Beginner's Guide to Sea of Thieves | Sea of Thieves｜Game8 (2024)

Sea of Thieves is a pirate sandbox game that offers little to no handholding after the initial tutorial. Check out Game8's beginner's guide to learn more about the game, including what you should know before playing, and tips and tricks to get started on your pirate adventure!

Beginner's Guide to Sea of Thieves

Choose Your Pirate Carefully

Character creation in Sea of Thieves happens via the Infinite Pirate Generator which randomly generates a set of pirates for you to choose from. You can reroll the generated pirates an infinite number of times to find one that you like.

Remember to spend as much time in character creation as you need since you will not be able to change your pirate appearance for free after it's created.

Delete Your Pirate or Buy a Pirate Appearance Potion to Change Your Looks

If you want to change your appearance later, you will either have to delete your current pirate and start over by going to the Pirate Profile tab in settings or buy the Pirate Appearance Potion from the premium currency shop for 149 Ancient Coins or $1.99 USD.

Play the Maiden Voyage Tutorial

After creating your character, the first thing you should do is play through the Maiden Voyage tutorial. You can learn the basics in the tutorial within a safe play space such as:

• Cooking and restoring health using food.
• Using weapons like the cutlass and flintlock.
• Reading a map and digging for treasure.
• Navigating and using the radial menu.
• Catching fish using the fishing rod.
• Playing shanties using instruments.
• Finding and using a rowboat.
• Maintaining and sailing a ship.

Take the time to familiarize yourself with the game here in the tutorial since the game does not hold your hand when you play in Adventure mode. Try out all the tools on the radial and get used to the movement before leaving.

Maiden Voyage Tall Tale Guide

Find the Old Sailor's Key to Access a Hidden Treasure Room

The Maiden Voyage tutorial has a secret room that rewards you with 25,000 Gold and 200 Doubloons to start your pirate adventure. Make sure to search for it before leaving to have starting funds when you enter the High Seas.

Adjust Your Controls and Optimize Your Settings

Players new to the game will usually have a tough time adjusting to the in-game radial menu. Since you'll be using this a lot in Sea of Thieves, consider setting keybinds (PC) or shortcuts (controller) for some of the most essential items in the game.

Tip: Consider adding shortcuts for Wood Planks and Food at the minimum. These two items will allow you to repair your ship quicker and heal in a pinch without having to go through the radial menu during combat.

Increase Your Field of View to See More of Your Surroundings

Field of View Setting
Lower FOV setting.
Higher FOV setting on the same spot.

Field of View (FOV) is a graphic setting that affects how much of the game world is displayed on screen at any time. If your machine can handle the performance impact, set your FOV to max so you can see more of the world on screen letting you spot things better.

Use a Sloop Since It's Easier to Handle for Beginners

If you're sailing solo for the first time or with one other friend, it's best to use a Sloop for a ship. Sloops are much easier to manage especially for newer players due to its small size and its single set of sails.

The anchor capstan and sail adjustments are also all on the upper deck next to the ship's wheel so if you need to anchor down or adjust your speed, you won't have to move too far.

The same cannot be said for the other ships so you should never use the Brigantine or the Galleon solo since they require perfect team coordination to sail effectively. Plus, they're a bigger target compared to the nimble Sloop.

How to Sail Your Ship and All Ship Types

Sail Against the Wind When Being Chased

The Sloop is the fastest among the three types of ships when sailing against the wind. The other ships are bigger and have more sails which means they rely more on the wind for speed.

If you ever find yourself being chased by enemy ships, you should turn your Sloop against the direction of the wind. This way you'll be able to lose your pursuers with your speed — or if they also use a Sloop, they'll never catch you.

Complete the Trading Company Tutorial Voyages

After finishing the Maiden Voyage tutorial and arriving in the Sea of Thieves, the Pirate Lord will direct you to the quest table. Here you can start quests called Voyages that will introduce you to the pirate life, earning you gold and reputation for the Trading Companies.

You should finish all the tutorial voyages for the three trading companies so you'll have an idea on how voyages work and how each company operates. You'll have to finish the tutorial voyage for a company anyway to unlock more voyages.

Voyages will be your main method of earning gold and reputation which are necessary for progression. Finishing at least one of the tutorial voyages will also unlock Tall Tales which can also be accessed via the quest table.

Start with Gold Hoarders Voyages Since They're the Easiest

Once you're done with the tutorial voyages, you can start working on earning gold and raising reputation to unlock more cosmetics for your pirate and your ship.

Trading Company	Description
Gold Hoarders	Offers voyages that are all about finding treasure. Easiest to do since you only have to follow a treasure map or solve riddles leading to the treasure locations.
Order of Souls	Offers voyages that are all about fighting skeletons on land. You'll be sailing to islands to defeat skeleton captains and their crew which drop skulls for you to sell.
Merchant Alliance	Offers voyages that are all about retrieving, collecting, and delivering goods. These range from finding and capturing animals to delivering cargo crates from one NPC to another.

Merchant Alliance deliveries are difficult since you'll have a deadline for delivery and your cargo can degrade leading to less rewards when turning them in to the NPC.

Gold Hoarders voyages would most likely be the easiest to do out of the three companies. If you find reading maps or solving riddles to be difficult, you can try out the Merchant Alliance voyages in Safer Seas mode so you can avoid other players while doing cargo runs.

Earn Reputation to Climb the Ranks of Each Trading Company

Raising your Reputation with the Trading Companies unlocks more voyages and cosmetics that you can use for both your character and your ship. Unlocked cosmetics are purchased using gold and themed around their respective trading company.

Emissary Flags are also unlocked once you reach Rank 15 Reputation with any of the 3 starting companies. Purchase each for 20,000 Gold and hoist it on your ship to earn bonus gold and reputation from turning in treasure to that company.

Gather Supplies Before Setting Sail

Before you leave the docks, check your ship inventory to make sure you have all the essential supplies ready including food, wooden planks, and cannonballs. You can find a lot of these supplies in the barrels at any Outpost or Island.

Get a Storage Crate to Store More Supplies

Since there is a cap to how much you can store in your inventory, consider buying a storage crate from the Merchant Alliance NPC at the docks to make resource transfer easier.

Bring the storage crate and go around grabbing all the supplies from the barrels. There should be a button allowing you to just take everything from the barrel and into the storage crate.

Avoid Engaging Other Players in PvP

PvP can be difficult for newer players since it requires you to pilot your ship extremely well in order to come out on top, and even then it's hard to win. Losing to other players and having your ship sunk means you lose all your treasure and anything you had aboard your ship.

When playing in High Seas, it's almost always a good idea to just turn your ship around and avoid confrontation especially when you have stuff on deck. Most players will be hostile on sight so don't expect to meet friendly faces in the Sea of Thieves.

High Seas and Safer Seas Differences

Play in Safer Seas Mode First to Learn the Basics of PvE

Safer Seas is a mode where you play in the Sea of Thieves by yourself or with a party without any other players, making it the ideal place to learn the ropes of the game. However, playing in this mode reduces the gold and reputation you earn by 70%.

Avoid Reaper's Bones Emissaries While Sailing

Reaper's Bones is a Trading Company that focuses mainly on PvP and their emissaries can be seen on the map table marked by the icon shown above. As a new player, you should do your best to avoid these players as they will almost certainly try to sink your ship and steal your loot.

Reaper's Bones emissaries at Grade 5 can also spot ships that are emissaries of other companies on their map table. If you are representing a company and you see a Grade 5 Reaper's Bones emissary (indicated by the number of red lines), you become a prime target for their piracy.

Switch Servers If You Find Yourself Getting Ganked Repeatedly

If you're playing on a server with a lot of veteran players, there is a high chance you'll get hounded and sunk over and over. If you're having a tough time as a new solo in a high PvP server, consider switching servers to save your sanity.

You can do so by going to Game Options > My Crew > Scuttle Ship and vote yes on the Vote to Scuttle to a New Sea option. This will let you sink your ship and start over in another server that hopefully doesn't have a lot of PvP.

Note: Be sure to turn in all your remaining treasure if you had any since transferring servers will make you lose all of your loot including supplies.

Complete Tall Tales to Experience Story-Rich Adventures

Aside from Voyages, Sea of Thieves offers players story-driven adventures in the form of Tall Tales. When chosen as your active quest, these Tall Tales will take you across the many islands of the Sea of Thieves in a grand, PvE-focused adventure.

Once you have most of the game's basics down, consider partying up and completing Tall Tales as they are some of the best solo and co-op content this sandbox pirate game has to offer.

List of All Tall Tales

Explore Islands to Find Extra Quests to Complete

The Sea of Thieves is littered with secrets hidden among the islands. If you have the time, make sure to fully explore the islands you sail to and you might discover secrets and hidden passages that lead to more treasure.

You'll be able to find messages in a bottle, parchments, journals, and even skeleton's orders that give you quests and point you in the direction of treasure.

Watch Out for World Events

World Events are dangerous encounters that occur in the Sea of Thieves. The major ones are indicated by large markers and clouds in the sky that can be seen by everyone in the server.

Some of these will even occur as ambushes by dangerous and mythical entities like the Skeleton Ship, the Megalodon, or even the Kraken. As a new player, do your best to avoid them until you have enough XP to take them on for their valuable loot.

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