But I soon realised that it’s more effective to dock myself right near the spawn location, and to fire at the skeletons from the deck of my sloop (the Sloop Deck, if you will…). There are a few obvious advantages:

Only skeletons with ranged weapons can attack you, but you can use the sloop’s walls for defence; You can continually reload due to the ammunition box on board your sloop; If you need to make a quick getaway (another ship goes after you while you’re mid-fight), this is very easy to do. Simply raise the anchor and sail off.

Better still, combat with the Eye of Reach is, in my humble opinion, more fun than any of the other options. The cutlass feels like it doesn’t really connect with anything, and the other two guns feel gutless and imprecise. It’s a lot more satisfying to pop skeletons with the Eye of Reach.

Of course, the Eye of Reach is also useful for fighting other players — but only if you’re shooting at them while they are on another ship (or on land, with you on a ship). If you’re up close and personal, the Eye of Reach will go from fluid to cumbersome pretty quickly.

There you have it! My semi-comprehensive, Slooper-Duper-Single-Sloop-Sailing-Summary. Okay, I’ll stop now; I just think sloop is a hilarious word. What can I say? I’m a simple creature.

Despite Sea of Thieves being a fairly simple game at heart, there are a ton more tactics that I could recommend. And I’m sure that if you play with a full crew of four people, it would be possible to write an entire strategy guide on how best to operate as an effective crew.

You may prefer to play cooperatively; I completely understand that. I’m sure I’ll love it when I try it, too. I may want to leave solo-play behind entirely once I try an online cooperative session.

But, for now, I’m enjoying the unique challenge and tension of the single player experience. If you’ve been discouraged from trying out Sea of Thieves for this reason, I urge you to re-consider, especially if you have Xbox Game Pass (which means you have access to this game right now anyway). And if you enjoy harsh survival games in particular, Sea of Thieves may actually be right up your alley.

This article was written by Super Jump Editor in Chief, James Burns. Please check out his work and follow him on Medium.