How To Get More Drifters In Corsair Cove

Published Aug 5, 2026, 11:46 AM EDT Collin is a Guides Staff Writer at TheGamer who has been writing guides for nearly ten years. He is also a professional game/level designer. More importantly, he's still waiting for a new Ape Escape game to release. If you want to be a successful pirate in Corsair Cove, you'll need to ensure your community is constantly growing and is happy. This is easier said than done, as you'll be managing a bunch of angry drunks with a propensity for violence (and a love of dancing with pigs). One of the key resources for building your island is Drifters, which is essentially the population of your city and workforce. However, since this isn't a resource you cannot just harvest, consistently getting more Drifters can be tricky if you don't know what to do. Here is how to acquire more Drifters and when you should actually expand your city's population. How To Get More Drifters When it comes to getting Drifters, you actually have several routes you can go to increase your ranks. Before we get into the best methods, here's a quick breakdown of all the main ways to earn more Drifters in Corsair Cove: Community Events Recruiting at friendly ports Various events at sea (smuggling, prison ships, shipwrecks, etc.) Rising Sun skill For acquiring more Drifters, your best bet is to always keep an eye out for various events that often reward pirates upon completion. Prison Ships and Shipwrecks are the most consistent events, as these will almost always offer you a decent number of Drifters upon completion. These are also pretty easy to beat — especially once you start upgrading your ships and expanding your fleet. Once you start opening up the map more, you'll gain access to a variety of friendly ports that you can visit. While at these ports, you'll be given the option to recruit more Drifters, which will expand your numbers and is largely a risk-free method of getting a large amount in a short time. That being said, this is not a method you can use when just starting, as you'll be fairly restricted to where you can visit just due to the effectiveness of your fleet. Community events that happen on your island are another way to amass quite a few Drifters. These will trigger randomly as you play and can often involve a large number of castaways washing up on the shores of your city. You'll always have the option to take them in, but this usually comes at the price of overall sentiment and can lead to an Outrage if you're not careful. Despite being inconsistent, these events will be a main source for how you get more Drifters when you start a fresh island and your options are limited. Remember, you can almost always deny castaways a place on your island without penalty if you cannot sustain them or risk adding more people to the city. When To Increase Drifter Numbers Where things get a bit complicated is when to actually increase your numbers. It's extremely easy in Corsair Cove to take in more than you have room for, which will cause your sentiment to free-fall and lead to an Outrage. Because of this, I suggest always taking in small amounts at a time, unless you really have a ton of resources and money to spend. Remember, unlocking Principle Buildings such as the Salty Cabin can give you way more housing for your Drifters. This will also save you space and make it much easier to ensure you have enough room for whoever you decide to bring in. Additionally, you can keep track of which Drifters are working and which ones are lazing about by looking at the top bar of your HUD. To the left of the Cohesion Meter will be two heads, with the closest one showing the number of Drifters working and the farthest one on the left displaying how many are unassigned to jobs at the moment. Use this as an indicator of when you can expand, as you'll want to ensure you have a decent number of unassigned Drifters to man all the buildings you'll build around the next Pirate Camp.