You may want to turn around the next time you sail the sea and spot a glowing fire on the waves. Swimming just below the flames could be the ferocious Ancient Feared Redmaw, waiting to set your ship ablaze with its fiery bite and deadly explosive blast!
The Ancient Feared Redmaw
The Ancient Feared Redmaw is a roaming World Event available to all pirates sailing the High and Safer Seas. During the World Event, you’ll take on the Ancient Feared Redmaw, an Ashen Megalodon that can light ships on fire with a fiery bite and unleash a cataclysmic explosion.
Each time the Ancient Feared Redmaw targets your ship, it will charge your vessel and attempt to bite it. When it chomps down, it will light your boat on fire and create several holes in the hull. To stop the giant shark from charging, you must damage it enough during its charge to cancel the attack.
The Ancient Feared Redmaw also builds up heat over time. If left alone, the Ancient Feared Redmaw will eventually overheat and unleash an incendiary blast that will rock your ship and leave it with several holes. You must continually damage the Ancient Feared Redmaw to release its heat gradually and prevent the giant explosion.
The Ancient Feared Redmaw is bigger, faster, and more aggressive than regular Megalodons. It is also an expert tracker. Once you engage with it, you can expect it to follow you further across the Sea of Thieves than other Megalodons.
How to find the Ancient Feared Redmaw
Unlike other World Events, you won’t be able to locate the Ancient Feared Redmaw by scanning the horizon for a specific cloud or beacon. Instead, you’ll want to work toward reaching Hunter’s Call Emissary Grade V to find it.
Similar to how reaching Reaper’s Bones Emissary Grade V will reveal all other Emissaries on your Map Table, achieving Hunter’s Call Emissary Grade V will reveal all Ancient Megalodons on your Map Table.
So, once you reach Emissary Grade V, if the Ancient Feared Redmaw is active, it will appear on your Map Table. The Ancient Feared Redmaw will appear as a red shark fin with flames below it.
While you should always be able to find an Ancient Megalodon, only one can be active at a time. So, if you see a shark fin with a different color, the Ancient Feared Redmaw isn’t currently roaming the sea.
However, if the Ancient Feared Redmaw is active, you can find it anywhere across the Sea of Thieves except the Shores of Gold and the Red Sea.
While randomly running into the Ancient Feared Redmaw is possible, finding it through achieving Hunter’s Call Emissary Grade V is much more efficient.
If you don’t see an icon for an Ancient Megalodon on your Map Table, it could be because of the cooldown between Ancient Megalodons. After defeating an Ancient Megalodon, you must wait around 12 minutes for another to appear. Otherwise, you should always see one as Ancient Megalodons can be active while other World Events such as a Skeleton Fort, Skeleton Fleet, and Burning Blade are active.
How to cool the Ancient Feared Redmaw
When a crew attacks the Ancient Feared Redmaw, it will begin heating up, building intense pressure inside, until eventually overheating and unleashing a fiery blast. The Ancient Feared Redmaw will continually build up and release pressure with an explosion until defeated.
As the Ancient Feared Redmaw builds pressure, the flames from its embers will grow larger and larger until it explodes.
Preventing the Ancient Feared Redmaw from exploding will require your constant attention. To cool the Ancient Feared Redmaw down, you must continually damage it. Damaging the Ancient Feared Redmaw will release pressure from the giant shark and keep it from releasing its devastating blast. You can use Cannonballs, Firearms, Tridents of Dark Tides, and any other tools you acquire that inflict damage.
However, some methods of damage can accelerate the frequency of blasts by adding to the pressure. You don’t want to use fire or explosive damage against the Ancient Feared Redmaw. Using an Ashen Winds Skull, the Ashen Roar, Firebombs, or Gunpowder Barrels against the beast will fuel the fire for the blast.
Don’t bother dousing the Ancient Feared Redmaw with buckets of water, as it will have no effect. It’s only worth doing once for the related Commendation.
Difficulty Scaling
The Ancient Feared Redmaw’s difficulty dynamically scales relative to the nearby crews. The scaling considers the number of crews and pirates on each crew.
So, a lone pirate sailing on a Sloop can take down the Ancient Feared Redmaw as quickly as a fully crewed Galleon fighting along other ships.
During the fight, you can expect a Sloop to receive fewer holes after a bite from the Ancient Feared Redmaw than a Brigantine or Galleon.
The health of the Ancient Feared Redmaw will also scale to the number of pirates and crews within its vicinity. A solo pirate on a Sloop can use fewer Cannonballs than larger crewed ships to take down the giant beast.
You should be able to take down the Ancient Feared Redmaw with the supplies stocked in your ship. However, purchasing additional resources for the encounter isn’t a bad idea.
If you run out of supplies, keep your eyes on the horizon for Barrels of Plenty, as they will appear near the fight.
It is important to note that the amount of fire from each bite and the damage from the Ancient Feared Redmaw’s explosive blast do not scale relative to your ship and crew size.
With that in mind, any crew would be wise to keep a Horn of Fair Winds around during the encounter to combat any flames that may arise!
Ancient Feared Redmaw Loot
Killing the Ancient Feared Redmaw will reward you with various Ashen treasures. Hopefully, the beast will also relinquish some Ancient Feared Redmaw Teeth and Scales.
While not guaranteed, you can find Grisly and Pristine Feared Redmaw Teeth and Scales amongst the loot pile. The Grisly Teeth and Scales are much more common than the Pristine, which are worth more. You can sell them to the Hunter’s Call, Reaper’s Bones, and Sovereigns.
