My Problems With Sea of Thieves

I love Sea of Thieves. It’s a unique game, perhaps the only real game of its genre, and I absolutely adore it. There’s something wonderful about roaming the waves, murdering passers by and getting huge amounts of treasure. However, I do have a few small problems with Sea of Thieves, and I think it’s worth talking about.

Before I start though, there are definitely some things which aren’t the fault of Sea of Thieves. One of my bigger problems is loading times, but that’s because my laptop is a little weak. Sea of Thieves requires an SSD drive in order to run optimally, but I just have normal hard drives. That’s my problem. And even then, I’ve noticed that loading times have decreased for me recently. Clearly they did some sort of voodoo magic to make the game load faster. There’s also the graphics. Since I have a craptop, I can’t turn the graphics all the way up, to really see how pretty Sea of Thieves is.

But the real problem I have with Sea of Thieves is time.

There’s just not enough time.

Loading screens aside, a good Sea of Thieves session is very long. It can take 15 minutes to get all your resources sorted out and head out to sea. While you can buy crates with cannonballs and wood already available, it’s good practice to grab a storage crate and run around the island, looting all the barrels. That way you can find cursed cannonballs and even rare fruits like pineapples. This is doubly true for un-captained ships, since they can’t buy the special captain chests that have extra resources in them.

And once you’re ready to set sail? Well, the journey can be long and arduous, depending on where you’re going. Even doing basic emissary stuff can have you traveling across the entire sea. The random nature of voyages means that you could be sent anywhere in the Sea of Thieves. Things like Reaper Chests and sailing to world events can also be very long journeys.

And then there’s the best part, selling. Thankfully, the Sovereigns do make things easier, as does selling to the Reapers. But there’s still a huge amount of back and forth. A good haul can take at least 10 minutes to fully sell, and that’s even with the new harpoons and using the lift at the Sovereigns. Selling at the Reapers’ hideout takes even longer, but at least they accept almost everything. But that also means exposing yourself to danger.

No matter what, a voyage can take a very long time, often more time than you’d expect. And it’s not nice to abandon a crew if you run out of time. This is especially true for me, due to the times at which I play, normally late at night when I’m tired. Either way, if you want a productive time on the Sea of Thieves, you ideally want to set aside a minimum of two hours. Anything less is greatly limiting. And a really good session can easily last four or five hours.

Why not play solo?

Now, you could suggest that I sail solo, so I can play on my own time and leave whenever I want. But I don’t enjoy sailing on my own. Part of the whole pirate experience is to play with (and shoot at) other pirates. Sea of Thieves is a community game, it works best when people work together in a single crew.

The other problem is doing everything by yourself, which makes things a bit more stressful. Steering, firing the cannons and exploring islands are all much more difficult. It’s definitely doable, there are plenty of players who do play solo. But it’s simply not as fun and requires way more work than sailing even with one other person.

The last problem is that I have to stay up late to play with my friends, but that’s just time zones for you.