There are plenty of treasures to be had deep beneath the ocean's surface, but the question is, but the big question is how do you bring that treasure back to your ship from the depths of the ocean? Well, thankfully, Sea of Thieves has an entire gameplay mechanic to help save you the trouble of hauling each piece of loot up to the surface.
You can use Sunken Merfolk Statues to transport your treasure back to the relative safety of your ship. The only question you may have is how exactly do you use a Sunken Merfolk Statue? Well, wonder no more, because we’re going to tell you how these undersea oddities work.
Updated July 21, 2023, by Sean Murray: Need to know how to store your treasure at the Sunken Merfolk Statues after an afternoon of deep-sea diving? We've updated this guide with improved formatting and breakout tips to make your treasure hunts in Sea of Thieves that much more lucrative.
Where You'll Find Sunken Merfolk Statues
First off, there are two types of Siren Shrines. Most Shrines act like puzzle rooms where you need to figure out how to advance through the shrine by solving puzzles and platforming challenges. Then there are Treasuries, which are wave-based battle zones where you fight waves of Ocean Crawlers, Coral Skeletons, and Sirens.
Regardless of what kind of shrine you go to, you’ll always find statues that look like the one depicted above. These are your Sunken Merfolk Statues. Their job is to send your treasure back to the surface to be retrieved and brought back to your ship.
How To Store And Retrieve Your Treasure
After you've gone through a shrine and grabbed all the treasure you want to take back, bring it to the statue, and then hold the Y button to store it at the statue. Each statue can only store 20 pieces of treasure.
However, if you find treasure chests that can be opened, you can place three pieces of small treasure inside. That way when you store it with the Merfolk Statue it’ll count as one piece of treasure instead of three.
Once you’ve gathered all the treasure you want, you can use the Merfolk Statue to warp back to your ship. You can do this at any point while you’re inside a Siren Shrine.
When you’re back on your ship, a purple Mermaid will appear on the surface of the water. They should be easy to spot as they'll be holding a smoking flare. Swim over and interact with them. Your treasure will then magically float to the surface of the water.
Unlike the blue Merfolk that help teleport you back to your ship when it sinks or you’re stranded, this purple Merfolk won’t appear anywhere else but above the shrine you just finished.
That means if other players sail up and decide to sink your vessel while you’re underwater — which will likely happen since this is Sea Of Thieves after all — you'll have to travel back to the location of that shrine to get your treasure.
On the plus side, enemy players can’t interact with your Merfolk and steal your treasure, which means that it’ll be waiting there for you when you get back. Of course, the ship that sank you may still be there as well. But that’s Sea Of Thieves for you.