Be a Pirate Kraken Guide: How to Recognize It and Avoid Losing Your Ship

Quick answer

A giant black tentacle rising from the water near your route is the Kraken. Stop closing on it, turn around, and set course back toward port.

• Encounters happen at sea while you're sailing, so watch the water along your course.
• Keep your distance from the tentacle for the rest of the sail.
• The game pitches the Kraken as a hazard to survive, not a boss to fight.

Sailing across Be a Pirate's eight seas, you're sharing the water with one of the game's headline hazards. The official description puts it right in the core pitch — blast enemy ships, survive the Kraken, defeat epic bosses — so every captain should know two things: what the Kraken looks like, and how to get away from it.

How to recognize the Kraken

The Kraken has one clear visual signature: a giant black tentacle rising from the water near your route. Encounters happen at sea while you're sailing, and when that tentacle breaks the surface close to where you're headed, there's no mistaking it. As one captain put it on spotting one: "Right there, dude. That's a kraken."

That wariness is good advice — the same player's standing warning for these seas is to be "really careful for the krakens" when going around them. And since survive the Kraken sits in the core pitch separately from the game's epic bosses, it's a hazard to keep an eye out for on any sailing trip.

How to avoid losing your ship

When a black tentacle rises near your course, steer away — it's the tactic to copy. In the one known encounter, a starter dinghy in the starter sea turned the other way: the player set the objective "HEAD BACK TO PORT" with the Starter Port a little over a hundred meters out, steered clear of the tentacle, and the ship got clear. The Kraken stayed nearby without attacking.

When you spot the tentacle, do the same:

1. Stop sailing toward it. The Kraken sits near your route, so your current course is the problem.
2. Turn around and head back toward port. That's exactly how the encounter above ended safely.
3. Keep your distance for the rest of the trip. Give the tentacle a wide berth rather than doubling back toward it.

The recorded encounter itself — a tentacle rising beside the route, and the sail back toward port that cleared it:

Watch the full guide on YouTube.

Getting your ship ready anyway

For the game's tougher encounters — Kraken and boss events included — the general advice is to watch for them and prepare before engaging: upgrade your ship's defenses and bring plenty of health. Upgrading your current ship's speed, health, and cannons with the coins you earn is the stated way to handle harder fights in general.

But the moment a black tentacle rises near your route, the response stays the same: stop closing on it, turn around, and head back toward port.

Our ship upgrades guide covers the upgrade routes, the combat guide covers ship fighting in general, and the sailing guide helps you read the seas. It's also worth a quick look at the codes page before you grind out upgrade coins.