Sea of Thieves

Sea of Thieves is a shared-world action adventure from Rare, in which you sail the open sea alone or with a crew as a pirate. Ships are steered, repaired and armed together, while islands, forts, shipwrecks and world events hold treasure and danger. Other crews share the world and can become allies, rivals or direct enemies.

Long-term progress mainly comes from reputation with the trading companies, commendations, new activities and cosmetic customization for your pirate and ship. There are also Tall Tales with stories, as well as seasonally evolving systems and game modes.

Sea of Thieves launched on March 20, 2018 for Xbox One and Windows PC. The Steam version followed on June 3, 2020. On April 30, 2024, the pirate adventure also came out natively for PlayStation 5.

Rare continues to run the game as an ongoing, constantly expanded live game. Major permanent additions in recent years include the story campaign A Pirate’s Life, the private mode Safer Seas and the creative sandbox Custom Seas.

Native versions are available for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. This lets you play the same pirate world on current Xbox and PlayStation consoles as well as on PC.

Crossplay connects the platforms. On PS5, a Microsoft account is linked to the PlayStation account. This lets existing pirates, along with progress, gold, doubloons, ancient coins and unlocked cosmetics, carry over across platforms.

A typical session combines exploration, navigation, treasure hunting and first-person combat with cooperative ship management. On a sloop, brigantine or galleon, you set sails, watch course and wind, man the cannons, repair leaks and defend loot against environmental hazards or other crews.

The quest table on board lets you choose voyages, Tall Tales and Raid Voyages. Since the Season 11 rework, a crew can dive under the waves directly for many activities and resurface at the destination. This shortens the way to the content you want, while loot on board still has to be delivered before diving again.

On PC, Sea of Thieves requires at least Windows 10 version 18362, an Intel Core i3-4170 or AMD FX-6300, 8 GB RAM, a GeForce GTX 660 or Radeon R9 270, DirectX 11 and around 100 GB of free storage. Recommended are, among others, a Core i7-4790 or Ryzen 5 1600, 16 GB RAM and a GTX 1080 Ti, Radeon RX Vega 64 or Intel Arc A750.

In the classic mode High Seas, multiple crews share an open world, so encounters with other players are a core part of the PvPvE design. Safer Seas, by contrast, offers a private world for just one crew and suits Tall Tales, exploration and learning the game systems without other pirates.

Since the rebalancing at the end of 2024, Safer Seas gives 100 percent of the regular Gold and Reputation rewards. However, progress with Trading Companies is capped at Rank 25 there, and PvP-focused content such as Reaper's Bones and Faction Battles remains reserved for High Seas.

With Season 20, Rare introduced the separate Custom Seas mode on Jun 18, 2026. Hosts can build private game worlds and their own challenges in it. The toolset allows, among other things, assembling crews, spawning enemies, fast travel, scoring, session switches and a free camera.

Custom Seas is designed as a creative and playground mode. Regular progress, for example towards commendations and in the Season Pass, is paused during a Custom Seas session. Rare continues to expand the system after its launch instead of treating it as a one-off seasonal event.

Tall Tales are the more story-driven adventures in Sea of Thieves and take you through puzzles, staging and special locations via connected stories. One of the largest permanent expansions is Sea of Thieves: A Pirate's Life, which since Jun 22, 2021 has linked five Tall Tales with Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean.

The campaign leads, among others, with Captain Jack Sparrow into the Sea of the Damned and the Sunken Kingdom. It is built into Sea of Thieves as a fixed story arc and is not just a time-limited event.