On Playing as Reapers in the Sea of Thieves

So far, while playing Sea of Thieves, we’ve mostly been doing the same few things. But we always do these things as an Emissary, earning experience for different factions. Outside of Veil missions, the Stormcloud are often representing the Reapers’ Bones, and the faction is somewhat frowned upon. Why? Because, although they spend a lot of time doing the same things as other ships, the Reapers are generally considered the PvP faction.

And it turns out not everyone is a fan of the Reapers’ Bones. Or PvP in general.

Reapers are easy to avoid

Well, they’re super easy to avoid, unless they are actively chasing you. Anyone who raises the Reapers’ Emissary flag is marked on your ship’s map, which frequently updates whenever the Reaper Emissaries move. So you can watch a Reaper ship in real time as they wander about and do whatever it is they are doing. Sure, some Reapers might be looking to kill you, but they have to find you first. And the Sea of Thieves is a pretty big fucking place, so running away isn’t too hard.

However, there is a reason to worry about Rank 5 Reapers. These are the guys you should watch out for, because they can see not just themselves and other Reaper ships on the map, but they can also see other Emissary ships as well, regardless of rank. You can still see them on the map though, and you can still try to avoid them. Even if they can see you.

It adds some much-needed risk vs reward

Honestly, without that player randomness, Sea of Thieves would actually be really boring. Sure, there are dungeons and bosses and stuff like that, but the pure Player VS Environment setting doesn’t really have much risk to it all. The worst case scenario is that you sink due skeleton ships. But even then, they’re not that hard to beat, and I’m saying that as a complete newbie. Other threats like Megalodons can be avoided or retreated from, and Kraken can only spawn when there’s no event going on, and you can wait those out at outposts.

You can and will die to enemies in the game, that’s a given. But there is very little consequence when it comes to dying to NPC enemies. You just go to the ferry and come back to your ship. It’s easy. And anything that isn’t easy, you can generally brute-force your way through. That’s exactly what I did when I got the Ashen Curse.

Throwing some human randomness into all of this actually means there’s some risk. Genuine, yet random risk. Without things like the Reapers, you can just stack loot indefinitely, not worrying about ever sinking. The game becomes nothing but rewards otherwise, and that makes things dull.

This is a pirate game

At the end of the day though, Sea of Thieves is a pirate game. It’s literally a sea filled with thieves. And some of those thieves will steal and loot other thieves, rather than just killing skeleton crews and digging up treasure. That’s just what happens. I mean, look at the Pirates of the Caribbean movies! There’s pirates fighting pirates all the time!

And before you say “but Medic, they are different universes!” there is an entire adventure, A Pirate’s Life, which directly ties Sea of Thieves with the Pirates of the Caribbean, to the point that you can get an exact replica of Jack Sparrow’s costume. And in that adventure? There’s also a lot of pirates vs pirates action.

So why would the Sea of Thieves be any different? No matter how you look at things, the Sea of Thieves is exactly that: a sea of thieves.