Sea of Thieves shows in video how to gather ship supplies

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Come with me, because today is pirate life! Rare released another Sea of Thieves video, and this time the subject is a very down-to-earth part of the adventure: gathering resources to keep the ship running.

In the video, Mike Chapman and Shelley Preston, from the design team, explain how it works. Each player starts with a few fixed items, such as a bucket to bail out the water that floods the ship or a musical instrument to cheer up the crew. But what keeps the vessel afloat has to be fetched from the islands: cannonballs, wooden planks to patch holes and food, such as bananas, to restore your pirate’s health. These are limited-use items, and forgetting to restock can be costly in the middle of a battle.

Look how cute the idea behind this is: exploring the islands is not just treasure hunting, it is taking care of the crew’s floating home. One goes for planks, another chases after bananas, another stays playing music for friends. The game had been announced at E3 2015 and, at the time of the video, still had no date, but was expected for 2017, with a likely appearance at E3.

What came next

Sea of Thieves ended up arriving on March 20, 2018, on Xbox One and Windows. Early reviews were mixed, with praise for the multiplayer and visuals and complaints about the little content at launch. Later updates changed that story: Tall Tales, missions with a narrative, and the A Pirate’s Life crossover, with Pirates of the Caribbean, in 2021. The game reached Steam in June 2020 and PlayStation 5 in April 2024, when it already had over 40 million players. My little gamer heart loves a comeback story like that.