UPDATE: If you are working on Puzzle 3, head here! We’ll be updating our findings along the way!
Stage 2 of The Hoarder’s Hunt Mystery is live, and the second Puzzle is now available for all pirates to solve! If you still need to complete Stage 1 of the Mystery, Skin of Gold, you’ll need to complete that before starting Stage 2. Once you’ve done the Puzzle and Voyage for the first Stage, you can begin working on Stage 2: A Feathered Fortune.
Solving the online Puzzle for Stage 2 will allow you to claim an in-game Voyage from Larinna at any Outpost and work on the next part of the Mystery.
Puzzle 2: A Feathered Fortune
The Letter
As before, Stage 2 of the Mystery begins with a Puzzle for you to solve, and each Puzzle starts with a letter delivered to the Gold Hoarders. The Gold Hoarders have opened the letter for the next Puzzle, which reads:
Before I sinned, Iโd sit in the TAVERN and sing shanties.
Iโd eat BANANAS and watch the gulls float upon the breeze.
Then things changed, the Hoarderโs pet MACAW became my vengeful bane!
Ever since, fearโs driven me to spy these beasts through windowpane.
Their scratching claws, their pecking beaks, I cannot stand these BIRDS!
But understand that secrets lie within their chosen WORDS.
Wise it may be to spy through glass, to view a PARROTโs perch,
And listen out for CLUES that may well help you on your search.
With the clues given inside the letter, you can now scour the internet for the answers. You are ultimately looking for a code to submit on the official Sea of Thieves website. Entering the correct code will unlock the in-game Voyage and allow you to work on the next part of the Mystery.
The first part of the internet you will be investigating is YouTube!
A Message from H
As soon as Part 2 of the Mystery started, a mysterious live stream from the official Sea of Thieves YouTube channel began with the title, ‘A Message from H.’ Featured in the stream are two colorful parrots randomly speaking and walking around the tavern. Some of the words spoken by the parrots are shady, skull, and misfits.
However, the words spoken by the parrots are just one area to focus on. Undoubtedly, dozens of clues hidden throughout the background will help us find the answer to the Puzzle! Two of which are a banana and a link in the video description!
The Banana
More banana codes! Well, at least one more for now. Around the 14-minute mark of the ‘Message from H’ video, a banana comes into the frame with more Pigpen symbols.
Decoding these symbols from left to right will reveal the phrase “what three words.”
The Pigpen answer could be a clue that we are looking for three words. We may need to find which of the three words the parrots spoke during the stream are vital to the Puzzle. How we will use them to find this out remains a mystery for now. However, the next clue could shed some light!
Google Maps
In the ‘A Message from H’ YouTube video’s description is a link to Google Maps. The link is disguised as an official Sea of Thieves link but was indeed a Google Maps Link:
For anything else, go to: https://aka.ms/Sea_Of_Thieves
The Google Maps link combined with the phrase “what three words” has led the community to the website https://what3words.com/. what3words takes three different words and translates them into a real-world location. So the three words we chose could lead us to our next clue based on the place what3words translates to!
The Transcript
A day after the ‘A Message from H’ surfaced, the official Sea of Thieves Twitter account tweeted that their best parrot interpreter listened closely to the message and shared their transcript with the community. The transcript revealed the following words spoken by the parrots:
- Washed
- Frost
- Robot
- Misfits
- Shady
- Goat
- Rocked
- Skull
- Lives
- Handy
- Chest
- Dawn
- Turkey
- Diet
- Parrot
- Chickens
- Locker
- Cannonball
Turkey Goat Lives
After countless hours of trying different combinations, a community member discovered that using the combination ‘turkey.goat.lives’ on what3words will take you to the Cutty Sark near Blackheath, London. The Cutty Sark is the last surviving British tea clipper and is now a museum.
With the hint about using Google Maps from the original video description, exploring the Cutty Sark in Google Maps will allow you to find a 360 image left behind by H of aย parrot sitting on a sign with a Gold Hoarder coin.
Painted around the Gold Hoarder coin is another Pigpen Cipher that translates to bitlysotfeathered. As we know from Puzzle 1, this is another bitly link!
The Link
Using a Pigpen Cipher on the Gold Hoarder coin will create the text bitlysotfeathered, which you can turn into this link: https://bit.ly/sotfeathered
The link will take you to a OneDrive with an image of a parchment with lines of symbols. The symbols almost resemble bird footprints.
Another thing to note is that a bounding box highlights the last line on the parchment.
We Shall Sail Together
A few music-savvy community members noticed that the symbols on the parchment lined up with the shanty, ‘We Shall Sail Together.’ The mysterious ‘H’ also mentioned that he sang shanties in the letter opened by the Gold Hoarders.
Now, the exact words to the shanty don’t align perfectly, but if you were to spell them phonetically, they do! So plugging in the actual shanty lyrics:
Cloaked in folds of midnight waters
Side by side, we sons and daughters
We set forth for no king’s orders
But we’ll sail together
Hold fast! Tides are turning
Flames roar! Fires are burning
We’ll all be returning
If we sail together
…into a phonetics translator will give you:
klษสkt ษชn fษสldz ษv หmษชdnaษชt หwษหtษz
saษชd baษช saษชd, wiห sสnz รฆnd หdษหtษz
wiห sษt fษหฮธ fษห nษส kษชลz หษหdษz
bสt wiหl seษชl tษหษกษรฐษ
hษสld fษหst! taษชdz ษห หtษหnษชล
fleษชmz rษห! หfaษชษz ษห หbษหnษชล
wiหl ษหl biห rษชหtษหnษชล
ษชf wiห seษชl tษหษกษรฐษ
Place the letters above the first seven lines of symbols to create a legend that you can use to create the phrase on line eight: ษksbษสks waษชษ mษหks รฐ spษสt
Pronouncing that phrase will give you a new one, Xbox Wire Marks the Spot.
Xbox Wire
Xbox Wire, an Xbox news site, recently published an article called “Sea of Thievesโ New Mystery Aims to Be โThe Ultimate Treasure Huntโ, With a Real-Life Golden Skull on Offer.” You can visit the page here!
The promo image used in the article immediately caught the eye of many pirates. The original version of the image did not have a parrot in the crow’s nest. With eyes focused in on this particular image, it was time to finish the Puzzle!
As the last clue suggests, Xbox Wire Marks the Spot, hinting that this is the final destination for the Puzzle. And, a the end of a hunt, what do you look for? An X!
And indeed, hidden inside the promo image for the mystery is a tiny blue X. Using a color tool to pull the Hex Color of the X will reveal the code, 2faced. Not only is that the color of the blue, but the final code!
What is the code to the puzzle?
The code to the puzzle is: 2FACED.
As soon as we find out how the community came to that conclusion, we will update the article! In the meantime, good luck on your next Voyage!
What's next?
Now that you have solved the Puzzle, itโs time to jump into the Sea of Thieves and claim your in-game Voyage from Larinna. Completing the Voyage will end Stage 2, and you will be ready for Stage 3 to commence!
If you need any help with the Voyage, weโll be updating our guide for it as we go along here: The Hunt for the Argent Silver Key Voyage.
it looks like rathbone aka gold hoarder is the one that is murdered, the guy that is under the picture of the greedy guy form port merrick is shady and Humphrey must be the rival
Does anyone have a complete list of the words they spoke?
oops, didn’t mean to make that a reply
The three words could be three words that both the parrots say.
i dont think the red parrot actually says anything
These were all the words I was able to understand from the parrots. Rock lost shiny skelly pretty problem worms turkey murder jailhouse dying rowboat shady fishhooks parrot Jack shark chickens best friends here cannonball got handy just. Hope this helps!
replace turkey… with “turn key”. In addition to “rock”… maybe the birds say “lock”? Turn key – lock
Turn key to lock jailhouse. Mabey
What about how the picture changed 3 time in the video the one on the left
Yeah it changed from Tribute Peak (aka Shores of Gold) to Port Merrick
Maybe it’s the words during the 3 picture changes?
Char gpt
what 3 words….the app
In the Instagram post with the Ara is an second picture on top you can see it in the left top corner
We know that the person in images 1 is Gold Hoarder, also known as Rathbone. Does anyone know the identity of person 2, 3 or 4?
As far as I can tell, 1. is Gold Hoarder, 2. could possibly be Hugh the gold hoarder, 3. i cant tell and 4. could possibly be Humphrey the gold hoarder.
There is a map in one scene that seems important. https://freeimage.host/i/HgqxyIs
The parrots also said the words “skull”, “chickens”, “cannonball”, “chest”, and possibly “west” but I’m not sure about that one
did someone play the video backwards yet?
I think the three words are going to be said by the birds in moments described in the letter —BANANAS, MACAW, BIRDS
so, maybe the next word after multiple bananas are shown on screen, the first word spoken by the red Macaw (or are they both macaws?) And the first word spoken after or when both birds are together on screen?
Then, put those three words into just3words.com to get a square location , then hit “navigate” or “Google” to get taken to Google maps, then maybe explore a street view from there?
I don’t have time to scour the video super close, but that would be my method if I did
i feel that we are on the right path… the pigen cipher revealed what three words. I don’t feel it necessarily means we go to “what3words.com” but, it is currently the best lead we have, given SoT’s google maps reference. There are a handful of interpretations of what the birds are saying. Taking the clues from H’s letter literally, would indicate that we should “listen” to the birds and “spy” from glass to see the parrot’s view. They say “Rock” numerous times; and, looking through that window pane, you see a giant rock in the background. I’ve tried rock in combination with every other word the birds say on “what3words” and i’m coming up with nothing definitive. I have tried to “reverse” the words in Vigenere cipher too.. still a work in progress.
https://imgur.com/a/Cdn0sxw
I have managed to get a somewhat clear picture of the overlay from the instagram post.
It looks like a still from the parrot video, maybe?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Seaofthieves/comments/13l33h9/comment/jkp5xyy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Just found this reddit comment. The overlayed picture is one we already know
It looks exactly like the picture for the Skin of Gold puzzle.
Well if it’s any consolation “misfit.hoarder.blast” takes you to the middle of the ocean by Santa Cruz da Graciosa
Skull rock lost brings you to skull rock in l.a and there is some writing on skull and some yellow glowing photoshopped plants
Didn’t someone like Falcore or someone find out that Sea of Thieves takes place north of there?
Nope I got that wrong sorry about that.
TAVERN BANANAS MACAW BIRDS WORDS PARROT CLUES
Maybe a clue – in the complete Video is only one Parrot with the green red head and then we can see in this times
5:37
7:30
8:04
8:58
10:24
11:15
11:49
12:47
13:24
13:52
16:30
17:51
18:03
2 Parrots and they change we can see the most time then the red head parrot maybe in this pictures a clue ….???!!!
Many combinations lead to the seas around japan
Wise may it be to spy through glass. The parrots in the window! What island or location is through the window, and then it changes to a town or tavern for one second and then back again.
I put in โrock wreck chickenโ and it gave me some place in Alaska ??
This link calculates all possible 3 word combos which can then be checked on “what3words”
https://www.mathsisfun.com/combinatorics/combinations-permutations-calculator.html
What about shady, hoarder, rowboat for the 3 words?
That is in the middle of the ocean
“H” is an assassin! The gold hoarder is crossed out because he died and the guy from the last mystery’s eyes are crossed out because he is also dead. Also the new sea of thieves logo’s eyes are crossed out in gold.
My idea is that the three words link to the 4 picture of those characters. Rathbone is crossed out so it could make it 3. But I’m not sure who these characters are but just wanted to see if someone knew them.
A few things!
My buddy sent me an update via a Tweet that someone posted talking about a bird on a wire cipher. They wrote:
“Just so you guys know I am in the middle of deciphering this code I think the birds position mean something because there is a Birds on a Wire Cipher And the first 4 letter/ big movements the bird has done spells out ahoy which makes sense so far.”
I would take this into consideration given the heavy use of the ciphers from the previous puzzle.
I think that the dice that are pictured in the riddle and then the parrot video are important. I say this because on a whim I analyzed the dice in the pic which are 1, and 3. Then I analyzed the dice in the video. they’re shown twice. One time there is the 1 side on the die showing and a 6 side showing on the die also partially showing a 3 side of the die. In the what3words site I plugged in “one.three.six” and it gave me a UK location near a residential neighborhood in a place called “Bishop’s Cleave.” While the neighborhood and surrounding area didn’t stand out to me, what did stand out to me were the names of the roads. All of the roads are named a specific stone, like “sapphire” “emerald” “ruby” and so forth. I thought this interesting as the table the parrots are walking on are covered in these stones. After this I am sort of lost to any connection and I feel it might be a herring, but I want others to know about it in case there is something I just don’t see.
Final thing! I also spotted news that a 17th century El Galeรณn replica ship arrived to the Weymouth Harbour, which is making me think that rare might take the opportunity to do something with it. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-65637069
Oh! I also forgot that out of the 4 gold hoarder posters on the wall I was able to identify 3 of the 4. The far left is Rathbone the original gold hoarder with the “X,” the one the the right of Rathbone is Hugh at port Merrick, the far right is Hyde at Morrow’s Peak. I can’t identify the middle one to the bottom. It doesn’t match any of the rest other than being closest to Henry at Galleon’s Grave.
Your w3w is wrong, that’s the result for “one.tree.sits”. Just a happy coincidence, sorry
could it be the three words are ripe green chive? considering they used pigpen again they could have used the same phrase.
a little bit of help, is that words like murder aren’t assigned locations in what 3 words so you can kinda filter what you try.
There’s a new YouTube video with captions for what the parrot is saying.
A Message from H – YouTube
do we know how many times each word was spoken by the parrots. Can we put the top 3 words in the three words map?
Washed x2, Frost x4, Robot x6, Misfits x3, Shady x4, Goat x3, Rocked x4, Skull x1, Lives x3, Handy x2, Chest x4, Dawn x1, Turkey x2, Diet x3, Parrot x1, Chickens x1, Locker x1, Cannonball x1. My count using the list in the transcribed video.
according to the yt subtitles there are 6 chest 6 robot and 6 rocked
https://what3words.com/Robot.Rocked.Chest
https://what3words.com/Robot.Chest.Rocked
https://what3words.com/Rocked.Robot.Chest
https://what3words.com/Rocked.Chest.Robot
https://what3words.com/Chest.Robot.Rocked
https://what3words.com/Chest.Rocked.Robot
that’s a lot of airports
Edit : well, nevermind ! that was the count according to chatGPT (I don’t know why I’m still asking it stuff)
If you change robot to rowboat you get very different locations in the ocean
I got Hawaii for on and Puerto Rico for another
Maybe you have to connect the w3w locations.
These Birds is underlined in the Letter.
I think maybe, Chickens, Turkey, Parrot are the Words for https://what3words.com that we are looking for.
But we can’t find a useful combination yet.
I tray with the three BIRDS: Turkey, Parrot, Chickens
What exactly are we looking for at these locations? Does anyone know?
We are not entirely sure. Perhaps the name of the city? Perhaps a clue in the Street View at the location?
One of the words is rocked. The sea of thieves YouTube channel recently made a short where someone was looking at a map of shark bait cove and then they accidentally crash into a rock. Probably nothing but here is the link: https://youtube.com/shorts/ijtJWIWZO0s?feature=share
What about good old Morse Code? Using the “Clicks” and “Whistles” betwixt the parrots words?
Something I haven’t seen mentioned is what happens at 17:19 in the birds video. I took the sharpest screen grab I could and put it here: https://imgur.com/a/jsQFslX
There’s an image of a pirate or an NPC in the bottom left of the framed image, as well as what looks like spyglass zoom-ins all over it. I couldn’t find any more info on the framed image so I suspect it’s important; otherwise, why pan over to it and sharpen the image?
Subtitles are now available on the video.
Using Rareโs confirmed words the Parrot says, I did the next logical thing. Find patterns/frequency. Simple task of counting, which has also already been done; but then, break down into categories of frequency.
– Most time spoken
– Least times spoken
– 3 word patterns (ie. Which 3 words are spoken same amount of times)
I’ve run multiple variations and everything’s coming up Milhouse… until: Robot/Shady/Chest: Oadby, Leicestershire, ENGLAND โ 54 Stoughton Ln. Then, view on Google earth Imagery and you can view older images of the house. On the older imagery, there’s a work van in the driveway from 2021 (cynlijohn is the company). Then an image from 2010, shows a trash can outside the house with the word (SOLU). That’s just the name of the trashcan brand. But this house is very nice and in the same town as Rare HQ. Might be one of the DEVs house??
โUsing Rareโs confirmed words the Parrot saysโโฆ
link please?๏ปฟ
I looked in that address and noticed there’s something in the window looks like a glowing blue thing but might be tripping
I found something that said OP 831
Has anyone tried taking the words from the video and putting them in the place of the capitalized words in the letter? One of the first things I tried was using the first letter of every capitalized word. But that was before I saw the video. So maybe the words are supposed to be changed to give you a different set of letters. For example the word BIRDS could be substituted for another word like MISFITS. I did not manage to complete this yet, it’s way too early for me. But someone smarter might be able to run with this idea.
Just a thought but the whistles and clicks by the birds could be moarse code.
So my theory is that we have a List of Parrot words. Then we have dice, that give us numbers. Maybe those number correspond to the three words we need to use?
https://pastebin.com/xvAVbKFD
njoy…
Has anyone tried deciphering the banana code with the skeleton runes or writing
Sorry I don’t understand, the code is a pigpen, like before ? I don’t see them matching the runes you mean.
It’s a pigpen code : WHAT THREE WORDS
oh ok
So what words we need tho?
anybody figure out what kind of cipher is in the image, inside of the bitly link?
Not yet!
It is the lyrics of the theme song, the last line says EKSBOX WIRE MARKS THE SPOT – thats as far as I have gotten
โLyricsโ?
Please explain?
The top portion is the phonetic lyrics to “We shall sail together”, which you use to decode the bottom half. If you sound it out phonetically, it gives “Xbox Wire Marks the Spot”
im not entirely sure it is a set cipher i think you have to decode it yourself given all the other words above the bolded box
The writing on the bitly link looks like ancient Mesopotamic writin. I just dont know how to translate cuz every alphabet I found is different (and im kinda stupid)
Hi everyone I think the bird footprint look like summerian language
Iโve been trying to find something that can translate the text but nothing will scan the text, there is an app I found that will scan the text but it costs 10 dollars a month or something like that, if someone is willing to spend 10 bucks once the app is called TRANSLATOR GO photo voice text
Goldbug cypher??
I read the article, and there are words in brackets throughout the article. Those words are So, Until, and This is. Not sure if I am overethinking, but it seems weird that the bracketed words form a partial sentence.
It’s 2FACED Dont know how they found it but it’s the answer
can confirm just entered it, now i’m logging in to do the voyage