Sea of Thieves Custom Seas
Custom Seas launched with Season 20 on June 18, 2026 and is free for everyone who owns Sea of Thieves, despite originally being announced as a paid subscription feature. A session holds up to 24 players across six crews, and the Session Owner controls the world through Switches, a set of curated Presets, and an in-game Command Menu. No gold or progress is earned in a session, so scoring runs on silver instead, a temporary currency you configure yourself. A cinematic Free Camera is included for recording.
Rare spent years telling players that private servers were not happening. Custom Seas is the reversal. It launched with Season 20 on June 18, 2026, and it arrived in a stronger form than most people expected, since the announced subscription price was dropped before launch.
What is Custom Seas?
A private Sea of Thieves session where one player is the Session Owner and holds admin controls over the world itself. Nobody joins uninvited. The host decides what the session is.
That makes it fundamentally different from the other two modes. Safer Seas removes other crews. High Seas gives you the full game with all its risk. Custom Seas hands you the toolbox and lets you build whatever you want. Full comparison of the other two is in Safer Seas and High Seas.
Custom Seas is free for all Sea of Thieves owners. It was first announced with a subscription model attached, and Rare reversed that before it shipped.
How big is a session?
Up to 24 players across six crews, with the Session Owner choosing ship types and crew configurations beyond what the live game allows.
Owners invite through platform invites or a Join Code, and can promote Session Leaders who get deeper access than an ordinary guest. From the lobby the owner launches everyone straight onto the seas with the chosen setup.
Two rules worth knowing before you plan a night around it:
- Everyone needs the Maiden Voyage finished. Patch 3.8.0.1 gated entry behind it, and anyone who tries without it gets an error explaining why.
- The lobby does not survive the host quitting. If the owner closes the game, everyone else is removed after 10 minutes.
When you type a Join Code the digits stay hidden, a patch 3.8.1 change aimed at streamers. You can reveal and re-hide them at any point while entering, so check the code before you commit instead of typing blind. Patch 3.8.2 covered the other half of that problem: a Session Owner creating a Join Code can now copy it without revealing it to anyone watching the stream.
How do you set a session up?
Through Switches, which are the individual settings that change how the world behaves. They group into categories covering players, ships, emergent creatures, World Events, and treasure hand-in locations.
You do not have to start from nothing. Rare ships curated Presets as the entry point:
| Preset | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Adventure | A session close to the ordinary game |
| Competitive Pirates | Crew-against-crew competition |
| Competitive Sandbox | Competition with the sandbox opened up |
| Social | Hanging around instead of fighting |
| Pirate Practice | Quick practice runs at World Events and naval battles, added in 3.8.1 |
| Creative | An empty slate to build from scratch |
Pick one, adjust any switch you want afterward, and save the result for next time. Presets can also be renamed before you select one.
What patch 3.8.2 added to the switches
Four new switches, and three of them control what happens when a player dies.
| Switch | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Skip Ferry of the Damned | Whether a dead player is sent to the Ferry of the Damned or respawns directly |
| Reviving | Whether crewmates can revive downed players |
| Skip Downed State | Whether a player waits out the full downed state or respawns immediately |
| Weapon Damage | The damage of every player weapon, attack by attack |
Weapon Damage is the one with real range in it. Each weapon's attacks can be raised or lowered from their default values individually, and the values go negative, so an attack heals a player or a creature instead of hurting it. Healing a crewmate that way needs Friendly Fire switched on as well.
Two existing switches went deeper in the same patch. Session Owners now get fully customizable ship supplies, with control over which resources appear in ship barrels and how many of each a session starts with. The weapon loadout override now accepts Unarmed in the primary or secondary slot, which opens up single-weapon and fully unarmed sessions. The same override stopped letting players equip a cutlass in both slots at once.
Setting a weapon to negative damage does not heal your crewmates on its own. Friendly Fire has to be switched on as well. Miss that step and you have built a healing weapon that will not land on your own crew.
The Command Menu
Once you are in the session, the Command Menu opens from Game Options and is where the live control happens. It handles the roster, editing ships and crews, changing settings, and spawning items.
Two things it does that nothing else in the game does:
Start World Events on demand. Choose the event type and, where the event supports it, its location. That is the direct opposite of the High Seas rule this season, where on-demand Raid Voyages are gone entirely. Patch 3.8.2 fixed Ashen Lords defeated in a custom session, which had stopped dropping their intended rewards.
Move the weather. Set the time of day and reposition storms and fog wherever you want them.
A separate Quick Commands Menu gives fast access to Fly, Quick Sail, Quick Spawn, and Free Camera. Patch 3.8.2 put that menu on the Game Options screen too, the one you open with Escape on PC or Options on a controller, alongside Session Overview, View Scoreboard, and Free Camera. Patch 3.8.2 also made usability, text, and localization passes across both the Command and Quick Command Menus.
The seven commands added in patch 3.8.2
| Command | Menu | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Hide Pirate | Quick Command | Hides your pirate from everyone else in the session. Use it again to reappear |
| Invulnerability | Quick Command | Makes you invulnerable to all damage |
| Ship Invulnerability | Quick Command | Used during Quick Sail, prevents all damage to the ship, holes, flooding, fire, and damage to ship parts included |
| Repair Ship | Quick Command | Used during Quick Sail, fully repairs the ship |
| Toggle Ship Invulnerability | Command | Prevents all damage to the ship, covering holes, flooding, fire, and ship parts |
| Reset Supplies | Command | Restores a ship's barrels to their starting loadout |
| Destroy Treasures | Command | Removes every item on the ground or in a pirate's hands across a large area around you |
Read Destroy Treasures twice before you press it. Its area is large and it takes items out of players' hands, not just off the deck, and it counts treasure, food, fish, Storage Crates, ammo, and Gold Pouches alike. A scored treasure hunt can be flattened with one keypress.
Reset Supplies is the quieter workhorse. Restoring every barrel to its starting loadout between rounds is what makes repeated naval practice fair without anyone sailing back to an outpost.
Spawning got considerably deeper
Rowboats, creatures, and treasure all gained options in patch 3.8.2.
Rowboats. Spawning one now offers a choice of type, including Cannon, Harpoon, and Reaper's Bones Rowboats, and each arrives docked to the ship. The server limit rose to 24 active Rowboats in a session.
Creatures. Spawn Creatures now summons Order of Bone and Blade Skeletons and their Captain variants, plus three Skeleton Lords: The Mutinous Helmsman, The Two-Faced Scoundrel, and The Duchess. Everything you summon now arrives with a nameplate.
Order of Bone and Blade Skeletons show up hostile and do not have to stay that way. Down one, revive it, and it becomes allied to your crew, so a host can hand out reinforcements instead of only opposition.
Treasure. Spawn Treasures gained a Tall Tales category carrying Quest Items and treasure from the Shores of Gold and Ashen Age arcs. Items from Sea of Thieves: A Pirate's Life and The Legend of Monkey Island are not included. Lighthouse Logs and Smugglers' Heist Paintings moved into the Miscellaneous and Paintings categories, and various other items were rearranged to make them easier to find. The Spawn Radial now keeps a slot for whatever you spawned last, so repeating an item or a creature is one input.
What do you actually earn in a session?
Nothing. No gold, and no progress. Patch 3.8.0 states it plainly, and patch 3.8.0.1 closed the activities that were still leaking gold by mistake.
The first exception is Season 20's Deeds, which live exclusively inside Custom Seas. Completing them awards a boost to your Seasonal Renown, and that boost lands when you return to the High Seas, never during the session.
Platform achievements added for the mode also fire inside a session. Welcome to Custom Seas!, So. Much. Silver!, and Tentacled Tribute all require one by definition, and the host's scoring and spawning controls make them quick work. Commendation progress stays suspended, so achievements gated behind commendations cannot advance here.
Silver is the scoring currency
Since gold is off the table, sessions keep score in silver, a temporary currency that exists only inside the session. Scoring switches decide the whole shape of it:
- Start conditions, so scoring begins when you want it to.
- Time limits and score limits, so a session ends on its own terms.
- Team or individual scoring.
- Silver values attached to almost anything, including player actions, creatures, ships, World Events, and loot hand-ins. Values can be negative as well as positive, so you can penalize a behavior as well as reward one.
Players are notified as they earn silver, and the session shows both a live scoreboard on the HUD and a full one with standings, objectives, and active limits. The Command Menu starts, pauses, resets, and ends both scoring and timers mid-session.
Negative silver values are the switch most hosts overlook. A race where sinking a rival costs you 200 silver is a completely different event from one where it is free, and that single number does more to shape behavior than any rule you announce beforehand.
The Free Camera and Legendary Locations
The Free Camera opens from the Quick Commands Menu and detaches from your pirate. Movement speed, field of view, depth of field, and the environmental conditions are all adjustable, and the camera can either be flown manually or locked onto a player, a ship, or a creature to follow it. Patch 3.8.1 added the ability to trigger an emote and then enter Free Camera to film yourself performing it.
Patch 3.8.2 made those settings stick between sessions, so a configuration you dial in once survives closing and reopening the camera. The same patch cleared two things that used to interrupt a shoot. Flying toward a map boundary in a Legendary Location now returns you safely to the playable area, and Deed completion notifications now appear while the camera is up instead of being swallowed by it.
Sessions can also be staged at Legendary Locations, which are iconic spots pulled out of the game's history instead of the open map:
- Old Sailor Isle
- Tribute Peak
- The Glorious Sea Dog Tavern
- The Damned Sea Dog Tavern
- The Seas of Sailor's Grave, added in patch 3.8.2
The Seas of Sailor's Grave is the Last Ship Standing battleground, and picking it lets a crew create and play inside that arena directly instead of waiting for the event to come back around. The Devil's Shroud surrounds the map and holds crews in the fight. Some World Events, creatures, and island-specific features are unavailable there, a consequence of how the location is built.
What is it actually good for?
Practicing ship combat. Two crews, a scoreboard, repeated fights with no loot at stake. This is the single biggest use, because open-world PvP gives you maybe one fight an hour and Custom Seas gives you as many as you want.
Learning the ropes without pressure. Set permanent daylight, calm weather, no events, and teach a new player to sail. That is a far kinder introduction than the Maiden Voyage plus a live server.
Content creation. The free camera plus weather and time control is a proper filmmaking kit. Sunset chase footage without waiting for an actual sunset.
Running events. Races, treasure hunts, custom tournaments, and whatever else a group invents. Scoreboards and win conditions exist precisely so these can be scored properly.
Practicing world events solo. Spawn a fort, learn the wave patterns, and repeat it without another crew arriving.
The highest-value thing most crews can do with Custom Seas is drill the fundamentals. Anchor turns, chain shot accuracy, boarding timing, and the patch-then-bail order all improve fastest with repetition, and repetition is exactly what the live game never gives you.
How does it compare to the other modes?
| High Seas | Safer Seas | Custom Seas | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Other crews | Up to four | None | Up to six crews, 24 players |
| PvP | Always possible | Never | Host decides |
| World control | None | None | Full |
| Gold and progress | Yes | Yes | None |
| Who sets the rules | Rare | Rare | You |
| Best for | The real game | Learning and Tall Tales | Practice, events, filming |
What to know before hosting
You are the admin, so you are the referee. Scoreboards and silver values do not enforce sportsmanship. Agree the rules with the group first.
Session control sits with one person. The owner's connection and their decisions shape everyone's session, so hand hosting to whoever has the most stable connection.
It is not a progression shortcut, and it was never meant to be. No gold and no progress come out of a session. What follows you home is the Season 20 Deed Renown boost, which lands when you go back to the High Seas, plus any of the mode's own platform achievements you unlocked along the way.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Custom Seas free in Sea of Thieves?
Yes. It launched with Season 20 on June 18, 2026 as a free feature for everyone who owns the game. It was originally announced with a subscription model, and Rare reversed that decision before release.
What can you control in a Custom Seas session?
Switches cover players, ships, emergent creatures, World Events, and treasure hand-in locations, and the in-game Command Menu handles the roster, ship and crew edits, item spawning, time of day, and the position of storms and fog. You can also start World Events on demand and choose where they happen.
Do you earn gold or progress in Custom Seas?
No. Patch 3.8.0 states that no gold and no progress are earned in a session, and patch 3.8.0.1 closed the activities still awarding gold by mistake. The exceptions are Season 20's Deeds, which pay a Renown boost when you return to the High Seas, and the mode's own platform achievements like So. Much. Silver! and Tentacled Tribute, which unlock inside sessions.
How many players fit in a Custom Seas session?
Up to 24 players across six crews, with the Session Owner choosing ship types and crew configurations. People join through platform invites or a Join Code, and the owner can promote Session Leaders who get deeper access than an ordinary guest.
What are the Custom Seas presets?
Adventure, Competitive Pirates, Competitive Sandbox, Social, and Pirate Practice, plus a Creative preset for building from scratch. Each is a starting point you can adjust switch by switch afterward, and the result can be saved and renamed for future sessions.
When did Custom Seas release?
June 18, 2026, alongside the launch of Season 20. It shipped as part of the same update that restructured the season pass to 50 levels, and it has had two rounds of fixes since in patches 3.8.0.1 and 3.8.1.
Can you play the Last Ship Standing map in Custom Seas?
Yes, since patch 3.8.2. The Seas of Sailor's Grave was added as a fifth Legendary Location, so a crew can create and play inside the Last Ship Standing battleground directly. The Devil's Shroud surrounds the map to hold crews in the fight, and some World Events, creatures, and island-specific features are unavailable there.
What did patch 3.8.2 add to Custom Seas?
The Seas of Sailor's Grave as a Legendary Location, seven commands including Hide Pirate, Invulnerability, Reset Supplies, and Destroy Treasures, and four switches covering the Ferry of the Damned, reviving, the downed state, and per-attack Weapon Damage that can be set negative to heal. Rowboat types and a 24-Rowboat limit, Order of Bone and Blade Skeletons and three Skeleton Lords in Spawn Creatures, a Tall Tales category in Spawn Treasures, fully customizable ship supplies, and an Unarmed loadout override all arrived in the same patch.
What to Read Next
- Safer Seas and High Seas. The other two modes in full, and what each one locks.
- Seasons and Events. Season 20, which shipped Custom Seas, and how the season structure changed with it.
- Ship Combat and Damage Control. The skills worth drilling in a custom session.
- PvP and the Hourglass of Fate. Where that practice gets tested for real.
- World Events and Raids. The events you can start on demand here and no longer can on the High Seas.
- Getting Started. The basics to learn before hosting anything.