The sea in Sea of Thieves has been quite rough over the last few years. Some almost forgot the pirate MMO by Rare. The game has been continuously improved and feels like a full-fledged title since the first season began in January 2021.
In the pirate MMO, you and three others traverse the eponymous Sea of Thieves to become a pirate legend. Along the way, you dig up treasures, transport goods, and take down skeletons and other enemies. For your adventure, you choose one of three ships, which differ in size, speed, and layout.
The game mixes PvP and PvE together. You never know what awaits you beyond the horizon – yet that’s what makes Sea of Thieves so entertaining. All players have the same equipment and there is no character level. Thus, theoretically, you always have the same chances in combat. Unless you encounter a large galleon manned by four pirates as a solo player.
That was the problem with Sea of Thieves: After the release on March 20, 2018, there was a lot of criticism. In particular, the lack of endgame content and monotonous quests were at the forefront. Developer Rare promised to continue working on the title and to supply it with new content for several years. And they kept their word.
The pirate adventure now has, in addition to events, a free Battle Pass and a proper story, a progression system that rewards you for many of the activities. But what is there to do in Sea of Thieves? What makes the game so special that it becomes the perfect candidate for “Find Your Next Game”?
How Sea of Thieves has improved over the years
In the last three years, the game has been supplied with new content, new game modes, events, and a progression system. With the start of the seasons in January 2021, there is also a “Battle Pass”-like system, with one peculiarity: The over 100 rewards are free. Optionally, there is a paid pass that allows you to secure exclusive cosmetics.
Since May 2018, Sea of Thieves has been regularly supplied with new content. Some of these, like “The Hungering Deep,” were time-limited, and only old sea dogs can now tell you about that adventure. In addition to the regular events, there is content that still can be played in 2021. The story mission “Heart of Fire” was released in March 2020 and introduced the most legendary villain in the game, “Captain Flamehart.”
If you prefer to take things a bit slower, you can travel the sea as an ambassador for one of the companies since April 2020. With the update, cats as animal companions found their way into Sea of Thieves. In addition to the cute cats, you can now also take other companions, such as parrots, dogs, and monkeys on your adventures.
Do you love to sail and want to become as famous and notorious as the old pirate legend Klaus Störtebeker? Besides Sea of Thieves, there are other sailing MMOs for pirates and seafarers. Which ones are worth playing in 2021 can be found in our overview:
Sea of Thieves finally has a coherent story
Many players missed a coherent story. Sea of Thieves has gained this with the “Tall Tales.” It serves as a red thread throughout the game, and crews experience longer adventures together in the game world. The “Tall Tales” themselves are quite something: you solve puzzles, sometimes under time pressure, and use texts from books and scrolls to find the next goal.
One of the stories leads players to a hidden cave on a deserted island. Once there, fire bowls are ignited in a concealed chamber, the chamber closes, and the exit of the room is blocked. Water streams from the ceiling into the room and quickly covers the floor. Only those who solve the puzzle and arrange the symbols on the pillars correctly will not end up as a water corpse.
The story is triggered by NPCs. The first quest is received from the mysterious stranger, who waits for you in the tavern. Your main task is to follow clues in the form of travel descriptions in diaries, smudged map drawings, or symbols in the sky to one of the many islands, where you search in caves or other special corners for statues, medallions, or other plunder.
A repetitive task is finally exciting: To earn gold and become a pirate legend, you complete various tasks. One of them is the search for hidden treasures. For this, you receive treasure maps from the gold collectors. The maps often show an island that you must look for on the map table on your ship. And this task repeats itself very often and becomes not only boring but also exhausting over time.
With the “Tall Tales,” you are offered more variety. You read the puzzle on scrolls and books and thus determine your course. This eliminates the need to cross-reference between the map and the map table.
Merchants and Alliances offer variety
You begin your adventure at an outpost. There you will also find trading companies that provide you with missions. If you sail under their respective flag, you gain additional reputation and rewards.
At the release, there were already the gold collectors and the soul order that provided you with missions. However, the missions became repetitive, and there was a lack of variety. Through content updates, the cutthroats, the hunter’s call, and the reaper bones found a new home in Sea of Thieves. With each of the five companies, you receive commendations for successful voyages, and some try to win your favor with reputation and promotions.
Action on the high seas in PvP
In the interview with MeinMMO, Executive Producer Joe Neate and Creative Director Mike Chapman revealed to us that Sea of Thieves will always be a mix of PvE and PvP. There is now a standalone PvP mode with the Arena. In this mode, you compete against other crews and fight for glory and honor.
In the regular mode, PvP will always be part of the adventure, despite the arena mode. Players are therefore constantly exposed to danger and do not know what waits for them beyond the horizon. It is not uncommon for your treasure-laden ship to be sunk by another crew just before reaching the safe harbor. This is extremely frustrating, and even someone who reaches one of the outposts unharmed should quickly unload and sell their cargo.
Just let your soul dangle
After a hard day at sea, one longs for relaxation. You find it in the game by fishing and cooking. The caught fish is stylishly fried in the ship’s galley. But you shouldn’t forget the food on the stove while you are standing on the bowsprit watching the sunset. If you’re not careful, the ship catches fire, and such a fire on the high seas can turn quite ugly.
The ships have been fundamentally overhauled and now possess a better and more comprehensive damage model after various updates. While before you just had to patch holes in the ship’s hull with planks, now you also take care of broken masts and fires. It gets particularly critical when you are being shot at by an enemy ship with cannonballs that have special abilities: they can make you dance or even make you drunk.
This is how Sea of Thieves is doing today with Season 2
With the start of the second season in Sea of Thieves, a long-awaited feature is being released: You no longer need to search for crates for planks, cannonballs, or food at the outpost, but can buy them directly from the Trading Alliance. This will cost you some gold, but it saves you from the annoying search for consumables before departure.
A season lasts about three months in Sea of Thieves. Every player receives free access to the content of the new season, and there are nearly 100 rewards on offer. Most of these are cosmetic in nature and are intended for your character, weapons, and ship.
The companies also provide you with new cosmetic items. When you complete missions for them, you increase your reputation and esteem. Those who reach the highest level with them unlock impressive skins for their ship.
In addition to cosmetic items, there are also new challenges: Rare skeleton forts appear all over the map, which are supposed to test you. On the small islands, skeletons roam and want to get their hands on you. If you want to succeed, you should make use of appropriate items like firebombs and the ash skulls – a kind of flamethrower. And they are powerful: with a fire beam, you carve your way through hordes of skeletons. If you survive as a crew, you may open the treasure chamber and grab the riches.
If you want more gold, you’ll be rewarded on other islands. Even if skeletons in Sea of Thieves don’t carry much: in Season 2, some of them carry bags of gold with them.
The trailer for Season 2 in Sea of Thieves gets you excited for the new content:
This has changed: Until the start of the season, you received no rewards for typical pirate activities. Covering nautical miles, going ashore, taking down skeletons and their forts, cooking fish, digging up treasures – there was previously nothing for all this. It was a necessary evil to improve your reputation with the respective companies.
With the “Loot Pass,” there is still a paid pass that includes additional items from the Pirate Emporium. However, you do not gain any gameplay advantage. Some of the items offered will also be available later for purchase from the merchants and the Pirate Emporium. The developers emphasize that they respect the players’ time and want to give everyone the opportunity to acquire the respective items. The Loot Pass costs 999 ancient coins, equivalent to about 10 euros.
Sea of Thieves is finally a full-fledged co-op adventure
I couldn’t wait for the release of Sea of Thieves in 2018. After the release, I was bitterly disappointed. The tasks were repetitive, and I found it simply not challenging enough to sail from one island to another to dig up a treasure there. Or to transport animals from A to B.
So, it happened that I set the game aside and only installed it again at the end of 2020. I was more than positively surprised. The game runs smoothly, there are a lot of tasks and content, and yet at no time does it feel overwhelming. Developer Rare emphasizes time and again that they respect players’ playtime. And this is not a marketing phrase, but a fact. If you only have an hour, you’ll find enough tasks in the game that match that time allocation.
With the “Tall Tales,” there is an exciting story that is a lot of fun in co-op. The tasks are demanding and require a lot from crews. Through joint coordination and much communication, you experience an adventure together that is gladly reported on even after its conclusion.
With the introduction of the progression system, you will also be rewarded when you fail. I experienced it myself: The ship filled with treasure chests is heading towards an outpost, and suddenly a ship appears on the horizon. Hostile players – great. What had to happen, happened: After an intense battle on the high seas, the ship was sunk just before the outpost and we could only salvage a few chests in the dinghy. Before the introduction of the progression system, the frustration would have been enormous. You search several hours through islands and get nothing in the end.
The new system rewards players for covering nautical miles, exploring islands, killing skeletons, cooking fish, and much more. This keeps the frustration to a minimum, and a rage quit followed by uninstalling Sea of Thieves is avoided.
The pirate adventure is included in Microsoft’s Game Pass. According to developer Rare, after three years over 20 million players have explored the Sea of Thieves. So if you’re unsure, you can subscribe to the Game Pass for a month and test Sea of Thieves.
Florian Franck
Author at MeinMMO and self-proclaimed captain of a galleon in Sea of Thieves
Sea of Thieves offers plenty of stories. The developers helped a father create a pirate adventure for his son. However, it was not an adventure in the game, but a real treasure hunt!
