Game: Sea of Thieves

Platform: Xbox One | PC

Nutshell Idea

Artefacts and Curios would be objects of high rarity that players could stumble across on islands, shipwrecks and in fort holds, similar to the unique chests and explosive barrels they can already discover. These objects could be sold for a high price, but they would also give players access to useful, unique, and sometimes extreme abilities should they use them. The pay-off is that the player’s location would become temporarily visible on the maps of all other crews at the specific location where they used the item, adding the risk of other players trying to hunt them down in order to steal the desirable tool for themselves.

Ideas for items and abilities:

Mermaid’s Wish: Water, everywhere… This powerful trident shoots a stream of water strong enough to displace even the most sure-footed sailor. 2 minute cooldown.

Fool’s Powder: Said to have belonged to the Gold Hoarder himself, enterprising pirates can sprinkle this powder over chests to increase their value by one step. 30 second cooldown.

Eye of the Storm: Ever wondered how lightning chooses where to strike? Rumours say that mischievous creatures actually select the spots, and that they once dropped their powerful tool during a dispute over the virtues of hitting the same area of ground a second time. 5 minute cooldown.

Tankard of Endless Merriment: A creation that the Pirate Lord himself takes ownership of, this magically refilling mug contains grog so potent that it still retains its dizzying properties even when expelled from the drinker’s gullet, so you’ve even more reason to avoid the stream than usual. 2 Minute cooldown.

Accordion of Obligatory Joy: Some say that there exists a song so wonderful that pirate’s can’t help but shuffle their feet awkwardly upon hearing its melody... 10 second duration, 2 minute cooldown.

Earthsplitter: What happens when a pirate cannons himself into a volcano with a shovel and an armful of cursed crabs? Something like this spews forth, or so it’s been said… Striking the ground with this shovel will cause a calamitous earthquake to shake the ground with calamitous vigour! 2 minute cooldown

Cloak of Shadow: Said to be part of the strange object that left the shadowy crews with their haunting fate, this object grants you and those around you the powers of the mysterious spectral skeletons briefly and the ability to strike your enemies with disregard for pain! Unless there’s light nearby… 15 second duration, 5 minute cooldown.

Blundergust: In the efforts to improve Ocean travel, it was said that the shipwrights were once able to bottle air. Unfortunately the powerful wafts were mostly used just to displace a captain’s favourite hat from his noggin when they denied their crew extra bananas, and thus it was deemed too powerful and cast to the depths. 2 minute cooldown.

Kraken’s Tentacle: In their ongoing dabbling with voodoo powers the Order of Souls once thought to try and control the powerful Kraken’s of the deep (so they could easily claim all of the skulls they’d swallowed, of course). The Tentacle’s creator did manage to get his hands on those skulls, actually, for a short while at least. It’s hard to live a prosperous life in a Kraken’s stomach. 30 minute cooldown.

Wand of the Five Winds (no points for guessing where this one gets its inspiration): This magical wand allows a crew to change the wind to a direction of their choosing. Improves naval travel, and helps you keep the campfire smoke out of your eyes at night. 5 minute cooldown.

Idea in depth

Every session of Sea of Thieves is a unique adventure. With every fresh load, and every vessel of your own that meets a watery demise, your crew starts with a minimum toolkit. It’s then up to you to search barrels and islands to accrue a stash of helpful items and objects for your voyage around the game’s verdant archipelago, the items you find will then help you better defend yourself and maintain control of your precious loot from threats — both human and not — as you set about your pirate-y deeds. Understanding your resource situation, and making decisions based on them, is an integral part of play.

To view it this way the game is somewhat rogue-like in its setup, but it’s fairly safe to say that most runs ultimately result in the same acquisition of power — grab a rowboat, hoard some gunpowder, scoop up a few Cursed Cannonballs (that you’ll likely miss your shots with), and then gather mountains of potassium filled miracle fruit, wooden boards, and lumps of lead. Similarly, due to the current spawn rates of once elusive game elements, like the Kraken and Skull Forts, most sessions currently share a similar flavour.

So outside of the Cursed Cannonballs there aren’t very many surprising or unique items that can appear. Even then these blighted balls rarely have a huge impact on what you decide to get up to, they merely offer a fleeting advantage should a ship vs. ship situation arise. What’s more once one of these silly spheres is held by a player it lives in their inventory, making it the sole property of that pirate, off limits to other greedy sorts unless the player is silly enough to pop them in their cannonball barrel.

With this in mind the idea laid out above is an attempt to add something more unique, more eye widening, more empowering and, undeniably, more covetable, to any given Sea of Thieves adventure…

There is actually an example of this kind of item in the game already, and that’s the Chest of Sorrows. Talk to any practised pirate and they’ll probably have a tale or two regarding this chest’s wonderful capabilities. For the uninitiated this is a chest that will periodically burst into a wave of watery woe, filling the hull of any ship it’s sat upon with unexpected brine. The item’s design intent is that this presents a trial for the crew looking to make a buck from this cursed chest, as they will need to bail water from their ship on the way to sell the object at an outpost even if their ship is factory fresh. However you can actually use this chest as a weapon; drop it on a computer controlled Skeleton Galleon and it’s a guaranteed KO, you just need to wait a minute. So that presents the crew with a quandary, do you sell the chest as soon as possible because you don’t want to deal with the burden it presents, or would you rather hang on to it and exploit its aggressive potential in search of greater rewards? It’s the sort of find that can immediately change the course of a voyage, generates discussion among the crew, and creates genuinely unique gameplay scenarios by being suitably rare.

Artefacts and Curios is an idea, then, that’s ultimately an expansion of what the Chest of Sorrows already offers. They would be powerful objects that are found randomly and rarely, that can be sold for a good price to certain characters, or can be held by a crew to give them intriguing, unique powers and opportunities. Players shouldn’t feel like they need one of these items to succeed, but they should be excited and invigorated to find one; they should see new potential and options in how their current voyage proceeds.

Additionally these would not be inventory items like Cursed Cannonballs, they would be objects like a chest or a skull and, as such, are not held on a player’s person — they are picked up to be used, and then must be dropped on the ground afterwards. This means that maintaining the item’s position becomes a part of gameplay and should definitely create a feeling of ‘my precious’ within members of the crew…

But Sea of Thieves is not a PvE game about risk-free co-operation, it’s a game about player to player interaction and confrontation, which is where the idea of ‘seeing’ these items being used on the map stems from. The idea is that, upon using one of these items, the mark of that object would appear on the maps of all other crews at the exact point of use for a short time. The potential is that a crew scanning their map could see this and make a decision to try and seek it out to steal this powerful tool for themselves. It adds a crucial layer of risk to using such a strong item, and would also encourage direct player to player interactions.

Again, having to place the item on the floor is important here — because the item must be put down it makes it easy for another crew to try and steal it. It’s also fun to note that holding an item would render you unable to fight (note that only one suggested item deals direct damage. Even though many can affect movement or push players, their focus is on being disruptive), so chases and panicked grabbing of items would occur. Crucially this allplays into the idea of fragile alliances as crews try to create opportunities to get their hands on the lovely artefact, or potentially backstab each other if they teamed up to overcome a crew in possession of one.

Imagine how you’d feel if, after a crew sweet talked its way into an alliance with you, you catch them leaping from the captain’s cabin, curio in hand and gunpowder sizzling where it once sat? Or consider that you’re in a fight with a ship because they’re trying to sink you to steal your Eye of the Storm, you spot a third ship sailing in to join the fight but rather than just opening fire you shout out to them accusing the other crew of having the item before hitting your own ship with lightning, thereby casting aspersions on the crew you’re battling in the eyes of this new ship. The potential for player interactions around these styles of items, both in terms of soft skills and hard skills, is clear.

Thinking about non-hostile play, some may use these items in a more heroic sense. Imagine sitting at an outpost with the Fool’s Powder, offering to buff the loot of passers-by in exchange for an alliance? Players may also derive joy and well being from passing items on to other crews upon concluding a session.

Elsewhere glory hunters could aim to acquire and hold a few of these objects and show their strength and power on a server — finally you could fly the Reaper’s Mark and truly position yourselves as a sort of ‘server boss’ that others would team-up to take down! But of course, due to the nature of Sea of Thieves, these objects would vanish when the crew logs out. While this means that there is no risk of a crew being all commanding for all time, you’d sure get some great stories of terrifying groups that could control The Kraken, Lightning, and the Oceans themselves!

Rare have made a beautiful title that shirks the power chase of persistent RPGs, instead focusing on a tight core design that rewards skills over stats, and that shouldn’t change. However it’s Sea of Thieves’ rogue-like undertones that are perhaps its most under-explored facet, and this idea is simply an attempt to consider how this sort of element could be enhanced in a manner befitting the designs and intentions of the game. Every session of Sea of Thieves is a unique adventure after all, so any elements that add a little more unpredictable seasoning to every voyage can only help expand the allure of taking to the waves time after time.

-Footnotes-

Top art — Sea of Thieves Concept Art by Davide Fabrizz