Someone Has Finally Earned Every Sea of Thieves Achievement

By Mark Delaney,
Earlier this year, we presented analysis on Sea of Thieves and the unprecedented grind players would face if they were trying to complete 100% of its achievements. We said in the story that to complete the game, one would need several thousand hours of playing time, far exceeding any other game in the history of Xbox achievements. We said Rare would need to alter the way their game works if anyone was to ever earn all the achievements. Eventually, they did just that, lowering the bar from an absurd estimated 10,000+ hours to finish the game to somewhere around 2,000 or so. We know that because community member and avid completionist Zyx just became the world's first pirate to earn every single Sea of Thieves achievement.

sotIt took eight months at sea before we got our first 100% completion.

We spoke to Zyx to find out what it was like chasing banana crates all across the sea, asking him what made him commit to the feat. He told us he doesn't typically play this sort of game but he fell in love with it during the beta and before he realized it, his completionist itch had taken over. He first played Sea of Thieves two days after launch on March 22nd and for the next eight months, he played almost nothing but Rare's pirate adventure game whenever he could, pausing only briefly for a few hours of Far Cry 5 and two weeks worth of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Sea of Thieves doesn't offer an in-game hours played statistic, but Zyx said he would estimate it took him about 2,000 hours. Over eight months, that's an average of over seven hours per day and he had to fit it in around his full-time job, too.

We asked which achievement was the hardest and he said none were really difficult per se, they're just astoundingly time-consuming — "few sprints, many marathons." He did call out Merchant Forager, the infamous 1,000 banana crates delivered achievement as being the most grueling but it was made easier recently thanks to an update that allowed message in a bottle missions to appear more frequently and even in barrels now. From there, it became a grind of island-hopping until he found enough such voyages. The 50 Gamerscore achievement is worth almost 15,000 TA score alone due to its unrivaled rarity and the game itself has the highest adjusted score on site, currently sitting at 35,589 TA score.

Sea of ThievesMerchant ForagerThe Merchant Forager achievement in Sea of Thieves worth 989 pointsReceive the Commendation for delivering 50 Fruit Crates on time.

Other updates along the way made the completion harder too, like the Forsaken Shores update bringing new loot to the game that did not count toward the chest collection achievements, which meant the chances of getting what he needed had actually decreased. Ultimately though, the Merchant Forager achievement was the one that took the game from a several hundred hours completion to something over 10,000 hours or, as Zyx called it, not viable in "human years." Once that was attended to by the developers, Zyx knew it was just one final push to the finish line.

Zyx becomes the very first player on TrueAchievements to finish the game's 60 achievements, out of nearly 88,000 tracked players. On Xbox Live as a whole, the game has boasted over four million players since it launched. Despite our best efforts, we have found no one else in the world who has legitimately earned every achievement in Sea of Thieves making Zyx the presumptive first person to ever do so. Below you can find a host of stats that detail Zyx's journey from deckhand to Pirate Legend and the world's first Sea of Thieves completionist. As you can see, he actually isn't first in every category, which tells the story of a pirate with good time-management skills.

StatCountSite Rank
Distance Sailed (meters) 17,517,570 5th
Gold Hoarders Chests Cashed In 4,904 13th
Islands Visited 13,181 5th
Merchant Alliance Cargo Delivered 6,527 7th
Order of Souls Skulls Cashed In 4,183 16th
Voyages Completed 3,321 1st
We asked Zyx if he would be playing the game some more or moving on to something different and he told us it'll be a bit of both. "I very much enjoy this game and coming back to it with friends for every new event and DLC will be funny, but now finally I have some freedom to play other games too."

Congratulations to Zyx on his remarkable achievement! If you have an especially interesting statistical milestone or achievement story you'd like to share, dock at the shores of my direct messages and let us know! You might just be featured on the homepage.
Mark Delaney
Written by Mark Delaney
Mark is a Boston native now living in Portland, Oregon. He has written for GameSkinny, Gamesradar and the Official Xbox Magazine. He runs the family-oriented gaming site Game Together.
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