The Sea of Thieves Stars of a Thief Tall Tale may be the trickiest of the Sea of Thieves Tall Tales altogether, In it, players will be tracing and chasing constellations across the Sea of Thieves sky using cryptic clues that are easy to miss. Basically, it's the stuff video game guides were made for, so we made one for you. With our guide, you'll enjoy all the best bits of stargazing without steering your boat in circles for hours. Here's how to complete Sea of Thieves Stars of a Thief.
How to start Stars of a Thief
This is one of the more annoying quests to kick off in the Tall Tales. Players will have to head to a tiny seapost known as The North Star Seapost. Just make sure to zoom right in on your ship map to pick it out. Once you've found it, head there and speak to Sudds, the lovely Scottish merchant with a book on his counter. Vote for the voyage with your crew and you'll receive the quest book.
Finding the Enchanted Spyglass
This part is fairly easy once you know what you're doing. Read your book for some notes on where to find the enchanted equipment. You'll either see the words "Face the North Star" or "My back to the North Star."
If it's the former, you need to head to Rum Runner Isle and follow the instructions. It says its right next to a "solitary hanging lantern," which is hanging off a tree near the shore.
If you've got your back to the North Star, head to Twin Groves, where you'll have to dig "beneath a tree between the two largest rocks," which are very hard to miss.
Open the chest and grab the Spyglass to move on to the tricky part of this quest.
Constellation conundrum
Here's where it gets interesting. Now you've got the spyglass, you can open up your quest wheel and equip it. When you look at crops of stars they will slowly turn into symbols, which correspond to the fancy new index in your book, and the compass direction you need to head in to get to the designated island.
After the index you should have three chapters worth of riddles to figure out too. The first two are your Star Jewels whereas the last chapter will lead you to the chamber where you need to plug them into a totem.
To explain how it works, an example. One of the riddles you can get is called "A Hunt." In it, the text reads "The man lived at Kraken Watchtower, towards the Boar from my Seapost." Now, the Boar constellation is North-East, so you should head North-East from the Seapost.
The next part of the riddle reads "Saw feather falling to nearby spire, followed it to this isle." The Feather constellation is in the South-East part of the sky, so you must head South-East from Kraken Watchtower to Shipwreck Bay. It then reads "Followed arrow to land unmarked."
So, find the Arrow constellation in the sky (which is always in the South-West,) and head in that direction to an uncharted island. The text then reads "Beast fell off south western shore" in an "underwater grave," so naturally dive off the South-West shore to find the Star Jewel in the water. It's tricky, but you'll figure it out.
Constellation cheat sheet
If you're not looking to figure it out for yourself, here's a guide to the constellations and their accompanying directions. Simply find the mention of each symbol in the text and head in the corresponding direction. Do this for the two riddle chapters until you have both star jewels.
- Great Kraken - North
- Sea Queen - North/North-East
- Boar - North-East
- Fish - East/North-East
- Great Warrior/Warmonger - East
- Crab - East/South-East
- Scarab - South-East
- Feather - South/South East
- One-Eyed Shark - South
- Bear - South/South-West
- Arrow - South-West
- Flame - West/South-West
- Boat - West
- Snake - West/North-West
- Eagle - North West
- Turtle - North/North-West
The final chapter
Now you've got your Star Jewels, you need to go slot them into a statue in the uncharted underwater vault found at N13 on the map. Swim down to the cave on the west of the island and slot them in, picking up the notes below the statue whilst you're there. For your trouble, you'll receive a totem. Where you need to go, depending on which totem you have, is poorly explained, so here's a quick cheat sheet. On each island, you're looking for cave paintings that depict the prefix of the totem. You'll find a truly tiny slot where you can place the totem to unlock a vault. If you're very lucky you'll get the crab totem, the slot for which is right behind you after you slot in the star jewels.
- Crab – Uncharted Vault Island (N13)
- Moon – Crescent Isle
- Scarab – Crook’s Hollow
- Boar - Devil’s Ridge
- Shark – Kraken’s Fall
- Snake – Mermaid’s Hideaway
Puzzling poetry
But wait, there's more! Now you're in the vault you'll be faced with another rotating block puzzle. For this one, you have to study the poem on the final page of the text. Make sure you figure it out before you light the braziers or you will drown.
To figure it out you have to link each line of the text to a constellation symbol, which you then have to display on the four blocks. Do this for each stanza. The best way to figure this one out is by looking at the descriptions to each indexed constellation in your book. They usually infer in the line what the symbol is, but they might not directly say it. For example, the 'Warmonger' refers to the Great Warrior symbol. The 'Patient One' is the Turtle, and the 'Old Mother' is the Kraken.
Input your two solutions and you will receive the Shroudbreaker once more, which you can take back to Sudds to complete the mission.
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