Tutorial: PvE Claim Flags and How They Work

[xwildslicerx 8]

Disclaimer: This is based on my personal experience of what my Company mates and I have come across while trying to protect our land from invaders. Some information may not be 100% correct but so far I have not seen evidence to dispute the workings of this system. Also note that this information is current as of v9.3 with future v10.0 in mind.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I will be referencing the venn-diagram image below and the information it holds. From here on out I will use the following references:

• Green circle as "A" 
• Red circle as "B"
• Yellow circle as "C"
• Blue circle as "D"

Example: If I say "AB" I am referencing the area covered by both "A" and "B".

 

As a pirate surviving the rough landscapes and the perilous seas you have numerous options afforded to you in regards to choosing a home location. You may do the following:

• Remain at Starter Freeports (Forever stuck at max level of 8)
• Live the Sea Life on boats
• Live on Lawless territory 
• Claim area outside of the above mentioned areas (can claim open sea)

At Starter Freeports, you cannot claim any land  nor does it allow building of any sort as it is not claimable or lawless.

Living at sea is possible. You can trade materials in to obtain yourself a raft (even a Ramshackle Sloop! coming soon) at a Starter Freeport by speaking with the Shipyardsman at the end of the dock. With this, you are able to place a bed, a campfire, some storage, a water barrel - and a few other things if you can fit it. Now that you have a built up mobile home you can live out on the open water. Keep in mind that all ships gradually take durability damage over time and that damage is increased based on whether or not you are anchored, in a claimed area and/or out in the water. The ideal method for this would be to find a piece of land to anchor to when you log off for the night.

Living in lawless territory is not for the faint of heart. This method does not allow for claiming land with Claim Flags; instead you use the size of your base to claim an area. Say you choose an area within a lawless territory and you place some foundations and build yourself a little hut to call home. This building will decay over time if you do not visit it / come online. However, other players will not be able to build right next to you. You are provided with a small area of effect (AoE) around your foundations that prevents enemies from building right next to you. The tricky and possibly very costly part about living in lawless is that resources around you are NOT affected by your base or you! Resources (including animals, passives and aggressives) will still respawn causing trees and brushes to protrude through your floors. This is also very beneficial as you can be creative with your terrain and build around the foliage for pretty awesome layouts.

Now onto the meat of this tutorial and the original reason for this post - PvE Claim Flags.

In areas you are able to claim land, you are unable to build without claimed land. If you find yourself needing to shack up due to harsh travels and you come across an island packed full of claim flags, you will find yourself having to steal claims in order to obtain a bit of land to build on. Or maybe you've found yourself a nice location and its free to claim. There are a few mechanics you need to know in order to do this.

You can see claimed land by bring up your map with "M" and looking for red circles. You can see these same circles in person by holding "H" and looking out into the world. You will see a few different colors throughout your time. I will explain these shortly. Finally, by pressing "F1" you will bring up a claim flag that you can place down.

If the land is free, you can simply place the flag and wait 10 minutes to claim your first bit of land! You do not need to be within the circle in order to claim. However, if any other player outside of your company or alliance walks into your circle, the claim will be contested. If you are not within that claim, your claim will begin to fail and you may lose out on that bit of land. if there is enemy territory nearby, you will either have to place your claim flag within that enemies territory, or travel far enough away in order to place your own such that it will contest the enemy territory. This is where different colors come into play, which you can see by holding "H". Note that these colors do not correspond to the venn-diagram image.

Green circles are areas you have claimed. Blue circles are areas you are attempting to claim. Yellow circles are areas other players are trying to claim within your claimed areas. Red circles are all other claimed areas other than your own company's - yes this includes alliance members (This should be fixed as allies can steal land).

Alright - so you have finally claimed a bit of land. At this point your claim is safe from other pirates wanting to steal your land for 3 real world days - 72 hours! From the moment you claim is successful, that claim will begin accruing time. Starting at 0, time will tick negative until it reaches -259,200 seconds (72 hours). During this time, you do not to be within the circle in order to maintain that claimed area. After 3 days, that claim can be contested by other players and you will likely be forced to protect your land. How do you do such a thing on a PvE server?! No worries - there are ways. As long as a member of your company remains within this new claim of yours, no one can ever steal it from you. Regardless of whether or not you are online or offline - your character remains where you logged. This means you can put together what I like to call a "Claim Building" - or also referred to as a logoff room.

Lets say you have claimed areas "AB" but you're solo! Ah crap! You have TWO areas yet you are but one person! No worries! Follow the venn diagram. Do you see how "AB" are overlapping? Build your Claim Building within the overlapping sections of "AB" and use that as your main place to logoff. At this point no enemy will ever be able to steal "A" or "B" from you. This is where you can get even more land for yourself even as a solo player. You find yourself needing more land, or even water to build shipyards in, so you expand your claim to "ABCD" and you find that your previously built Claim Building falls outside of the new area. You can build yourself a new Claim Building in the center of ALL 4 of the circles! See how they overlap? Alternatively, you can find yourself a company mate to join you and build them their very own Claim Building. You could place this new building where "CD" overlap and thus be covering all 4 with 2 separate logoff rooms.

Do not let this fool you though. Once you come online and begin moving about - your land is in danger of being contested. If someone attempts to steal your land while you're not there you will have to find your way back to contest it! There will be a notification that someone is attempting to steal your territory, so as long as you're paying attention, you should have plenty of time to react. You will have 30 minutes to get back to your claim in order to contest it. Once this 30 minutes is up, you lose your land and their claim timer (10 minutes) begins. Say this enemy of yours has placed a flag on the NW side of "A" but their claim also covers the building you have between "AB". If the enemy successfully claims "A" you will lose that circle and potentially the building. If they are successful, their newly claimed area has the 3 day protection as yours did when you first started.

I will try my best to correct any inaccuracies within this post and update it as time goes on. If you have questions, suggestions or concerns, please let me know!

I hope this helps alleviate some of the confusion surrounding the PvE Claim Flag system and helps you maintain your claims - or steal claims - whatever floats your boat! 

[Endo Fett 73]

Are you sure about overlap protection? In our experience, the sleeper only protects the closest flag...

[Kirves 45]

Yes I can confirm the overlap protection definitely works. So with the patch 9.3 the only way to get your 72 hours protection is to demolish your flag and put down a fresh flag?

[Chacytay 0]

in a perfect funktion game this would be how it works...but its not.

 

If you want to contest such a terrtory as in your picture, the only thing you have to do is setting your flags at one (or all!) ends of the circle....you might not take all the territory...but the owner is left with near to nothing....by then youre not in the range of the center with the sleeping bodys in it....and that is how everyone is stealing territory as long as the circle itself isnt the protection (how it should be...but its clearly not working)

[xwildslicerx 8]

1 hour ago, Endo Fett said:

Are you sure about overlap protection? In our experience, the sleeper only protects the closest flag...

Yes.

 

1 hour ago, Kirves said:

Yes I can confirm the overlap protection definitely works. So with the patch 9.3 the only way to get your 72 hours protection is to demolish your flag and put down a fresh flag?

Yes - if you want that timer to be active this is what you'd have to do.

 

53 minutes ago, Chacytay said:

in a perfect funktion game this would be how it works...but its not.

 

If you want to contest such a terrtory as in your picture, the only thing you have to do is setting your flags at one (or all!) ends of the circle....you might not take all the territory...but the owner is left with near to nothing....by then youre not in the range of the center with the sleeping bodys in it....and that is how everyone is stealing territory as long as the circle itself isnt the protection (how it should be...but its clearly not working)

 

The way your image is displayed does not work. The system will not allow you to place it THAT close to an enemy territory. This can still happen, however, using sea claims to increase the size of the circle as the radius of a sea claim is longer than the "can't place claim" length.

[Chacytay 0]

it is IN their territory....just at the edge...and it works...this is how we managed to get our territory back...just by declaiming their flag from the edge of the circle

 

[Mahakmar 21]

overlapping is the huge issue, enough overlaps and you will be without a base plain and simpel, the fix for protecting flags in PVE are not working AT ALL , replacing each 3 days when you getting overlapped flags means you have to contest the owner of it and they will do same next time etc etc untill you are done with the watch the flag game

[Kirves 45]

Quote

PVE Territory can only be claimed if the owner has not been active around the territory within the last 3 days.

This is where all the confusion with the claiming system is in PVE. Reading this makes me think the system should be if you are walking around in your claim the upkeep timer should stay capped out at 3 days. Whenever you are gone for 3 days good bye claim. That quote is straight from the patch notes. We seriously need a dev to explain this claiming system and if it is truly working as intended. Cause reading that in the patch notes would tell me that there upkeep system is not working.

Edited January 4, 2019 by Kirves

[Kirves 45]

As mahakmar stated you can't drop your claims and reset your timers cause of the overlaps. So I still can't leave my base without losing everything. 

[Chacytay 0]

it is not working at all..the only thing contesting is a sleeping body...if anyone can declaim your flag without touching your body with his circle....then youre screwed....the whole territory has to contest...not only the bodys...as soon as a flag touches it...it should be contested...that would kill the overlap problem too

 

[sora 4]

2 hours ago, Kirves said:

This is where all the confusion with the claiming system is in PVE. Reading this makes me think the system should be if you are walking around in your claim the upkeep timer should stay capped out at 3 days. Whenever you are gone for 3 days good bye claim. That quote is straight from the patch notes. We seriously need a dev to explain this claiming system and if it is truly working as intended. Cause reading that in the patch notes would tell me that there upkeep system is not working.

@Jatheish  Please explain this to us because it is not working as described.

[Stid 2]

I just been stolen , my territory and house are gone !
I was not in the house for less than 48 hrs , How could that happened then ?

[agodin 1]

I am in the same boat as STID We had our 1 claim taken when we were all sleeping in the 3 houses we build within our area, we played up till 1am ish and by 9am we lost everything. We are now standing within the land claim and everything belongs to the company that own most of the island.

[Pax 83]

Yha most of this looks good except for 2 noteable things...

1. The original claim timer doesnt start at 0. Starts somewhere around 17k-25k seconds in the positive.. at least all the ones our tribe has placed do.

2. what you dont talk about is that enemy lands CAN overlap yours.... The problem here is that if they do over lap yours and they have the protection and your does not. they can expand into your area by stealing more but you can not try to get back that area for 72 hours.  And if you try to pull your flag up and replace it. you will NOT be able to. 

Heres a picture.. all of the green flags were here before any othre reds.  

https://gyazo.com/86294739a80f2e3c4f64d82e86e097c0

[Nari 197]

If you mentioned this I missed it. You can use your ship to protect claims in PvE as if they were sleepers. Not super useful though because if they want your land bad enough they will sink it.

[Yellowfrog 4]

after reading all these i start to understand how 40k people will fit in one server  everyone will have the ability to build everywhere ,keep his buildings for 1 hour or 2 and then loose them so the next one can build.

Edited January 5, 2019 by Yellowfrog

[Stid 2]

5 hours ago, Yellowfrog said:

after reading all these i start to understand how 40k people will fit in one server  everyone will have the ability to build everywhere ,keep his buildings for 1 hour or 2 and then loose them so the next one can build.

Exactly as it is now yes !  ^^
I don't even know why I still want to build in this state of the game as you can loose EVERYTHING in an hour ...  -_-

 

[gatoloko32 6]

20 hours ago, Kirves said:

This is where all the confusion with the claiming system is in PVE. Reading this makes me think the system should be if you are walking around in your claim the upkeep timer should stay capped out at 3 days. Whenever you are gone for 3 days good bye claim. That quote is straight from the patch notes. We seriously need a dev to explain this claiming system and if it is truly working as intended. Cause reading that in the patch notes would tell me that there upkeep system is not working.

I totally agree, i'd rather the system it says on the patch notes to be the correct one.

I'm paying in a 4 person crew and i'm hard working on a nice looking village, but i can't leave to play the 80% of the rest of the game, because if i leave with my crew to explore, the village is defenseless.

I'm a pacient person and i don't care it takes a while, but the thing that makes me loose my shit is the 0 respones and comunication about the pve claim system complains.

Sure, the next patch will touch claiming in water, but as they say it's useless, and the only thing is usefull for it's to appear listed on top10 dynamic map.

[rurickjames 8]

I suspect most watching this thread are aware, but I was not until yesterday...; you can build structures in the water.  I had not been able to find or steal land since day 4 (when I lost my only claim), but was able to claim some water near an island [circle not touching any land].  Yesterday I finally saw a post somewhere that said foundations could be placed on the ocean floor; sure enough, 9 foundations deep I was able to build a platform and create a small base just off-shore.