The Battle for the Sea of Thieves World Event Guide​ | Sea of Thieves


The Battle for the Sea of Thieves, or better known as the Skeleton Fleet is a World Event that takes place in the heart of the Sea of Thieves. You will need to prepare well for this fight, so read this guide before sailing head long into the fight.

The Battle for the Sea of Thieves Location

There are two possible locations for this world event to spawn, The first is in the center of the map, close to J11 on the map. The other area that the event can spawn is DEEP to the south of Devil’s Roar. Regardless of where the event starts, you will have 30 minutes before the event ends unless someone enters the area to keep it active.

Beginning The Battle for the Sea of Thieves

This event consists of three waves of skeleton ships, spawning two ships each wave. The ship types appear to be random between them being simple sloops, or gigantic galleons. For those of us that aren’t “Mathletes”,  this means you will need to sink six skeleton ships back to back to complete this event with a chance of them ALL being Galleons. This means you best come prepared with A LOT of cannonballs, I’d recommend at least 300 cannonballs be on your ship before you begin.

Once the Event begins you and your crew will need to work together to sink each ship while avoiding the return fire and large rocks that are in the area. These rocks can be used to your advantage as you can either hide behind them while making repairs or trick the enemies into smashing their ships into them to cause extra damage. As you sink each wave the next wave will begin immediately, not giving you much time to loot the items that drop from each ship.

This can be done solo but is very difficult for most players as taking on one galleon is hard, but two can seem quite impossible.

I HIGHLY recommend trying to force the Skeleton Galleons to crash into the rocks to damage and sink them if you are trying this event on a sloop. Being out gunned is hard enough, so using the area to your advantage will help a lot. 

Another tactic is to Keg the galleons. Dropping a lit Keg below deck will wipe out any skeleton that can make repairs and deal tons of damage. I’ve sunken several Skeleton Galleons using this method while sailing solo.

Skeleton Ships Combat Guide​ Thumbnail

Skeleton Ship Combat Guide

Learn more about Skeleton Ships and different ways to sink them.

The Battle for the Sea of Thieves Rewards

Each ship sunk will drop its regular loot pool for you to collect throughout the event, the final ship however will drop extra loot including several Skeleton Captain Skulls, Skeleton Captain’s Chests, and Ashen Chests. These reward amounts vary but all in all are very profitable.

This battle is also good at boosting your emissary value to max level. Regardless of what emissary you choose, you are guaranteed to be level 5 before the end of the event. Since this event can take place near Reapers Hideout, taking the Reaper’s Emissary allows you a place to sell everything quickly with the emissary bonus.

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