The Hourglass in Sea of Thieves, is it worth it?

[@Millbear1]

Thanks again to @tommyshommy for the thumbnail, inspired by Halo Reach's Skull helm. If it were possible, I'd equip it! Still coping over no Halo Elite sails...

[@drchosen3649]

yoho yoho its hourglaas for me i sink i die i have a big cry i make a cup of tea loss farming again i make a new friend im now on a ten win streak full song please

[@janmoravek157]

7 months later since this video's release, and... Well, I lately tried to resume the hourglass, as I was halfway through to get the skeleton curse. Oh boy, Did I quickly remember why I dreaded that thing. On one hand, the hourglass and curse are meant to show how skilled and powerful the other party must be since they managed to get this. A good way to show off determination. A true achievement. On the other hand, you by now get matched up against people who have near perfect cannon aiming skill in high wave waters, people that "Rolls on deck laughing" every time they slay you and sink you, those that are overcautious and turn the game into "Who runs out of wood first"... Not to mention, how do you think a player, who simply wants the curse, feels, when they see that the guy they are forced to fight already has this curse. Like, why? Do you just need to flex even harder on us who still dont have it? So, yeah, I completely understand and even support those who do loss farming, because they already suffered enough, and just dont want to be sitting in one battle for over an hour just to then sink and earn less.

[@Millbear1]

Good on you for giving it another shot. 7 Months in myself and I must say that my skill in the game has gotten significantly better, but I still find myself agreeing with what I said back then. That said, since the Playstation release I've noticed a significant increase in player matches, which is great for the OCE region as it was stone dead before as demonstrated. Time of day does play a big role too. The resource management issue I think is a problem for equally skilled players. All it takes is a one ball and that match is more or less decided if it comes down to that, which is a horrible way to lose but also means you were equally matched if you win. The TDM'rs in hourglass still suck and people who launch from the out skirts to try and get to you that way are the worst, best way is to bait them off their boat and keep them engaged with snipe shots as you close the gap and smash them. I will agree with what Nessiedoes said on one of his streams though, if you are going to loss farm, then doing so in Solo Sloop hourglass matches to hone your cannon skill matches is the way. No need to repair, just focus on getting those shots lined up if you can. Generally speaking, it's faster than sailing out into the distance and waiting for the ring out mechanic and you hopefully are getting some experience out of it. You may even win a match or two by one balling the other guy. Lastly, remember there is a mute text and chat option in the game. They are specifically trying to rile you up and which stresses you out and makes you worse. Quieten the music down, mute the chat and just chill.

[@L0n3w0lf-YT]

That explains the flags that night haha. All though I still frown on loss farming, I can understand that some people are just so over getting an unequal match, that it's borderline unfair as OCE really doesn't have a wide range of crews at any given time as well as players only wanting the curses to learn the lore, but they can't since the attaining the first 100 levels for both factions is such a commitment, most people wont bother trying. I still firmly believe that every time you sink, you learn something and over time you get better, I was terrible once and I'm still far from the best, but I really do think anyone can improve if they really focused on understanding why they lost instead of just giving up and scuttling 100'ds of times :)

[@Millbear1]

100%, scuttling is no fun at all for anyone. The rest of my crew were loading in to defend that haul as well! Our final guy loaded in when we were half sunk haha! 1st legit match up of that night with all 3 of us diving at the same time, which basically tells the story of hourglass in its current state for OCE. I don't want to guess how long it took you previously as you guys were asking if the queue times were ok on our stamp too...

[@L0n3w0lf-YT]

@@Millbear1 We were only on a two streak, we were diving after stealing stuff, we asked you since you guys were champion and we wanted to know if it was worth staying on haha (it wasn't)

[@boopjack9522]

​@@Millbear1if I end up going up against a crew in hourglass that is massively better than me and my crew, I don't usually see the point in continuing the fight. And I don't see what I can learn from a loss where ultra mega try hard sweats completely eviscerated my ship and vamp my ship spawn points with a blunderbuss so that I spend 90% of the fight on the ferry of the dammed

[@Yugioh7733]

I finally got both curses this week with gold and glory. I had more fun trying to match with my friend than waste my time with other players. We were playing in the early mornings and while we waited in the queue, we ranked up grogs and shanties milestones. If we didn't match up we gave the win to the other player. It made the grind so much better. 🤺

[@Millbear1]

If it works, it works! And ticking off a few commendations to boot, good job! I couldn't recommend hourglass farming outside of the bonus week/weekend. It's too much of a punishing slog for me.

[@SnaxMang]

I wish they'd add some official way to fight friends. I have enough friends and friends of friends that play to make several gally crews. An all out brawl between us all would be great. I managed to match my friend solo slooping in HG and it was a riot.

[@Demonicstrike22]

How did you do that? I wanna know to do it with my friend too.

[@Yugioh7733]

@@Demonicstrike22 We played in the early mornings and in only Xbox controller server's. This way the pool of players will be lower and we could match up more consistently. We also were in different factions and when diving, we did at the same time.

[@alexcole9325]

That's actually kinda genius!

[@didden5520]

great vid, loved the song at the end!

[@Millbear1]

The hourglass bossman himself! Thanks Didden!

[@skylerfisher4347]

I just recently got my skeleton curse, and after a long grind I can offer some advice Make sure your crew is willing to do HG before you start. Nothing makes a loss sting more than a crew who’s not even trying because they didn’t want to do HG in the first place but did it simply because you wanted to. If you’re a solo and you don’t want to be forced to improve yourself to god-levels of skill, find a crew! I know it’s hard, but trust me. There are chats and discords aplenty for specifically finding likeminded individuals that want to grind hourglass. It’s what I did! (Shoutout to captain roach’s server) If the losses are really starting to get to you, just take a break. Your mental health is far more important than pixels on a screen. And if you want a combat tip, aim the cannon where the enemy ship *will* be, not where it currently is. You’ll hit way more shots that way.

[@skylerfisher4347]

As for the loss farmers, dice rollers, coin flippers, and all you gimmick dudes… I have no beef with you. The game is a sandbox game and no one is allowed to tell you how you should or shouldn’t play the game. My personal preference to actually fight is just that, MY personal preference and not anything you should feel you have to do. I’ll even offer some advice. If you’re getting levels this way, go for Ghost Curse since it is a one and done situation that doesn’t require any extra grinding after you get it, while unless you’re fine with being a plain skele with extremely limited cosmetics to pick from, you’ll be pretty disappointed with skeleton curse.

[@overclocked5422]

I feel like it is soo sweaty now. I consider myself and crew decent, but it's crazy how hard hourglass can get.

[@Millbear1]

It's crazy how high my blood pressure gets because of it too! 🤯There are players in there pulling off insane shots on those cannons.

[@GrayGamer]

I agree. Players can pull up and beat you in under 3 min.

[@tommyshommy]

Please keep doing the Sea Shanties at the end of the videos, they are AWESOME

[@Millbear1]

Soon may the wellerman come...

[@poorboistudios]

Hg is hands down the best way to practice and become confident enough to solo without worrying for your fate and that of your treasure

[@giggsi1006]

might be true but most Open World fights don't run like HG fights

[@josiahbishop6705]

I wish everyone had your attitude man. Would make the seas a lot more fun!

[@josiahd8468]

just wanted to say hello

[@alexanderebrahimi9559]

Hourglass is fun when I dont fight level 160 players when I am level 20.

[@EvanFirecat]

As a guy with both curses i will tell you hourglass can be hell if your on the Grind Mindset. But if you just wanna Fight somebody and there's nobody in the sever its good.

[@jackmcnally8706]

I’m pretty late to this amazing video, but after receiving my blessing I can confirm this is all very true. Hourglass is a massive pain to grind but is incredibly satisfying to see yourself improve at. The hardest parts are the beginning when you inevitably suck and the middle when you hit a mental wall of having done so many fights but still being so far away. Also with the season 13 reveal I really got to go finish my skeleton curse now to be a skeleton on Flameheart’s ship, luckily I’m already about 60% there and have a few months. Great video!

[@Millbear1]

Already imaging 2 gally crews teaming up in an alliance and manning 8 of the 10 cannons 😂 really looking forward to that ship!

[@jackmcnally8706]

@@Millbear1 I was wondering how that would work. Will they let alliances crew the boat together, or can only one be on at a time? I’m hoping it’s the former for the full Man-o-War experience, although I have a feeling for balance reasons it’s going to be the latter. Time will tell. Should be super fun either way!

[@JonathanKing9608]

awesome video mate

[@Millbear1]

Thanks John!

[@captainblubber]

Nice video! Keep it up! 👍🏼🏴‍☠

[@Millbear1]

Thanks! :)

[@ViViDG]

I just wish there was other ways to raise hourglass rep, when I'm in queue for 15 minutes doing nothing, its just, ugh.

[@Millbear1]

And that's the worst part about it, the long outro and setup doesn't help either. Just throw me back in already so I can sink again!

[@Rozzachu]

Another banger! I am pretty decent on the seas but find it so hard to get an hourglass mate on board so it has been mostly untouched

[@Millbear1]

Solo hourglass is still active, but my good Doctor would start getting concerns about my ticker going into overdrive. How Mmmcrispy just chats on his stream whilst he's murdering me casually, I'll never understand.

[@Rozzachu]

@@Millbear1 I watched a lot of Capt Stirling to get an idea of what to do in hourglass, I just need to assemble the crew!

[@Millbear1]

@@Rozzachu Stirling is one heck of an hourglass player! You'll find a crew soon enough! If you're diving in solo try to appeal to your opponent if you have a good match to get them to join you!

[@True_Camo]

This was an awesome video! I'm a returning player who primarily plays solo now and seeing that ghost curse was like a sick joke when I found out it was locked behind a sweaty PvP mode, since we've wanted a curse like that since we first set foot in the pirate legend hideout and saw the ghost outfit/ship set. Also as an avid lore mongrel myself, it hurt to learn that both curses are integral to story content. Til now, I've said "fuck that" and not pursued it out of self preservation for my own sanity, but the fomo is real. Loss farming has had a strong call to me, but I want to give it a good go before I resort to that. My main hiccup is I don't know how much supplies I need to bring into a fight, is it even worth the time/gold to get supplies just to feed them to an enemy that will likely wax me in minutes?? I also don't understand if I should be raising an emissary flag or not, does that do something that I'm not seeing?

[@Millbear1]

Prepare your sanity, solo sloop hourglass is the longest slog of them all. Especially if you're equally good.| You can never have enough supplies, but I tend to avoid buying them myself other than a storage box to steal your opponents supplies. Reason I never buy them is that you generally need a one ball and the game tends to be over and you can stack up. If you've burned through all of your supplies you probably need a change of opponent anyway because otherwise you'll go insane having spent hours in one match. It could be great fun, but not exactly a great way to optimize your grind of hourglass rep. As for the emissary flag, you don't have to, but it's good if you're also grinding up Athena/Reaper Emissary monthly rewards. Also, you're able to to hand in flags for a small bit of Hourglass rep, but I cannot confirm as to whether having an emissary grade 5 actually increases the value of the flags for hourglass itself or it's just an increase for Emissary value. That and it's generally just good manners that if you sink then the other player has something to hand in as well. Hope this helps, and good luck on the grind! It's a tough one.

[@magicpyroninja]

Best advice I can give you for hourglass Is it not take it to seriously when you're learning you're going to lose probably a lot. Do you get super upset if you don't win call of duty match? It's nothing right. Think of this the same way you don't win your hourglass match. Just go on to the next one. The only thing that really should annoy you is those guys who sail around for an hour in circles cuz they refuse to fight even though they're in a one-on-one fight. That's just annoying as hell

[@magicpyroninja]

It's absolutely worth it if you want to learn how to fight. You need to get into fights. Need to charge in head first and you will lose some of them but you'll win some of them and eventually you'll win more of them. And at some point you won't be worried about people coming near you because you know you can defend yourself

[@magicpyroninja]

Guarantee you got a huge rush when you finally take down a tough enemy when you're so into the fight, you don't even realize where you're at and then the thing pops up to tell you that they sunk and you're like 😮oh s*** we won😁

[@conalocsc]

Its quite on point. Good vid, fella.

[@Illuposecondaccount]

Short answer : "Yes and No" Honestly it depends on your enemy, if he's a pro player or a cheater, you'll suffer, if he's the same as you, or a less experienced player or even a chill player then its enjoyable 🍷🗿

[@gamingbady5305]

Galleon is the fastest ship to sink and I solo joined into one to see how quick it was and it was still about 10 minutes before I sank… how like actually how…

[@Millbear1]

Stop it from reaching the second deck and you’re generally ok! The moment it reaches the second deck it’s over in seconds more often than not.

[@ReinthePain]

great video well done sir!

[@Millbear1]

Appreciate your kind words :)

[@xdrew84x]

I have never tried hourglass. Do you need to stock up inventory like planks and cannonballs or does each crew have the same amount of inventory when the battle begins?

[@Millbear1]

On your first few attempts just go in as you are. Get a feel for the game mode. After that, I'd recommend supplying up everytime. What you can in with is what you can use, so curse balls etc can give you a huge advantage over your opponent. If the other player has been winning for hours then they will have a huge supply advantage. In summary, what you take with you is what you can use. The only thing that doesn't come along with you is any treasure related items

[@elmasmiller4371]

love you sell your allegiance level cheesing as sience :D

[@Millbear1]

"We decided to test this ourselves" aka - Where are the matches? We're so close to 100 and I can't find any games! You caught me in 4K Elmas! :X

[@ThatOneGuyWhoTalks2Much]

The tdmers were right all along...

[@Millbear1]

There were a few comments scalding me for blowing up the TDM'rs, I'm beginning to understand why!

[@royking700]

I very recently just got my skelly up to level 200 in Solo HG. As a result my mental health and sleep schedule has deteriorated horribly. That being said, any dice rollers or lost farmers I come across I treat with the utmost of respect. They're usually very wholesome people who I can have a calm conversation with.

[@Millbear1]

First of all, level 200 solo, you absolute monster! Although, sorry to hear your mental health took a dip whilst doing it. Are you taking a break from HG for a bit?

[@royking700]

@@Millbear1 oh absolutely! A well-long deserved break. But if it's a fight in adventure open crew or with my M8s, I'm always down to have a good fight for fun!

[@guerovillalbaso2523]

What does dice rollers and lost farmers mean. ? In hour glass sea of thieves

[@alexcole9325]

​@@guerovillalbaso2523Dice rollers are people that put matches up to a gamble. Loss farmers are people that lose on purpose for the pity xp because they're fed up with hour long matches that end with them losing anyway.

[@guerovillalbaso2523]

@@alexcole9325 oh

[@magicpyroninja]

Who really cares how you get your curse. If you're happy with it, you're happy with it. But when you're fighting against somebody who achieved it but didn't really like earn it. You can usually tell when you're fighting them because they're not very good at it

[@magicpyroninja]

And a good number of the people complaining about other people with the curses. Don't realize they're just mad that you're not on their level. There's nothing to do with you being good or bad. You're just not as good as them and apparently anything worse than them is absolutely trash so I guess that makes them bottom of the barrel then right?

[@RaidzTV]

W video

[@Eevee-pd6nj]

every millbear vid is 11/10

[@drchosen3649]

yoho yoho its hourglaas for me i sink i die i have a big cry i make a cup of tea loss farming again i make a new friend im now on a ten win streak i need the full song please

[@drchosen3649]

where can i find more of the yoho hourglass song?

[@Millbear1]

This is it I'm afraid, I didn't make a second verse :( Glad you like it though!

[@physicsunivese]

Good vid 👍👍👍

[@Millbear1]

Thanks Physics!

[@SpookyJackaBoy]

i cant really agree with you millbear on the fact that hour glass is blocking any content the only "content" is two replayble cutseens and a small bit of lore. Which if you want to find YT or vet players could/ should help you out with.

[@TheHammerofDissidence]

Loss farming is lame (and inefficient), but at least it doesn't drag on a match and provides a free win to the other player. Runners who spam TDM boards (and suck at it) are the absolute worst, only second to cheaters. If you ever manage to kill one of these hemorrhoids, be prepared to hear the saltiest, most rage induced, petulant gamer rants you've ever heard.

[@Millbear1]

Absolutely recommend recording those, there's nothing quite like a montage of salt.

[@gamingbady5305]

I hate how tedious it is let me just go into another game I hate raising anchor and sailing for 5 minutes every time just to matchmake

[@Itscurry259]

@gamingbady So ur telling me the pve in the game is fun? Like hg is the only thing to do in the game

[@gamingbady5305]

@@Itscurry259 I do enjoy the pve yes, I do ghost forts and will always sink skeleton ships it’s not the fighting I dislike it’s the queue and reset

[@Itscurry259]

@@gamingbady5305 valid but if they reset u just watch yt and does pve not get more repetitive than pvp? Like u have way more replayability with pvp compared to pve But everyone is different so at Done degree I do understand u

[@sublime7617]

Good video!

[@Millbear1]

Thanks Sublime!

[@giggsi1006]

It is so funny how bored HG people are by now. Me and my friend play reaper atm and try to get 100. I use Voicemod and sometimes play some Jack Sparrow music and stuff. One of the enemies told me that I am the reason that he keeps playing and that all the others are sweats or tryhards. Explains the mode pretty much.

[@JackSepticTank-uw5vg]

Bruh idgaf about the *prestige*. Anytime I see someone talk about how they earned their curse the right way I can smell their greasy basement goblin ass through my screen. Imma loss farm or dice roll all the way and watch netflix on screen 2 😂

[@Capt.Slippery]

You do say work together with the loss farmers, but i dont see how its fair that you guys get a 9 streak on a stamp by cheesing, then we get on and sink you guys and you all stop playing? Wouldn't you rather vs a crew who is actually playing the game instead of scuttling a boat over and over? If you really want to have fun, instead of just dipping at the first sight of a more experienced crew why dont you ask if they'd rather do some tdming or legit anything else while in the battle to make ot more fun? I can respect your outlook on it but yeah it really sucks for the people wanting to get their curses legitimately but cant find any matches but then theres others who can just cheese it so easily

[@Millbear1]

You nailed it in your first sentence. It's simply not fair. I won't pretend to think that everyone knows how to land on different stamps, I don't fully understand it myself other than "changing seas", but it's not fair to expect people to just wait 15 minutes to just get sunk in less than 2 for virtually no progress. That's imbalanced of the greatest proportions. I would much prefer to fight a full team legitimately, despite as much fun as we had, but those queue times are ridiculous and shy of popping over to the States via VPN and suffering 250ms, I can't see any other way to solve it. As mentioned, I started landing matches in Singapore vs ones closer to home... it makes no sense. If you were on the crew that sunks us on our 9 streak (as you mentioned it) we had planned on cashing in on 10 and calling it a night. Sleep, responsibilities and all that jazz. And as you saw, my crew were loading in just as we were sinking, so we were planning, at the very least, at defending our haul. We'll blame Nom for playing on a HDD still!

[@tommyshommy]

Just to give some context; - We didn’t just dip, we all stopped playing cause it was almost midnight lol - We couldn’t even find another crew the whole night (started at about 9pm), like Millbear said in the video I was underwater for about 15/20mins with no game (multiple times) until I eventually just got paired with him. - Despite a couple of us getting the curses, not including myself, we had so much fun just versing our friends. We’ve tried versing by changing seas and running Reapers to find each other, but with no luck. Since Hourglass is so dead, it’s the easiest option by far.

[@abyssal-labs]

Never done it and if I do I’ll just lose farm

[@Millbear1]

Try it once properly with a few friends if you can. Always found brig to be the best mix for HG battles. You might like it!

[@abyssal-labs]

@@Millbear1 why bother I play solo and suck at the game what’s the point when iam forced to play a game mode I don’t like people in this community have never helped when I’ve tried all I got was toxic bs

[@VaporyBeat]

Yeah I’m not too fond of loss farmers or dice-rollers either since at the end of the day, it’s a PvP game mode intended for people looking for a good fight, so especially when there are 10-20+minute wait times only to have 1min of watching the other ship sink, it’s a bit annoying & takes the fun out of hourglass. Which isn’t just a case for higher skilled players since lower skilled players also need good matches (where the other boat actually fights as opposed to insta sinking or perma-running) in order to improve as a player, so yeah I’d say loss farming & dice rolls despite being how some people want to play, are a net negative for the game mode overall🤔

[@NazzyDragon]

How do you have so few subs? Wtf?

[@Millbear1]

I damaged my youtube reputation for cheesing :( (I'm joking, I'm still fairly new here I think!)

[@wolfmirebacta8710]

Only for the skeleton curse, and even then the costumes (Warsmith, Spinal and the banshee) just look better

[@gamingbady5305]

Had a guy run the edge hotmicing a really loud brain root song Edit and missing the board I just gave up must of been about 30 minutes it was awful

[@Millbear1]

Yup, no time for time wasting. They don’t get much out of it either.

[@nickbitlee]

MILL!!!

[@Millbear1]

NICK!!!! You gold skelly yet?!

[@nickbitlee]

@@Millbear1 Tried to go for it but instructions were unclear - ended up purchasing the fake ass skeleton curse from the emporium....

[@nickbitlee]

@@Millbear1 but in all honesty - "don't stay in it for too long" - that bit of advice is more valuable than the gold curses ;) point of the game is FUN. Love your content, as always. see you on the seas soon hopefully!

[@Millbear1]

Has one of the best emotes in the game anyhow! Haha!

[@Millbear1]

I certainly feel like I got a few more grey hairs after doing the hard push... Thanks as always Nick! Was actually feeling like dipping into Halo Infinite again soon, so maybe see you there!

[@wretchedwendigoSot]

The reason I don’t agree with loss farming is quite simple: If I worked my butt off doing hours of hard work and getting better and some loss farmer gets the same crap in about the same time while not getting better and just sitting afk and watching a movie Im gonna be mad. Call me sweaty idc because I already know I am I literally have waterfalls of it in the mornings and your salt gives it flavor, DRINK UP ME HARDIES YO HO

[@magicpyroninja]

Lost farming on community day is not a waste of time at all. You get like half a level per loss. It's ridiculous

[@Eevee-pd6nj]

i cant do pvp for the life of me

[@Millbear1]

It honestly wrecks me most of the time in this game

[@Jonotang]

oh my its Nom!

[@Millbear1]

He's a monster on the cannons, but also loves to bilge backwards!

[@alexander2385]

You might have those courses that won't ever explain the skill Gap that I have because you don't even try lmao it's still hilarious how people refuse to PVP in the PVP gamemode

[@ondrejmalek1322]

after 170 levels in reaper, no, it wasnt worth it for me, skelly curse is lackluster and its cosmetics are a mixed bag of dogshit and average

[@AngelRamirez-qp7uu]

Me I am level 200 reaper and ghost but I still think gold curse is still the best curse And I wish I never did hg

[@Millbear1]

I'm starting to feel that hourglass has created some small amount of PTSD amongst the players!

[@SamadAlHayadi]

If your starting now and your bad at the game, nah

[@conArtistAUS]

you can lose to get it its not a flex

[@peepeeman4740]

Bro you have to sink like 800 times

[@microwave1148]

I do not like loss farmers and dice rollers due to how 90% just swear at you and call you slurs for refusing im in hg for the pvp not the rewards so im just asking please fight me but im always somehow the villain for this i think a cool loss farmer or dice roller i see no problem but omg they tend to be more toxic than regular hg player's I honestly wish loss farmers woukd actually just fight me when i dont agree to just take a free win its funner for everyone plus it could be more efficient who knows ill add i think private pvp should be a thing as you say though if it would be a thing it shouldnt give the same rep as a standard fight but also i think they should add a tdm mode and a 2v2 mode but these would all need there own server's so its impossible they would just shut hg down like they did arena eventually

[@VomitComet-nm3ny]

Sot KZbinrs are really running out of ideas. “Is hourglass worth it” 💀💀🙏

[@juzzi137]

Sadly this community is disgustingly toxic and will hate you for what ever reason.

[@bryceharvey5572]

No

[@Millbear1]

@@bryceharvey5572 With such a fine contribution to the subject of conversation, I hereby declare the debate of whether or not Hourglass is worth it (un) officially close!

[@scottmiller5710]

Yea if your a loss farmer your a loser

[@wesleyjohney7557]

🥹