Sea of Thieves Lavenderbeard

Rare names this code but does not publish the wording it prints on screen, so we quote only the code itself: Lavenderbeard. Any site showing you an exact message for it has written one.

What it actually means

Rare's own wording puts the causes in order: “Mainly caused by the servers being down for maintenance. This can also be caused by Firewall and Antivirus updates blocking the game client, or ISP connection issues.”

Their dedicated article adds a fourth cause that catches people after every patch: the client version has fallen out of sync with the server because a newer build was deployed. And on PC there is a fifth, specific to Steam, where the stored Xbox Live credential goes stale.

That is why this is the single most searched beard code and also the most misdiagnosed. Five unrelated problems share one name.

How to tell which one you have

Check the Sea of Thieves status page first. If a maintenance window is running, stop — nothing on your machine is broken and nothing you do will help. If status is clear and the game updated recently, it is a version mismatch. If status is clear and nothing updated, suspect your firewall or antivirus. If it only happens on Steam, it is the Xbox Live credential.

Fixes, in the order worth trying

1. Check status before anything else — If a window is open, waiting is the fix. Every other step below is wasted effort during maintenance.
2. Update the game — On console, a hard reset forces the check. On PC, look for the update in the Microsoft Store rather than in the game.
3. Allow the game through firewall and antivirus — Rare names antivirus and firewall updates specifically: a security update can start blocking an executable that worked yesterday.
4. On Steam, clear the stale Xbox credential — Open Credential Manager, go to Windows Credentials, find the entries named Xbl_Ticket, and delete the ones containing 1717113201 — or 804980065 on the Insiders build — then sign in again. This is Rare's own procedure and it is the fix almost nobody mentions.
5. Re-link your Xbox Live account to Steam — If clearing the credential did not take, the link itself needs rebuilding.
6. On PS5, delete saved data and re-link — Rare publishes a separate procedure for PlayStation, because the cause there is the Microsoft account link rather than the credential store.

Operator documentation: support.seaofthieves.com. Rare documents every beard code in one catalogue, last updated 22 May 2025, and that catalogue states its own completeness. It describes causes and fixes but never quotes the message the game prints, which is why this page does not either. Lavenderbeard is the only beard code Rare gave its own dedicated page to, which tells you how often it comes up.

Common questions