Sea of Thieves Season One is here, and it’s brought with it an all-new kind of Voyage for pirates to experience, the Lost Shipments Voyage. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the Sea of Thieves Lost Shipments Voyage, including all the steps to take, the special tips to know, and why the captain’s key is important.
Even as the game is largely procedurally generated in its quests, Lost Shipments Voyages follow the same basic rules as other Sea of Thieves Voyages, so this guide will clue you in on how to solve them even as your details won’t be exactly the same as ours — or even yours — from Voyage to Voyage.
Sea of Thieves Lost Shipments Voyage Walkthrough
The first thing you’ll want to do upon waking up in an outpost is to speak to Larinna — who is always just outside the front door — and buy a Lost Shipments Voyage from her. Don’t worry; they won’t cost a single gold coin or Doubloon right now.
Head to the Voyage table on your ship and vote to start the Voyage. This will put a new kind of quest item in your inventory, a Lost Shipments map.
On these Merchants Alliance missions, you’ll be seeking salvage from sunken ships whose whereabouts are unknown.
This map will include several pieces of pertinent information, including where the ship departed from, its intended destination, and the route it sought to travel initially.
There’s a chance the departure point is the outpost you’re standing on now, but if it isn’t, head to where it began for the fateful crew and align the unmarked maps on your quest map with that on your ship’s map table. Head off in the same direction as the ship did.
In short order, you’ll see a gathering of birds flying overhead. These smaller, more tightly packed flocks signal a clue is nearby, so sail to the birds, and you’ll likely find some loot floating at sea.
You can tell this loot is specific to your mission because there are new barrels, painted with a blue stripe, among the flotsam. Dive in and look for a Clue in a Bottle, collect it to get to the next destination.
This process is randomized, so it’s important to know how the game will behave.
Lower-level players may only get a single clue before their final puzzle piece points them to their destination, while more experienced players can get up to three clues before the ship is located.
How to Find the Captain’s Key
It is possible, albeit unlikely, to stumble upon the ship before you’ve found all the clues, but there are good reasons not to do so. Mainly, you don’t want to skip the Captain’s Key.
Among one of the clue locations, be it on an island or at sea, you’ll find a special shimmering item, light blue in color. That’s the Captain’s Key, and collecting it means you’ll get a lot more loot later, so make sure not to leave it behind at one of your clue locations.
Clues can come in a few different forms when you find them. They can point to a specific island by name, they might point to a map location via the grid (for example, R11 or C9), or they can refer to unique landmarks, such as a place “shrouded in fog.”
These last clues are more subtle and take some familiarity with the game to decipher, not unlike the Riddle Voyages.
Merchant Alliance Loot in Shipwrecks
Ultimately, you’ll be following the figurative breadcrumb trail, departing from the ship’s original path if it did so as well, but eventually, it will lead you to a spot in the water that seems not to have anything else to find. It’s here you’ll want to dive underwater. If you’ve followed the clues correctly, you’ll come upon the shipwreck.
Swim down into it and bring the Captain’s Key. Use it on the Captain’s quarters to open up an impressive cache of Merchants Alliance loot, such as crates of materials and gunpowder barrels.
This will take a few trips to unload, so these missions, like much of the game, are best played with others for efficiency.
As opening the Captain’s quarters is a missable portion of the Voyage, there’s still one thing you’ll want to find to truly complete the Voyage: the Manifest.
Head into the lower decks on this sunken galleon and look for a skeleton holding a lengthy piece of paper. The poorly fallen pirate’s location will vary each time, but he’s easy to spot as such scenes are unique to these missions.
Pry the manifest from his old bones and watch as the game tells you the Voyage is complete. Load up on all your riches and depart for the nearest outpost or your next great adventure in Sea of Thieves.
That’s all you need to know about the Sea of Thieves Lost Shipments Voyage in Season One and why the captain’s key is so important.
Check out some of our other Sea of Thieves guides here on GameSkinny:
- SoT Legend of the Sunken Kingdom Voyage Walkthrough
- SoT Shrine of Ancient Tears Journals Walkthrough
- SoT Shrine of Hungering Journals Walkthrough
- SoT Shrine of the Coral Tomb Journals Walkthrough
- SoT Shrine of Ocean’s Fortunes Journals Walkthrough
- SoT Shrine of Tribute Journals Walkthrough
- SoT Secret Waters Commendation Guide
- Where to Find the Kraken in Sea of Thieves
- SoT Dark Desires Commendation Guide
- SoT Strike Your Colours Commendation Guide
