Everything you need to know about Cursed Crews

Sea of Thieves’ Latest Bilge Rat Adventure

Beginning with Patch 1.2.4 released today August 30th, and ending on September 12th, the latest Bilge Rat Adventure lets us finally get our hands on the Cursed Cannonballs.

This guide will cover the general concept of Bilge Rat Adventures, an explanation of the new gameplay mechanics, and then a breakdown of what the Commendations are that you need to complete with tips on how to do that. If you’re very familiar with Sea of Thieves and these gameplay additions, you can skip down to The Challenge for the breakdown on Commendations.

What are Bilge Rat Adventures?

Who are the Bilge Rats? Duke and his merry gang of adventurers (or possibly just Duke) are a clan of swashbucklers that seek challenge on the Sea of Thieves for nothing more than the thrill of adventure- they care not for reputation or gold, and instead spend their days crafting challenges for intrepid pirates seeking unique limited time thrills.

In come the Bilge Rat Adventures, biweekly events which introduce new mechanics to the Sea of Thieves, as well as new rewards.

Bilge Rat Adventures consist of a set of challenges or “Commendations”, which when completed will earn you scalawags a number of “Doubloons”, a special Bilge Rat exclusive currency which can buy time limited cosmetics or be turned into standard Reputation levels or even Gold. Completing some subset of the commendations will typically yield a base level “title” exclusive to the event (which can be equipped in the clothing chest), while completing the full set of commendations tends to unlock a more impressive “master” title. Finally, a set of “legendary” tiered commendations aim to add longevity and repetition to the events, adding further doubloon earnings and a legendary title.

Where the Bilge Rat Adventures become interesting is their limited time nature- an event only lasts for two weeks, after which those commendations will still be unlockable and those challenges still remain present in the world, but the doubloon rewards and limited time cosmetic purchases will no longer be available and a new Bilge Rat Adventure will begin.

Talk to Duke, who can be found in every Tavern in the game, somehow, and he’ll tell you about the latest goings on in the Sea of Thieves, as well as give you access to his shop of Doubloon purchases. To see the current event’s commendations, press menu, navigate to the Reputation page, and select Bilge Rats.

What does Cursed Crews add to the game?

Cursed Crews brings with it two new major gameplay additions: Cursed Cannonballs, and the Reaper’s Mark, and you’ll be utilizing both to earn your Bilge Rat commendations.

Cursed Cannonballs are a new type of projectile weapon which, when it strikes a surface, impacts the world with some type of curse. There are two general varieties of Cursed Cannonballs: the Purple cannonballs which impact an entire ship, or the Green cannonballs which impact individual players that are caught in a smaller area of effect radius.

There are 11 specific types of Cursed Cannonballs in total. They are:

Peaceball (Purple)- Raises the ships cannons sky high and prevents their operation for a time.

Ballastball (Purple)- Makes the enemy ship ride lower in the water, causing them to take water on more quickly.

Helmball (Purple)- Impedes the enemy ship’s ability to steer their helm more than a small degree.

Anchorball (Purple)- Drops the enemy ship’s anchor

Riggingball (Purple)- Raises the enemy ship’s sails

Barrelball (Purple)- Locks the enemy crew out of accessing their supply barrels

Jigball (Green)- Makes enemies caught in the blast dance uncontrollably

Wearyball (Green)- Makes enemies caught in the blast go to sleep

Grogball (Green)- Makes enemies caught in the blast overwhelmingly drunk, inducing vomitting and impeding the ability to walk in a straight line

Limpball (Green)- Makes enemies caught in the blast walk as if they have a sprained ankle

Venomball (Green)- Makes enemies caught in the blast blinded by snake venom

In addition to these new weapons, Cursed Crews brings us The Reaper’s Mark, which is a special type of flag. Using your crow’s nest’s Flag Box, you can equip the Reaper’s Mark. Doing so will make a shadow of your ship appear on every other player’s map table on the server. It will not reveal to them what type of ship you are, or whether or not you are in an Alliance or not. By advertising your location to other player’s, you may open yourself up to an ambush or general stalking by player’s looking for a fight. And hey, maybe that’s what you’re looking for too.

The Challenge

Cursed Crews’ challenge consists of 16 commendations, which award a total of 150 Doubloons and 3 unique titles. Those commendations are split into three general paths, which I’ll discuss separately.

Legend of Cursed Iron

There are 5 commendations which are based around utilizing each of the 5 types of Green Cursed Cannonballs (the ones that impact individual pirates in a blast radius), and 2 bonus commendations for using any combination of the 5 types.

Your task is to use these Cursed Cannonballs against skeletons, not players. For each of the 5 Cannonballs, you’ll need to impact a total of 5 skeletons and then kill them while they are cursed.

This will earn you 5 doubloons for each cannonball type, for a total of 25 doubloons. If you‘ve really got time on your hands, there’s a bonus 10 doubloons and 30 doubloons for killing a total of 50 and 200 skeletons in this way, respectively. Completing that last hefty commendation will also net you the cosmetic title “Legend of Cursed Iron”.

Tips:

Skeletons that are impacted by your curses don’t have to be from AI Skeleton Ships. AI Ships are the most difficult skeletons for earning these commendations.

Order of Souls voyages will spawn dozens of skeletons. Do a Souls bounty on a small island and lure them to the beach- then cannon them from off shore.

You can save time by doing this track of commendations at the same time as the Legendary Cursed Voyager commendations below- but make sure to equip the Reaper’s Mark if you want to earn those!

Bearer of the Reaper’s Mark

There are 6 commendations which are based around utilizing each of the 6 types of Purple Cursed Cannonballs (the ones that impact an entire ship when struck).

With these Purple Cursed Cannonballs, you’ll need to use each of them just one time, but it must be against another player’s ship, and it must be while flying the Reaper’s Mark which I described above.

Once you’ve hit an enemy ship with a purple cursed cannonball, you’ll earn 5 doubloons. Repeat this for all 6 of the Purple cannonballs, and you’ll earn the title Bearer of the Reaper’s Mark.

Tips:

Wait until you’ve stocked up on all the Purple cannonball types before equipping your Reaper’s Mark.

Once ready, equip the Reaper’s Mark, and search your map table for other Reaper Marked ships. Chase them down and let the cannonballs fly!

If you can’t find any other Marked crews, either sail to the center of the map and wait for a crew to come for you, or sail from outpost to outpost looking for ship spawns.

Legendary Cursed Voyager

There are 3 commendations which require you to go about your business completing your regular trading company Voyages… while flying the Reaper’s Mark.

Complete 5 voyages while flying the Reaper’s Mark, and you’ll earn 10 doubloons. Complete 30 and you’ll early 30 doubloons, and the title Legendary Cursed Voyager.

There’s also one bonus commendation awarded for completing a single voyage while in an Alliance AND flying the Reaper’s Mark- this nets you 15 more doubloons.

Tips:

In order to get the commendations, you MUST equip the Reaper’s Mark before starting a voyage and throughout the entire duration of the voyage.

Contrary to typical play, you’ll want to do the lowest level voyages of any person in your crew, so you can complete many voyages quickly instead of embarking on longer, higher value voyages.

You may be able to save time and work on The Legend of Cursed Iron commendations while you do these, by doing Order of Souls Voyages.

While flying the Reaper’s Mark flag, keep a close eye on the horizons for ships on their way to distract you from your mission. If you get attacked repeatedly by the same crew, consider switching servers.