There’s No Such Thing as a Short Sea of Thieves Session

In the Sea of Thieves, being patient is a big part of the game. Everything takes time, and sessions can easily get longer and longer as the night goes on. The last time I played Sea of Thieves, we were at it for hours, getting various commendations done while also sailing with emissary stuff. We did several Veil missions and got a lot of loot. This took us quite a long time, and there wasn’t really a chance to make it take less time. So where does this time actually go?

Getting started and actually setting sail takes a long time

Every fresh ship starts off with basically nothing. We have to buy cannonball crates, wood crates and food for our journey. When you sail on a captained ship, then you can easily buy some supplies from the dock. The Merchants also sell some basic boxes of resources, but this generally isn’t enough, especially on a galleon. It’s also important to grab a storage crate and loot all the barrels on an outpost, as they can contain important resources like cursed cannonballs.

By the time you’ve done all this, you can easily have spent 20 minutes, before you’ve even set off. And even once you’ve set off, it’s worth stopping at a ghost fort, in order to grab even more supplies.

Then there’s the actual sailing

With the game being set on a large sea, moving around it is going to take a long time. You can only really go as fast as the wind takes you. This is especially important if you are trying to go somewhere in a hurry, or if you are chasing someone or are being chased. While you can turn the sails to face the wind though, the wind is often not on your side. I don’t know how the wind works in Sea of Thieves, but I swear it’s always against you, especially when you are in a rush. The best you can do is turn the sails into the wind as much as you can, and hope that it changes soon.

Getting loot to the ship is a pain if it’s not in harpoon range

In season 9, we were introduced to a bigger and better harpoon. It used to be that you’d need two people, one to harpoon, then one person to grab the loot off the harpoon. Now, you can just harpoon loot and it teleports behind you on your ship. However, harpoons have limited range and direction. So parking the ship is vital when it comes to efficiency. The Sovereigns are of some help, but only if you are on a captained ship. On the flip side, the Reapers have no real way to speed things up, aside from one acute angle on the side of the island, that you can sort of ram into. Even that though can be dangerous, because it’s easy to get stuck.

And once you have managed to harpoon everything, or you have lodged yourself as close as possible to whoever you want to sell to, then you have the actual handing in of loot. And that can take a VERY long time, because you can’t sprint while holding loot. You’ve got to carry every single treasure chest and hand them in in person. There’s no easy way to sell everything in one go.

And then there’s PvP. If you win, great. If not, you gotta rebuy all your supplies

In almost every battle on the Sea of Thieves, there’s always one loser. And that loser does in fact lose everything. It’s not just treasure, emissary flags or notebooks either. If you sink, you have to completely refill all your supplies, starting from scratch.

And Hourglass PvP drives this up to 11, since you need to get all your cannonballs back before heading back into battle. It can be a very slow process, especially since Hourglass stuff can take a really long time. One of the more chaotic battles I’ve had lasted over ten minutes, and two skilled captains can make a duel last for a good half-hour, both vying to sink each other.

At the end of the day, you need a lot of time.

And by ‘a lot of time’, I can mean a good 3-4 hours sailing on the high seas. A great session can easily last 5 hours, especially if you are doing longer missions like Veils, or get unlucky with lost shipments, treasure map parts and vaults.

Heck, even just going fishing can last a super long time! Because, in order to make maximum profit, you have to cook every single fish you catch. And even if they’re adding a second stove in season 10, that still takes forever. The fastest way to cook all your fish is to go to a ghost fort and use the 4-pan stove top there!

At the end of the day though, it’s generally worth it. Even if you do sink. After all, the real treasure is the adventure itself, not the loot.

Well, that’s not true at all, but you get what I mean.