You’ve just finished putting your first good Tier 1 engines on your ship and finally have enough power to get through a windwall! Just a couple more islands to find the databanks on then its off to the Expanse…

Wait. Are those engines in the distance?! Are they friendlies? Pirates?! Or seal clubbers?! Oh no!

We’ve all had this experience. This is where we all start. Part of starting a new game or a new character is not having the means to escape or to have much hope of fending off a ship or crew that has much better gear. There certainly are ways to do damage to better equipped players and larger crews but this guide is for those who choose not to go that route for whatever reason.

For those of you who prefer to fight please refrain from calling the following advice cowardice. To a degree it is, of course, but they are also good ways of having the greatest chance of not losing one’s ship if one isn’t a PVP oriented player or has a low power computer that can’t really handle the increased load of battle. Besides, complying when someone has a gun to your head isn’t cowardice, it is practicality for those who don’t yet have the fighting skill to do otherwise.

If you want to both avoid being pirated and control when you engage in PVP then speed is the primary consideration in building a ship. The critical detail that many new players take a while to grasp is that ship speed is largely a factor of weight. I won’t go into ship building here* but the general rule is to build your ship as small and light as possible and use most of your core’s weight allowance for engines. That means that Tungsten and Palm, while giving a great boost to the power of your engines, are bad choices because they weigh so much your ship might actually be slower than if you used lighter materials.

It also means you probably will have less storage than you’d like because additional storage containers mean more weight. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that a fast ship maker really only needs to focus on collecting a few different materials: iron, tin, nickel, and aluminum and titanium when you can. Also a light to midweight wood: cedar, hemlock, chestnut, elm or birch. I usually stock up like crazy on 1 wood and use that for casing everything that requires wood and, of course, for the sails.

You also don’t need panels at first as they are mostly just extra weight until you get to your first stormwall. They do protect your core and fuel tank if you get shot at but our goal is to not get shot at. The same goes for cannons. If I am not planning to shoot at other ships I usually save the weight of a cannon, especially when I’m solo. For mantas I might have a lightweight swivel gun but in T1/2 I just as often don’t and stop the engines when I see mantas aggro’d. Grapple down from the ship, shoot a couple mantas so they fly at you instead of chew on the ship, then swing around and avoid them until they de-aggro or use the opportunity for pistol practice.

If you must have a cannon, rear facing cannons are generally considered less aggressive than front facing and are useful for discouraging pursuit if your ship is fast enough to escape but not fast enough to quickly get out of cannon range. Rear cannons can also be used for shooting mantas and that makes great target practice. If you intend to comply less and practice PVP more – even if that means losing your ship more often – a front mounted cannon or two is the way to go. This also lets you mount a swivel in the rear where it is more useful than a cannon for dealing with mantas. PVP practice isn’t a bad idea, by the way, it is just not the focus of this guide. Keep in mind that cannons and swivels add weight and slow you down.

*Updated video! This is not quite a minimalist starter ship but is instead designed to work as a starter or 2nd ship that can then be upgraded all the way through to tackling a sandwall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqg9tCi3gwU

Update: Here is a larger, more advanced solo ship design that I use for endgame play. Its not something I'd make until I'm thinking about stormwalling and have enough aluminum for the frame but new players might still enjoy looking at the thinking that goes into an endgame design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1460&v=j-6jo7gNRW0

Below is the original video showing the process of building a fast sailboat that, in full wind, will outrun most pirates that haven't crossed a sandwall, yet. It requires only shipbuilding
unlocked to build but is much nicer if you have can add wings.

The 7/24 update makes the sail configuration on this original video not work. Instead center the helm and place 2 sails on either side as far forward as possible. I haven't test if that will leave enough room for 2 sails on the back, yet.

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg6i1hqjY0k

Belt management is another thing new players often take a while to get down. The items in your belt don’t get dropped when you die so it is pretty much the only completely safe storage you have. What you keep in your belt can have a huge impact on your peace of mind when that T4, jet festooned monster rolls up on you. Everything you really care about should be in your belt most of the time and that means making some tough choices.

If you have engines you need fuel so you should have fuel on your belt. You shouldn’t, however, have all of your fuel on your belt. Have at least 300+ fuel in a storage container as soon as you can. More on that later.

Above or below that 2×2 block taken by the fuel go berries and a stack of bullets or a stack of atlas shards. You can keep a pistol in your belt and a lot of players do but you can also have a stack of metal in the same place. That lets you make a pistol when you need one, make more bullets when you need them, and have enough metal to make a new ship should you lose the one you have. You can have 4K metal, 1K fuel, berries and bullets in your belt. With that making a recovery ship can take as little as 5 minutes. While you might not always have your belt configured that way its not a bad idea to quickly do that when you see Big Nasty Ship rolling up on you…

Now that your belt is ready for you to lose everything else and your fastest ship is probably not fast enough to get away from the incoming ship your next concern is to figure out what their intentions are.

1) They hail first

Some pirates will hail you first with some variation of “CUT YOUR ENGINES AND SURRENDER.” If so then they probably aren’t going to sink you if you comply. But don’t just comply. Cut your engines and hail back with something like “OK, I CUT ENGINES. DO YOU WANT ME TO SIT DOWN, TOO?” or some such. They declared their intention to pirate you and you do them a favor by declaring your intention to let them without resistance. They’ll still be wary of you at first but clear communication helps ease any itchy trigger fingers.

Remember that while you may not think of yourself as any threat they don't know that for sure. For all they know you could be a PVP master pounding knoweldge on a new alt.

2) You hail first

On the other hand if they are coming towards you and haven’t yet hailed you your best bet is to hail them first. “AHOY, SKYFARERS. DO YOU NEED ANYTHING?”

9/10 when I offer assistance to people intending to pirate me they won’t shoot. Why would they? The only reason to shoot is to get me to let them take my stuff anyway. They know it and they know I know it. The other 1/10 were probably going to shoot no matter what happened.

But what usually happens is I get back “NAH, MAN. I’M GOOD. JUST LOOKING FOR KNOWLEDGE. UNLESS YOU KNOW HOW TO MAKE A COMPASS? I CAN LOAD A CORE UPGRADE FOR YA IN TRADE” There really are a lot of friendly people playing the game.

3) They shoot first

Some pirates will just shoot first to immediately establish the upper hand. This is the trickiest situation because they might just intend to sink you and there is no way of knowing. The way to have the best chance of not getting sunk is to assume they intend to pirate you and treat the situation that way. I usually hail with something like “WHOA! YOU’RE WELCOME TO MY STUFF. NO NEED SHOOT”

9/10 they stop shooting and tell me to cut engines because that’s what they wanted in the first place. For the other 1/10 who were intending to sink you no matter what you did… what you do next is up to you. Void dive the stuff in your storage so they don’t get it? Board them and do as much damage as you can while getting in some good PVP practice? Core your own ship so they have as little fun as possible? Grab as much of your stuff as you can, jump down to an island and hide? All valid. But these are last resorts after having tried every other way to make it a pirate scenario instead of a sink scenario.

You've hailed and offered to comply but they are still shelling your ship, have boarded and are salvaging your engines and are simply saying nothing (or are spouting profanities and insults) in chat.

1) Fighting Back

At some point you might choose to fight back. The best reason for doing this is to get some experience fighting... since you have little choice, anyway. The worst reason is because you are angry and want them to suffer. Why? Because as a newer or solo player you may not be able to do much damage and getting you angry is exactly what they want. Such players often thrive on salt: don't give them any.

You have a variety of weapons at your disposal. They are in descending order of damage caused: cannon, swivel (to players), pistol (to players), timed explosive, salvager and atlas pulsing. If you have a cannon and want to do the most damage keep pounding on their ship for as long as you can. The swivel is the best way to clear attackers from your own ship's decks and you can atlas pulse to knock off anyone grappled to your ship. If someone is on your ship and attempting to get on your helm, cannon or swivel (i.e. the are standing still near it) you can interrupt them by shooting them with your pistol.

If you can swing over to their ship you can do some damage to it with your salvage tool. The best targets are the fuel tank (especially if they don't know you're there), engines, the core, wings. You can also attempt to get on one of their cannons and see if you can shoot anything on their ship with it. You can also attempt to get on their helm to move their ship to your advantage or on their swivel to shoot them when they revive back to their own ship.

Your reviver will stop working 5 minutes after they have “destroyed” it so you have that long to revive back to your ship and attempt to fight back or save it. After that you'll revive at a nearby spawner as in item C below.

2) Clearing Out

When you run out of options for fighting back or if you decide not to and just want to get out of there you have a few options for getting away from them.

A) Jump!

If you are near an island that you might safely jump to you can grab as much stuff as you can and attempt to make a getaway. They are likely to pursue you figuring you have stuff in your inventory that they want. If you really want to save what you've got you log out once you've gotten a little distance on them. Some people consider this “combat logging” though, so be aware that some might call you a cheater for doing so. If you've gone through all the steps to communicate and they are still killing you for no reason, though... you're fairly safe in not caring what they think.

B) Glide!

If you have a glider this is one the perfect times to use it to get safely to an island with an inventory full of stuff. Take that thing out of your belt, pack that space with full stacks of recovery metals and get some distance as fast as you can!

C) Respawn Nearby

If storage is gone or not worth anything, your belt is already situated and you just want to move on with your life you can respawn to a nearby reviver. This will put you on the closest island with only the contents of your belt and deregister you from the personal reviver on your ship if it still exists. Get out on land, dust yourself and think about what adjustments you've been wanting to make to your previous ship design or that new design you've been meaning to try and start gathering mats to make a shipyard and assemblers and probably some wood since you probably don't have that on your belt.

Enjoy these moments when you don't have a ship to worry about and there is nowhere to go but up. These can, indeed, be very liberating, creative and enjoyable moments in the game.

3) Crap, is that them again?!

It is fairly rare but some players and crews really enjoy messing with other people and they might follow or find you on that nearby island and continue harassing you. The worst example is when they “spawn camp” and wait near the revival chambers and attempt to kill you over and over.

So you see their ship roll up and they're coming down towards you. What to do?

This may be difficult to do but it is best to first be friendly, shout "AHOY" and say "GG!" Chances are actually quite good that they came to check and see if you need any assistance getting back on your feet. You'll be surprised how often a PVP crew will give you some feedback on ways you can improve your ship or fighting technique and load up more advanced equipment for your next ship. Some will even give you some mats to get you started or extra schematics they've found but don't need.

If they are there to harrass you, though, get their names. This is usually bad behavior that almost no one condones, for the most part, and if they become known as regular spawn campers other players may eventually take steps to put them down. The one circumstance I'm aware of that this is a legitimate tactic is if they are trying to get you away from an island they are farming or building on but you probably won't get to know if that's the case.

Second, respawn and use the tool of last resort: Random Respawn. This will revive you at a random island in the same zone. This will get you away from the players harassing you and hopefully not land you on an island where there are other obsessively hostile players.

4) What?! Not AGAIN!

Sometimes a crew will make a hobby of following you around and harassing you. This is much more likely if you fed them salt and is another really good reason not to do that even if they have gotten under your skin. Even if you random respawn they might check the islands in the zone that have spawners in order to find you. If they do definitely get their names. It isn't against the rules of the game at present but let other players know that they are doing it. You can also report players that are harassing you in this way and Bossa may decided to take steps if others are reporting the same things about the same players.

This is also why you get 2 random respawns per 24 hours of play. If you land on an island where you meet other players that are making too much trouble for you or the original trouble makers track you down you can use the second random respawn and hope for better luck.

5) Log out.

As a last resort remember that you can just log out and go make a cup of coffee, have a snack, do the dishes, etc. Or load up an alternate character and play somewhere else in the game. Players that are bent on harassing others usually get bored easily and will move on when they realize you are no longer there.

Now that we have that ugliness out of the way let's get back to the ship that is actually pirating you and not just sinking you.

Once you’ve established that you are complying they’ll board your ship. If you have a pistol out put it away and equip the repair tool instead. You can sit down if you want to be as non aggressive as possible. Stay away from your swivel gun.

There are a few things that might happen at this point, as well. Most of the time they’ll start breaking into your storage so they can poke through your stuff for themselves. If you don’t have much storage on your fast ship it won’t take long and they won’t be expecting to find much, anyway.

Sometimes they’ll just ask for what they want instead of taking the time. Especially in low tiers they know there isn’t likely to be much of value in your boxes and aren’t really interested in damaging your stuff. Or they might be pants pirates looking for trophies rather than useful loot. Some new players don’t know how to give them things without using a chest. Here’s how.

Your belt is packed with recovery mats and fuel already, right? Your inventory is empty, right? So you can put what they want in your inventory then respawn. The items they wanted are in your death bag and they didn’t have to spend time breaking your containers.

(Remember that 300+ fuel you kept to the side instead of keeping it on your belt? That’s the fuel you give them instead of the 1K stack you might have on your belt.)

Some pirates might also shoot you to make sure you aren’t holding goodies in your inventory. There is no reason to consider this an attack and to respond with violence. If you were attempting to keep the best stuff back in your inventory (and not your belt) they might get upset with you. Most won’t insist you empty your belt but some might. Get their names: this is still fair play but pretty hardcore. Most pirates accept that you’re going to need recovery mats if you are to stay in the game long enough to get better and gather more juicy loot for them to pirate later.

Usually at that point the encounter is over, they’ll probably thank you for complying and say you are free to go. If they don’t say you’re free to go ask if you are just to prevent any possible misunderstandings.

But you might be missing an opportunity if you let it end there. Depending on how friendly they’ve been they might also be interested in talking some. If they hailed first, for example, chances are good they might be willing to talk a bit. Some suggestions for where to start:

“Have you guys seen much action in the area today?”
“I ran into some pirates earlier named <name> and <name>. Do you know who they are?”
“I was shot down earlier by <X>,<Y> and I think <Z>. Any idea who they are?”
“I’m thinking of trying my first stormwall soon. Any suggestions?”
“Wow, your ship is cool design. Those are Apotheus engines, right? What’s the base power?”

Asking about action is talking about stuff they likely find interesting and gives you the chance to find out how dangerous the area might be. Same with telling them who you ran into earlier: they might want to go find the other crew hoping for a good fight and they’ll appreciate you telling them. If you were seal clubbed by someone and got their names then telling other people about it gets word out that there are hooligans about. If they do it too much sometimes more experienced players will take steps. All are ways to start putting together your own mental map of who is who in the game.

The other 2 suggestions are ways of asking more experienced players for advice about playing the game. You’ll be surprised how many are willing to spend a little time giving you advice or helping in other ways. The interactions are likely to be short so their other crew members don’t get bored but solo pirates will sometimes spend a bit more time helping out newer players.

When it comes down to it pirates are people in real life and usually not mean or bullies. They want to have fun playing the game and usually want others to, as well.

I think many new players, especially solo players, take a while to realize that Worlds Adrift is a small world filled with people that you are likely to run into over and over if you continue playing for any length of time. That will likely be shifting somewhat as the game goes back into full marketing and the population goes up but it still pays dividends to invest in getting to know people in the game. You’ll end up getting pirated by the same people several times. Usually it gets more pleasant each time.

“Oh, hey! Good to see you again! You still running an iron ship? Oh, Titanium now! I’m afraid I don’t have any, yet, but I do have some extra fuel. You guys ever find those seal clubbers the other day?”

A Word About Alts

Each Worlds Adrift account now includes 3 character slots and each player can choose to use them in a variety of ways. Some will have completely different kinds of names for each of their characters while others will have similar, easily recgonizeable variations of one name. Some players with differently named alts will roleplay their characters differently, others will play the same way on each character.

This complicates things a bit when you are trying to figure out and remember who is who. Some players who meet you multiple times when you the same character and they aren't will tell you. Others won't for reasons of their own. You can chose if you want to reveal the player behind the name, as well.

One of the things you can watch for, though, is the style of ship they are in. It takes a while to develop your eye for it but each crew tends to have a similar style of ship even if they are playing on alts with different names from time to time. The ships of popular streamers are often immitated, as well, though the more experienced you get in understanding the details of ship design the easier it gets to spot the immitations. More than once I've guessed that I was dealing with someone I knew beacuse of the kind of ship they had.

If someone who uses different names does choose to confide their "true" identity to you, by the way, I'd keep it to yourself and leave it up to them to tell others if they want to.

This set of game habits and social skills also applies to piracy encounters in the higher tiers but in T3 and even more so in T4 it is considered fair game to attack and sink other ships just for the sake of having a PVP experience. Simply being in the Badlands is reason enough for some people to sink you if they can. Your job increasingly becomes convincing them not to.

Being friendly helps a lot and hailing first becomes more important than ever. Having a ship that is clearly not meant for fighting (but also doesn’t have TONS of storage on it and is clearly meant for speed) also sometimes helps. Having had good interactions with PVP crews earlier increases the chances that they won’t sink you out of hand if they run into you in the higher tiers.

There is no way to entirely avoid being sunk. That’s just the way the game is. The above suggestions will probably help in being attacked, damaged and sunk less often but it will still happen. If you do get sunk the best response is always some variation of “LOL! GG!” rather than “Your mother was a hampster and your father smelt of elderberries!” And if your belt is properly packed with recovery mats getting back into the air isn’t nearly as much of a chore.

If you've read all this way you may be interested in one of the key concepts that will help the most both in dealing with potentilal pirates and with other friendly people in the game:

Player interaction IS content in a sandbox MMO: the more effort you put into making your interactions with other players fun, light and interesting the more you and they will enjoy the game... and they'll be less inclined to ruin your day.

Let's look at why pirates play as pirates. It seems obvious that they pirate because they want to steal things instead of having to farm it for themselves. It seems like they don't want to spend the time so they will let you spend the time then steal your best materials from you. To some degree this is true, and for some more than others, but it is far from the whole story.

Pirates, like everyone else, want to have a good time playing the game. That doesn't necessarily mean that they must have fun blowing up your ship but they might if that's what seems like the most fun. If you make the effort to be engaging they'll likely notice and be less inclined to be mean to you.

A basic reading of my advice might make it seem like being pirated well is a transaction, tactics for rolling over and playing dead. To some degree it can be, especially with newer pirate crews who might not yet have their own style down. A more advanced way of looking at it is that being pirated is an opportunity to start building relationships with other players in the game.

In my case I know a number of PVP crews and I'm happy to help them if they need repair mats or fuel. Not because I'm terrified of them but because I know them. They often turn me down because they don't really need them and we have a conversation instead. I'm genuinely interested in changes they're trying in a new ship design, if they've finally found the high power engines they've been hoping for, the fights they have with other top tier crews, etc. They are genuinely interested in what I've been up to, as well. I'm just as helpful and interested in what non PVP players are doing, too, and am free with advice, loading better schematics for thier ships and with mats when I have them.

What has really kept me playing the game after well over 1000 hours are the people I know in the game and the interesting things we all cook up to do together.