UPDATE: If you are working on Puzzle 2, head here! If you are working on Puzzle 3, head here!
Stage 1 of the Mystery has begun, and the first Puzzle is now available for all pirates to solve! Head to the official Sea of Thieves website to sign up and get started. Once signed up, you can work on the first Puzzle: Skin of Gold. Solving the Puzzle online will allow you to claim an in-game Voyage from Larinna at any Outpost and work on the next part of the Mystery.
Puzzle 1: Skin of Gold
The Letter
Each Stage 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 first letter, which reads:
I trust you’ve seen my rules are SHAPED for Hoarders at their heart.
Just DON’T use COMMON PIRATES in your stead, and we can start!
First think of health and what you need to keep you fighting fit.
And FOODS that help survive both shot from gun and cutlass hit.
But there’s a DARK side to what we eat when time and life collude.
Old it becomes and rotten too, with scent of death imbued.
You must check in all the TIME. What if it’s now no good?
Be it PIG in PEN or FRUIT that’s stored in tuneless DRUMS of wood.
PICTURES paint a thousand WORDS – or so some artists say.
You must seek to LINK the two. Now hurry on your way!
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 Instagram!
The Bruised Banana
One minute after the Mystery started, the official Sea of Thieves Instagram account posted a story featuring a bruised banana. The bruising created an image of the Gold Hoarder.
The bruised banana art led pirates to another Instagram account, Banana Bruiser, that specialized in bruised banana art. One of their posts features the Gold Hoarder banana and shows Banana Bruiser bruising 13 symbols into the banana.
As hinted at in the letter with the capital words “PIG,” “PEN,” and “FRUIT,” you can put these symbols into a Pigpen Cipher decryption tool to reveal the text bitlysotfruit.
The Link
Using a Pigpen Cipher on the bruised symbols from the banana you can create this link: https://bit.ly/sotfruit
The link will take you to a OneDrive with five images named from the fruit in the Sea of Thieves.
The Fruit
In the OneDrive are five images with more Pigpen Ciphers to decode. You’ll need to connect the split symbols and rotate them correctly to create the symbols. You’ll want to match their orientation to the Fruit Crate that was posted by the official Sea of Thieves Twitter account.
Once you have rotated and revealed the correct symbols, plug them into the Pigpen Cipher to reveal the following decoded letters:
- Banana = HKD
- Coconut = BNR
- Pomegranate = ASL
- Mango = DTI
- Pineapple = JJYG
With the Pigpen Cipher solved, it’s time to figure out the other puzzle in the fruit images.
Take note of the Spotify symbol found on each parchment. That’s where you will be heading next!
The Spotify Clips
Scanning any of the Spotify codes from the fruit images with your mobile phone will send you to the official Sea of Thieves Spotify account in the Spotify app. Listening to songs in the app will allow you to watch a small clip play alongside them.
Hidden in the small clips for specific songs on Spotify, you can find the letters “B,” “O,” “U,” “N,” “T,” and “Y.” Which, when put together, spell the word BOUNTY.
The songs with the clips and letters are:
Again, you must listen to the songs on your mobile device to see the clips with the letters.
The Vigenère Cipher
The next step is to use the solutions from the Pigpen Ciphers and the word from Spotify you’ve discovered together to form the code.
While many pirates were already trying to use a Vigenère Cipher to decrypt the decoded fruit letters, a Twitter post from the official Sea of Thieves account confirmed that the community was on the right track! You see, the Ship’s Crest has the word RIPEGREENCHIVE on it which is an anagram for VIGENERECIPHER.
Entering the decided fruit letters with the key BOUNTY into a Vigenère Cipher will give you the final code. However, the order of the decoded fruit letters in important!
You need to order of the letter segments for each fruit in alphabetical order. Putting the letters into the correct order will give you ASLBNRDTIHKDJJYG.
Now, plugin ASLBNRDTIHKDJJYG with the key BOUNTY into the Vigenère Cipher, and you will get ZEROUTCFOURFIVET.
You can then translate ZEROUTCFOURFIVET into the code 0UTC45T to reveal the the answer to the Puzzle!
What is the code to the puzzle?
The code to the puzzle is: 0UTC45T.
That’s the number zero, capital U, capital T, capital C, the number four, the number five, and capital T.
What's next?
Now that you have solved the Puzzle, it’s time to jump into the Sea of Thieves and claim your in-game Voyage from Larinna. Completing the Voyage will end Stage 1, and you will be ready for Stage 2 to commence!
If you need any help with the Voyage, we’ll be updating our guide for it as we go along here: The Hunt for the Plated Silver Key Voyage.
You said you would give us the answer
As soon as we know! Like we mentioned, no one has solved the Puzzle yet. We are working on it with the rest of you and sharing our findings as we go 🙂
thank you seafriend theres some pirates we never use socialmedia at all never so imposible is a great word to say ill never answer the first riddle but too easy to find the key..i hope rare be aware of that on the next one..so again thanks to every one to resolve the puzzle
chill
Some people are so rude
Has anyone explored the duck theory yet?
You just have to be patient and they will eventually figure it out
wait, is the cipher key the one on the wikipedia page? how do i find the key for the banana part, so I can work out the fruit pictures part?
You can put the symbols from the banana into this Pigpen Cipher decryption website and get the result. You can use the same site for the other symbols too.
yes
bounty can be found in the glitches on the videos
Like the word bounty?
yeah theres glitches in the videos linked to gold hoarders soundtracks they spell out bounty
yeah the word
But if I enter “bounty” I’m told that it’s wrong
Bounty isn’t the end. There’s still more to go!
yeah this has been really fun so far lol
Maybe a character with a bounty on them?
On the sea of thieves official website there is a photo with someone’s face crossed out i believe it could be Humphrey the gold hoarder.
My group figured we need to rotate the images to get the fruit orientation correct before doing the cipher, which gave us the different result of dkh pnb asl itd llxi
Oh okay, interesting! We’ll add that to the section about the fruit for other pirates to easily see. We’ll find out the correct way once we know where to use it!
your solution to the fruit cipher is incorrect, the second way you have them listed is the only orientation that matches the fruit crate, and it is impossible to get GYJJ on pineapple
PepperTitan’s solution is the only one that matches the fruit crate
The coconut is flipped Vertically so you have to flip its cipher texts and the pineapple is rotated and flipped vertically. You can confirm by comparing the small details on the fruit on the images and the crate. So the actually solution is
Banana = DKH
Coconut – BNR
Pomegranate – ASL
Mango – ITD
Pineapple – GYJJ
This is what I got too. Really not sure what to do with that though. I even played with the orientation of the fruit being the orientation of the letters. Here’s what I have along with a quick explanation at the top of the following for others wondering how we arrived at our letters:
Decoded Pigpen by fruit order shown on crate:
DKH – Right Side (banana – rotate 180 degrees)
BNR – Left Side (coconut – transpose horizontal)
ASL – Right Side (pomegranate – no change)
ITD – Bottom Side (mango – rotate 270 degrees)
GYJJ – Right Side (pineapple – transpose horizontal)
Raw Concatenation:
DKHBNRASLITDGYJJ
Backwards Right Sides – Mango Top Down:
HKDBNRLSAITDJJYG
Backwards Rights Sides – Mango Down Top:
HKDBNRLSADTIJJYG
Backwards Left Sides – Mango Top Down:
DKHRNBASLITDGYJJ
Backwards Left Sides – Mango Down Top:
DKHRNBASLDTIGYJJ
I’ve tried each of these codes for the solution but none are correct. I’m happy to entertain any suggestions as for what to try next.
They almost look like the old cheat codes for the zelda game and zelda just came out today
I got HKD BNR ASL DTI LLXI
LLXI could be roman numeral 50 + 50 + 10 +1
I thought that too. However, LL isn’t s proper Roman numeral because “C” makes 100. Therefore 50 + 50 (L+L) doesn’t exist.
And now you have discovered(great job!) the word bounty, but is there any other paths to follow?
Not that we know. It seems like everyone has hit a roadblock for the moment.
people are saying they are finding glitches in videos, what videos?
The Spotify videos we believe. That’s where we found the “bounty” letters.
could you give me a link please?
They are linked in the above were the names of the songs
Perhaps Bounty doesn’t lead to another website, maybe it is a cipher. I’ve already tried base 26, I’m busy so I can’t commit to trial and error.
Maybe we hit a roadblock because in the letter it says something about Time, maybe new information is getting released over time?
We were thinking the same thing. That perhaps it cannot all be solved in one day?
A dev popped into PhuzzyBond’s twitch stream and confirmed it is not timelocked
So is the coconut one PNB or BNR?
The coconut is mirrored so I’m not sure and both solutions are one here
People are debating about it right now. It depends on how you rotate the symbols.
I rotated all the symbols and found 8 possible combinations for the pigpen solution but none of them make sense and look just random letters, maybe we need to shuffle the letters in some order to get what we want. I did the cross symbols puting the letters clockwise, but if you change the initial spot of the cross you get other 8 codes, i didnt triend to do counter clockwise but you can get different combinations.
If you use the PIGPEN cypher on the letters using bounty as key you get
BOUNTY HAROLD PLANK WALK
How’d you use a bounty as a keyword? I’ve been trying without success
This seems very important, but I don’t understand how do this part. Can anyone confirm? Is HAROLD PLANK WALK the important clue?
no pigpen does not require a keyword
I’m curious if Captain Kidd’s Kids (1919) is somehow related, based on this clue. The film stars Harold Lloyd and, in it, his character is forced to walk the plank.
BQF PNB BSG AYPP ASL?
Probably nothing but the fruit code can spell light
im still stuck on the bruised banana story on instagram i can’t find any post of the sort
Also on the teaser on the website there is a person with their eyes crossed out
what minute/second of the video
Not a vid but the poster
The next bold word is drums
It says drums of wood. Could that mean a barrel? Drum is a synonym for barrel sometimes.
Chicken Drums pretty sure
It says tuneless drums so barrels
banana barrel…
What about herdy gerdy?
From the sound of the initial message I could have sworn we’d be using a ROT cipher, but I guess it would have been capitalized like PIG PEN if that were the case. Running out of ideas at this point.
The word bounty is only rarely used when in sot unless it configured to the order of souls… or one other thing.
The Reapers Bounty chest.
And it just so happens that sot released a picture of one/ mentioned it in the “Season 9 The Journey So Far…”
“880,000 Reapers Chests and Bounties Sold ”
maybe something in the picture will lead us to the next clue
as it says
“Pictures paint a thousand words”
We like where your head is at!
i would like to mention the dice in the photo being 4 not too sure what this could mean possibly something important to season 4, or the shores of gold tall tales 4, maybe the 4th journal in the shores of gold tall tale
In the picture by the Dice is a x scratched into the table, I do believe without checking X4 is the shores of gold island too
that’s what I was thinking. it’s also the only number in the photo that isn’t abbreviated other than the chest of fortunes.
thinking about it didn’t the shores of gold have 4 vaults? isnt there also 4 bosses in the shores of gold tall tale. each vault required the right 4 blocks.
There are symbols on the reaper’s bounty chest, one of them looks like it could be pigpen and the other one I don’t know.
They appear to be an unknown skeleton rune and another skeleton rune meaning ‘gold’ but I’m not sure how to link that to the info we currently have.
The fruit code is a red hering
Not sure if it has been mentioned but the code is a 30 character limit, if that narrows it down at all.
Been throwing “DKHPNBASLITDLLXI” through a bunch of key-based cyphers, using “bounty” as the key, and I’m coming up with jibberish that might have an answer, but no telling if that’s the case.
If you use the pigpen cipher on ‘DKHBNRASLITDGYJJ’, you get ‘FORTOFORTUNE’. Could lead to something to do with those?
Edit: The phrase ‘FORTOFORTUNE’ actually comes from the string of letters with LLXI at the end. The phrase with the new string of letters is ‘EASTMOSTPENINSULA’. It has something to do with the Devil’s Roar, maybe Morrow’s peak Outpost?
Edit: All the possible codes have been decrypted using the PIGPEN code:
DKHPNBASLITDLLXI = FORTOFORTUNE,
DKHPNBASLITDGYJJ = EASTMOSTPENINSULA,
DKHBNRASLITDGYJJ = FORGOTTENMASOULEUM, and
DKHBNRASLITDLLXI = FORGOTTENISLE.
I hope this information helps in the community’s effort to find the first keyword.
Forgotten isle and mausoleum could refer to the uncharted isle at N13? And the temple underneath the water?
there is another uncharted isle too that has an underground area
The letter count doesn’t match up
The east most peninsula would be Flintlock Peninsula.
wut?
Which cipher are you using, pigpen uses symbols for encoded text
Vigienere cypher might work for “DKHBNRASLITDGYJJ”. Using “BOUNTY” as the key word results in nothing, but when running with 4-6 character length keys on dcode.fr, you get some results somewhat resembling words. Idk if this will actually be fruitful though.
What if the pineapple code, LLXI, is roman numerals or something also because it says that is can regen to full health, you know. But I’m not just just an idea.
In the bottom of the letter it says You Must Seek To Link the Two. What if it is talking about bounty and the fruit code
ignore this comment, thought it wasn’t approved
The compass points south (S) and the dice are on 4 (1 and 3) has anyone tried running the pigpen Cypher through a shift Cypher of either S=4 (12) or S=13 (21)
above the gold hoarders on Port Merrick there is an open book showing a kraken and 3 dice on a table 6, 3, 1
does “bounty” have to do with the HMS Bounty?
Sailors Bounty derelict barrel cache?
Is there anything we could find in the devils roar
Not sure if i’m on the right path here. But if you take the last LLXI for pineapple has a hint for roman numerals, and take the healing values for all the other fruits and convert those to roman numerals you get XXXXXXLLC. Replace the XXXXXX with bounty and you get bountyLLC which the “LINK” between the two could be the page on linkedin which is a maritime transportation company but I can’t find anything else from this https://www.linkedin.com/company/bounty-llc/about/
I like this theory but I also came to a dead end when trying to see if there was more. clicking the show me location on the LinkedIn page brings you to the address for the business. the map doesn’t show anything for Bounty LLC but the building has a marking for Davinci. that made me excited but nothing seemed to come of that. even tried APPLE on the sea of thieves page for the code hahaha.
My only other thought for the inclusion of the word LINK was the sea of thieves official Linktree page. but also came up with nothing there. and don’t know how bounty or the fruit code would even connect. there is a documentary on the linktree i have not yet had a chance to watch but it is a little over an hour long. at a skim nothing jumped out at me.
Ya still havn’t gotten anything out of that link, maybe just multiple unfortunate coincidences
be interesting if bounty just referred to one of those twitter Sunday-Vibes videos of islands like sailor’s bounty they post every so often.
I just stopped by Sailors bounty (above and below ground) checking for anything different than it was earlier this week. No differences that I can readily report. Performed about 5 minutes of exploratory digging around the islands as well. Checked to see if I could replicate the spot where the fruit crate was pictured.
I realized that if you look at the images from afar, they seem to have a strange background. What if the background is sharpened?
Which images do you mean?
What if the backgrounds of the One Drive photos are sharpened. They seem to hide something
Maybe BOUNTY and EAST MOST PENINSULA could be talking about the box of wonderous secrets
Possibly a keyword cipher? “Bounty” could be the keyword and the fruit code can be the phrase
Or maybe bounty refers to the reapers bounty
I put DKHBNRASLITDGYJJ on the end of a bit.ly link and it took me to a youtube video by Natasha St-Pier called Tu trouveras. The song title translates to YOU WILL FIND but I tried YOU WILL FIND BOUNTY and BOUNTY YOU WILL FIND as the code and neither worked. So I guess “linking the two” is a bit more complicated than just the word BOUNTY and the Fruit code. Or maybe I just got a lucky bit.ly link and it has nothing to do with it.
I also want to point out that putting a + at the end of the bitly link shows it was made May 11 . . .
this video is definitely a next step!
Anyone can purchase a quote though so I would not trust anything that was created one hour past the launch date
Hey, just wanted to say for the Spotify canvas ones, you’re missing the T picture 🙂
Oops! Thanks for the heads up 🙂 Fixed it!
If you won it, would you sell it or keep it? I still searching like hell right now
Leaves us with Time – Drums – Link from this sequence and deciphering the fruitcrate symbols (DKH PNB ASL ITD GYJJ).
Ey you type like me
drums, i think k = Spotify tunes. What about SHAPE ? Looking at the picture of the letter , we can see a coin image on a book pointing down (triangle shape ) , but on their inta page, it pointing in another direction. The compass is showing south , and dice = 3 . There’s also LINK
LINK, Isn’t that the main character in Legend of zela. Don’t they have a new game out today . SOT Twitter also mentions not sheding a tear if you in another kingdom today. Could the island is from be the location ?
And didn’t they say that the mystery had been delayed for copyright reasons?
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sea-of-thieves-dev-we-get-it-its-ok-go-play-tears-of-the-kingdom-today/1100-6514107/
Rare’s tweet about tears of the kingdom seems like they’re dropping a clue here?
https://twitter.com/SeaOfThieves/status/1656917180355604480/photo/1
You could be onto something…
https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Bounty_of_the_Sea
link -> the sea
I see everyone reading the mango as ITD. I read it as DTI. Start from the fruit and go up.
I also decoded it like that but considering we read book pages from top to bottom… IDT makes more sense
code I get is DKH BNR ASL DTI GYJJ …try that!
This is so fun…
There was a character called Bounty Bass in one of the old Donkey Kong games I believe. No clue if this is at all related but thought I’d bring it up
To decrypt this string “DKH BNR ASL ITD GYJJ”, you must use the Vigener cipher with the “bounty” key.
The Vigener cipher works as follows: each plaintext character is replaced with a ciphertext character using a table that depends on the current position in the keyword. For encryption and decryption, the Vigener table is used, which is a table in which the letters of the alphabet are repeated cyclically.
To decrypt this string, you first need to translate it into uppercase so that it matches the key. Then the following formula is used for each letter of the string:
decrypted letter = (encrypted letter – key letter + 26) %26 + ‘A’
Where ‘A’ is the code of the first letter of the alphabet (65 in ASCII), and ‘%’ denotes the operation of taking the remainder.
Applying this formula sequentially to each letter of the string and the key, we get the decrypted text: “THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS”.
Nice try but that code does not work…
Aren’t foxes the newest pet in SOT?
Wong the output of this is CWNOUTZERVAFFKPW
There is no way that the decrypted msg has a different number of characters when you use this cipher
To decrypt “DKH BNR ASL ITD GYJJ” string, you must use the Vigener cipher with the “bounty” key.
The Vigener cipher works as follows: each plaintext character is replaced with a ciphertext character using a table that depends on the current position in the keyword. For encryption and decryption, the Vigener table is used, which is a table in which the letters of the alphabet are repeated cyclically.
To decrypt this string, you first need to translate it into uppercase so that it matches the key. Then the following formula is used for each letter of the string:
decrypted letter = (encrypted letter – key letter + 26) %26 + ‘A’
Where ‘A’ is the code of the first letter of the alphabet (65 in ASCII), and ‘%’ denotes the operation of taking the remainder.
Applying this formula sequentially to each letter of the string and the key, we get the decrypted text: “THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS”.
My attempts result in seemingly random numbers
but what does that fox say?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_quick_brown_fox_jumps_over_the_lazy_dog
Maybe someone can figure something out with this…
if this is what i think it is this could be a possible new alphabet for a pigpen……..
this is a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_quick_brown_fox_jumps_over_the_lazy_dog
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cryptography/Polyalphabetic_substitution
It’s a saying related to Cryptography it seems…
I just thought you should know the description for the Auburn Fox is “If you have lazy dogs aboard, these quick brown foxes may try to jump over them.”
The Auburn Fox description is “If you have lazy dogs aboard, these quick brown foxes may try to jump over them.”
If the code is translated into a link, it redirects to the given song “Natasha St-Pier – Tu trouveras”. There is a line in the song “in my songs you will find”. I have reviewed most of the songs, the most relevant, which is called “survival instinct”, refers to the wreck of June 14, 1931 ship.
Here’s wiki:
More than 500 people drowned in the capsizing of a French tour boat, the Saint-Philibert, when it was toppled in a gale while returning to Nantes from the Île de Noirmoutier. On departure from Nantes, the boat was carrying 467 adult passengers, a seven member crew, and an unknown number of children who were accompanying their families for the excursion. The overloaded Saint-Philibert sank in the Loire river within sight of Saint-Nazaire, and only eight people survived.
i’m sure it’s the next step!
this bit.ly was created one hour past the official launch so that is most definitely not an official SOT content
could FORGOTTEN MAUSOLEUM = Shrine of the Coral Tomb
do you know if the code is only one phrase because I am wathing a sea of thieves livestream at the moment and I saw the word “BRB” and someone told the chat he solved the puzzle.I do not know if it is a prank or not.
does the hoarders hideout map mean anything
Did you find the code? Or not yet?
Nope, not yet! No one has.
On a french Discord, someone claims to have found the code… Is this the case elsewhere ?
try reversing the fruit code also the banana bruiser has a pig pen symbols on it and you have to look at them to first symbols to the last i got UITLYSOTTFR
Mayby fruitlysot?
Bitlysotfruit
Has anyone thought that it could be totally different and somewhat Zelda related? The new coin looks like the triforce, one of the zelda games has a recipe for a roasted banana, there is a ‘Dark’ version of link, and so many other connections and also the ‘link’ between it all could be the hero Link, no idea where I was going with this but just thought
https://rarethief.com/how-to-solve-the-skin-of-gold-puzzle-in-sea-of-thieves/#comment-34661
https://twitter.com/SeaOfThieves/status/1656917180355604480/photo/1
Yes it seems likely after this tweet
Maybe it’s a link to the past 😉
This may be far fetched…but….what if TIME and LINK are iron?….you have to constantly check the iron the entire time, if it is taken out to early its bad, if its taken out to late its bad…you also have to quench at the right moment…and iron can “LINK” together…check out the Golden Bananas quest video…. They are making the Golden Bananas out of iron….AND make sure to read the story on that page by the videos….thoughts?