Sea of Thieves Isn’t A Hard Game

I’ve been playing Sea of Thieves for a while now, and I like to think I am quite good at it. Sure, I’m not amazing, but I can get in a boat, sail it to an island or two and shoot some skeletons or ghosts. I’d struggle to do a Legend of the Veil quest on my own, however, I am at least somewhat competent. However, I don’t really have that many hours in Sea of Thieves, and I play rather irregularly, meaning that I don’t really get much practice. I also play with very, very competent pirates so I can learn more quickly.

But really, looking at the game, there’s not much that’s actually hard. If I consider what I am bad at doing in Sea of Thieves, it’s mostly things like recognizing islands and the occasional jumping puzzle that I stumble across. I think the real hardest thing to do in the Sea of Thieves is actually to do with multitasking, especially when you play solo. While simply sailing a sloop yourself isn’t too hard, naval combat becomes much, much  more complicated because you have to sail and fire at the same time. You need to be able to angle your ship so you’re not in too much danger but also have to be at a good angle to fire the cannons.

Playing solo though is a whole separate thing. The game is mostly meant to play in groups, and ideally a sloop is designed for two people, not one. While playing solo is definitely doable (and people do it all the time), this game is designed to be for multiple players working together in a single crew. And in a crew, you can easily conquer pretty much everything in the Sea of Thieves. The Fort of the Damned? Not a problem. Ashen Lords? They fall quickly. Tall Tales and puzzles? Two, three or four heads are better than one.

Really, the only hard content comes in the form of PvP. Players are a lot more chaotic than skeletons and ghosts are. Fighting against another ship of players may use the same skills learned elsewhere in the game, but you need to be strong and intelligent to be able to defeat other players. You can’t just rely on cannon balls from a safe distance, surviving against other players requires you to take them out, carve out opportunities and then cash them in. Players can sail better, fire better and repair better than any AI character can do.

But even then, the skills you need for PvP are the same skills you need for the rest of Sea of Thieves. You practice firing cannons on far away skeleton ships in order to learn how to target player ships. You learn how to prioritize repairing your ship by, well, repairing things. And you practice killing players by killing them the same way you kill everything else. The combat in Sea of Thieves really isn’t that difficult to learn, there’s only four weapons and three of them are guns.

Sea of Thieves is not a hard game. Frankly, if I can learn how to play, pretty much any other competent gamer should have no trouble picking up the controls. It’s an easy game, it just takes time to learn, just like anything else.