Sea of Thieves

Sea of Thieves is a First Person Wide-Open Sandbox Pirate game made by Rare and published by Xbox Game Studios. Originally exclusively for the Xbox One and Windows 10, it was later released on Steam and PlayStation 5. This marks the first time since Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts in 2008 that they have been the primary developer of a non-Kinect title.

The game is set in a persistent online world, where players can interact with each other in a wide variety of ways. They can form crews and man their own ship as they set sail to the seas in search of treasure in the massive world. At the same time, they must watch out for enemy crews who possess more malicious intentions. The world is large and entirely handcrafted, said to take "6-8 hours" to travel from one end to the other. It was released on March 20, 2018.

On June 13, 2021, it was announced Rare had partnered with Disney for a crossover with Pirates of the Caribbean for an original adventure, "A Pirate's Life", where players get to hang with Jack Sparrow on one of his escapades. The expansion was released on June 22, 2021.

On June 11, 2023, they announced a crossover with Monkey Island as "The Legend of Monkey Island", bringing Guybrush Threepwood and Mêlée Island to the world. This expansion released in July.

Tropes related to the game include:

• Accordion to Most Sailors: One of the items you can use is a concertina, meaning that you can hunt for treasure and hang out on your ship while playing sea shanties on your concertina.
• Acrofatic: Body types range from "plank of wood" to "spheroid," and neither option hinders your mobility or skill at piracy in any way.
• The Alcoholic: As one can expect from a pirate setting, you can take part in drinking in-game and drinking too much will make you intoxicated to the point of vomiting. Unfortunately it seems the player pirates are extreme lightweights, as even a quarter of a tankard is enough to make them tipsy, and a half one gets one smashed. Must be some truly powerful rum...
• All-or-Nothing Reloads: Using any of the three firearms available, from the weak mid-range Pistol, the variable short-range Blunderbuss, or the strong long-range Sniper Rifle (referred to in-game as 'Eye of Reach'), the animation will play out very close to how Real Life flintlock weapons operate, save for the parts of plunging the barrel and/or pouring new gunpowder in the muzzle. Every firearm only holds a maximum of 5 rounds before needing to grab more from an Ammo Chest on the ship, though for the Blunderbuss, it's more like grabbing five handfuls of buckshot.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • Among the playable sea shanties are the "1812 Overture" and "Ride of the Valkyries". Neither of which were written until the 1800's, well after The Golden Age of Piracy ended.
  • The clothing sets available don't adhere to any particular time period, ranging from the Renaissance-inspired Sovereign sets to the Wooden Ships and Iron Men Admiral sets.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: The only benefits to increasing your levels with any of the quest giver factions are new cosmetic unlocks.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If a pirate winds up adrift in the open ocean with no ships nearby, a mermaid will show up and offer them a lift, teleporting them instantly back to their ship (if they have one and it's still afloat) or a friendly port.
  • If your ship sinks and you die while at a raid island, you'll spawn at the nearest island so getting back there won't be too arduous and long to do. On the other hand though, that applies to everyone so good luck sinking the enemy ship, because they will be back very shortly with a fresh ship.
  • You can sail directly into the wind, albeit at a slower pace than sailing in other directions. So if you don't want to learn how to tack, you don't have to, but players that do learn can get upwind faster.
  • If you're in the Devil's Roar and a nearby volcano is active, embers falling from the sky will indicate that you're in range of the eruption and its flaming boulders, allowing you to quickly determine if you're safe or not.
  • Tall Tales have checkpoints for you to resume if you decide to quit them part way, or if you get attacked by other players.
  • When fishing, text will appear showing what you have on the line, in case it was difficult to tell which fish it is by the looks alone.
  • A later update upgraded the harpoons found on ships and other locations to be able to pick up loot items and crates and set them down by the harpoon (no longer requiring the player to get off the harpoon and manually set it down), allowing for much faster pickup of treasure and supplies.
  • The Siren Shrines all require players to abandon their ship and dive down into the ocean floor, but mitigate this issue by having Sunken Merfolk Statues that can store up to 20 pieces of treasure. This treasure can only be collected by a ship's crew member from a purple mermaid that waits on the ocean's surface above the Shrine, which prevents an enemy crew from just stealing the treasure as it comes up from the Shrine.
• Apocalyptic Log: In "The Legend of Monkey Island: The Quest for Guybrush", you can find diary entries detailing Elaine's experience with the warped Mêlée Island, and her escape.
• Arc Villain: A few for the Tall Tales
  • For the "Shores of Gold" saga, it's the Gold Hoarder, though he's more of a Greater-Scope Villain who appears at the end.
    • Additionally, Gideon Graymarrow serves as this for 2 of the Tall tales, specifically the ones focusing on the Morningstar.
  • For the "Pirate's Life" saga, it's the Dark Brethren.
  • For the "Legend of Monkey Island" saga, it's LeChuck.
• The Artifact:
  • The Reaper's Mark flag displays your ship on the map for every other player to see, intended to attract others to fight you. Since its introduction, the Reaper's Bones Emissary flag was added, which does the same thing, but also increases profits from the Reaper faction, and lets you spot other Emissary ships when it reaches its maximum level. The only reason the old Reaper's Mark flag remains in the game is the handful of commendations that require it. Though some players have found some use with it in alliances as a way to let each other know if they're in danger.
  • Skeleton ships were added in the Cursed Sails update, before the Brigantine was available to players. Therefore, only skeleton sloops and galleons exist roaming or as part of a fleet.
  • Skeletons found on islands can only carry a pistol, sword, or blunderbuss; however, they used to be able to carry an Eye of Reach. This was removed for being too tough to deal with, but sniper skeletons still exist in the game - only as part of a skeleton ship's crew.
• Attack of the Monster Appendage: The Kraken consists of tentacles sticking out of the water. It's only possible to see the rest of its body in "The Sunken Pearl" Tall Tale.
• Back from the Dead: Should a player be killed, they'll be sent to the Ferry of the Damned. After a few seconds, the cabin door opens, allowing players to return to land of the living.
  • Story-wise, some important NPC characters have gone through this, such as Jack Sparrow, Wild Rose and George, and Captain Flameheart
• Big Bad: Captain Flameheart, the biggest antagonist of the game and intent on ruling the Sea of Thieves.
• Border Patrol: Sailing off the edge of the map, represented by a grayed-out border which is referred to in-game as the "Devil's Shroud" results in the seas turning blood-red while ominous music plays, and if the crew doesn't take the hint quickly enough and turn back, the ship gradually develops numerous holes until it sinks.
• Boss Rush: The last few waves of a Fort of Fortune count. After fighting fifteen waves of some of the toughest skeletons possible, you first fight a skeleton lord, then two skeleton lords at once, before finally facing an Ashen Lord. All the while, another pirate ship could show up at any time. A boatload of valuable loot is yours if you succeed.
• Bounty Hunter: The Reaper's Bones encourage players to hunt Emissaries and take their Emissary flags.
• Canon Character All Along: The "Dark Brethren" tall tale reveals that [[spoiler: the Castaway is really Calypso from the Pirates of the Caribbean series.]
• The Cavalry: During the "Lords of the Sea" tall tale, Pendragon, Eli Slate, Wild Rose and George show up to aid Jack Sparrow and the player in battling the Dark Brethren, all to some nice music.
• Character Customization: Each player can customize how their pirate looks, from clothes to hair to makeup, right down to choosing their gender, all of which is purely cosmetic.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Actually possible for the player to be this. Treasure is a physical object that belongs to the player holding it, and what happens next is up to the player. It's entirely possible to run away with it and keep it for themselves. However, the nature of the game results in everyone on the crew getting a share of any treasure turned in, regardless of any other circumstances, and as long as you're playing, you're part of a crew^note Even if you're just a single person on a boat, you're part of a crew; you can't backstab your crew no matter how hard you try. However, there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone in an Alliance from damaging their allies, or any crews involved from backstabbing their allies, taking their stuff, and then leaving the Alliance.
• Combat Tentacles: The Kraken has eight enormous tentacles, each ending in a sharp-toothed mouth large enough to pick up a pirate.
• Constructed World: Sea of Thieves is set in its own pirate-themed world, separate from real life. As such, it does not feature any real world pirates.
• Cool Boat: The reborn Burning Blade. It not only looks so different and cool than all the other ships, it's got 10 cannons, a crew of obsidian skeletons, able to crewed by anyone no matter the crew size, and it's coolest aspect, a bow shaped like a mouth that SHOOTS FIREBALLS.
• Cool Chair: As part of the first Bilge Rats Adventure in the game, the crew was tasked with finding 10 Skeleton Thrones scattered throughout the world. Some are in easy-to-reach places, others are cleverly hidden and require a bit of ingenuity to reach. At the same time, the ten were divided so that only 5 could be acquired by the crew, with the other 5 requiring one or more members of another pirate crew to be sitting on the throne at the same time. And this was before the easy-breezy days of making Alliances with other crews, so one had to ply a good bit of faith in hoping there would be at least one Friendly Enemy around if they wanted that 100% Completion for the event.
  • The Gold Hoarder has an opulent throne in his chamber, befitting his greed.
  • As of Season Seven, pirates can customize the Captain's chair of their Galleon, a few of which resemble a throne.
  • As of Season 13, Captain Flameheart sits on one, made from the first figurehead of his ship.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: The Megalodon, the first 'raid boss' to be added, can take many cannonball shots directly before being defeated (it varies depending on the ship the player is crewing).
  • From the Tall Tales addition of the Anniversary update comes the Skeleton Lords, powerful undead beings that hold control over the lesser bone-bags fought before, can Teleport Spam, thrives on Improbable Aiming Skills, and just loves to send pirates a-flying with their Ground Pound. Not to mention being only slightly slower-paced than a Motor Mouth about their own greatness and/or treasures.
  • The Ashen Lords take the cake with this, boasting the most health of any skeleton. Fighting them is split into three phases, and they gain more powerful attacks as their health gets lower. Also, unlike regular Skeleton Lords, their thrown volcanic rocks can potentially sink your ship if it's too close to the fight. Have fun.
• Dem Bones: The islands and, with the Cursed Sails update, even the seas themselves, are populated by armed skeletons who are not too keen on letting the pirates get away with their lives and/or treasure. The Tall Tales addition introduced elite skeletons that rule the lesser ones, formerly being mortal pirates that chose to become undead in the pursuit of power.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: Two examples:
  • The Shroudbreaker, said to be the only relic capable of getting the crew past the world's Border Patrol, is located by the crew and returned to a person that can help them make use of it, only to discover they only recovered its main body; the four gems that give it its power to dispel the Devil's Shroud have gone missing, thus starting the series of quests to recover them from the various places they've been lost to and/or stolen from.
  • There's also the Veil of the Ancients, an artifact that allows the user to cross to the Sea of the Damned (without dying). It was recovered from the Shrouded Ghost in the Shrouded Deep Adventure, but was discovered to be missing the Veil Stones that gave it power. The acquisition of the missing stones thus serves as the main goal of the Legend of the Veil Athena quest.
• Dramatic Irony: Happens in two of the tall tales, though it only makes sense if you did some prequel to them.
  • In "Heart of Fire", Tallulah, the NPC you talk to to start the tall tale, says she knows a few people who want to talk with the pirates who released Captain Flameheart. But Tallulah herself is pretty much talking to said pirates, assuming you did the "The Seabound Soul" tale before this one.
  • Near the end of "The Quest for Guybrush", Guybrush comments on the sword LeChuck is using and wonders where he got it. If you did the "Dark Deception" adventure prior to this, you'll not only know that the sword is the Burning Blade and Pendragon's former Sword of Souls, but also that you helped LeChuck steal it.
• Early-Bird Cameo: With the A Pirate's Life Tall Tale, references to the Monkey Island franchise such as the Headless Monkey ship were sprinkled throughout the story before the full-fledged expansion "The Legend of Monkey Island" was introduced.
• Easter Egg: With the Legends of the Sea update, there are a number of hidden shoutouts and references to players that accomplished impressive feats scattered throughout the world.
  • On Marauders Arch, there is a (non-moving) skeleton holding a banana in its mouth with the word "GRIFFIN" scratched nearby on the wall that is a reference to Polygon video producer Griffin McElroy who shot a video eating a banana both unpeeled and stem first like they do in the game.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Safer Seas, added in Season 10, allows you to join a private server with no other crews than your own. This eliminates most of the risk of hoarding treasure - or even obtaining it in the first place - since nobody will sail in all-cannons-blazing to make off with your hard-earned loot. However, since the seas are... safer, rewards for completing voyages and turning in loot are gutted to a mere 30% of what you would've earned otherwise. Not only are you earning less gold and reputation, but even if you do power through the diminished returns, it's impossible to gain faction reputation past level 40. This makes it impossible to become a Pirate Legend, the game's "goal" of sorts, in Safer Seas. After all, what sort of legend takes no risks?
• Everything Is Trying to Kill You: Sharks, skeletons, snakes, and most of all, potentially every other player all want you dead.
• Exploding Barrel: Played straight in the form of powder kegs (referred to in-game as Gunpowder Barrels). They can be used to sink ships as a form of naval mine, kill a group of skeletons/players (and potentially you), or to help fulfill Merchant's Alliance voyages.
  • A later update introduced the Stronghold Gunpowder Barrel, a far more dangerous variant with an explosive blast and radius equivalent to six regular barrels in a single container, capable of singlehandedly destroying all three ship types when used correctly. This kind of barrel is also far more valuable, but it's also a much higher risk than other Merchant goods since attacking ships and/or sneaky enemy pirates can destroy and/or steal it in transit.
• Fetch Quest: A major criticism of the game at launch was the extreme repetitiveness of the quests, named "Voyages", given by the three available factions, and how they all essentially boiled down to "Go to this place, get this thing, and bring it back for some gold." The monotony has been mitigated somewhat with the numerous world events focusing on different elements of gameplay, and it not being necessary to be on a quest in order to turn in treasure. In the mood for a naval battle? Skeleton fleets drop ghostly chests which you can sell to the Order of Souls. Feel like fighting waves of enemies on foot? Fort of the Damned or Fort of Fortune will more than fill the deck with loot.
• Fictional Constellations: A major part of the Tall Tale called "Stars of a Thief" involves following directions based around an assortment of fictional constellations such as a snake, a crab, a kraken, and a creature known as the "Sea Queen".
• Fishing Minigame: A long-requested addition to the game since the early days, with the Anniversary update it was fulfilled. Pirates can use their fishing pole and cast off to hook one of numerous types of fish, though some can only be caught with the right bait and/or in certain conditions.
  • This occasionally morphs into Fishing for Sole as fishing at any given location can also result in hooking such mundane items as an old skull, a discarded fish skeleton, and yes, even an old boot. Which boomerangs into being Commonplace Rare as there is a commendation for handing in 50 of such items to the seaposts, but fishing up this treacherous plunder is incredibly rare.
• Flying Dutchman:
  • The main focus of the Cursed Sails update is the emergence of cursed ships emerging from the seas and crewed by skeletons to attack the world's outposts.
  • When players die, they are transported to a place called the "Ferry of the Damned", where their souls are held temporarily by the 'Ferryman' before being released back to the living world. Though not always...
  • The A Pirate's Life Tall Tales feature the Flying Dutchman itself, fought aboard the Ferry of the Damned and later with your own ship, with the Black Pearl at your side.
• Fragile Speedster: The Sloop. It's smaller and faster to accelerate than the Galleon (see Mighty Glacier below), and is relatively simple to operate with its single mast. However, it also has the smallest crew size (1-2 players) and only two cannons, meaning that the ship is often horribly outgunned in most battles. A Sloop can destroy the larger ships, but it requires that the Sloop's crew take full advantage of its maneuverability and stay out of the other ships' lines of fire.
  • However, this is somewhat subverted. While the Sloop is more maneuverable, it's only faster when sailing into the wind. In situations where ships can catch wind at the ideal angle, the Sloop is the slowest ship. Also another subversion in that, while the sloop takes less time to fill with water, being a smaller ship means there are fewer places to put holes and it's harder to hit. The Galleon, being longer and having two decks in the hull, can have at least two to three times as many holes in it, causing it to be more difficult to repair quickly and sink much faster than a sloop can.
• Genre-Busting: To wit, it's a First Person Wide-Open Sandbox Pirate game.
• Glass Cannon: The phantom ships associated with Captain Flameheart introduced in the Haunted Shores update. They are destroyed by three direct hits anywhere on the ship, making them easily the most fragile ships in the game. But they also feature special wraith cannonballs that blow multiple holes in your ship with one hit and tend to outnumber player ships by at least four-to-one odds.
• Gold Fever: The quintessential term to describe the Gold Hoarders. They absolutely crave the idea of gold, the collecting of gold, the wearing of gold, and the sharing of gold, to the point that they all are shown to have patches of skin turned to gold, implied to be the result of handling cursed gold at some point. They offer maps to crews to find long-buried chests around the various islands, that can only be unlocked and the contents dispersed (with an obligatory, hefty cut for the crew's benefactor) if the chest is brought back and they use one of their mysteriously-gained keys on it.
  • It is revealed with the release of the Anniversary update & the Tall Tales addition that the reps' golden skin is a result of their leader Rathbone falling prey to his greed and becoming a Skeleton Lord known as the "Gold Hoarder" residing on the Shores of Gold. Like any decent cult, the rest followed suit and got cursed as well, though seemed to have (mostly) retained their sanity and shells of flesh.
  • If one completes all of the Tall Tales introduced in the Anniversary update along with their individual feats, then they can earn a Curse customization option that lets their character become "infected" with the very same golden complexion. Whether this increases their desire for gold above the average pirate's, is a matter of self-debate...
• Gold Tooth of Wealth: The Gold Hoarder has a golden jaw. As a pirate, his success made him obscenely wealthy in the wider world, but his greed drove him back into the Sea of Thieves until all that was left was a Skeleton Lord with a lust for gold. Also counts as Villainous Gold Tooth because he's the Arc Villain for the Shores of Gold Tall Tale arc.
• Handicapped Badass: Your pirate can be missing an eye, a leg, a hand or all three combined if you choose. Doesn't slow them down any.
  • There are also some other characters who have a prosthetic yet still perform well in battle, such as the Pirate Lord with his peg leg. The person who takes the cake is Merrick, who lost both of his legs, his left hand, AND his eye, but doesn't seem to be practically bothered.
• Harpoon Gun: Introduced in the Anniversary update, though they are firmly mounted on the bow of the ship while serving the same purpose. They can harpoon players and loot, which causes them to be quickly brought back to the ship, or tether the ship to something like a rock or another ship.
  • Season 14 will add in a proper Harpoon Gun, which pretty much does the same thing as a ship harpoon. Though the fact that it will be held will probably make a difference.
• Heel–Face Turn: If keen-eared and patient pirates take the time to listen before engaging in the fight, it can be learned that the Skeleton Lord and former Pirate Legend Briggy, ever since being turned into what she is now, has actually been looking for a way to become human again. Quite the tall order considering her skeleton is now less bone and more made of precious gems and solid gold because of her lengthy association with the Gold Hoarder on the Shores of Gold. Eventually, she's able to pull one off during the "Rogue's Legacy" adventure.
• Human Cannonball: Players can load themselves into cannons to be fired off, either towards an island to save some time or towards an enemy's ship.
• Human Shield: Played with as a favored tactic of pirates that are fighting a large group of skeletons, especially when their enemies are armed. The skeletons have a habit of always trying to shoot their living target, even if one of their own is standing right in between, whether it is a fighter attacking with a sword/claws, or another shooter that just happens to be in their crosshairs.
  • Occasionally subverted when skeleton shooters actually wait for a pirate to destroy the skeleton blocking their aim before firing.
• Hyperactive Metabolism:
  • Pirates can heal themselves by scarfing down bananas, apparently without peeling them first. Even Skeletons can be seen chowing down bananas when damaged despite having no organs to digest them - potassium must have an amazing effect on health.
  • With the Anniversary update, there is a variety of fruits to eat such as pomegranates, mangoes, as well as entire coconuts in one bite, though one still can only eat half of a pineapple at a time, leaves and all.
  • Pirates on the Sea of Thieves can also apparently convert food energy into oxygen, as eating while drowning underwater will restore health, allowing you to stay in submerged shipwrecks that have food barrels essentially indefinitely, despite drowning continuously the whole time.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Filling up the inventory, i.e. resources slots are at their maximum capacity, can make one only wonder how a pirate, especially one with a thin body type, can walk around unburdened while carrying a cutlass, pistol, blunderbuss, and/or rifle, 5 pieces of fruit, a 5-layer stack of wooden boards, and 10 cannonballs. That can weigh between 4 to 42 pounds at the most. Each.
• If I Can't Have You…: Though he is dead set on reaching the Shores of Gold himself, the Skeleton Lord known as Graymarrow also is ruthless in his regard for making sure that nobody else can too. He does so by chasing them down to their last stand, overwhelming them, and imprisoning their souls so they never reach, and thus never return from the Ferry of the Damned. Through this, he hopes to make sure the only pockets lined with the ancient riches are his.
  • Averted when, across two separate Tall Tales, the crew frees his former victims of the Morningstar crew and resurrects him only to then defeat and destroy him.
• Interquel: The Legend of Melee Island occurs after the events of The Curse of Monkey Island.
• Intoxication Mechanic:
  • If a pirate drinks a large amount of grog in a short space of time, they get drunk, represented by the screen going wobbly and the controls becoming unreliable.
  • If a pirate gets vomited on (by the aforementioned drunk pirates), the screen gets mostly covered in a vision-obstructing green blob. And then they start to vomit as well.
  • Getting bitten by venomous snakes will mess with the player's vision of a hazy deep shaded purple.
• Jack of All Stats: The Brigantine, introduced in the Cursed Sails update. A 3-player ship with 2 masts and 4 cannons (larger than a Sloop, but smaller than a Galleon), it has neither the Sloop's speed nor the Galleon's firepower and sheer size, but lacks the weaknesses of either ship as well. As noted above in Fragile Speedster and below in Mighty Glacier, the Sloop and the Galleon can trade places as the fastest and slowest ship depending on whether you are sailing against the wind or with it (though the Sloop is always more maneuverable). The Brigantine is always in the middle, being neither the fastest nor the slowest ship regardless of whether it's sailing into the wind or not.
  • The Brigantine's main drawback is the layout of its hull. The Galleon has two distinct levels below the main deck as well as a covered cabin, and the Sloop has a sort of "half deck" between the lowest level and the main deck (which is also conveniently covered by a roof). The Brig only has one deck. It's been discovered that the Brig will sink faster than both ships due to its hull layout making water fill up faster and harder to bucket out. In comparison, it's easy to bucket out water in a Sloop, and while the Galleon does suffer the same problem as the Brig, it needs 4 players to perform well, so an efficient crew can bucket the water out fast, not to mention the discovery of a faster way of bucketing water. [[note: You can bucket water through the grate above the second deck.[[/note]]
• Lethal Lava Land: The Devil's Roar, introduced in the Forsaken Shores update. It is a treacherous place where most of the islands are formed around active volcanoes that can erupt and hurl out giant flaming rocks that can easily sink the ship of an unprepared crew, boil the seas around the island and even the water inside the ship, cause earthquakes to shake the ground, and geysers to launch unwary pirates into the air for a hard landing. As dangerous as it is, the unique treasures that can be found there are worth almost double that of the main seas, so going there becomes a matter of risk-versus-reward.
• Letter Motif: All the NPCs belonging to a certain business or faction will have names beginning with the same letter. For example:
  • Every member of the Gold Hoarders has a name starting with H.
  • Every member of the Merchants' Alliance has a name starting with M.
  • Every member of the Order of Souls has a name starting with O.
  • Every tavernkeeper has a name starting with T.
• Libation for the Dead: As part of the game's first fall season, there was a Bilge Rat Adventure called the Festival of the Damned, centered on the titular celebration hosted by the Bilge Rat faction to give praise to the Ferry of the Damned and its coolly-serious Ferryman for shuttling countless souls to the afterlife (and the doubtless many that had to be shuttled away from it).
  • How did they do this?... By having the crew perform several acts of dying in different ways, from getting eaten by a shark, to being bitten by a snake, to being struck by lightning, to being burned alive in the game's Lethal Lava Land. Then gathering a color-coded flame from an Everything's Better with Rainbows relic on the Ferry. And then locating one of several beacons on the various islands to light with the flame as a final sendoff.
  • The reward for all this? A sickly-green skull fraught with Glowing Eyelights of Undeath as an equipable lantern.
• Living Legend: The supposed end goal for all pirates is to gain the maximum level of Reputation (50) with the three factions, by which time they are granted the title, gear, and privileges of a "Pirate Legend"... which itself brings about a whole other faction to gain Reputation for. And this one takes even longer than the three combined, despite only going up to 30.
  • Played with in regards to the Pirate Lord, who was/is the very first pirate captain to have sailed and made it big in the Sea of Thieves. Although he is no longer alive, pirates can still encounter his ghost in the Pirate Legend Hideout to receive voyages for Athena's Fortune. He even manages to manifest after the crew defeats the Gold Hoarder beneath the Shores of Gold, congratulating them on a long and wealthy journey, though reminds them there is still more to learn about the Sea around them.
• Lost World: The titular Sea of Thieves itself. It's said to be located somewhere in the upper Caribbean, but is also described as "a fold in the map" that is secluded from the rest of the world. This actually gives a lore reason for the Border Patrol described above: nobody was able to pass the Devil's Shroud, and so nobody knew of it until the Pirate Lord managed to pass the shroud by unknown means.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: In "The Legend of Monkey Island", LeChuck has trapped Guybrush in one of these. Again. Specifically, he's warped Mêlée Island, causing Guybrush to become Governor suddenly beloved by everyone and trapped him in the memories of his greatest hits, so to speak.
• Marathon Boss: Played straight with the skeleton fleet battles in the Cursed Sails update, which blurs the line between this and Marathon Level. Multiple player crews are encouraged to cooperate to repeatedly sink one or more ships, typically Galleons, although the Shrouded Spoils update introduced Skeleton Sloops as well. Eventually, once enough waves of ships have been sunk and risen enough, one will rise from the deep with a named Skeleton at the helm to mark that it is the final ship, which will drop the good loot upon sinking.
• Mega Maelstrom: Starting in a single moment, whether far off in the distance or barreling down upon the ship, the world will always have one of these tearing through. If any ship gets too close, the gale force winds throw the wheel into a chaotic spin that changes direction on a whim, the varying magnetic waves or somesuch mess around with the compass (in addition to the one in your hand). And it rains. Constantly. So constantly, that if not careful, the ship can and will sink from overflow, not even counting the chance that lightning will blast a hole in the hull (and quite often unlucky pirates too, especially ones that are holding their sword out).
• Microtransactions:
  • With the September 2019 update, the Pirate Emporium was introduced and played with in regards to this trope, as while players would be spending real money to buy the offered content, through a currency called 'Ancient Coins' in-game, per the game's core mechanics, every single item is of a purely cosmetic nature, while also defying the infamous 'loot box' scheme as you know precisely what you're buying. Among the offered goods are Pets and associate trimmings, new Emotes, new Ship liveries, etc.
  • There exists an alternate way of getting the new currency: Ancient Skeletons that randomly pop up in the world and have to be killed before they escape, which grants Coins. However, as they are a strictly rare spawn, this is a slow crawl at best.
• Mighty Glacier: The Galleon. It has the most firepower (8 cannons in total) and the largest crew size (3-4 players), meaning that it can handle itself quite well in a fight. However, the Galleon is also generally slower and much more difficult to maneuver due to its large size, and it demands far more resources to keep running. Even raising the anchor can take an inordinate amount of time without all four players cooperating. However, this is somewhat subverted. While the Galleon is less maneuverable and takes longer to begin moving, it has the fastest top speed in the game when all three sails can catch the wind at the ideal angle. When sailing into the wind, it is the slowest ship.
  • Also subverted in that, while a Galleon takes longer to fill with water and there's more leeway for how much damage it can take, there are more places to put holes and it's easier to hit. The Galleon is the only ship with two decks in the hull (and, thus, two decks which can have holes in the side and be below sea level) and is the longest ship in the game, resulting in more places for holes to be placed on each deck. Much like its travel speed, it takes longer to begin sinking, but once the water reaches mid-decks, if you already have holes there, expect your ship to begin sinking much faster. Because a Galleon was designed for larger crews, the expectation is usually that there will be more people available to patch holes and bail water; only one person on repair duty will be unable to stop it from sinking, and that pulls players away from utilizing all the cannons.
• Money for Nothing: Played with through the concept that all gear is of a purely cosmetic purpose. As such, the only benefit to buying a blinged out sniper rifle like the Ceremonial Admiral variant is how pretty it looks in your hands. The only other thing money can buy is higher level quests... which reward more money to spend on that new shiny compass.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Two examples:
  • At the end of The Seabound Soul, the last spirit you free winds up being a Skeleton Lord named Captain Flameheart, who swears horrible fiery vengeance on the Sea of Thieves before he vanishes. All Pendragon, who just wanted to help trapped spirits, can do is whisper "What have we done?"
  • The ending of the "Dark Deception" adventure sees the players inadvertently help the Pirate Lord Imposter in stealing the Burning Blade cutlass. Then it turns out that the imposter is Monkey Island Big Bad LeChuck, who uses it to carry his Evil Plan as seen in the Monkey Island Tall tales.
• No Plot? No Problem!:
  • The game largely eschews an overarching story for a large world with numerous stories that the players can craft for themselves.
  • Averted with the Anniversary update that introduced the Tall Tales series of story-based challenges.
  • The "A Pirate's Life" DLC adds a storyline for the players to follow with Pirates of the Caribbean characters. The same thing happened when the "Legend of Monkey Island" DLC was added.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • Straight with the cutlass, a pirate's melee weapon. Though it does its job well enough as a tool of combat, with its three-hit main attack and its slow, powerful lunge, players were quick to latch onto the latter's alternative application; as a tool of locomotion. The game's physics allows for one to jump a split second before executing the lunge, which sends them soaring a fair distance forward. This has been used to move quickly from the shoreline to the ship, cross chasms that even a running jump could not, and even reach places that would be impossible.
  • A second case is made with the bucket. While normally used to bail water from a holey ship (as well as catching the stray vomit stream), during the Cursed Sails update, pirates found that the water could be deposited from their ship onto the skeleton ships without the hassle of return-fire, as the boneheads do not bail out their ship, creating another weapon for those pitched battles on the Sea. It also works on other player ships, but not quite as viable unless the opposing crew is really not paying attention.
  • Firearms are obviously intended to be used as weapons. However, since you can see the bullets (they manifest as a white-yellow streak), they can be fired into the air as rudimentary flares to alert crewmates on an island to your location, especially the pistol and the rifle. This has been rendered superfluous with actual flares being introduced.
• Pirate Parrot: Played straight as of the September 2019 update. Pets were a hotly requested feature and with this update, they were introduced with the advent of the Pirate Emporium. Presently, while a Parrot is available, with alternative color schemes, pirates can also purchase a Macaw, a Capuchin Monkey, and a Barbary Monkey to act as their companion.
  • Pets will follow their owner around their ship, on land, and react accordingly to the world, i.e. cowering while in combat, dancing along to music, even enjoying a banana or two if offered, etc.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The game includes a great deal to do, such as searching for buried treasure, fighting rival pirates, fighting undead, fighting undead pirates, fighting for buried undead pirate treasure... but this does not include actual piracy. In fact, there doesn't seem to be anyone on the Sea of Thieves except pirates, so there's no actual thievery on account of there being nobody to steal from.
• Player Versus Player: It's the Sea of Thieves - that means you. PvP is fully enabled at all times in the High Seas game mode, both between individual pirates and their boats. If you're sailing with a bounty of treasure on deck, be prepared to fight off other crews who aren't afraid to sink you for it. Further encouraged by the Reaper's Bones faction, which offers the highest gold payouts when selling treasure to them but offers no voyages - incentivizing Reaper's Bones emissaries to hunt down their fellow pirates and sell their loot instead. The Anniversary update also introduced a dedicated Arena mode pitting up to five crews against each other in a matchmade free-for-all battle. This Arena was later removed at the start of Season 6.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: There's no difference between male and female avatars in terms of ability, and all avatars can wear any clothing or hair piece (even dresses and facial hair).
• Psychopomp: Pirates who die end up on a ghost ship. They can respawn when the door opens for them.
• Redundant Parody: Sea of Thieves has been accused of this towards Pirates of the Caribbean. With the "A Pirate's Life" DLC, the game owns that accusation.
• Ruthless Modern Pirates: Can be enforced by certain players who shoot up every player ship on sight. Encouraged by the Reapers whose bounties revolve around this.
• Scenery Porn: The water physics are absolutely amazing, especially when combined with a sunrise or sunset.
• Shout-Out:
  • One achievement requires you to play a song on your ship while it's sinking, and to keep playing until it sinks. The achievement's name? "A Titanic Ensemble."
  • The Tall Tale "The Seabound Soul" recycles the premise of an early Rare adventure game titled Blackwyche; the protagonist of the earlier game serves as the quest-giver.
  • The shipwreck of the Headless Monkey is one big shout-out to Monkey Island. Reading the captain's journals reveals that Kate Capsize, wanting to take revenge on Guybrush after the events of Monkey Island 2, raised the wreck of the Mad Monkey (now the Headless Monkey since Guybrush stole the figurehead) and headed to the Sea of Thieves... only to re-wreck the ship and die on the way. You can find things like sea maps of the original games, and the series' uber-iconic theme music can even be heard around the ship.
  • Isla Tesoro from the "Captains of the Damned" section of A Pirate's Life. While the rowboat doesn't move on its own, the scenery and characters such as the hen seller will be recognized by classical Disneyland patrons as the setting of the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet:
  • Straight with the Bone Crusher gear set. Although broken up across several different events in the game's history, the full set consists of articles of clothing adorned with several preserved bones, from ribs on the brow of the hat to an entire spinal cord as a peg leg.
  • The weapons follow the same, the blunderbuss being most prominent as the entire length of its barrel is the limb bone of something massive enough for it to be able to hold and spew a flurry of bullets.
  • The equipment gear really takes the cake, among such pieces being a shovel with the upper part of a skull, a speaking trumpet decorated with a small ribcage, and a tankard that is a literal, scalped skull that you can drink grog from.
  • Of particular note with the associated ship liveries set is the fact that the figurehead consists entirely of a mounted kraken skull.
  • Sir Arthur Pendragon is a reference to, well, yes, King Arthur but more specifically Ultimate Play The Game's Sir Arthur Pendragon series from the Commodore 64; The Staff of Karnath, Entombed, Blackwyche and Dragon Skulle.
• Snake Charmer: In order to peacefully capture snakes in basket-cages for sale to the Merchant Alliance, you have to play music for them. You're using a concertina or hurdy-gurdy instead of a flute, but the end result is the same.
• Soft Water: Landing in water negates falling damage even if the pirate has been launched into the sky, or jumped from a really high cliff carrying a golden chest.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: During the "Wild Rose" Tall Tale as part of the Anniversary update, the crew is tasked with finding out the fate of two pirates that were hopelessly in love, only for it to be learned that they were attacked by another envious pirate who cursed them and bound their souls to the two halves of the pendant they shared, keeping them separated and unable to reunite in death. Subverted when the crew helps them get better...
• Storming the Castle: Played with in regards to the Skeleton Forts. Popping up in one of the six forts (seven as of the Shrouded Spoils update), the fort becomes "active" and populated by skeletal enemies. Crews must travel to these locations, braving a hailstorm of cannon fire from the emplaced cannons as well as any watchtowers. Once the ship is in a safe place, the crew has to endure at least 10 waves of skeletons, sporting any weapon from bony claws to any of the three firearms, or a mix of both. Once the last wave pops up with the "commander", once they are defeated as well, a key to the fort's vault is dropped, and inside the crew finds an assortment of loot, including the high-value Stronghold variants.
  • The aftermath, however, is likely the more dangerous part, as with the vault open, anybody can take the loot and sell it, including other crews that weren't even involved in attacking the fort. All that fighting will cause an obvious racket, and the giant glowing skull over the fort suddenly disappearing is a signal for any crews in the area to come running in.
• Team Chef: With the introduction of the cooking mechanic in the Anniversary update, this is both active and inverted depending on the player, as every member of the crew is capable of using the added stove to fry up whatever meat they might come across, be it fish, pig, snake, chicken, megalodon, or kraken. The incentive to cook comes from the high health boost in addition to the Gradual Regeneration Regenerating Health that it gives. Cooked meat can also be sold to the various seaposts (and there is a challenge that involves selling different types).
  • Unfamiliar players, however, can easily slip into Lethal Chef territory as undercooked/raw meat afflicts food poisoning on the unfortunate pirate, causing a row of vomiting and hazy vision. At the same time, overcooked/charred food grants only half the health and none of the regen. Don't even bother trying to cook fruit. Just don't.
• Tropical Island Adventure: The main setting of the game.
• Tutorial Failure: Good luck figuring out the controls or even how to do the most basic things (e.g. How to equip a weapon) without asking someone (that is, if you can even figure out how to bring up the text chat) or checking out a guide, because the game offers absolutely no help in that regard.
  • This has been averted as of the Shrouded Spoils update, with a more fleshed out tutorial that educates new players on the proper mechanics of turning in treasure, customizing a character, etc.
• Virtual Pet: Certain Merchant Alliance quests have you capture pigs in crates and return them to your outpost. However, you need to feed them every once in a while; you can tell when they need to be fed if they are sitting/whining or lying down. If you don't, you may come back to a porkchop in its place.
• Water Is Air: You can do lots things underwater that you shouldn't be able to, such as reading paper maps, playing musical instruments, firing presumably powder-based guns, etc.
• Wham Line: One occurs in the prologue of Chapter 4 of the A Pirate's Life storyline, in which the Castaway reveals her true identity.
  Jack Sparrow: How can you know all this? That pendant–
  The Castaway: Belongs to me.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: A large open-world game said to take "6-8 hours" to go from one end of the game world to the other. There are also different regions with different settings, such as one based on the classic Caribbean, a lush wilderness with ancient civilizations, and a barren wasteland. Everything happening on one server takes place in the same world, and everyone on that server can interact with each other. When there are too few crews on the waters, the server simply brings in more.
  • If the wind is with you, it takes less than one hour of real-time to travel from one corner of the map to the opposite. However, this assumes that you don't stop over at any islands and nothing attacks or slows you down. In other words, you can make the trip fairly quickly if you ignore nearly all of the game's content while you do.
• Witch Doctor: The Madames that represent the Order of Souls in the outposts. They focus on sending crews after the cursed captains of fallen pirate crews that have turned into skeletons, retrieving their skulls, and returning them for a sum of gold. They profess to be proficient in all sorts of mystical rituals centered on the manipulation of the soul, whether cursed or no, and are rightfully given a wide berth by the majority of the characters on the Sea of Thieves unless absolutely necessary. One of them even makes a habit of making alliterative puns about bones and destroying them.