Sea of Thieves’ New Mystery Aims to Be ‘The Ultimate Treasure Hunt’, With a Real-Life Golden Skull on Offer

As the story goes, in 1730, Olivier Levasseur stood on the gallows, awaiting his execution for a lifetime of piracy – which had included the theft of an infinite treasure haul from a Portuguese galleon, subsequently buried on the Seychelles island of Mahé. Asked for any final phrases, Levasseur eliminated a necklace from his neck, shouted, “My treasure for he who can understand!”, and threw it into the watching crowd. That necklace was hung with a parchment that includes a 17-line cryptogram, seemingly providing the placement of his hidden riches. For greater than three centuries, treasure hunters have tried and failed to decode the message on that parchment, and the gold stays misplaced to at the present time.

It’s a becoming inspiration for Sea of Thieves’ new thriller, The Hoarder’s Hunt, which can take gamers each in-game and past within the hunt for a real-life treasure – a golden cranium, which shall be awarded to the primary participant that solves a multitude of puzzles (with extra bodily treasure for the subsequent 110 gamers to attain the tip of the method, and in-game rewards for others who participate). Those puzzles may not be fairly as troublesome to decode as Levasseur’s treasure, however it definitely received’t be a easy course of.

For Lead Designer Chris Davies, the promise of the occasion is easy: “To deliver the ultimate treasure hunt. Sea of Thieves is five years old, and we’ve done a lot of allowing players to pursue that pirate fantasy of searching out treasure, and digging it up. [So,] how can we offer the ultimate version of that? Taking it outside of the game as well as in-game and actually offer real-world treasure for our community to search out.”

To do this, The Hoarder’s Hunt will characteristic out-of-game puzzles, unfold out throughout the web world, which can lead you to otherwise-locked in-game Voyages, which in flip lead to extra out-of-game clues to decode. All of this shall be wrapped up within the story of a new character, H, who – for the subsequent 4 weeks – will ship gamers cryptic messages, serving to direct them to their subsequent objective, main to a race to the prize (and you may join to obtain H’s first message now). The first participant to end that closing Voyage will obtain the golden cranium as their reward.

Aside from Levasseur’s gold, the occasion has been impressed by different treasure hunts, from Cadbury’s Conundrum promotion (which supplied actual golden eggs for those who may remedy advanced puzzle books), to Ready Player One’s story about an internet hunt with huge real-life rewards. But it’s additionally a response to earlier Sea of Thieves occasions. Before launch, Rare arrange a quest to earn real-life golden bananas, and the sport’s first Mystery occasion noticed gamers cracking the case of who killed Sea Dog DeMarco. But The Hoarder’s Hunt goals to enhance on each.

The hunt for the Golden Bananas noticed fewer and fewer gamers ready to take part till its finish – The Hoarder’s Hunt will stay open to all proper till its conclusion. Meanwhile, the Mystery of DeMarco was pretty open-ended, main to a very lengthy thriller, dominated by clues solely from Rare’s personal social channels. This hunt shall be much more open however it’ll be time-limited, giving gamers extra fascinating puzzles, however with an endgoal at all times in sight.

To do that, Rare has labored with real-life puzzlemasters, tasked with creating really mind-boggling duties that can ship gamers everywhere in the web within the hunt for the subsequent resolution – with a view to creating a very fascinating dynamic: this ought to be a collaborative effort, with a number of gamers working collectively to uncover options – till it transforms into a person hunt for that closing treasure.

“What we don’t want,” explains Davies, “is individuals, puzzle experts, to kind of squirrel themselves away and solve these individually. We want this to be something where the community needs to lean on each other, where they speculate on potential avenues of investigation to find the solutions. And by getting the community working together, that’s what makes it such an interesting dynamic shift, [until] people reach that point of, ‘Okay, this is actually a race with a cool prize at the end of it.’”

And that closing race shall be fascinating to see – the second this turns into a true dash for the tip shall be a check for gamers’ ethical compasses in addition to their brains. It’s really the primary participant to remedy the thriller that earns the reward – not their crew. The closing golden cranium comes with 4 removable golden keys, permitting the victorious participant to reward their crew – however they don’t have to. That’s very a lot by design:

“[This is] the ultimate test of the Pirate Code,” says Head of Brand and Licensing, Adam Park. “Because fundamentally as a crew you can go and win this prize but whoever proposed that voyage will be the actual winner. So that person could at that point turn around and choose to keep the prize for themselves, or it’s been made in such a way that it can be split with the keys – they can share their spoils but again, it’s going to be another fascinating test of how people actually behave. I know what I’d do… you’d never hear from me again.”

“That’s why I’d never crew up with you Adam,” laughs Davies.

All of this has led Rare to suppose in new methods about the way it delivers this Mystery. For the out-of-game puzzles, the mantra has been that there’s no puzzle too troublesome, so long as the clues have been supplied pretty, and that at the least a few gamers may crack the code and share it with the group. I received’t give something away, however be ready to search for clues in some very surprising locations.

Even the in-game Voyages are a new endeavor, although:

“We’re calling them Hunt Voyages,” says Davies. “Ultimately, you’re hunting for one of the keys that can be used to unlock the chests that have been added to every Gold Hoarders tent. It’s a unique Voyage, different to what we’ve done before. It’s going to send you throughout the locations in the game, island-hopping, to do a map-wide scavenger hunt for these keys. But obviously, after five years, our super-engaged players know these locations like the back of their hand. And what we actually want this to feel like is, even if you haven’t played the game as much, even if you’ve recently joined the game, you’ve still got a great chance of winning these.”

The key to that’s the new character, H. Players have been fixing in-game riddles for years, however H speaks to gamers in a wholly totally different method: “H will see things through a slightly different lens and describe things in a slightly different way. You can’t rely on how we usually describe these aspects of the scenes, you need to interpret H’s lexicon and how they talk about these things, try and understand what H was seeing when they were making these notes and following in their footsteps.”

In impact, H would be the sport’s personal model of the Mystery’s inspiration, Levasseur, providing inscrutable supplies for gamers to puzzle over, talk about, and work collectively on – till they strike out on their very own to obtain the final word prize. But don’t dilly-dally; you might have a lot lower than 300 years to determine this one out.

The Hoarder’s Hunt begins in Sea of Thieves as we speak. Sign up now to participate.

Sea of Thieves 2023 Edition

Microsoft Studios

☆☆☆☆☆
956

★★★★★

$39.99

$19.99

Xbox One X Enhanced

PC Game Pass

Xbox Game Pass

Xbox Live Gold membership required to play on Xbox One; offered individually.

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2023 Edition Out Now
Celebrate 5 years since Sea of Thieves’ launch with this particular version of the sport, which incorporates a copy of Sea of Thieves itself with all everlasting content material added since launch, plus a 10,000 gold bonus and a choice of Hunter cosmetics. The Hunter Cutlass, Pistol, Compass, Hat, Jacket and Sails will make sure you reduce a formidable determine as you set sail for journey!
About the Game

Sea of Thieves affords the important pirate expertise, from crusing and combating to exploring and looting – the whole lot you want to stay the pirate life and develop into a legend in your personal proper. With no set roles, you might have full freedom to strategy the world, and different gamers, nevertheless you select.
Whether you’re voyaging as a group or crusing solo, you’re sure to encounter different crews on this shared world journey – however will they be pals or foes, and the way will you reply?

A Vast Open World
Explore a huge open world full of unspoiled islands and underwater kingdoms. Take on quests to hunt for misplaced loot, forge a fame with the Trading Companies and battle foes from Phantoms and Ocean Crawlers to Megalodons and the mighty Kraken. Try your hand at fishing, make maps to your personal buried treasure or select from lots of of different elective objectives and side-quests!

Sea of Thieves: A Pirate’s Life
Play the Tall Tales to expertise Sea of Thieves’ distinctive narrative-driven campaigns, and be a part of forces with Captain Jack Sparrow in Sea of Thieves: A Pirate’s Life, an acclaimed authentic story that brings Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean crusing into Sea of Thieves. These immersive and cinematic quests present round 30 hours of the final word pirate journey.

A Game That’s Always Growing
With every Season bringing in new sport options each three months alongside common in-game Events and new narrative Adventures, Sea of Thieves is a service-based sport that’s nonetheless rising and evolving. Check again usually to see what free content material has been newly added, and see how far you possibly can climb by way of every Season’s 100 ranges of Renown to earn particular rewards.

Become Legend
On your journey to develop into a Pirate Legend you’ll amass loot, construct a fame and outline a distinctive private fashion along with your hard-earned rewards. Adventurer. Explorer. Conqueror. What will your legend be?