Sea of Thieves Emissary Ledger Guide: Flags Grades and Monthly Rewards
How emissary flags, grades, and the monthly Emissary Ledger tiers work in Sea of Thieves, with flag values, grade multipliers, and tier rewards.
Flying an emissary flag in Sea of Thieves is basically a handshake with a trading company. You spend the session working for them, and they pay you back with bigger gold, faster reputation, and a shot at monthly leaderboard loot. The catch is simple: the flag makes you a target, and losing it hands the other crew a payday. The whole setup landed back in 2020 with the Ships of Fortune update and it still works the same way, so here's the full loop, from buying your first licence to cashing a Grade 5 flag at the table instead of watching it float off your wreck.
Joining an Emissary Company
Buying the licence
Every company sells an Emissary Licence for 20,000 gold, and it's a one-time purchase per company. Most of them want rank 15 first: Gold Hoarders wants the Gold Swabbie promotion, Order of Souls wants Mystic Apprentice, the Merchant Alliance wants Merchant Cadet, and Hunter's Call wants Tempered Hunter. Then there are two exceptions. The Reaper's Bones have no rank requirement at all, though you do have to sail out to the Reaper's Hideout and buy it from the Servant of the Flame in person. Athena's Fortune flips it the other way and gates the licence behind Pirate Legend status, sold by the Pirate Lord down in the Athena's Fortune Hideout.
Guild licences are free once the guild hits rank 15, since a guild basically counts as its own company.
Here's the part a lot of crews miss: only one pirate needs to own the licence. Anyone who has it can put the vote on the table, and the whole crew sails under the flag. So for a mixed crew of new players and veterans, one person can front the 20k and everybody gets the payout boost.
Finding your table
Emissary tables sit next to each company's representative at the outposts. The Athena's Fortune table is over by the Mysterious Stranger in the tavern. Reaper's Bones tables are small shrines tucked out of sight at every outpost, plus the big one in front of the Servant at the Hideout. Your ship has to be docked nearby to use any of them, so the game won't let someone left ashore raise or lower the flag while the ship sails off.
Voting works like voting on a voyage. Majority rules, the flag goes up, and you're locked to that one company until you lower it. No flying two flags at once.
Emissaries are also a High Seas thing only. Safer Seas has no emissary tables at all, so practice runs there happen flagless.
One nice touch before you commit: the table shows tiny ship models for every active emissary of that company currently on your server. Five little boats on the Gold Hoarders table means five Gold Hoarders crews are sailing with you. Free intel, worth a peek.
Which company should you fly for?
Gold Hoarders is the gentlest start. You dig up chests on maps, and the Sovereigns will even hand the loot in for you at the dock, flag bonus included. Order of Souls is skeleton hunting with a side of combat practice. The Merchant Alliance is cargo runs and commodity flipping, kind of a pain solo but great money in a crew. Hunter's Call joined the emissary club in Season 15 (the Wild Seas update, early 2025) and grades up off hunting and fishing. Reaper's Bones is the PvP pick, open to anyone from day one, but your ship shows on every map table the entire time you fly it. Athena's Fortune is late-game legend content.
The usual advice holds: fly whatever company you're actively ranking up. The gold bonus gets the attention, but the multiplied reputation is the quiet half of the value.
Raising and Protecting a Flag
What the flag actually does
Raising the flag puts two banners on your ship: a big one on the stern and a pennant above the crow's nest. The pennant gets longer and more notched with every grade, so anyone with a spyglass can read roughly how built-up you are from a distance. Spyglass an emissary ship and you'll even hear a short tune, which is a handy audio tell in the dark.
While the flag flies, everything you sell to that company gets your current grade bonus stacked on top, and the extra shows as a separate line when the payout tallies up. Sell through the Sovereigns and it still counts, with one exception: Reaper's Bones emissaries only get their bonus selling directly to the Servant of the Flame (or the Caged Skeleton), never through the Sovereigns.
Who can see you
For most companies, the flag makes you visible but not trackable. For Reaper's Bones, the flag doubles as a Reaper's Mark: your ship appears on every crew's map table the whole session, with little red lines on the marker showing your grade. The trade comes at Grade 5, when Reapers get to see shadowy map markers for every other emissary ship on the seas. Hunter's Call gets a softer version of the same idea at Grade 5, recent sightings of Ancient Megalodons on the map table.
So a high-grade flag is a walking advertisement. A Grade 4 or 5 ship has almost certainly got a hold full of loot, and everybody knows it.
What your flag is worth to someone else
When an emissary ship sinks (or scuttles), a Broken Emissary Flag bobs up where it went down. Only the Reaper's Bones buy those, and the price scales hard with the grade that ship had reached:
| Flag grade | Gold (approx.) | Reaper emissary value | | --- | --- | --- | | Grade 1 | 1,600 | 6,000 | | Grade 2 | 3,500 | 12,000 | | Grade 3 | 5,500 | 18,000 | | Grade 4 | 7,600 | 24,000 | | Grade 5 | 9,500 to 10,500 | 30,000 |
Stolen flags sell to the Servant of the Flame at the Reaper's Hideout, or to the Caged Skeleton at any outpost if you don't fancy the trip. A broken Reaper's Bones flag can even go to the Mysterious Stranger for Athena's Fortune reputation instead. The exact gold wobbles a bit per roll, but the emissary value column is fixed, and it's why sinking emissaries is the fastest way to climb the Reaper ledger.
Two details that surprise people. Scuttling drops your flag too, right next to your Captain's Logbook, so scuttling to deny a hunter the prize doesn't work. And if you fish out and sell your own ship's flag, you get exactly 1 gold for it.
Protecting the flag is mostly just selling often and checking the horizon. Sell in smaller batches instead of one giant parade, and treat a full hold plus a far-off Reaper as a prompt to find an outpost now rather than after one more island.
Increasing Emissary Grade
What fills the bar
Grades (I through V) measure how much company work you've done this session, and the bar fills from doing the work, not from selling. Things that count:
- Progressing and finishing that company's voyages and quests
- Picking up company treasure for the first time, and putting it on your ship for the first time (each item counts once, and it resets if another crew claims it)
- Finishing world events, like killing the Skeleton Lord at a fort or the final captain of a skeleton fleet
- Beating megalodons and krakens
- Taking down emergent skeleton captains, Ashen Key Masters, and Ashen Guardians (Order of Souls and Athena's crews)
- Killing rival emissary pirates, for Reaper's Bones crews
The big quirk: selling loot does almost nothing for your grade. The exceptions are cargo crates, resource crates, animal crates, and gunpowder barrels tied to an active voyage or quest. Everything else you sell pays out great but leaves the bar alone, so a crew that hoards a full hold and sells once has the same grade as a crew that sold the same loot at each stop.
Why grade is worth chasing
The grade multiplies your gold, your reputation, any doubloons, and your emissary value all at once:
| Grade | Bonus on payouts | | --- | --- | | Grade 1 | base reward | | Grade 2 | +33% | | Grade 3 | +67% | | Grade 4 | +100% | | Grade 5 | +150% |
That top grade is 2.5x on everything you turn in, which is why people hold loot until Grade 5 before the big sell-off. Guild flags run a weaker version of this (+15% up to +75%) but apply it to loot from every company, which suits crews who like variety.
You can watch the bar in the Reputation tab of the pirate menu or on the equipment radial. There's no fixed numeric target published for each grade, it just fills faster the harder the company work is, so treat it as a progress bar rather than a checklist.
Grade 5 perks
Hitting Grade 5 unlocks a one-time bonus per flag raise. Most companies hand you an Emissary Quest from their representative: Gold Hoarders gets you 4 treasure maps holding 4 Admiral's Chests and 6 Baron's Chests, Order of Souls gets 4 bounty maps with 2 Vile and 6 Vicious skulls, Merchant Alliance gets 2 cargo maps with 6 crates, and Athena's Fortune gets a stacked mixed voyage with high-end loot like an Ashen Chest of Legends. Reaper's Bones and Hunter's Call skip the quest and give their map powers instead, and guilds get nothing.
Note the "one-time" part. Claim the quest, and if you want another in the same session you have to lower the flag, grind back up to Grade 5, and raise it again. Some crews run exactly that loop on purpose.
What resets it
Three things wipe your grade: sinking, scuttling, or lowering the flag at the table. Grade progress also doesn't carry between sessions. It's a spend-it-today resource, so a Grade 4 bar at the end of a long night is worth exactly nothing tomorrow unless you cash the loot before you log.
Reading Ledger Tiers
How emissary value adds up
The ledger ranks you by Emissary Value, and the only source is selling that company's treasure while flying their flag. Every item has a fixed base value, and your grade multiplies it, so the same loot is worth way more ledger points at Grade 5 than at Grade 1. A Captain's Chest is 2,400 value at base and 6,000 at Grade 5. A Villainous Bounty Skull goes from 3,240 to 8,100. A Stronghold Chest jumps from 12,000 to 30,000, which is why fort loot sold at high grade moves you up a whole tier band.
Reaper crews take a haircut: selling other companies' treasure to the Servant only pays a quarter of the item's original emissary value. Broken flags pay full value though, 6,000 up to 30,000 a pop, so flag hunting is the express lane up the Reaper board.
The four tiers
Each company's ledger splits everyone who participated that month into four tiers by percentile. The bands: top 25%, the 25 to 50% band, the 50 to 75% band, and the bottom quarter. Each band has its own name per company:
| Company | Bottom 25% | 50-75% | Top 25-50% | Top 25% | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Gold Hoarders | Castaway | Seafarer | Marauder | Captain | | Order of Souls | Apprentice | Mercenary | Chief | Grandee | | Merchant Alliance | Sailor | Cadet | Commander | Admiral | | Reaper's Bones | Follower | Servant | Keeper | Master | | Athena's Fortune | Seeker | Voyager | Guardian | Legend |
Hunter's Call and guilds run ledgers the same way these days.
Because placement is relative, the value you need shifts all month. The bar rises as other players sell, so a score that sat comfortably in the top 25% mid-month can slide a band by the last weekend. The pirate log shows exactly how much value you still need for the next tier, and the official website has full leaderboards if you want to see who's actually ahead.
What each tier pays
The bottom quarter gets nothing. The 50-75% band gets a title. The top 50% (the 25-50% band) gets a title plus a cosmetic from that company's rotating reward set, stuff like the Tribute Peak ship pieces for Gold Hoarders, Relic of Darkness for Order of Souls, Merchant Ambassador gear, Masked Renegade for Reapers, and Magpie's Glory with Legendary Spirit weapons for Athena's. The top 25% gets the flagship items, figureheads, wheels, sails, and flags from those same sets, plus its own titles like Captain of Golden Emissaries or Master of Eternal Emissaries.
Rewards unlock one item per month and in order, so you can't skip to the figurehead. Place in a paying band every month and the set builds up over time. There are also five achievements worth 20 gamerscore each for finishing five months in a company's top tier, with names like Gold Hoarder Incarnate and Feeding the Flame.
The ledger closes at the end of every month, everyone's value resets to zero, and rewards land after the close. So value you banked is safe once the sale happened, but the leaderboard itself is a monthly grind that starts over.
Cashing In Before a Sink
Sold money is safe
This is the rule that should shape everything: the moment an item sells, the gold, reputation, and emissary value are banked for good. A sink can only take what's still on your deck, your current grade, and your flag. Loot that already sold cannot be stolen back, which makes frequent selling the single best insurance policy in the game.
So the classic rhythm looks like this: run company voyages, stack the hold while the grade climbs, sell the big-ticket stuff once you're sitting at Grade 5 and enjoying that 2.5x, then repeat. Spreading sales across two or three outposts costs a little time and removes most of the disaster scenarios.
Lowering beats losing
If you've had enough for the night, don't just log off with the flag up. Sail to your company's table and vote to lower it, because returning the flag pays out based on the grade you reached:
| Grade when lowered | Gold returned | | --- | --- | | Grade 1 | 0 | | Grade 2 | 750 | | Grade 3 | 1,750 | | Grade 4 | 3,000 | | Grade 5 | 5,000 |
That payout comes with company reputation attached, and it's the difference between cashing out and donating. The same vote that pays you also wipes your grade and ends any active emissary quest, so finish the Grade 5 quest you claimed before you bring the flag down.
When the fight is coming anyway
About to get run down with a full hold? Whatever's sold is already yours, so prioritize getting loot to a vendor over winning a brawl you didn't pick. The Reapers circling you want the flag more than the chests, honestly. And keep the math in your head: a Grade 5 flag lowered at the table is a clean 5,000 gold in your pocket, but that same flag floating over your wreck is up to 10,500 gold and 30,000 Reaper ledger value in theirs.