I think you should provide proof that you have actually done any of the event before you can come here and tell us drop rates and expected drop rates in the future.
How many hundreds of maps or SoS have you done?
How many beacons have you done? Ships?
If you did 1 beacon you would not be making this thread.
I have decided not to do Treasure Maps because it takes too long to get one done for me, yes, I have read of players mentioning doing 20 maps in an hour, or marking all spots for a good number of Treasure Maps, and then use a Glorious Potion and recall from one rune to another already marked to dig all chests up in a quick series, without dealing with the Spawn nor opening the Chests so as to use the bonus from the Glorious Potion on the highest number of chests possible and then, when the hour of the Glorious Potion bonus is over, go back to all Chests to actually open them up and retrieve all of the stuff but I do not like this way of playing, it is not for me.
Also, digged up chest have a decay timer, if I recall it as correct, not sure how long it is, but I would hate to go into that much trouble and then, to find the chests having gone with all of their contents.
Beacons... I have given it a try but I also find it too slow in between false trackings which lead me to players' ships rather then NPCs and while Beacons may have a decent number of Hats drops, Dread Pirates and Merchant ships have less and, as we know, in order to see Beacons spawn it is necessary to also attack (and board and loot ?) Dread Pirates and Merchant Ships for them to despawn and give a chance to a Beacon to spawn and this also takes time.
In the end, for a player with limited time to play, the most efficient option seems to be the Void Pool but while on Atlantic it is relatively easy to find players doing the Void Pool at any time of the day, on other Shard with a lesser population it is not the same... outside of prime gaming time for that shard it could well be that only a handfull of players might be available off time, so to speak, to participate to the Void Pool.
And, with the current setting that lower waves have a lower chance at dropping Pirate Hats, it is obvious that when only a few players are available to participate to the Void Pool, they might not be able to get too much far with the waves before getting overwhelmed and, therefore, can only get very little Pirate Hats drops per each wave that they can do.
My other thinking is that, with the Event going on, and more and more players getting the Rewards that they want, I imagine that less and less players will want to participate to the Void Pool having already fullfilled their Rewards needs... and this will mean, especially for lower populated Shards, even less players being available to join others at the Void Pool and, consequentially, less waves that can be handled and thus less Pirate Hats drops possible for those still doing the Void Pool.
This, to my opinion, could be handled by raising the chances to get Pirate Hats drops also at lower waves.
How about, linking this increased Pirate Hats drop chance at lower waves to the number of Players who are present in the Void Pool ?
The Void pool can already tell how many players are doing it, right ?
So, the Pirate Hats drops could be adjusted by the number of players doing the Void Pool.
If they are, say, up to 3, the chances at Pirate Hats drops could be raised up to say, wave 30ish which is on average what 3 players might be able to handle, if the players are 5 or 6, then the increase could be less for the lower waves which 6 players can handle more easily but be increased, say, past wave 30 when things start to get harder also for 6 players and up to wave 40-45 which, I think, is when things start to get more difficult to handle... and so forth.
Bottom line is, make it more dynamic so that, when less players are at the Void Pool where they can handle only lower waves, they can still get a decent chance at Pirate drops during that Void Pool run that was to stop at like 30 or 40 waves because of the low number of players participating.
This way, also players on lower population Shards could still be able to get their Pirate Hats drops at the Void Pool even when only a few players are participating.
@ Kyronix , do you think this could be possible ?