In Sea of Thieves, Xbox One players are increasing the calls for parley in order to gain better resources for your ship and your crew on the high seas. Not to be confused with parlay, where you use your winnings from gambling into a greater gain or favor in the future. Parley refers to a cease-fire of sorts, so you can open negotiations for peaceful trading between ships.
When Sea of Thieves was first released, it was common practice for the bigger ship to destroy the smaller one in order to take its resources. But now, players have found a more interesting and perhaps lucrative way of gaining upgrades through parley. As noted in a post on Polygon, parley goes a little something like this:
“Calling parley opens negotiations, as long as both sides are willing to honor the tradition and abide by the terms. “We’ll take half your loot if you drop anchor now, and then we’ll leave you alone,” for example. These social encounters often veer a little closer to DayZ than Pirates of the Caribbean, but straddling the line between super-nice and threatening is oftentimes necessary to convince another ship to drop anchor.
Parley is also an invaluable tool around strongholds. A single crew can’t possibly fight the waves of skeletons to get their loot and an enemy galleon. Two crews, however, can easily clean up the island and split the loot. Now that Rare have confirmed crews will need to work together to fight bigger and more dangerous PvE threats very soon, parley is going to become the word that every pirate in Sea of Thieves needs to know.”
The story from Polygon stems from a post on Reddit, where a member of the SoT community proposes parley as a general accepted rule among players. So far, parley appears to create a better social experience in Sea of Thieves that may benefit players in the long run. Parley may prove to be a better tool for players that want to gain Pirate Legend status than trying to get to the achievement solo.
Seeing that Rare has plans for Sea of Thieves players to “fight bigger and more dangerous PvE threats very soon,” it might not be a bad idea to figure out how to work together sooner, rather than later.
