The second of Sea Of Thieves' limited-time adventures has launched, and it continues the story that has begun back with The Shrouded Islands this past February. For those who missed the last adventure, the residents of the Golden Sands Outpost all mysteriously vanished, which coincided with the ominous disappearance of Captain Flameheart. With Forts Of The Forgotten, we now have a chance to rescue these unlucky NPCs and figure out what's going on with this strange green mist that keeps popping up.
This particular adventure will only be active until April 7th, so you need to jump into Sea Of Thieves sometime before then if you want to continue this storyline. For now, here's how to complete the Forts Of The Forgotten adventure.
Forts Of The Forgotten Walkthrough
Just like The Shrouded Islands, to begin this quest you need to speak to Larinna outside of the tavern at whichever outpost you spawn in at. Select the option to "begin adventure" at the bottom of her dialogue choices, and she'll tell you to go visit Belle at Golden Sands Outpost. Jump on your ship and sail on over there.
When you reach Golden Sands, Belle will be waiting for you in front of the tavern. Talk to her and she'll tell you that Flameheart is responsible for the sudden appearance of the recently added Sea Forts. Go through her dialogue, and you'll eventually get the option to "continue adventure." You'll then receive a note that has a checklist of things that you need to do next. This list includes:
- Defeat a Phantom Jailer and recover their key.
- Free the prisoners and speak with them to learn more.
- Clear a Fortress in each region of the sea.
- Bring Belle any Enchantment Vessel you find.
At this point, your goal is to travel to at least one of the Sea Forts located within The Shores Of Gold, The Ancient Isles, and The Wilds regions of the map (The Devil's Roar doesn't have any Sea Forts, so you thankfully don't need to worry about dodging volcanoes.) I found that the most expedient route for completing this adventure was to go to Imperial Crown Fortress, then sail to Ancient Gold Fortress, and then head to Mercy's End Fortress, but you can go to any Sea Fort in any order.
Clearing out a Sea Fort involves defeating waves of Phantoms. For a more in-depth look at these Sea Forts, you can check out this guide here:
However, there are a few differences in how these Sea Forts operate during this adventure. Normally, when you approach a Sea Fort it'll fire cannonballs at you. During this event, they'll instead fire Phantom Cannonballs, which send green ghosts flying at your ship. These can do quite a bit of damage, so be ready to repair your hull.
Among the Phantoms that you normally fight at a Sea Fort, you'll also see a special Phantom called a Phantom Jailer. This guy has more health than a regular Phantom but doesn't appear to be much different otherwise. Once you defeat one of these enemies, they'll drop the Prison Cell Key. That fulfills the first objective on Belle's list. You'll use that in a moment, but first, you need to clear out the fort. Kill all of the Phantoms and defeat the Captain of the Fortress, and things will settle down around here.
Now head to the bottom of the Sea Fort where the treasury is. If you've done a fort prior to this event, you'll know that there's a locked prison cell down here that was previously inaccessible. You can now open it with the Prison Cell Key, and inside will be various residents of Golden Sands who were being held captive. Talk to them to fulfill the second objective on your list. Inside the jail cell will also be an Enchantment Vessel, which you should hang on to for when you next see Belle. After that, you can loot the fort for treasure and supplies.
Now you need to clear out a fort in each of the two remaining regions to complete objective number three on your list. Once one Sea Fort in each of the three regions is cleared of Phantoms, talk to the prisoners, grab the Enchantment Vessels and any other loot that's lying around, and all that should be left to do is to go back to Belle at Golden Sands.
When you arrive there, you'll be able to sell your Enchantment Vessels to Belle, which is similar to how you sold her Rune Tablets during The Shrouded Islands adventure. These are worth somewhere around 1000 to 1500 gold. Doing that will finish your final objective. Now speak to Belle and you'll have the option to "complete adventure." Oddly, this will begin chapter three of the adventure, although all that happens in this chapter is that Belle will give you some exposition about how Captain Flameheart plans to obtain some object called the Veil Of The Ancients. Once she's done prattling on about that, the adventure will be over.
Deeds And Rewards
As with The Shrouded Islands, Forts Of The Forgotten has a list of deeds that you can complete for additional rewards. There are 12 deeds this time, but they're not especially hard to accomplish. They include the following:
- Find Belle at Golden Sands Outpost
- Defeat 3 Phantom Jailers
- Deliver an Enchantment Vessel to Belle for study
- Speak to Wonda once she's freed
- Speak to Tina once she's freed
- Speak to Tom once he's freed
- Speak to Cecil once he's freed
- Speak to Sharon once she's freed
- Speak to Senior Trader Mavis once she's freed
- Speak to Hugh The Hoarder once he's freed
- Speak to Madame Olga once she's freed
- Speak to Emily once she's freed
The first three deeds you'll end up doing anyway since they're an essential part of the adventure. The annoying bit is talking to all of the various Golden Sands residents. There will only be three prisoners in each of the Sea Forts' prison cells. That means if you only complete the three forts that you need to do to complete the objective on your list, you'll only come across 9 NPCs in total.
To make matters worse, when we ran this adventure it seemed like Wonda was always in the cells, and whoever else was in there was random. One time we ended up going to two different forts that had the exact same three prisoners in both cells. It's not clear whether this was a bug or if that's just how this adventure works. Either way, if you want to finish all 12 deeds, you'll have to keep visiting Sea Forts until you run into everyone that's been taken captive.
As a reward for completing the adventure, you'll receive the Jailer's Cutlass, which is a nice little sword that you can equip. For finishing every deed, you'll earn the title Freer Of Forgotten Forts.
However, the real reward comes from the increased loot you can find in these forts. When we did this adventure, there seemed to be extra ghostly treasure piled in front of the treasury. Running this adventure with a grade 5 emissary flag raised for one of the trading companies could easily net you over 100K in gold. Not too shabby for a bunch of forgotten forts.
We don't know when the next limited-time adventure will drop, but we'll have a guide ready for that one as well when it eventually arrives. Have fun storming these forts!