sea-of-thieves

Sea of Thieves on macOS via CrossOver

This patch aims to address the following two issues:

1. The Xbox sign-in window crashes and/or is completely black.

2. Even making it past the Xbox sign-in, the game itself will struggle to authenticate and essentially go into a loop until eventually the dreaded 'Lavenderbeard' error appears.

The below script can patch both these issues, resulting in a playble game. Limited testing seems to indicate decent performance with no connectivity issues.

Things remaining to test:

• Audio / voice chat
• Naval combat
• Actually meeting other players
• First-time sign-in for a Microsoft account
• Controller support?

Caution

Our fellow Linux gamers using Proton seem to be running the game just fine through Wine and avoiding bans or other problems when sailing the high seas. Even if Rare's stance has been mild, this may change.

The patch for CrossOver's credential management will affect all bottles (and any games or apps therein). If you are unsure whether this may affect you, make sure to revert the patch once you are done trying Sea of Thieves.

These are experimental changes to (small) parts of the game.

Please use at your own risk.

Screenshot

Game running on macOS through CrossOver 23.7.1 + D3DMetal:

^{~60fps @ 1440p with low quality settings on an M1 Pro}

Prerequisites

• Sea of Thieves (Steam version only)
• Microsoft account (this is a multiplayer game after all)
• CrossOver 23.7.1 or CrossOver 24.0.0

Note

Enabling D3DMetal for Sea of Thieves under CrossOver 24.0.0 seems to crash the game. Will need some investigating.

Instructions

1. Install Steam and Sea of Thieves in a (fresh) CrossOver 23.7.1 bottle

2. Download the patch-sot.sh file

3. Make it executable: chmod +x patch-sot.sh

4. Patch libcef which is used for the Xbox sign-in window:

   ./patch-sot.sh libcef <path/to/Sea of Thieves>

   Note: If you get the message Found an unknown version of libcef.dll then the script most likely needs updating. Sea of Thieves seems to alter libcef.dll slightly with each release.

5. Patch CrossOver's advapi32 which contains seemingly bugged credential management:

   ./patch-sot.sh cx

   If you have installed CrossOver.app in a non-default location, pass it as an argument:

   ./patch-sot.sh cx <path/to/Crossover.app>

   If this fails with Operation not permitted temporarily grant Terminal full disk access under System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access.

6. Disable both DXVK and D3DMetal for your CrossOver bottle temporarily

7. Restart the bottle / CrossOver

8. Boot Steam, launch Sea of Thieves and sign in

   Note: the sign-in window is still notoriously unstable: if it freezes, stop the game via Steam and try again.

9. Once signed in, you may have to skip the intro movie using esc

10. At this point: quit the game, swap back to D3DMetal for improved performance 🥳

Important

If you run into any potentially problematic behavior (the game glitching, account lockouts etc.) please leave a comment so that others are informed.

Unpatching

Simply run the commands again to unpatch either libcef or cx.