Sea of Thieves World Events and Raids
World events announce themselves with a cloud or beacon in the sky, and every crew on the server sees the same signal at the same moment. Green means a standard event and red means the high-value version, so a red skull cloud pulls far more crews than a green one. Red ship clouds are the exception this season, because Season 20 stopped the Fleet of Fortune spawning at all. The Kraken has no sky signal at all, announcing itself only through sound and the water around your ship turning black.
Reading the sky is the highest-value skill in Sea of Thieves that nobody teaches you. Every signal tells you what the event is, roughly how rich it is, and how many other crews are already sailing toward it.
What does each sky signal mean?
| Event | Signal in the sky | Contest level |
|---|---|---|
| Skeleton Fort | Large skull cloud with green thundering eyes | High |
| Fort of Fortune | Glowing red cracked skull cloud | Very high |
| Reaper Fortress | Dark gray skull cloud in a hat, glowing red eyes | Very high |
| Fort of the Damned | Gray skull cloud with red eyes over a fog-locked island | Very high, and player-triggered only |
| Skeleton Fleet | Large green cloud shaped like a ship | High |
| Fleet of Fortune | Large glowing red cloud shaped like a ship | Not spawning in Season 20 |
| Ghost Fleet | Thin green tornado over an island | Medium |
| Ashen Winds | Massive red tornado on the horizon | Medium |
| Burning Blade | Red-orange beacon from the flame atop the center mast | High |
| Kraken | Nothing. Sound cue and black water | None, it finds you |
The color rule is worth memorizing on its own. Green is the standard version. Red is the fortune version, worth substantially more and guaranteed to be busy.
Patch 3.8.0.1 stopped the Fleet of Fortune appearing as an emergent World Event for the duration of Season 20. A red ship-shaped cloud is not something you will see this season, so the red rule currently applies to the forts only.
Before you commit to a red event, count the ships between you and it. A Fort of Fortune with three ships already converging is not a treasure run, it is a three-way naval battle where the loot goes to whoever is left. Sometimes the smart play is letting them fight and arriving late.
Forts
Skeleton Fort is the entry-level raid. Sail into range, the event activates, and you fight waves of skeletons until a boss wave drops a key. The key opens the vault, and the vault holds Stronghold treasure, an Ashen Chest, a Villainous Bounty Skull, and Mermaid Gems.
Fort of Fortune is the same structure with harder waves and much better loot, including Athena's-tier items.
Reaper Fortress drops Reaper's Bones and Smugglers' League valued items and sends phantom waves in place of standard skeletons.
Fort of the Damned is the player-triggered one, and it never starts on its own. A crew lights the six Ferryman statues at the former Old Boot Fort with all six colored Flames of Fate, then places a Ritual Skull on the caged skeleton. The fort wakes under a gray, red-eyed skull cloud, a horn sounds across the entire map, and the island sits in permanent fog. The waves end at the Ghost of Graymarrow, whose key opens a vault holding a Chest of Legends alongside Stronghold-tier loot. Expect company, because every crew on the server heard the same horn you triggered.
The standard fort mistake is anchoring right at the dock. Your ship sits unattended for the entire fight, in plain view, at the exact location every other crew is sailing toward. Park around the back of the island instead, out of the approach line.
Ashen Garrisons
Two fortified skeleton strongholds sit deep within The Devil's Roar, added in patch 3.6.2 and still receiving balance work as recently as 3.8.1. They have no sky signal, because they are fixed locations and never spawn. You sail to them.
Servant's Oath Garrison and King's Chalice Garrison have unique layouts, so learning one does not fully teach you the other.
The assault runs in a fixed order:
- Navigate the approach. The waters around each Garrison are hazardous before you reach the walls.
- Scale the outer walls to begin the assault.
- Battle across the ramparts and unlock access to the Guardhouse.
- Open the main door from inside the Guardhouse, which is the only way into the central Garrison structure.
- Fight through waves of Flameheart's forces defending the inner Garrison.
- Kill the Custodian of the Treasury to unlock the Treasury and the loot inside.
New Lighthouse Logs sit in lockboxes inside each Garrison, and the Storage Crates you pull out of one sell for 250 gold.
Ashen Keys are deliberately scarce. Patch 3.6.2.1 cut the pile of keys crews used to find, so you have to choose which locked compartments are worth opening. Broken Emissary Flags are among the better finds in those compartments, and patch 3.7.1 made them less likely to be Athena's Fortune and more often another Trading Company's.
Do not count on the barrels here to resupply you. Patch 3.7.0 reduced how many Bone Callers and Cursed Cannonballs sit in the crates and barrels around the structure, so bring your own.
Fleets
Skeleton Fleet spawns in open water and runs in waves of skeleton ships. Sinking them drops Skeleton Captain's Chests, Ritual Skulls, and Ashen Chests, and the final wave is the payout wave.
Fleet of Fortune is the red version, and patch 3.8.0.1 pulled it out of the emergent rotation for Season 20. Do not plan around it this season.
Fleets are more dangerous than forts for one reason: you fight them at sea, with your ship taking damage the entire time, which leaves you already holed and already low on planks when a real crew shows up. Bring resources. Fights at fleets are decided by who has planks left.
Ghost Fleet works differently. A thin green tornado over an island summons Flameheart's armada, and the ghost ships fade in and out instead of sitting solid. It drops the Captain Skull of the Damned and ghostly treasures. It was pulled from the game after patch 2.4.2 and brought back in Season 9 with the tornado indicator replacing Flameheart's old appearance in the sky.
Ashen Winds and the Burning Blade
Ashen Winds puts a massive red tornado on the horizon and summons an Ashen Lord. Kill it and you get the Ashen Winds Skull, which is the one piece of treasure in the game that doubles as a weapon: hold it and it breathes fire, with limited charges. Players routinely sell it without ever firing it, which is a waste.
Burning Blade is a ship, not a place. Captain Flameheart's flagship sails with a red-orange flame beacon at its center mast, and a crew can board it, take it, and then sail it themselves. Taking the helm of the Burning Blade turns you into the server's most visible target instantly, because everyone can see that beacon from anywhere on the map.
The Kraken and the Megalodon
Neither of these is a cloud event. Both come to you.
The Kraken announces itself with a sound cue and the water around your ship turning black with ink. Tentacles come up around the hull, grab crew members, and can swallow them. There is no health bar. You end the encounter by destroying tentacles, and the count scales with your hull:
| Your ship | Tentacles to destroy |
|---|---|
| Sloop | 2 to 3 |
| Brigantine | 5 to 6 |
| Galleon | 7 to 8 |
Each tentacle you destroy drops a piece of Kraken meat and one or two random treasure items, so a full Galleon kill is a real payout. Chests of Legends and Boxes of Wondrous Secrets are the two things it will never drop.
The honest advice for a new crew is still to sail out of the ink and keep going. The Kraken does not follow you, and an early crew spends more in planks and hull integrity than the tentacles pay back. Come back for it once you can fight without sinking.
Megalodons are roaming sharks that ram your hull. Same logic applies early on. Sail away.
The Kraken picks its target at random, not by how loaded you are. On a full server that is a 1 in 5 chance per attack, and it can pick the same ship twice in a row.
For years it could only surface while no World Event was active, and patch 3.3.2 (April 24, 2025) lifted that restriction, so Kraken encounters now run alongside some World Events without any change to their frequency. It still tends to catch crews right as they finish an event and sit holed and full, so bank a haul before you start hunting the next one.
Can you still start a world event on demand?
Not for the big five, and not this season. Patch 3.8.0 pulled every on-demand World Event Raid Voyage from the Quest Table for the duration of Season 20 as a deliberate live experiment.
The five removed are:
- A Duel with an Ashen Lord
- A Raid on a Skeleton Fort
- A Battle with a Skeleton Fleet
- A Raid on a Reaper Fortress
- A Battle with the Burning Blade's Armada
All five still appear emergently on the seas, and Rare states they offer the highest value on completion when encountered that way. Rare has called the change time-limited and said the result will inform whether it becomes permanent, so treat the Quest Table gap as this season's rules, not the game's.
The practical effect is that reading the sky matters more than it did. You can no longer buy your way to a fort, so the crews at any given event are the crews who saw the same cloud you did.
Where does the Chest of Fortune drop now?
Across a range of emergent World Events instead of one specific event. Season 20 opened it up in patch 3.8.0, and patch 3.8.0.2 fixed events that were not awarding it and raised the odds significantly.
Eight events can now carry it: Skeleton Forts, Reaper Fortresses, the Fort of Fortune, Ashen Winds, Skeleton Fleets, Ghost Fleets, the Burning Blade, and the Fort of the Damned.
Clearing one of them pays out in one of three shapes: a regular loot pile, a lower chance of a regular pile plus a Chest of Fortune, or a rare chance of a regular pile plus three Chests of Fortune.
That third outcome is the reason to finish an event you would otherwise abandon. It is rare, and it is worth more than the rest of the session.
How do you decide which event to run?
Ask three questions before turning the wheel.
- How full is your hold? A loaded ship should be selling, not raiding.
- How many ships can you see? Every visible ship is a crew that also saw the signal.
- Do you have planks, cannonballs, and food? Events drain all three, and the fight after the event is the one that matters.
Crews that treat world events as loot piñatas lose their haul constantly. Crews that treat them as bait, and plan the sell run before they start, keep it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a red skull cloud mean in Sea of Thieves?
A red cracked skull cloud is a Fort of Fortune, the high-value version of the standard Skeleton Fort. Green signals mean the standard version of an event and red signals mean the fortune version, which pays far more and draws far more crews.
Does the Kraken have a sky signal?
No. The Kraken is the only major encounter with no cloud or beacon. It announces itself through a sound cue and the water around your ship turning black with ink, and it targets a ship directly instead of spawning at a location you can sail to.
What is the Ashen Winds Skull used for?
It is treasure that also works as a weapon. Hold it and it breathes fire with a limited number of charges, which makes it useful against boarders or skeleton waves before you sell it. Most players cash it in without ever firing it.
Where should you park your ship at a Skeleton Fort?
Around the back of the island, off the approach line, never at the dock. Your ship sits unattended for the whole fight, and docking in plain sight puts it directly in the path of every crew sailing toward the same skull cloud.
Was the Ghost Fleet removed from Sea of Thieves?
It was disabled after patch 2.4.2 and later brought back in Season 9. The returning version uses a thin green tornado over an island as its signal, replacing Captain Flameheart's earlier appearance in the sky.
Can you still buy a Raid Voyage for a Skeleton Fort?
Not during Season 20. Patch 3.8.0 removed all five on-demand World Event Raid Voyages from the Quest Table as a time-limited experiment, covering the Ashen Lord duel, Skeleton Fort, Skeleton Fleet, Reaper Fortress, and Burning Blade's Armada. All five still appear emergently and pay the most that way.
How do you start the Fort of the Damned?
Light the six Ferryman statues at the former Old Boot Fort with all six colored Flames of Fate, then place a Ritual Skull on the caged skeleton. The fort activates under a gray skull cloud with red eyes and a horn sounds across the entire map, so every crew knows the moment it begins. It never starts on its own.
How do you get to an Ashen Garrison?
Sail to it. The two Garrisons, Servant's Oath and King's Chalice, are fixed fortified locations deep in The Devil's Roar with no sky signal. You scale the outer walls, fight across the ramparts to the Guardhouse, open the main door from inside it, then kill the Custodian of the Treasury to reach the loot.
Which world events drop the Chest of Fortune?
Eight of them as of Season 20: Skeleton Forts, Reaper Fortresses, the Fort of Fortune, Ashen Winds, Skeleton Fleets, Ghost Fleets, the Burning Blade, and the Fort of the Damned. A rare payout gives a regular loot pile plus three Chests of Fortune at once.
What to Read Next
- Ship Combat and Damage Control. Surviving the crew that turns up while you are mid-raid.
- Voyages and Treasure. What Stronghold chests and Ancient Tributes sell for and where.
- PvP and the Hourglass of Fate. Opting into fights instead of having them find you at a fort.
- Ships and Sailing. Getting to the event before the other three crews do.
- Trading Companies and Reputation. Which faction to sell event loot to.
- Tips and Tricks. Kraken behavior and the loot habits that lose a full session.