The Ancient Isles is one of the original regions in Sea of Thieves, and while it is the oldest place around, not many players stay in this region anymore. Aside from Tall Tales or the occasional World Event spawn, this place is barren unless you run Athena’s Run of Thieves Haven. Crooks Hollow keeps the area somewhat populated since Athena’s Fortune reputation can take much longer to grind. Yet, thankfully it has fewer levels than the rest. I’ll show you one of the fastest ways to get your reputation up after becoming a pirate legend quickly. This guide really focuses on the Crooks Hollow Sea of Thieves island to maximize your efforts in the Athena’s run of Thieves Haven quest chain!
Normal Athena Runs
Going out on a voyage for Athena’s Fortune will put your skills as a pirate to the test. This is because your quest log gets filled to the brim with different tasks located on many different islands. The quests in your voyage will typically stay within the region you purchased them. From slaying skeleton captains to digging up treasure chests, solving riddles, and charting delivery routes is expected in a regular Athena’s Fortune voyage. All these quests are done in chapters. They will continuously fill your quest wheel as you progress and complete them until you obtain a Chest of Legends. However, these voyages can take an extremely long time to complete compared to other Emissary quests.
Ashen Athena Voyages is a more rewarding and challenging voyage to do for Athena’s Fortune. Ashen voyages send you to the Ashen isles to do the same style of quests. Yet, with extra dangers like active volcanoes and earthquakes. The payout is much more worthwhile. For instance, all the loot within the Ashen regions is rarer and set at a higher selling price.
The problem with these quests is they take a lengthy amount of time to complete. Moreover, only finishing chapters or obtaining Athena’s items will progress your Emissary Flag to around rank three, maybe four. Unless you want to sell for less, you will need to run two entire voyages to get your flag up to rank five, so you can sell for the most reputation and gold.
Athena’s Run of Thieves’ Heaven
Unlike regular voyages for Athena’s Fortune, you can obtain a mixed amount of loot for all factions with few items to give back to Athena. Queuing up a run around Thieves Heaven provides a lot more of the loot you are looking for and less travel time. Additionally, you have more minor quest variations; this requires doing more riddles and digging up treasure, aiming for more Athena loot, and going to fewer islands. On average, you will only go to three different islands in a Thieves Heaven run; the islands you will typically visit the most are Snake Island, Devil’s Ridge, Crook’s Hollow, and Thieves Heaven.
Snake Island and Crooks Hollow Sea of Thieves Islands
You will mostly get put into Snake Island and Crook’s Hollow Sea of Thieves map during a few chapters of this voyage, but Devil’s Ridge does occasionally show up. Snake Island has more specific locations because of how it’s split into three sections, but Crook’s Hollow has far more easily identifiable landmarks than the other two. Snake Island relies more on sun-shaped symbols, while Crook’s Hollow has far more interesting ones such as “Dueling Crabs,” “Painted Fire,” and “The Watcher.” Once you do this run a few times, it becomes far easier to identify these landmarks in comparison to the other islands.
Why Running Thieves Heaven is Better for Reputation Grinding
Overall, there is a lot less fluff and not as much loot when doing a Run of Thieves Heaven around Crooks Hollow. In other words, it’s far more efficient than setting sail for a normal or even an Ashen voyage. Sadly, there is still one significant downside that cannot be avoided by doing a Thieves runs either, which is one full quest rotation will not get you a rank five Emissary Flag. The brighter side is that since Thieves Heaven is much faster to complete, it means a much quicker grade five flag, even if it still takes over an hour for the fastest crews.
Now, you might be wondering what loot you’ll get from doing this run, especially since it seems to prioritize rarer loot, aimed explicitly towards Athena’s Fortune.
Dug up Treasure Loot
- Any Of the Three Mermaid Gems
- Chalice of Ancient Fortune
- Crate of Legendary Voyages
- Gilded Relic of Ancient Fortune
- Keg of Ancient Black Powder
- Chest of Legends
Riddle Loot
- Roaring Goblets
- Brimstone Caskets
- Devil’s Remnant
- Magma’s Grail
- Chalice of Ancient Fortune
- Gilded Relic of Ancient Fortune
- Villainous Skull of Ancient Fortune
Results to Expect from Athena’s Run of Thieves Haven in Crooks Hollow
You will get three extra selections of dug-up treasure loot added to the previous amount each time you return to Thieves Haven and three trinkets guaranteed from each riddle. One voyage roughly totals about 18 items from the dug-up pool and six items from the riddle pool; the more expensive the item is to sell, the rarer it is in the drop pool. It is also essential to keep in mind that you should take a green and red flame to the voyages to get a chance at getting a Fortune Skull. The final map randomly spawns a Skeleton wielding an Ancient Black Powder Keg that drops both that and a Fortune Skull on kill.
