Sea of Thieves Permanently Scraps Voyage Diving After Season 21 Test: All 7 Xbox Achievements and PS5 Trophies Getting Reworked
Introduced back in Season 11 to let crews submerge beneath the waves and fast-travel directly to their quest destinations, the Voyage Diving mechanic has officially reached the end of the line. In the latest official Developer Update published via the Sea of Thieves portal on November 5, 2026, Production Director Drew Stevens shared the final verdict on Season 21's no-diving experiment: Rare is permanently scrapping Voyage Diving and actively reworking seven Xbox, Steam, and PlayStation 5 achievements that were previously tied to the feature.
Why Season 21's Server Experiment Sealed the Fate of Voyage Diving
While diving to quests and Raid Voyages offered a convenient shortcut for time-strapped pirates, its underlying technical cost proved detrimental to the broader sandbox. Because every dive migrated the crew onto a fresh server instance, ships were constantly vanishing from the map rather than sailing across it, draining servers of active crews and gutting the spontaneous player encounters that made Rare's pirate sandbox one of the best co-op and multiplayer games to play with friends.
Following Season 21's trial removal of diving for standard voyages and world event raids, Drew Stevens confirmed that internal telemetry showed a dramatic turnaround: crews now remain anchored to individual servers significantly longer, keeping seas populated and restoring organic naval standoffs, alliances, and contested loot hauls. Only the on-demand PvP matchmaking queue tied to the Hourglass of Fate will retain its diving transition, which is undergoing its own targeted matchmaking trial.
All 7 Sea of Thieves Achievements and Trophies Getting Reworked by Rare
For completionists and trophy hunters,whether playing on consoles or using tools that run PC Game Pass games locally on Steam Deck,the sudden removal of diving created an immediate roadblock. Seven specific achievements introduced since Season 11 explicitly required players to "Dive to, and complete, a Voyage" for each Trading Company, rendering them temporarily unobtainable once the Season 21 experiment went live.
Rare has now confirmed that none of those achievements will be permanently discontinued. Instead, the studio is updating the unlock requirements across Xbox, Steam, and PS5 so that all seven rewards can be earned through traditional surface sailing and voyage completion:
| Achievement / Trophy Name | Associated Trading Company | Legacy Diving Requirement Being Reworked |
|---|---|---|
| Voyager of Gold | Gold Hoarders | Dive to, and complete, a Voyage for the Gold Hoarders |
| Voyager of the Soul | Order of Souls | Dive to, and complete, a Voyage for the Order of Souls |
| Voyager for the Alliance | Merchant Alliance | Dive to, and complete, a Voyage for the Merchant Alliance |
| Voyager of Bones | The Reaper's Bones | Dive to, and complete, a Voyage for The Reaper's Bones |
| Hunter of the Noble Voyage | The Hunter's Call | Dive to, and complete, a Voyage for The Hunter's Call |
| Shady Smuggler | Smuggler's Run | Dive to, and complete, a Smuggler Voyage |
| Legendary Plunge | Athena's Fortune | Dive to, and complete, an Athena's Fortune Voyage |
My Perspective
It takes real design humility for a live-service studio to admit that a headline Season 11 quality-of-life feature ended up hurting the soul of the game ten seasons later. Voyage Diving was convenient for solo grinding, but it quietly turned Sea of Thieves into a revolving door of empty seas where ships popped in and out of existence instead of crossing paths on the horizon. Pulling the plug on quest diving while reworking all seven affected achievements so completionists aren't locked out of 100% Gamerscore is the healthiest move Rare could make for the sandbox.
Based on the outskirts of New York City, Chaya 'Chayane' spent five years studying software engineering in Montreal before returning to her home state. A Full-Stack developer and Deep Learning AI architecture researcher, she explores neural networks and algorithmic optimization while engineering data pipelines for Retrocharting and Gamescharting alongside Grimtag. A gamer for over 20 years and an avid collector of Nintendo history and The Legend of Zelda, she explored World of Warcraft's Azeroth before bringing her deep technical background to video game analysis.
