All Sea of Thieves Instruments and how to play them

There’s a lot of equipment that’ll come in handy as you adventure across the ocean in Sea of Thieves, but none are quite as important to crew morale as instruments. Whether you’re uncovering buried secrets or battling other ships, performing a good shanty is guaranteed to enhance the experience.

Luckily for new players, the four instruments in Sea of Thieves are all automatically unlocked during the Maiden Voyage quest. The only components of them you might want to purchase are cosmetic variants, which are available at the majority of vendors, from the equipment shops at Outposts to the sellers in the Athena’s Fortune Hideout.

How to play instruments in Sea of Thieves

In Sea of Thieves, all of your instruments are accessed through the equipment menu. After opening the radial menu, select the instrument you wish to play to equip it.

From there, hold your primary inventory use button (RT or LMB by default) to start playing it. You can also pick the shanty you want to play by clicking the shanties button from within the equipment menu while you are holding your instrument of choice. The shanty will play for as long as you hold down the button. If you stop and start again, though, you’ll begin playing a new shanty instead.

If you’re playing with a crew, whichever player starts playing their instrument first will be designated as the lead instrument and dictate the shanty everyone else’s instruments will also play.

While playing instruments is a sandbox tool mostly reserved for a bit of fun with your friends as you sail the seas, it does have utility as a gameplay element as well. Playing an instrument charms snakes, pacifying them so they can’t poison you as you walk past them. This is also incredibly useful when trying to capture them with snake baskets, saving you from taking unnecessary damage in the process.

Every instrument in Sea of Thieves

As of writing, there are four instruments in Sea of Thieves:

• Banjo
• Hurdy-Gurdy
• Concertina
• Drum

All of the instruments are able to play the same suite of shanties, however some shanties such as “We Shall Sail Together” and “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life)” are only unlocked after meeting certain pre-requisites. These can range from reaching the status of Pirate Legend to completing commendations for Tall Tales like A Pirate’s Life. With 15 shanties available by default, however, you’ll have no shortage of tunes to play with your merry band of rogues.