Get Chills from Season 21 Community Weekend on October 23rd

A few months on from Season 20 Community Weekend back in balmy June, it’s time to light the torches and ease open the eerily creaking floodgates for a crepuscular celebration. We’ve got Community Emissary Grade boosts and Twitch Drops, there’ll be Pop-Up Plunder (and Pop-Up Blunder) to track down, and you can get involved in Tricksters and Treaters to hit some special Community Spirit Goals too. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves…

Board Hoarders

Let’s start with what’s different this weekend: the return of the long-absent Tricksters and Treaters Event! In its latest incarnation, this old favourite focuses on the Quest Board found at Outposts, encouraging players to post maps that either lead to buried treasure worth at least 10,000 gold or conceal Gunpowder Barrels for a comedy explosive surprise.

Doing this contributes to one of two Community Spirit Goals – Treat Together or Trick Together – and if players hit these cumulative targets, everyone who’s posted at least one qualifying map will be rewarded with the Treater’s Prize Hat, the Trickster’s Prize Hat or both, as appropriate. Happily, accepting maps from the Quest Board also offers its own reward to play for, with the perky Pocket Pumpkin Emote provided to any player powering through five or more.

Want stuff for free? Can’t be doing with all that earning malarkey? Very piratical. Fortunately you’ll get your mitts on the Season 21 Community Weekend Flag just for jumping into the game this weekend, plus a free daily Voyage of Wild Luck leading you to loot buried out there in The Wilds. And a complimentary Community Spirit Firework Crate will be left in the care of your closest Merchant Alliance representative!

Watching and Waiting

More free stuff exists in the realm of Twitch Drops this weekend, where linking your Twitch and Sea of Thieves accounts and tuning in to participating streamers will set you on a course to claiming another clutch of cosmetics. Half an hour’s viewing gets you the no-nonsense Stalwart Sea Dog Bucket, 1-3 hours will unlock a trio of Gilded Phoenix ship parts, and those who watch for four hours can enjoy the papercraft pleasures of the brand new Bat Cutout Emote.

Another good reason to clamp your eyes on streamers in Twitch’s Sea of Thieves category for at least some time this weekend is the Community Emissary Grade. Powered by total Twitch viewing time, this Grade rises from 1 to 5 as that duration steadily climbs, which in turn boosts gold, reputation, Seasonal Renown, Allegiance and Guild Reputation for all High Seas players for the remainder of Community Weekend. Get it to Grade 5 and everyone enjoys two-and-a-half times the going rate, which means you can revel in the same rewards for doing exactly… uh… not quite as much work.

Want to catch snippets of some of this in action? Season 21 Community Weekend (and the Festival of the Damned that follows hot on its heels) both feature in the latest episode of Sea of Thieves News. See below!

Pop Till You Drop

Of course, we couldn’t leave out that stalwart Community Weekend favourite, Pop-Up Plunder. If you’ve never partaken, these juicy hoards (not actually juicy, nobody wants that) are buried at dig spots you can find by following clues on Sea of Thieves social channels, posted every few hours throughout the weekend. There’ll only be one dig spot per server, not per crew, so depending on your competition it’s possible that even if you untangle the clues, another pirate could be quicker on the uptake and get there first…

Pop-Up Plunder despawns after one hour has elapsed, so time is very much of the essence when figuring out your destination and closing the distance. And providing the trick to this particular treat is the return of Pop-Up Blunder, meaning some likely dig spots may not disgorge quite what you were expecting.

Witness Me

Would you like a delightful hat to go with all that? Since its inception, Community Weekend has offered pirates the opportunity to obtain a Hat of Unfeasibly Glorious Fame. These can be handed out by us for an inspirational creation of some kind, for a dedicated display of devotion to the pirate life or just for being a previously unrewarded good egg in the community. If you want to shout out a creative crewmate or a generous stranger, or you’re confident that you yourself can #BeMorePirate in a way that’ll impress our faces clean off our heads, throw that hashtag in there as you submit your suggestion to be considered on Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky or Twitter/X.

We also want to see celebratory pics of your crew captured for posterity this weekend, and back to provide you with peak backdrop action are the Picture Walls – once again erected at each Outpost and The Reaper’s Hideout, along with Legendary Locations (now including Golden Sands Outpost) in Custom Seas. We would very much like to witness you all clowning in front of those too.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Weekend

And that’s that! Cling on tight to your chosen lower body garment as we speed towards another Community Weekend, running for the now-standard three days from Friday, October 23rd to Monday, October 26th (10am UTC). The place to be is on the High Seas to enjoy everything on the roster, and of course we welcome all the usual examples of your boundless creativity – clips and crafts, exceptional deeds, Picture Wall posturing, Custom Seas shenanigans, whatever you’ve got in the back pocket. Season 21 Community Weekend: be there, or be a player in possession of slightly fewer things than some other players.