Guide to The Arena & Sea Dogs

The Arena is Sea of Thieves brand new competitive mode. It puts your crew’s skills to the test in timed matches, where every crew is fighting over the same treasure and anything can happen. Along with it comes a brand new trading company, The Sea Dogs, with their own challenges and rewards. This guide explains how The Arena works in detail, so you’ll be prepared to prove yourself on the seas. For other Anniversary Update features, check out:

Every New Feature in the Anniversary Update
Spoiler-Lite Guide to Tall Tales: Shores of Gold
Guide to Fishing, Cooking & The Hunter’s Call

GAMEFLOW

You probably already guessed that The Arena plays very differently from the original “Adventure Mode”. Here’s how:

The Sea Dogs Tavern

All crews that get matchmade into an Arena contest will spawn together in a very large tavern. In this area you can’t hurt each other, but you can socialize and have fun, or access the clothing, equipment, and weapon shops. You can talk to DeMarco or Lesedi of the Sea Dogs Company to upgrade your rank and unlock Sea Dog cosmetics, and they also give tips and hints for The Arena.

You’ll be in the tavern until the game has finished finding players to fill the contest, and then you’ll load into The Arena itself.

Contest

The match itself will last 24 minutes, denoted by a countdown on the top right of the screen that ticks down each minute. As the match goes on, the music intensifies. Messages also pop up to warn that the match is a quarter over, halfway over, etc. During the contest every crew competes to gain as much silver as possible, which is done in a variety of ways described below in OBJECTIVES. When the time is up, the standings are displayed, and all players are sent back to the Sea Dog Tavern and given their rewards.

At the time of writing, every match is between up to 5 crews, each on a Galleon (up to 4 players).

Death

When you die in Arena mode, you do not travel to the Ferry of the Damned and wait to respawn. Instead, you experience the “Sight of the Damned” a death animation in which the camera pans to a bird’s eye view, and after some time you respawn on your ship without ever entering and exiting the Ferry.

OBJECTIVES

The goal of The Arena is to amass the most Silver in the time limit. Each crews current score is displayed on the right side of the screen. When a contest is finished, each player is awarded Gold and Sea Dog Reputation based on how their crew placed in the contest- First Place gets the greatest reward, while Last Place gets the smallest, but every crew gains gold and rep for finishing a match.

Arenas

Each contest takes place in an Arena, which is a small subsection of the overall Sea of Thieves map. There are a handful of different ones that you can be placed in at random, and they vary in size and layout. They may have from 5 to 8 islands, different initial spawn arrangements of the crews, and different numbers and positions of “Sellposts”. Don’t sail outside of the Arena, or you might meet a watery grave.

Silver

Silver are the points you score in The Arena, and are awarded a number of different ways:

• 100 Silver: Digging up a Chest
• 1000 Silver: Selling a Chest
• 5 Silver: Killing an enemy pirate
• 25 Silver: Hitting an enemy ship with a cannonball
• -1000 Silver: lost whenever your ship sinks

Treasure Chests

At the start of each contest, every crew is given one or several treasure maps. These are identical across every crew, pointing to the same islands and the same X’s. Race to the big islands with multiple chests, or fly under the radar by picking off quick runs to small islands, or just chase the other ships and steal the chests that they have! Once every map is cleared out, another “wave” of identical maps are given out to each crew, and this repeats until the match is finished.

Sellposts

Each Arena has one or two Sellposts, marked on the map table with the Sea Dogs insignia, and seen from a far by a plume of red smoke. In appearance they are like a ship that’s been made stationary, with platforms and ramps added to create multiple paths onto its deck.

Each Sellpost has two agents of the Sea Dogs stationed on it, which will accept your chests when you hold the sell button down for a second. They also have cannons which you can use to fire on crews that approach- fighting over a Sellpost to prevent a crew from selling their chests, or to steal them, is a useful strategy.

Other Crews

Whenever any crew discovers or sells a chest, a UI popup informs everybody. Additionally, every crew shows up on every other crew’s map table. Because of this, you will know when another crew is stockpiling multiple chests, and you’ll know when they are heading towards one of the Sea Dog Sellposts. This information can come in handy so you can intercept crews and interrupt their progress- but they will all use the same knowledge against you as well.

Strategy Tips

• As the match winds down, in the final quarter or so, watch the scoreboard. Be aware of which crews you could feasibly surpass, and which crews could overtake you. If you can’t win the match, at least try to improve the position you do hold, or defend it from a close opponent- each position earns more Gold and Reputation than the ones below it.
• Don’t focus only on ship combat. Often two crews will fight in heated battle after battle, while another crew grows an insurmountable lead by selling chests unmolested. Find a balance between gathering chests, and fighting the crews that are gathering the most chests.
• If you know you won’t be able to sell chests, due to the time limit or another crew preventing it, dump what you have somewhere that it can’t be stolen- don’t just sail right at the crew that wants to steal it. Also, you earn silver just for digging one shovel into a chest- if you know there’s no time to sell it, leave it right there, move on to the next one and don’t finish digging it up.
• If an island is hotly contested, you can have one crewmate go ashore to dig up chests, while the rest continuing sailing the ship. They can come back later to pick the chests up, or just leave them- you still got points for discovering them.
• Don’t be afraid to let your ship sink if it’s still a net gain- you lose 1000 silver when the ship goes down, but gain 1000 for each chest you sell.

The Sea Dogs

The Sea Dogs are a new Trading Company that reward you and chart your progress from partaking in Arena contests.

Like the existing Trading Companies, The Sea Dogs reward you with gold and reputation, in this case for completing Arena contests, which levels you up from level 1 to level 50. Along the way you earn cosmetic rewards at each level tier including the Glorious Sea Dog cutlass and blunderbuss, and you gain access to purchase the Glorious Sea Dog ship cosmetics from a shipwright. Glorious Sea Dog equipment items are for sale unrestricted in the equipment shops.

When you max out any three Trading Companies to level 50 you become “Pirate Legend”, granting you access to further challenges and rewards as well as a hidden tavern. There are also a host of Sea Dog commendations, described further below, which will also earn you reputation as well as exclusive cosmetics.

The Sea Dogs differ from previous companies in two major ways:

• The Sea Dogs do not give out voyages for you to complete. Instead, each Arena contest is how you will gain reputation with their company
• As long as you finish the match, you always gain progress for playing The Arena. In Adventure Mode, completing a voyage earns you loot, but you don’t gain gold or reputation until you sell the loot, and it can be lost or stolen in the process. In The Arena, every time you complete a contest you earn some amount of Gold and Reputation- even if you come in dead last.

Commendations

Commendations earn reputation when completed, accelerating your path to level 50. Each of these commendations are on a scale of five “grades” with each grade rewarding you for doing a challenge an increasing number of times. Some Commendations grant you access to cosmetics in the shops.

• Sharpshooting Sea Dog: Kill players with a pistol in The Arena
  Grade 5 grants access to Glorious Sea Dog Pistol
• Swashbuckling Sea Dog: Kill players with a cutlass in The Arena
• Deadeye Sea Dog: Kill players with the Eye of Reach in The Arena
  Grade 5 grants access to Glorious Sea Dog Eye of Reach
• High Calibre Sea Dog: Kill players with a blunderbuss in The Arena
• Iron Sea Dog: Kill players with cannons in The Arena
• Master of Arms: Kill players in The Arena
• Seeker of Silvered Loot: Dig up chests in The Arena
• Treacherous Sea Dog: Deliver stolen chests in The Arena
• Keeper of Silvered Loot: Earn Silver in The Arena
• Sailor of Silvered Waters: Complete contests in The Arena
• Captain of Silvered Waters: Place in the top three in contests in The Arena
  Grade 5 grants access to Glorious Sea Dog Hat, Gloves, Hook, and Jacket
• Master of Silvered Waters: Place first in contests in The Arena