Sea of Thieves Guide - Cursed Sails Update, Tips and Tricks, Beginner's Guide

Sea of Thieves is a game with a lot of secrets that are meant to be discovered by players, and this is true for the Cursed Sails update, which has only just launched. In this Sea of Thieves guide, we'll be walking you through everything you need to know to get to grips with the opening of the game. We've also got guides on the Merchant Alliance, Gold Hoarders, and Order of Souls Factions, as well as all the details you need on the new Sea of Thieves Cursed Sails update.

Sea of Thieves Cursed Sails Update

As of July 31, the Cursed Sails update for Sea of Thieves has launched for all players. Just download the small update file for Rare's pirate game, and you're ready to go.

Official Sea of Thieves: Cursed Sails Teaser Trailer

Watch on YouTube

In Cursed Sails, you can now find pirate crews of undead skeletons on the high seas, patrolling the world and waiting to engage in combat. There'll also be a new ship called the Brigante, specifically designed for three players.

Sea of Thieves Guide

Firstly, you can find a complete running list of all our Sea of Thieves guide pages just below, which expand upon intricate details of the game in greater depth. We've got complete breakdowns about how to set sail on your maiden voyage, as well as how to fully outfit your ship with new and decorative parts from the Shipwright.

• Sea of Thieves Beginner's Guide - How to Set Sail on Your First Voyage
• Sea of Thieves Money Guide - How to Earn Money Quickly in Sea of Thieves
• Sea of Thieves Crew Guide - How to Play Online, How to Play Sea of Thieves Solo
• Sea of Thieves Ship Customization Guide - How to Completely Customize Your Ship at the Shipwright
• Sea of Thieves Gold Hoarders Guide - How to Increase Your Reputation With the Gold Hoarders, All Gold Hoarder Rewards
• Sea of Thieves Merchant Alliance Guide - How to Capture Animals, All Chicken Map Locations
• Sea of Thieves Order of Souls Guide - How to Increase Your Reputation With the Order of Souls, All Order of Souls Rewards
• Sea of Thieves Kraken Guide - How to Find the Defeat the Kraken
• Sea of Thieves Skeleton Fort Guide - How to Conquer a Skeleton Fort and Reap the Loot Rewards
• Sea of Thieves Errors Guide - How to Fix Every Error Message in Sea of Thieves
• Sea of Thieves Mysterious Stranger Guide

Sea of Thieves Pirate Customization

While there wasn't a whole lot of character (pirate) customization back when Sea of Thieves first launched, Rare has introduced a whole new bunch of shop items into the game, as part of 1.0.6. Here's a list of all the new customization variety for your pirates, as detailed by Rare:

• Regional Stock - Shopkeepers in different regions of the Sea of Thieves map now stock different items to one another, so you won't find the same items in every shop.
• Clothing Range - There's a brand new range of clothing items in the shops, including the Executive Admiral, Grand Admiral, Rotten Bilge Rat, Castaway Bilge Rat, Corsair Sea Dog, Ruffian Sea Dog and Imperial Sovereign sets.
• Ship Shop - There's a whole new variety of items available from the Shipwright stock, including the Grand Admiral, Castaway Bilge Rat, Ruffian Sea Dog and Imperial Sovereign ship customisation sets.
• New Weapons - Finally, there are a host of brand new types of weapons in Sea of Thieves for your pirate character, including the Grand Admiral, Castaway Bilge Rat, Ruffian Sea Dog and Imperial Sovereign weapons.

Sea of Thieves Tips and Tricks

In the concluding section of our Sea of Thieves guide, we've got a complete list of all the tips and tricks any newcomer or veteran pirate should know, laid out for you just below:

• If you jump backward while running from skeletons, you can outrun them and shoot them with your pistol.
• Gold skeletons are incredibly weak to water in any form.
• Plant skeletons are strong against water and rain, but weak to sword attacks.
• Shadow skeletons are weak to light sources, including lanterns and daylight.
• Storing gunpowder barrels on your ship is incredibly risky, they can explode if they're damage even slightly.
• Alternatively, you can place gunpowder barrels and use them as bombs.
• If you put someone in the brig, they can drown if your ship sinks.
• The only way to get out of the brig is to be either voted out by your crew, or to quit the game.
• You can make snakes passive by playing music around them.

Otherwise, we'll give you an introductory guide to Sea of Thieves just below, outlining how you should go about starting the game, as well as how you can get to grips with sailing your brand new pirate ship.

Sea of Thieves Walkthrough

When you first begin Sea of Thieves, there isn't actually a character creator of any sort. As we detailed back before the game even launched, there's something called an 'infinite pirate generator' instead, which presents you with an infinite number of randomly generated pirates, letting you choose one to begin your journey in Sea of Thieves. If you aren't happy with any of the options in front of you, simply spin the selector again to bring up a brand new range of pirates for you to choose from.

Once you've selected a pirate avatar with which to play, you'll find yourself in a tavern in an unspecified outpost. Remember that the map in Sea of Thieves is entirely randomly generated, so you could theoretically wake up anywhere on the map. However, you'll always be on an outpost with a number of shops, your ship, and most importantly, all three faction vendors, which we'll break down in detail for you below.

At this point you'll find yourself out in the open world of Sea of Thieves, so if you need a helping hand in knowing where to go and what to do next, head over to our guide on how to get started in Sea of Thieves.

Sea of Thieves Gold Hoarder Faction

Simply put, the Gold Hoarder faction in Sea of Thieves focuses on your conventional treasure hunts for lost gold. All of the voyages you can select from the Gold Hoarder vendor will see you tracking down buried treasure in one form or another, be it through solving a riddle on a piece of paper, or heading to the X on a blurry map. The Gold Hoarders focus on treasure, and as a result, it's through this faction that you can expect to earn the most cash for your efforts.

Sea of Thieves Order of Souls Faction

The Order of Souls faction definitely come across as the more creepy faction in Sea of Thieves, hiding out in dim rooms in the far reaches of outposts dotted around the map. However it's through the Order of Souls faction that you can expect to find the majority of combat-orientated voyages, which will see you taking down hordes of skeletons in specific locations, including skeleton forts (more on that later).

Sea of Thieves Merchant Alliance Faction

Finally, the Merchant Alliance faction in Sea of Thieves focus on delivering specific items to a specific location, at a particular time. For example, you could be tasked with heading to an island on your map, collecting a few cages of chickens from the island, and transporting it back to an outpost within a certain time limit. Rare designed the Merchant Alliance faction in Sea of Thieves to entirely avoid combat, giving players something different to do if they didn't want to go to war with other players or NPCs.

Sea of Thieves Black Dog Pre-order Pack

If you put down a pre-order for Sea of Thieves before the actual game launched, then good news, for the Black Dog Pack is waiting for you in-game. To find all your loot, you'll want to head on board your ship whenever you want, and head down to the group of chests in the ship that hold all your gear. For the bigger galleon, this will be the middle deck of the ship, but for the smaller slupe, you'll find the gear chests at the very bottom deck.

You're looking for the Armory and the Clothing Chest, both of which will hold your Black Dog weapons and clothing items. When you've selected either chest, you'll find yourself with a range of weapons to equip for your melee and ranged slot, as well as new clothing items, all of which are Black Dog branded. It'll give a nice stylist look early on into your adventure.

Sea of Thieves Skeleton Forts Explained

We previously mentioned Skeleton Forts, and we found out from Rare beforehand that these would form the base of the PvE experience for Sea of Thieves. Whenever you see a Skeleton Fort on a map, you'll see a giant skull above the island on which the fort is placed, signifying a great challenge that awaits you with the horde of undead there.

It's your choice whether you team up with other players on other ships to take down the Skeleton Fort, but one thing's clear: you're going to want to plough through the horde of skeletons in the fort in order to reach the multiple treasure chests waiting for you once you've cleared out the fort.

Because there are multiple treasure chests at the end of the Skeleton Fort, there's potentially going to be some conflict if you've raided the fort with other pirate ships. How do you dish out the treasure chests between you all? Or do you stab the other team in the back and attempt to kill them off, to claim all the treasure for yourselves? Rare obviously designed the Skeleton Forts to be somewhat unpredictable, so you're going to have to steel yourself and your crew for the challenge ahead.

Sea of Thieves Skeleton Types Explained

We've mentioned that you'll find hordes of skeletons to take on in Sea of Thieves, particularly in the Skeleton Forts explained just above, but did you know that there are a total of four different types of skeletons found in the game?

Sure, there are the standard skeletons with weapons that'll go down after merely a few swings of the sword, but then there are the treasure skeletons and the seaweed skeletons, on top of the intimidating shadow skeletons to face off against. You'll know the type of skeleton you're going up against based on their appearance: shadow skeletons only operate in darkness, treasure skeletons are covered in gold, and seaweed skeletons are covered in, well, seaweed.

Firstly, shadow skeletons are powerful while under the cover of darkness, but if you can either lure them out into daylight or shine a lantern on them, they become significantly weaker. The same goes for treasure skeletons, as if you can lure them into water or throw water over them, they'll both slow down and become weaker to gunfire.

Finally, the seaweed skeletons are just downright fast, and difficult to deal with in swarms. There's no actual way to slow them down (at least not that we've discovered as of yet), so your best bet is to simply lure them to the beaches of whichever Skeleton Fort you're currently taking on, and let your teammates rain down on them with cannon fire, tearing them to shreds.

You'll also usually have to take down a skeleton pirate captain at the conclusion of a Skeleton Fort, in order to wrap up the fort and claim the treasure for yourself. You can see the skeleton captain just above, and while you'll usually find them in forts, you can also regularly find them on Order of Souls Voyages which challenge you on taking out a skeleton pirate crew. The skeleton captains might look intimidating, but unlike the three other types of skeletons in Sea of Thieves, there's no special method for killing these undead.

This might be the end of our introductory Sea of Thieves guide, but make sure to check back on this complete walkthrough, as we'll be updating it whenever we uncover anything new in Rare's latest game.