Sea of Thieves PvP and the Hourglass of Fate
The Hourglass of Fate is opt-in PvP that matches you against another crew who also chose to fight, and it sits on your captain's table. Unlocking it takes the Maiden Voyage, the introductory voyages for Gold Hoarders, Order of Souls, and Merchant Alliance, and Reaper's Bones reputation level 25. You pick a side once, Servants of the Flame or Guardians of Fortune, and your rewards scale with your Faction Stash grade and your active win streak. The arena is not open water: Battle Bounds shrink at set intervals to force the fight to a finish, and arriving low on supplies gets you a Faction Storage Crate at the mast.
Open-world PvP in Sea of Thieves is chaotic and mostly one-sided, because the crew that starts the fight usually picked a target that could not fight back. The Hourglass exists to fix that. Both crews want the fight, both crews are ready, and nobody is a Sloop full of cargo that just wanted to sell.
How do you unlock the Hourglass?
Four requirements as of patch 3.7.0:
- Complete the Maiden Voyage.
- Complete the introductory voyage for Gold Hoarders.
- Complete the introductory voyage for Order of Souls and Merchant Alliance.
- Reach Reaper's Bones reputation level 25.
That last one is the real gate. Reaper's rep comes from selling treasure at the Reaper's Hideout, so the fastest route is running normal voyages and cashing everything in at the Hideout instead of at outposts.
All four must be completed during High Seas play, and the old tricks for skipping the Maiden Voyage or the Tutorial Voyages were closed in the same patch. Players who already had access before 3.7.0 kept it, so these requirements only bite on new accounts.
Servants or Guardians?
You choose a faction, and the choice shapes what loot feeds your progress.
| Servants of the Flame | Guardians of Fortune | |
|---|---|---|
| Loyalty | Captain Flameheart | The Pirate Lord |
| Feeds Allegiance with | Reaper's Bones loot and faction-agnostic items | Athena's Fortune loot |
| Typical player | Aggressive, Reaper's-focused | Legend-focused, Athena's-focused |
Allegiance banks separately for each side and survives a switch, which costs you nothing but your active win streak. Pick based on what loot you naturally collect. If you are already selling everything at the Reaper's Hideout, Servants fits. If you are chasing Athena's voyages, Guardians fits.
How a battle works
Interact with the Hourglass on your captain's table and you go into matchmaking. Two ways to play it:
Dive immediately. Use the War Map to drop into a battle fast. This forfeits the treasure currently on your ship, so it is the clean option when you are empty.
Sail and accumulate. Keep playing normally, build up loot, and defend it when the battle starts. Riskier, and worth more.
When matched, both ships descend and surface near each other. The fight runs until one ship sinks.
Two things happen automatically the moment you arrive, both added in patch 3.7.0.
A Faction Storage Crate appears near your mast if you are low on supplies. The game tallies what you are carrying across barrels, Storage Crates, player inventories, and loaded cannons against a minimum threshold, then resupplies anything sitting under it. Diving in empty no longer means fighting a stocked crew with four planks. Patch 3.7.1 reordered the fruit in those crates so the most useful items sit first.
An Emissary Flag goes up for your faction. Guardians of Fortune raise Athena's Fortune, Servants of the Flame raise The Reaper's Bones, and crews who do not own the relevant flag get nothing raised. That means every battle now feeds Emissary Grade progression without you preparing for it.
The 15 minute commitment is to the faction, not the queue. After opting in you cannot turn in your hourglass at a company's Emissary Table to opt back out for at least 15 minutes, and enemy crews can hunt you the whole time you are opted in. The matchmaking queue itself is cancellable by crew vote at the captain's table while you wait beneath the waves, though the cancel is not guaranteed if an opponent has already been matched.
What are the Battle Bounds?
A boundary around the fight that shrinks at set intervals so neither crew can run the clock out. Patch 3.7.0 added it and the starting size is unchanged from the old open arena, so you still get room early to feel out the other ship.
The area then closes twice before settling on a final zone where the only remaining option is to fight. You get an on-screen notification and an audio cue each time it moves, and the boundary is drawn on the water and on your Ship's Map at all times. A crew making a defensive stand from behind an island gets pushed out into open water for the final area, with no rocks left to hide in.
Sailing into the bounds is survivable for a moment and then it is not:
- The sea beyond holds a deep red color that marks the danger zone, with a defined starting point added in patch 3.7.1. Your Hourglass of Fate cracks as a warning while you linger there.
- Your screen shifts to greyscale instead of turning red, a patch 3.7.2 change so you can still see well enough to fight.
- The mists at the point of no return carry floating embers. Cross those and the Hourglass of Fate detonates, scuttling the ship on the spot.
The embers are the last warning you get. Past them the Hourglass of Fate goes off like a lit keg on your deck and the ship is scuttled on the spot. A crew that keeps sailing past the mists to escape a losing fight does not escape, it loses the ship outright, and the Emissary Flag it drops counts as won in battle for the opposing crew.
Requeueing after a loss
Losing crews are offered a dive straight back beneath the waves to find the next opponent. Quick Requeue arrived in 3.7.0 and carries the Faction Storage Crate and the automatic Emissary Flag with it, so the second fight starts as prepared as the first.
Scuttling is not a way out. Patch 3.8.0.2 stopped a crew scuttling before it sank to deny the opponent the win, and patch 3.8.1 removed the requeue option entirely for crews that scuttle after pledging at the Hourglass.
Winning crews sail out repaired
Patch 3.8.2 fully repairs the winning crew's ship the moment the victor is declared, so the reward collection and the next dive no longer start with a hull full of holes.
Two other Faction Battle changes landed in the same patch:
- Battles open as soon as everyone is eligible. Previously a crew that had just met the requirements had to restart the session before matchmaking would take them.
- You cannot leave your Faction mid-battle. Players pledged to the same Faction are locked to it for the duration of an active battle.
The repair change is the one that shifts how a streak run feels, since a crew chasing consecutive wins no longer carries the previous battle's hull damage into the next one.
Two smaller fixes from the same patch are worth knowing if either caught you. Reaching Allegiance level 90 with the Guardians of Fortune now displays the correct Title earned, and the Glassbeard errors some players hit after switching Pirate Profiles and queueing for a Faction Battle were addressed.
Sloops fight somewhere else
Patch 3.7.2 introduced Last Ship Standing, a battle between up to six Sloops in the Seas of Sailor's Grave. During its Season 19 Act 3 debut, solo and duo Sloops fought only there while Brigantines and Galleons kept diving to the 1v1 Faction Battles described above.
The mode has its own arena, its own matchmaking, and Allegiance paid by final placement, not only to the winner. It returns as a scheduled event instead of running permanently. Full detail in Last Ship Standing.
Faction Stash and why your rewards vary so much
Instead of the emissary grades used elsewhere, Hourglass uses a Faction Stash, shown when you look at your Hourglass. Collecting loot aligned with your faction raises the stash grade, and the grade directly scales your battle rewards.
The important consequence: two crews can win identical battles and be paid very differently. A crew that loaded up on faction loot before queueing earns substantially more than a crew that dove in empty.
You also gain faction reputation by turning in your hourglass at the appropriate emissary table regardless of whether you won, though a stash turn-in pays better than a loss does.
Streaks
Consecutive wins build a streak, and rewards climb with it. Losing breaks the streak.
This produces the defining Hourglass experience: the fifth win in a row is worth far more than the first, and losing it stings accordingly. Crews chasing a long streak get progressively more cautious, which is worth knowing if you are fighting one. A crew on a high streak has more to lose than you do.
Practical advice for actually winning
Fight the ship, not the crew. Sinking them ends it. Killing one player just delays them a few seconds while they respawn on their own ship.
Chain shot their masts first. A ship that cannot move cannot control range, and controlling range is the whole game at sea.
Do not over-board. Sending a player onto the enemy ship leaves your own ship short-handed. On a Sloop, boarding means one person is now sailing and repairing alone.
Supplies reset to a floor between battles, not to full. Every dive tops a low ship up to the minimum through the Faction Storage Crate, so you never start a round with four planks, but the minimum is not a stocked ship. A minute spent topping up past the floor pays off by round three.
Bucket even when you cannot repair. A hull too shot up to patch under fire can still be kept afloat one bucket at a time, and outlasting the other crew by 30 seconds wins the fight.
Practice the anchor turn until it is automatic. In Hourglass fights the crew that can reverse direction fastest controls whether the fight happens at close range or long range, and that single choice decides most matches.
Open-world PvP is a different game
Everything above applies to opt-in fights. Out in High Seas, PvP looks different:
- Crews attack because you are flying an emissary flag or sitting at a world event.
- Nobody is obliged to fight you, and running is always legitimate.
- Your loot is on the line, not a streak.
Sailing upwind on a Sloop escapes most pursuers. There is no shame in it, and there is no penalty for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you unlock the Hourglass of Fate?
Complete the Maiden Voyage, finish the introductory voyages for Gold Hoarders, Order of Souls, and Merchant Alliance, and reach Reaper's Bones reputation level 25. The Reaper's requirement is the slow part, and selling any treasure at the Reaper's Hideout is the fastest way to it.
What is the difference between Servants of the Flame and Guardians of Fortune?
Servants of the Flame follow Captain Flameheart and gain Allegiance from Reaper's Bones and faction-agnostic loot. Guardians of Fortune follow the Pirate Lord and gain Allegiance from Athena's Fortune loot. Allegiance banks separately for each side, so switching costs you nothing but your active win streak.
Can you cancel an Hourglass battle?
The queue, yes. Your crew can vote to cancel matchmaking at the captain's table while waiting beneath the waves, though the cancel is not guaranteed if an opponent has already been matched. The faction commitment is separate: after opting in you cannot turn in your hourglass and opt back out for at least 15 minutes, and enemy crews can hunt you until you do.
Why do Hourglass rewards vary so much between battles?
Your Faction Stash grade scales them. Loot aligned with your chosen faction raises the stash, and a crew that loaded up before queueing earns far more from an identical win than a crew that dove in with an empty hold.
Do you lose your treasure when you dive to an Hourglass battle?
Only if you dive immediately from the War Map, which forfeits the treasure currently aboard. Sailing normally and letting the battle come to you keeps your loot on the ship, but then you have to defend it during the fight.
What are the Battle Bounds in a Faction Battle?
A boundary that shrinks at set intervals so neither crew can run out the clock. It closes twice before settling on a final zone, it is drawn on the water and on your Ship's Map, and crossing the misted point of no return marked with floating embers detonates the Hourglass of Fate itself, scuttling your ship on the spot.
What happens if you dive to a Faction Battle with no supplies?
You get a Faction Storage Crate at the mast. The game tallies your supplies across barrels, Storage Crates, player inventories, and loaded cannons against a minimum threshold and resupplies anything below it, so arriving empty no longer means fighting a stocked crew with four planks.
What to Read Next
- Last Ship Standing. The six-Sloop battle mode, its arena, and how Allegiance pays by placement there.
- Ship Combat and Damage Control. Cannonball types, the repair order, and boarding defense that decide these fights.
- Ships and Sailing. The anchor turn and wind control that win range battles.
- Trading Companies and Reputation. Getting Reaper's Bones to 25 to unlock the Hourglass at all.
- Safer Seas and High Seas. Why Hourglass does not exist in Safer Seas.
- Achievements: Combat and PvP. The Hourglass and combat achievements, including some of the rarest in the game.