Great moments in PC gaming: Stealing and selling someone else’s treasure in Sea of Thieves

Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.

I like pirate survival game Windrose a lot, but playing it mostly just made me pine for my favorite pirate game of all time: Sea of Thieves. It’s been years since I played Rare’s oceanic sandbox, so I dragged several of my PC Gamer associates back into it with me and we’ve been sailing together again a few times a month.

A lot has changed since we last set out to sea: new enemies, new factions, new systems, season passes, and more cosmetics than you could shake a peg leg at. As we’ve tried to come to grips with those changes, it’s also been nice to see that some things haven’t changed at all.

We were sailing along on a multipart quest, having visited several islands over the past couple of hours, and were headed back to an outpost to sell off our loot. Then one of our crew members abruptly got a notification. It was an achievement titled “This is Unacceptable!” which informed us that “Another crew took one of your chests and cashed it in.”

It was a surprise: we’d definitely seen a couple of other players out on the seas that night, but as we were on a four-player galleon and they were on two-player sloops, they all kept their distance. Or so we thought. Apparently, at some point, one of them had got close enough to sneak aboard and pilfer one of our chests, then slipped away to sell it somewhere.

No salt. Just admiration. Stealing treasure from other players in Sea of Thieves is a thrill, and as this mysterious and bold pirate demonstrated, it doesn’t always have to involve cannonballs and sabers. Best guess, they waited until we’d disembarked on one of the islands, swam or row-boated over (if they’d shot themselves out of a cannon I think we’d have heard it), climbed onto our ship, and absconded with a bit of our loot. By the time we knew about the crime it had already been committed. Well played.

In the early days of Sea of Thieves I stole my share of loot too, though I was rarely as surgical. My main strategy was to spot a ship in the midst of a mission and then head to the nearest outpost to wait for them. When they sailed over to drop off their loot, I’d have posted up with a couple of carefully placed explosive barrels, and when they ran down the dock with their arms full of treasure chests, I’d open up with my sniper rifle. Boom. Their treasure is mine now.

It wasn’t exactly sporting, and quite often it wasn’t even successful, but there’s something to be said for letting some other industrious pirates do the hard work of finding the treasure and then taking it off their hands so you can sell it yourself.

It’s so satisfying to steal from someone else that I don’t even mind when it happens to us, like when that silent, slippery buccaneer made off with some of our loot. All you can do is tip your tricorn hat. We’re pirates, after all. Stealing’s the name of the game.