Role Responsibilities:

• Led design for the Eternal Guard and Garrisons, from initial ideation and prototyping through launch and post-release tuning
• Built the Eternal Guard’s behaviour tree, abilities and attack behaviours, plus the summoned skeleton adds
• Designed the full encounter flow, including the opening ritual sequence, spawn locations, outro and finale
• Structured and paced the encounter’s character callouts so story beats landed clearly during combat
• Designed Garrison layouts, exterior passive and ambush waves, traps, interior waves and the vault finale fight
• Balanced Garrison loot pools for each company voyage type, including the Mega Stash, and documented gold-per-hour and XP values for Garrisons and the Eternal Guard
• Contributed to this season’s lorebooks which could be found at set locations around the world which drove the narrative forwards with the Smuggler faction.
• Used player feedback and live data to tune the encounter and Garrisons after launch

Project Challenges:

Working within the limits of the existing AI systems:

• The original vision was for players to feel hunted, like the Predator films, with the Eternal Guard stalking crews across the island
• Sea of Thieves’ core AI systems couldn’t fully support that behaviour, so parts of the original design were cut and the encounter was rescoped around what the systems could reliably do
• The final fight plays out more as a choreographed duel than a hunt, with the Eternal Guard moving between distinct attack states

Making a high-health boss readable and rewarding:

• The Eternal Guard has very high health compared to player weapon damage, so the fight risked feeling like a grind
• Clearer wind-up animations and appearance changes telegraph each attack, and the armour visibly cracks as damage is dealt
• Vulnerability phases reward crews who deal enough damage quickly, giving players a clear goal beyond chipping away at health
• Balancing health, damage and phase thresholds took many rounds of tuning

Designing the finale explosion:

• The Eternal Guard’s final ability is a large explosion: instantly lethal at close range, with damage falling off and knockback applied across the rest of the radius
• Building a clear visualiser for the danger zone was key, so players could read the threat and react
• It was designed as a final “gotcha” moment, and seeing players react to it after release was a highlight

Delivering story during combat:

• The Eternal Guard’s story is told through voice lines that trigger as it changes state, with each set of lines tied to that specific behaviour (for example, Blowpipe lines reference the Widow they are loyal to)
• Death lines reinforce them as an ancient, oath-bound people: “Though I fall, the oath endures”
• Frequent state changes made the lines feel repetitive, so their frequency was toned down to keep the story present without overwhelming the fight

Pacing a multi-stage Garrison:

• Exterior waves are deliberately passive, with high numbers but low difficulty, to sell the feeling of a fortified stronghold
• Activating the mechanisms to reach the central building triggers ambush waves that challenge both solo players and full crews without being impossible
• Inside, each room plays as its own encounter: clearing a wave drops the key to the next room, ending with captain-level enemies that drop the vault key
• Spawn points vary within set locations, so enemies sometimes appear behind players or in their path, keeping repeat runs unpredictable
• Low-health standard enemies keep waves quick to clear, so the stages don’t feel repetitive

Responding to playtests and player exploits:

• Early playtests showed the Eternal Guard’s attacks were too erratic and powerful (even a full server of players struggled), so its behaviour was toned down and its cloak and uncloak were given clear audio cues
• Players could exploit the fight by shooting from their ship or from places the Eternal Guard couldn’t reach. If its target is off its navmesh or unreachable, it now cloaks, becomes invulnerable and wanders off, encouraging players to re-engage on foot
• Getting into a Garrison originally involved too many chained puzzle steps (find X to open Y to trigger Z), so the puzzle elements were pared back significantly, with UI popups and audio-visual feedback added to confirm when something had happened
• The main door is now opened by three levers, with three torches above the door that go out one by one as each lever is pulled. Players can glance at the door to see how many are left, which made the overall flow much clearer

Balancing loot across voyage types:

• Each trading company voyage uses its own bespoke loot, so Garrison vaults had to be balanced separately for every variant
• Players expect a full-looking vault, but some variants use fewer, higher-value items, so quantity and value had to be balanced against each other
• Garrisons were positioned as a step up from Sea Forts, reflecting the extra danger of the Devil’s Roar