Sea of Thieves: crewing up

Sea of Thieves has no community servers. You crew up through Xbox friends, even on Steam or PlayStation.

Before your first voyage

Know your gamertag. Every Sea of Thieves player signs in with a Microsoft account, PS5 included, and invites run through Xbox friends on every platform.
Add your crewmates as Xbox friends using their gamertags: in the Xbox app (PC or phone), through Recently Played after sailing together, or on console. Until they add you back, you only follow them.
Check crossplay. Under Settings → Matchmaking, crossplay must be on for PC and console players to crew together.

Crewing up for a session

Post in #sot-crew-finder: the ship (sloop for 2, brigantine for 3, galleon for 4), what you want to do, and your platform. Ping @SoT Crew Call if you want takers now.
Swap gamertags and add each other.
The captain sets sail with Closed Crew and invites the others. Only friends of crew members can join a Closed Crew, so a stranger can't take the empty slot.
Meet in the Tavern voice channel.

HTG guilds

Guilds give a persistent crew and a shared guild ship.

A guild holds 30 members, and you can be in 3 guilds at once.
HTG guild invites come from an officer. Ask in #sot-guilds. Invites expire after 7 days.
Pledge a ship to the guild, and guildmates can join it from the Guild menu.

Custom Seas events

Custom Seas puts a whole HTG event on one server: up to 24 players in 6 crews, joined with a 5-digit code. There's no gold or reputation progress in Custom Seas.

Events are announced in #sot-custom-seas and #events. Sign up there.
The host sends the join code to signed-up members only.

Fair play

Rare's Code of Conduct forbids teaming in competitive modes such as Hourglass. Don't organise it.
Don't use third-party tools or game-file mods. They break Rare's rules, and EAC bans for them.

Sources (checked 2026-10-01)

Sea of Thieves © Microsoft Corporation. This guide was created under Microsoft's "Game Content Usage Rules" using assets from Sea of Thieves, and it is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft. Game Content Usage Rules.