Ok. So.
Tl;Dr if you have a fort key and are pushed to a new server because everyone ragequit it woild be nice if you could use it on the fort in the new instance.
If you want more but don't care about the story, skip down the bottom.
Longer story.
So. Forts. So much fun. A friend and I have been slooping all weekend and thanks to his amazing skills (or perhaps despite my appalling skills) we've been able to grab some keys out from under people. We also got one uncontested fort which was lovely and set ourselves a new cleartime record.
The most recent happened earlier tonight. A fort popped next to us, largely concealed by a storm. Despite having seen some galleons washing around, we agreed to roll up and see how we did. If we were contested we agreed to just bail and take advantage of clear seas to grind out more quests, rather than waste an hour or two trying to hold it.
Off we go. Cleared three waves. I got the noname bug on cannonballs, so was only able to hold 2. He plays PC so I quit and he invited me back (why can't I do this on Xbox?). That led to a lazybeard loop, so I force quit the game and he invited me back again, whilst dealing with skeleons (the man is a genuine legend). Thankfully, the slot hasn't filled, so I made it back by wave 5.
At wave 11 or so, the storm had passed and a galleon was on the horizon. I do lookout/cannon/sailing when we're 2 manning a fort, so I proposed that we push on and see what we can clear in the next couple of minutes, just in case the captain pops. A couple of waves later, the galleon is close. My friend heads back to the ship. No harm done. We've cleared the waves, but it's unlikely we'll win quickly so we bailed. No harm done. Little time wasted. We bug out, flashing lights and telling the incoming galleon we're leaving. They don't hear or don't trust us and open fire. No big deal. We have the planks to take the hits and we're not sticking around.
Not a single shot hits. And then they crash. So we think maybe we can get an easy kill. 5 minutes max. Turns out their repair game is at least on point so despite many holes, they're holding up. That's fine. Galleons are very hard to sink quickly if a crew has even a modicum of communication.
In the meantime, up rock 2 more galleons. So we're definitely bugging out. But we're both curious about how it'll play out. We sail out of range of the skeleton forts and are discussing tactics as we watch these galleons blow the bananas out of each other. One goes down fast, caught between the other two. The other two demonstrate real skill in manoeuvring and shooting; despite laying into each other hard, neither is getting the upper hand.
They become so focused on each other, they start to drift away from the fort. We follow at a safe distance just admiring and learning until we realise there's noone clearing fort waves.
So.
My friend slips back in to look around. He sees one guy sitting in a tower, and strikes up conversation. He was apparently there to shoot at one of the galleons but has run out of cannonballs. He "doesn't want to die to the skeletons" - he's basically dead weight at this point. so we start a wave clear, convinced he'll report back and the galleons will come rushing over.
But no. He sits there and watches as we clear that wave. Captain arrives. Still nothing. Kill the captain. Take the key. Bug out.
This is pretty standard for us. If we get the key, we'll run into the wind and zigzag past islands, lowering sails and one of us leaping off at each until the pursuers see a mermaid. Most will anchor up, thinking we've dropped it off. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don't. This time, we did at the third island - mermaids hideaway. I'm not sure why that's important, but it sticks in my mind. They're already lagging behind having stopped at the first island. Once the key is stashed, we run past a couple more islands and then break line of sight and scuttle so they won't see us go down, mermaid out, head to an outpost, change paint, pick up the key and carry on with quests.
This takes about 15 minutes, so we know we have 2.45 until we need to get back. We go continue with our quests for a couple of hours. Then, sell loot and decide it's about time to get our fort treasures.
As we get back on the boat, server changes. Damn it. Ok. You know what? It doesn't matter. Were a bit deflated but we have a great story.
Then we notice a skull at a different fort. Can we use the key there we wonder? We should at least take a look...
There's a galleon and sloop slugging it out as we approach. The sloop goes down to the galleon. Fine. We're still carrying the key but it's buried under a castaway. Nothing to lose. The galleon is parked up at the gate. They're anchored and so we come in at angle where they can't shoot us and unload about 100 cannonballs into them, peppering the anchor point and below the water line. One guy is spamming "I need help repairing" and because we keep hammering the anchor, they get knocked off and can't turn to face us (or maybe aren't even trying?). As we're down to our last three cannonballs they manage to get the anchor up and start moving. They run out of planks (we guess) because they can't get away fast enough.
They run to the nearest outpost to resupply and we rush in to see if anyone is lurking. There's a few blue skellies there but we can't find any players. So we grab the key, expecting the skull to disappear and them to be alerted. Were planning to grab the chest and the skull and leave. But the skull stays. The blues have followed us in so we deal with them and luck is on our side. A gold sword wave spawns, and they obviously get stuck in the water. We decide to keep looting until the galleon is heading back. But because the skull is still up, they assume they have time and are still resupplying. We take everything except a seafarers which we leave at the entrance to the vault. They deserve something for all their hard work, after all.
We fly off and sell out treasures. Yay!
Anyway. Here's the point.
Running with the key is (I presume) a pretty common tactic. It certainly is for me. Knowing that people will camp the fort, it's not unreasonable to want to wait an hour or two before returning. This is the first time I've had a server change while holding a key. Of course it will happen. And I realise this is an edge case, so it's very low priority, and the story alone was worth the effort. But it would be nice if, when the server changes, it puts loot into the fort which was cleared, so that if all the server hoppers leave and we're forced out, we don't have to go through that rigmarole again. It would have been even worse if there was no skull (we were discussing just leaving it in the tavern at one point, to really confuse people).
Thanks for reading if you made it this far!
