YMMV / Sea of Thieves

• Anti-Climax Boss: Complete the intense waves of ghost pirates followed by shooting down three colossal siren statutes that require a rather hefty sum of cannonballs to get to the legendary Flying Dutchman captained by none other than Davy Jones? Congratulations, you've got yourself a fight that'll last about no more than five minutes, and is no more formidable than a Galleon.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • The first Mystery was introduced in May 2022 and continued for months afterward. Its slow progress tired out players due to many of the clues being hidden behind engagement with the Sea of Thieves Twitter rather than being hidden in the game world itself. Exasperation really set in with the reveal that the Fallen Sea Dog’s Lantern was lying, rendering 99 percent of all the clues gathered beforehand useless.
  • Flameheart's return. His soul was freed in "The Seabound Soul" in 2019, but he was limited to a spectral form looming over the Ghost Fleets for two years. His return to his physical body was declared with his victory in "Return of the Damned" in 2022, but over a year later there has been no word about him in the story since.
• Awesome Music: In addition to being just an absolutely gorgeous game, it also has some very memorable tracks.
  • On the Warpath. This will play during the final wave when you are either taking a skeleton fort or fighting a fleet of skeleton ships and either the Skeleton Lord or the Skeleton Flagship comes out to fight you personally.
  • The Shores of Gold version of the Becalmed sea shanty, which will only play when you complete the final chapter of the Shores of Gold Tall Tale. While the version you play on the concertina or the hurdy-gurdy sounds almost sad, the combination of strings and winds in the Shores of Gold version turns the whole thing into a piece that warmly says "You did it."
  • The We Shall Sail Together shanty. Honestly, you just have to listen to it.
  • "Maiden Voyage", the rousing and rollicking tune that welcomes you to the game and lets you know you're in for a fun and pirate-y time.
• Breather Level: Tall Tale 7 (The Fate of the Morningstar) is a lot more straightforward compared to the tales before it, as it involves simply obtaining a lantern and using said lantern on a single island to track down the whereabouts of some keys and chests, the lantern showing footprints to each spot and the whereabouts of each item being fairly easy to figure out. The prerequisite tall tales to unlock this one, on the other hand, involve sailing to several different islands, figuring out more cryptic puzzles with obtuse clues, and avoiding deadly traps (one of which involves hauling a vulnerable item that causes a Non-Standard Game Over should it be destroyed).
• Broken Base: There's a long-standing and extremely bitter tension between players who enjoy the Player Versus Player aspect of the game and seeking out ships to destroy and the people who would rather be left alone to do Player Versus Environment and finish quests, finding loot as they go along without being bothered by marauders every five minutes. The former group believe that PvP is an essential part of the game that nobody should avoid (even going so far as to accuse players of not being "proper" pirates for not wanting to plunder ships). The latter just want to enjoy a solo or cooperative experience without the hassle of fighting off player crews that outnumber and out-gun them, arguing that there's more than enough natural hazards and computer enemies to justify a lack of PvP. To this day, the topic of dedicated PvE servers as a possible remedy to this friction is a huge source of Flame Bait in a lot of community circles for this game.
  • The Tall Tales exemplify this issue, as it's the exact kind of content that the latter category of players would want to complete, but all of them are very easily interrupted by PvP crews. Some of the Tales practically demand a crew leave their boat in the open, unguarded, while they go do their business in an underground cave. PvP crews can just destroy the questing crew's ship and wait for them to bring the loot for them... or even just steal quest-related items entirely, like a plot-critical compass, and just toss it into the ocean somewhere so the other crew can't proceed in the quest. Even if the quest goes to a protected area (i.e. the Gold Hoarder boss), everyone knows where it is, so they can just wait for the questing crew to sail out.
  • This probably isn't going to get any less divisive now that, as of Season 10, the game introduced a "Safer Seas" mode (essentially private sessions) for people who just want to play without PvP, giving the pure PvE players what they wanted, but with significantly reduced gold/XP gain (only 30% of the normal mode) and a level cap (40), which they're also not happy about. And of course, the PvP players are furious that this mode even exists at all, despite the obvious intention of the restrictions is to encourage players to eventually play in the standard mode.
• Character Rerailment: In The Legend of Melee Island, LeChuck is back to his more menacing portrayal.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • By far the most standard boarding weapon configuration for PvP is the rifle and the pistol. Their high damage and pinpoint accuracy are strong, but when fired while rapidly switching from one to the next, any opponent will die within two unblockable shots.
  • The Dark Adventurer sails were a common choice for PvP, as the cutout on the bottom edge of the sail allowed for a bit more visibility in ship vs. ship combat. Consequently the DA sails were infamously associated with sweaty Blood Knight crews. Sails that gave extra visibility were altered to no longer provide that advantage near the start of Season 10, but it's still not an uncommon sight.
• Demonic Spiders: The ocean crawler type enemies are a lot more dangerous than the skeletons and ghosts, boasting a lot more health points and various attacks that make it a bad idea to engage them with a sword. And since you only get five shots per gun before you run out...
• Fan Nickname: "Disney Sticks" for tridents.
• Fandom Rivalry: As to be expected since they're both open-word pirate games, with Skull & Bones. Sea of Thieves fans love to mock Skull & Bones for being yet another example of a live-service game which cares too much about being live-service to make the gameplay fun, whereas Skull & Bones fans will point out Sea of Thieves had very similar problems at launch and got way better over time, so it's not fair to judge it by its state at release.
• Fridge Brilliance: Sea of Thieves and Pirates of the Caribbean having a Shared Universe makes a ton of sense considering one wonders where those Krakens come from; in the film, Davy Jones commanded one.
• Funny Moments:
  • Several physics oddities are quite funny, like a ship that gets blasted into the sun instead of sinking.
  • Getting drunk affects everything, even your map reading skills. In fact, having one player "drunk" reading the map throws the entire map into a drunken haze that even sober players can see.
  • Speaking of drunken shenanigans, you can store vomit in buckets then chuck it at players to blind them.
  • What is the name of the eyepatch in the game? The Day One Patch.
  • Firing yourself out of a cannon can have fun moments, including scaring your buddies after they’re still on a PvP high, bouncing off a port’s lampposts and going into the drink, under/overshooting your target or, if you're extremely unlucky, right into a cannonball being fired at your ship.
  • The entire trailer for "The Legend of Monkey Island" is a riot from start to finish, and bodes well for what players will run into in July:
    • Stan up to his usual shtick, trying to sell the pirates a ship - a "big ship", a "luxury ship", and "a ship with just a splash of je ne sais quoi". The latter is literally just a small boat with a "sold as seen" sign and it's literally sinking.
    • Guybrush's re-election poster shows him as being somewhat handsome, whereas when the pirates break into his mansion, he's disheveled and playing with figurines of himself and Elaine. When he tries to show off and draws his golden cutlass, he accidentally cuts off his belt and causes his pants to fall down, revealing Goofy Print Underwear, causing the pirates to look away awkwardly while he smiles sheepishly.
• Goddamned Bats: The skeletons and ghosts will certainly serve as one, appearing constantly during your island goals, attacking you every step of the way.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Server-hopping. By starting the Tall Tale "A Pirate's Life", loading the session onto a private server, and then cancelling the Tall Tale, players could transport their ship from one public server to another, without losing their supplies or Emissary Flag (though they would lose all loot.) This was useful for Emissary crews who'd rather depart from Reaper-infested waters, or for Reapers who wanted to get the jump on an unsuspecting server. The glitch was never patched; rather it was made more accessible in Season 11 through the diving quest mechanic.
  • The "Keg Wall", an essential part of Fort of Damned stacking. By placing explosive kegs in a pile overlapping with a wall, their explosions can be chained together to form an enormous trap that allows players to kill the final boss in a single blast. What's more, this keeps the kegs out of the hands of roaming skeletons or enemy pirates, and is handy for rapidly completing a highly visible and coveted world event. There’s an even faster variant that has one stack kegs inside the vault, killing the boss the instant he spawns, but it’s riskier since there’s a bigger chance of players setting it off early.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Rare once did a NES port of Sid Meier's Pirates!, which is also a free-roaming game about pirates.
  • Regarding the following memetic mutation, it is commonly paired up with "He's a Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean. Come June 13th, 2021, it was announced that content from Pirates of the Caribbean would be added to the game.
• Like You Would Really Do It: While there were those who quickly swallowed the Mystery rumor that the Pirate Lord murdered his son Demarco, many more quickly caught that it was a lie since there was no good motive for it and Rare probably wouldn’t allow the Big Good mascot of their game and central figure of quests like the Maiden Voyage and Veil of the Ancients to be a murderer of their own children.^note While there is arguable precedent with Duke undergoing a Face–Heel Turn, his role as face of the Bilge Rats was not nearly as central a Big Good by comparison. Sure enough, it turned to be a red herring.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "CAPTAIN! LOOK!"^ExplanationA short clip of two streaming players on a sloop heading to an outpost to sell their haul, both of whom Failed a Spot Check so badly that it allowed a player-controlled galleon to get close enough to ram them. The second mate Connor screams the line when he spots the incoming ship. This serves as a beloved clip for the Sea of Thieves community for how perfectly it sums up the game and for Connor's Oscar-worthy warning, and the captain's panicked Rapid-Fire "No!" entered common use as a sound clip. Funnily, another clip of the incident revealed Connor actually said “Captain! Ooooohhh shit!” but the audio cut off a little.
  • SNAIL PepeHands^ExplanationThe song "Becalmed" has become strongly associated with AdmiralBulldog's playthrough of the game. In one incident, a player named Snail kept annoying Bulldog by playing the Hurdy-Gurdy, and he was then sent to the brig. Snail kept playing "Becalmed" while imprisoned, leading to Bulldog having a My God, What Have I Done? moment and freeing him while joining him on the accordion. The Twitch (technically FrankerFaceZ) Emoticon PepeHands represents sadness, and was spammed by Twitch chat users in response to this, along with "HIS ONLY CRIME WAS MUSIC".
  • Why do I hear boss music?^ExplanationA video of a player uttering this phrase before a shark attack has become a catch all term for when an audio cue that something bad is about to happen begins.
  • “The Shrouded Ghost isn't real.”^ExplanationThe albino Megaladon known as the Shrouded Ghost is such a rare encounter, such that even players who’ve sailed for years haven’t seen it, that on videos of encounters with it it’s a common joke to sarcastically accuse the footage of being faked with CG or using "paid actors".
  • “Getting Rared” is used as slang for bad luck coming from questionable coding, such as getting treasures stuck inside rocks or accidentally spawning a ship directly in front of a skeleton’s cannon. It later saw use for when random encounters show up at very bad times, such as when a skeleton galleon attacks when a crew is already dealing with another player ship.
  • "Your supplies must be dwindling by now."^ExplanationOne of Flameheart's taunts in the Ghost Fleet world event, applicable whenever a player is low on supplies.
• Paranoia Fuel: Being an open world pirate game where anything can happen, a lot of elements are ripe sources of paranoia. A ship on the horizon? Better hope that its sails and frame are ragged, because skeleton ships are usually not as hostile and savage as a player crew can potentially be! Are you scanning the horizon while digging for treasure, or did you drop anchor on the other side of the island? If you haven't, your ship is probably getting set on fire by another player. Flying an emissary flag? Pray that no Reaper emissaries show up! No sign of any world events in the sky? The Kraken is now waiting to ambush you...
• Ron the Death Eater: The more Reaper-happy side of the fanbase is prone to disparage the Pirate Lord as a fun-hating pacifist who wants to rid the sea of pirates and will even murder his own family in pursuit of a “Sea of Friends”. This is despite that while Athena’s Fortune does proclaim belief in values like cooperation over war, it doesn’t actually do anything to discourage combat, and possibly encourages it with its commendations for robbing other Athena crews. It also accepts Reaper’s Bones progress as qualification to be a Pirate Legend. Not to mention how the rumor that the Pirate Lord killed his own son turned out to be a fakeout.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Demarco was really hesitant to start matches in Arena mode, when even every ship in the lobby had a decent crew and the game still didn't start, resulting in lots of wasted time.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Probably the closest thing to a One Piece or Pirates of the Caribbean MMO out there. However, for the latter it is more of Spiritual Successor to the defunct Pirates of the Caribbean Online, doubly so now that there's a crossover with Pirates of the Caribbean.
• Tear Jerker:
  • During the finale of the Pirate's Life Tall Tale, a crossover with Pirates of the Caribbean, Calypso entreats one last time with Davy Jones to abandon his mad plan to conquer the Sea of the Damned, saying that the Sea of Thieves is an entirely new world where Jones can finally start anew and put his old life behind him, and that she would be with him. Davy Jones sincerely considers it, nearly accepting Calypso's offer, but rebuffs her in the end, citing that it's too late for him and that both he and she are monsters. The entire exchange culminates with this:
    Calypso: (sadly) Then the man I love... is truly dead.
    Davy Jones: (in a voice filled with regret) And none shall mourn his passing...
• That One Achievement:
  • Hunter of the Shrouded Ghost. The mythical Megalodon is so rare, many players with even over 1000+ hours in the game haven't seen it. Even rarer is the Legendary Hunter of the Shrouded Ghost title, earned by killing said shark 5 times. To date, the most anyone has ever encountered the beast is four.
  • The Captaincy update introduced Captain's Milestones, many of which were extremely hard to earn at first. Special note goes to Minutes Spent On Fire, which at release demanded 100 hours burning alive, The Rogue milestones (100 hours each for sleeping, sitting, and playing shanties), and Grogs Poured which required 15,000 grogs (500 hours of drunkenness). Rare later reduced the amount needed for milestones^note for time-based ones, from 60 minutes per milestone to 5 minutes per milestone, as well as lowering the grades needed to earn trinkets^note from 25, 50, 75, and 100 to 5,10, 20, and 30.
  • Hoarder of Barnacled Gold, which requires selling 300 Shipwrecked Chests to unlock the exclusive cosmetics. Said chests are rare, spawn at random in small quantities, and don't sell for any more than their un-barnacled versions. What's more, they must be sold exclusively to the Gold Hoarders, as selling to the Reapers does not count for the achievement (selling to the Sovereigns may count, but occasionally the progress is glitched.)
  • The Hunter's Call is the trading company that is the hardest to level up to max, as it has no voyages or emissary and can only be leveled up by selling fish and mermaid gems, making it very grind-heavy. Some of the fish commendations for the Hunters are also difficult, due to needing special conditions for said rare fish to spawn, such as only within storms, only around shipwrecks, or only around shipwrecks that are in storms.
  • Seeker of Ancient Vaults. This commendation requires that a player open 100 Gold Hoarder Vaults, a task that can potentially take an hour just to pop open one Vault if your luck is bad (mainly if you have to get all the pieces of the map leading to a Vault key). Pursuing a normal Vault means you can be hunting through most of the game world for map pieces and have four possible locations for the Vault; going after an Ashen Vault narrows the search area and only has two potential vaults, but you're now operating in the Devil's Roar.
• That One Level: Any of the traditional Tall Tales can become this simply due to the nature of sailing to far away islands and leaving your ship vulnerable to potential griefers, the cryptic nature of the puzzles for the Tall Tales, and the specific areas in which those Tall Tales need to be started at, but there are some with some standout issues of their own:
  • Stars of a Thief takes the cryptic puzzles up to eleven, as upon obtaining the spyglass you need to figure out which island you need to go to next by studying the matching constellations with the story title found in the Tall Tale's book, which isn't clear at all and absolutely screams Guide Dang It!. The next part also has some potential for unfavorable outcomes with another set of new, cryptic puzzles and the possibility of sailing to far away islands.
  • Art of the Trickster involves plenty of traps to avoid, such as sawblades and the classic Spikes of Doom. These spikes have a short “warning” jut up, and then they fully extend from wherever. The problem is that these spikes cause instant death, no matter if they’re in the warning period, extended or even retracting, leading to frustrating deaths from spikes you think would be retracted, nearly impossible timing windows that feel like you only get through because you got lucky on the timing,. Earlier, there's also a plot-important gunpowder barrel that must be carried through a dungeon. Said gunpowder barrel can be detonated by gunfire or damage like any other explosive keg, resulting in a Non-Standard Game Over, failing the tall tale, and requiring the tall tale to be started all over, as demonstrated by the explosions triggered all over the island that this gunpowder barrel is found at, requiring it to be unearthed extremely quickly and necessitating a quick escape to the water.
  • Shores of Gold involves collecting medallions all over the elusive island that is normally covered by the Red Sea (breached by using the Shroudbreaker artifact repaired through completing all other Tall Tales before it), one of which is protected by the same finicky Spikes of Doom found in Art of the Trickster (no, this doesn't mean access to the vault is guarded by these traps, the traps are inside the vault itself, meaning that you need to constantly walk on top of the traps to rotate the pillars. The problems with the spikes being seemingly retracted only to get killed anyway because you didn't happen to give it the widest berth are taken up to eleven in this part). If dying to those traps doesn't test one's patience, the sheer monotony of delivering each of the medallions to their required destination will (unless you had the foresight of bringing a wooden or ashen chest to carry three of them at once).
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The removal of The Arena, a competitive mode in which five ships battled in timed matches within a closed server, was very harshly received by its loyal Sea Dogs fanbase. A combination of long matchmaking times, increasing complexity of the game code and demand for bug fixes, and that only 2 percent of users regularly played Arena (and those that did were prone to be extremely sweaty and/or toxic), resulted in the mode ultimately being cut. A year later, the new competitive mode Hourglass was introduced, which brought back ship-vs-ship combat on demand, though only 1-on-1 rather than the fleet-scale battles of the former multiplayer mode.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Due to a combination of technically proficient graphics and a unique art style, Sea of Thieves definitely is appealing to look at.
  • The water in particular looks incredible. The waves move realistically and crash against the sides of ships as expected, with light bouncing off each crest in the water to make the whole sea shimmer. Calling it the most beautiful ocean in any videogame wouldn't be far off.
  • Remember the Unmoving Plaid on Stan's jacket in Monkey Island? In the Legend of Monkey Island expansion, Stan appears, and sure enough, the look is replicated perfectly while maintaining Sea of Thieves' art style.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Many thought Rare was a done deal after they started making Kinect Sports. When Rivals failed and the Kinect was largely abandoned, it seemed like all hope was lost. Then they announced Sea of Thieves, along with Rare Replay and a change of their logo to a more classic look, and many agree that things are, are the very least, taking a step up from what it used to be.
  • Would happen again with the game itself later on. The launch of the game was mixed to say the least, the gameplay itself was solid but the world was empty and there were several bugs. Updates only drove away more fans due to almost never addressing the game's problems and even adding new bugs on occasion. Then came the Shrouded Spoils update which greatly pleased fans and reinvigorated interest in the game thanks to putting in much more things to do in the world, adding several new enemies, fixing the struggling economy, and finally patching most of the game's bugs.
  • Many who liked the game's non-PvP elements like sailing or voyages were turned away from the game due to the potential for someone to interrupt a peaceful adventure at any time, and the impossibility of avoiding conflict or other players making it likewise a hard sell for parents wanting to play with their children. Come Season 10, and the introduction of Safer Seas - a private lobby with no crews besides yours - is so popular Rare had to put a message on the main menu apologizing for the long waits to get in. It's safe to say the pure PvE crowd's come back in full force.

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