If you’ve ever wanted a portable Harpoon, then the Grapple Gun is the loadout weapon for you! Not only can you reach high peaks in a matter of seconds, but you can also grab the treasure, pull in pirates, and gain an advantageous angle for boarding a rival ship! With the Grapple Gun’s ability to unlock unique traversal methods, you’ll never look at exploring the Sea of Thieves the same again.
Grapple Gun
The Grapple Gun is a traversal loadout weapon that can Grapple solid surfaces by firing a rope with an arrowhead attached. Depending on the surface you hit with the arrowhead, you can Harpoon an object to reel it in or Grapple a surface and propel toward it.
Grappling onto the environment like the ground, a mountainside, or a cliff will propel you towards that surface, rapidly accelerating before detaching on impact and launching you upwards with a short vault jump. Grappling a ship will behave the same, minus the small jump.
Harpooning an object like an item or pirate will pull it towards you. You will hold the item once you reel it in, and pirates will land directly before you.
Grappling Skeletons, Phantoms, or Sirens will not reel or propel but instead will damage them.
Each time you fire the Grapple Gun, it uses up an arrowhead that you must reload. Like all loadout weapons, you can restock your arrowheads with Ammo Crates, Armouries, or Ammo Pouches. You can carry up to five arrowheads at once.

How do you get a Grapple Gun?
Similar to the Blunderbuss, Cutlass, Eye of Reach, and Flintlock, you can equip it as one of your two loadout choices at the Armory on your ship. You don’t need to purchase it or find it out on the sea.
Like all other loadout weapons, you can use any Ammo Crate, Armoury, and Ammo Pouch to restock your Arrowheads.
You can also equip the new Blowpipe from the Armoury. To learn more about this silent weapon, check out our guide here!
How to use the Grapple Gun
You can fire the Grapple Gun while aiming down the gun’s sights or by hip-firing. However, shooting the Grapple Gun without aiming down the sights is much less accurate. While aiming down the gun’s sights, you will move and aim slower, similar to other loadout weapons.
When you fire the Grapple Gun, it shoots a rope tethered with an arrowhead. It uses an arrowhead each time you fire it, regardless of whether you hit something.
Once you hit a surface, the arrowhead will embed in it. Depending on the surface, the Grapple Gun will either Grapple and propel you toward the object or Harpoon and reel in the object,
Grappling
If you shoot the ground, rocks, a building, a mountainside, a cliff, or a ship, the Grapple Gun will propel you toward the surface. You will rapidly accelerate toward the surface as you travel along the rope.
Once you reach the surface, the Grapple Gun will disconnect from the rope and automatically start reloading the gun. You will also perform a small jump, allowing you to vault over the surface. However, you won’t perform the jump when Grappling a ship, preventing players from boarding over the deck.
If you collide with other objects as you travel along the rope, the Grapple Gun will disconnect, breaking you off the rope. You also cannot cancel the Grapple midway through.
It is important to note that you cannot Grapple Rowboats docked on a ship or floating in water.

Harpooning
If you shoot treasure, Resource Crates, or pirates, the Grapple Gun will reel in the object. The speed of what you reel in will vary depending on the object. Harpooning pirates will travel the slowest, while harpooning treasure will travel faster.
When you fully reel in a piece of treasure, it will transfer directly into your hands. Fully reeling in a pirate will place them directly in front of you. Similar to Grappling surfaces, you cannot cancel the Harpoon midway through.

Grappling Ships
Grappling ships is a different experience depending on the vessel you are trying to board and whether you are in the water.
While in the water, you cannot Grapple any ship’s mast, yard arms, wheel, harpoon, or crow’s nest. On the Sloop, you cannot Grapple anywhere within the rear canopy, preventing you from entering from the back of the ship.
You also do not gain the small jump at the end of Grappling to a ship. Not having the hop at the end of your Grapple will prevent you from quickly boarding a vessel from the water.
With those restrictions, you can only board the Sloop and the Brigantine from the water by climbing the ladder. So, to use the Grapple Gun to board either of those ships, you will want to Grapple the ladder itself on either vessel and quickly interact with the ladder to grab it or Grapple elsewhere on the hull that places you in a suitable position to get to the ladder.
However, unlike the Sloop and the Brigantine, the back balcony around the Captain’s Cabin of the Galleon allows you to board by Grappling above the balcony and landing on it. You can also Grapple above the three side ledges on each side of the Galleon to get a foothold on the ship.
If you are not in the water, you can Grapple the top deck of a ship if you have the angle. So, if a vessel passes by you while you are on a cliffside above or in a crow’s nest looking down on another ship, you can shoot the deck to descend onto the ship.
While you can Grapple the top deck of a ship from above, you will find it impossible to Grapple a vessel’s top deck specifically after being shot out of a cannon.

Grapple Gun Exclusion Zones
The Grapple Gun is a powerful traversal tool that allows pirates to access previously difficult-to-reach locations. The Grapple Gun could even allow you to skip entire areas of several experiences or break the flow of scripted events. That’s where Grapple Exclusion Zones come in. Grapple Exclusion Zones limit the use of the Grapple Gun’s Grapple and Harpoon abilities in specific areas.
Some of these areas include:
- Diving Tunnels
- Invasion Tunnels
- Tunnels of the Damned
- High areas in the Ancient Temples below Skeleton Camps
- Locked Captain’s Cabin of Lost Shipment Shipwrecks
- Locked Captain’s Cabin of Legend of the Veil Shipwrecks
- Siren Shrins
- Siren Treasuries
- Athena’s Hideout
- Various locations throughout the Shores of Gold, Ashen Age, A Pirate’s Life, and Legend of Monkey Island Tall Tales