The Cursed Sails event has thrown into focus the passing of time in the Sea of Thieves and how that is tracked in real time. Here is what I have learned.
SOT Time (Standard Ocean Time?) runs 60 times faster than time in the real world. Thus, each second in the real world is one minute in the game; and each minute in the real world is one hour in the game. Consequently, there are sixty game days (each lasting 24 real world minutes) in a real world 24 hours. These sixty days are split into two (unnamed) months of 30 days each.
The first month starts at real-world 00:00 (midnight) UTC (Universal Coordinated Time), also known as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) or, in military circles, Zulu Time. Thus, it is the 1st of a month from 00:00 to 00:24 UTC; and from 12:00 to 12:24 UTC. It is the 2nd of a month from 00:24 to 00:48 UTC; and from 12:24 to 12:48 UTC, and so on. This means that if you only get to play, for a couple of hours, at around the same time each day, you will always find it is the same five or six calendar dates, in-game.
Even the Poms, enjoying their hot summer right now, have to adjust for this. BST (British Summer Time) is one hour ahead of UTC.
It should also be noted that SOT Time is the same on every server. There is never any benefit in server-hopping to find a more suitable date and time.
The problem with the Cursed Sails event, discussed much elsewhere, is that Rare ran the skeleton ship attacks with different regions linked to certain days of the in-game month. This made it harder for people with jobs, family and even real ships in their lives to get onto the Sea of Thieves to complete every region. Rare are shifting it about in the second and third weeks of the event, to make completing every region a bit easier. But, in week one:
- The Cursed Helm attacks The Shores of Plenty between the 1st and 10th of the month, i.e. 00:00 - 04:00 and 12:00 - 16:00 UTC, each day.
- The Foul Grog attacks The Ancient Isles between the 11th and 20th of the month, i.e. 04:00 - 08:00 and 16:00 - 20:00 UTC, each day.
- The Dancing Demon attacks The Wilds between the 21st and 30th of the month, i.e. 08:00 - 12:00 and 20:00 - 24:00 UTC, each day.
My slowly-developing Sea of Thieves fansite now features a SOT clock/calendar widget, that lets you know the in-game time, without needing to fire up the game.
imgur.com
