News, updates and info from the Sea of Thieves.
News

Official Arena Dev Q&A

Hit reg! Cross play! Cosmetics! Etc! Roundups
On Wednesday the Sea of Thieves community team hosted a Q&A with some of the Arena leadership team. You can read the whole thing here, but to keep things nice and simple we’ve summarised the discussion below.   Q: When are we going to be able to play with sloops and brigs in the Arena? Shelley: We want to do this! In fact they’re currently in the Insider build for experimentation. We are working towards finding the right approach for adding all the ship types into Arena whilst creating a fair and level competitive playing field.   Q: Crossplay, the Opt…

A spartan surprise

Play Sea of Thieves before June 15th to nab the cosmetics. News
As part of his Inside Xbox appearance, Joe Neate revealed an exclusive cosmetic reward to celebrate E3. Play Sea of Thieves any time from June 10th till June 15th to receive the Spartan ship livery, sails, flag and figure head for free! Update: The Sea of Thieves twitter account answered some commonly asked questions about the Spartan set: To answer your Spartan Ship Set questions: To earn the set you need to play #SeaOfThieves between now and 23:59 BST on Saturday.| You can play either Adventure or The Arena to qualify. We'll add the set to your account within 72…

Sea of Thieves hits 8.4 million pirates

With a huge boost coming from the Anniversary Update. News
On today’s Inside Xbox from E3, Joe Neate made an appearance to chat with Major Nelson about Sea of Thieves. As part of the show, Joe announced that the game has now had 8.4 million unique players. He also mentioned that over 2 million unique players have played the game in the time since the Anniversary Update. Here is a summary of all the announced player milestones: 1 million players was reached in 48 hours 2 million players was reached in 1 week 4 million players was announced in June 2018 5 million players was announced in July 2018 8.4…

Announced: Sea of Thieves Roleplaying Game

Angle the sails! Man the cannons! Roll the dice! News
Yesterday on Reddit and Twitter, Sea of Thieves announced their official roleplaying game. We’re pleased to announce in partnership with Mongoose Publishing, the release of the Sea of Thieves Roleplaying Game. The Sea of Thieves Roleplaying Game is the only way to Be More Pirate on the tabletop! Using the new Avast system, we’ve ensured you’ll be playing within minutes of opening the box set, setting out on a Voyage designed to introduce both players and Gamesmasters to the Sea of Thieves. You will soon be fighting skeletons, uncovering buried gold, and hunting down a deceitful captain! The Sea of…

Arena lobby times have been reduced

Less wait before you dominate. Tidbits
Today Jason Cross, Producer of The Arena, announced improvements to the Tavern (lobby) waiting times. We have just implemented the following changes which you will begin to experience immediately: Reward Timer: 15 seconds – down from two minutes. (Time spent in the tavern following a contest when rewards are given and the banners are unfurled.) Staging Timer: one minute – down from five minutes. (Time spent searching for a fifth crew when you have four crews in the tavern. When this timer expires, your game begins the Ready Timer.) Ready Timer: one minute – unchanged. (Time spent when all crews…

Improvements are coming to riddles

Avoiding riddles on the seas, perhaps we could improve them please. Tidbits
We’ve all felt the pain of loading up a Gold Hoarders voyage to be greeted with a fat stack of riddles. They’re certainly fun at first. But the time required to complete them just isn’t worth it for a single chest, especially the 4-steppers. It’s long been the subject of mild irritation from players, with endless suggestion threads on Reddit and the official forums. With the recent addition of collectors chests to the game, there have been some suggestions use these to expand how riddles work. On a Reddit thread suggesting that riddles could perhaps drop trinkets to be stored…

Anniversary Update: New Achievements

Hot Tub Crime Machine! News
Sea of Thieves have just shared a full list of achievements for today’s Anniversary Update, along with a huge gallery of all the achievements art. Players have been asking for new achievements for some time, so it was exciting to hear there would indeed be a new set coming with this major update. A full 1,000 gamerscore is included, giving completionists some new targets. And of course, the achievement titles come with sprinkles of Rare’s classic comedic flare, ranging from Hot Tub Crime Machine to Rum ‘N’ Bass. Many of the achievements included at launch were very heavily tuned, causing…

Rare invited press to play the Anniversary Update [roundup]

Links to all the best reading from this weeks Anniversary Update coverage. Roundups
Last week Rare hosted press for a preview look at the Anniversary Update – the highly anticipated free update for Sea of Thieves coming April 30, 2019. The embargo lifted earlier today, so following is a round-up of all the press so far. There’s a huge amount of info nestled in these pieces, so we’ll have an ultra-detailed summary of everything covered in these press pieces a little later in the week. 🚨 Be aware that there are spoilers in these previews. If you want to go into the update fresh-faced and wide-eyed, you may want to turn back now. 🚨…

The Arena will be playable at TwitchCon

Not an Insider? Not a problem. News
Of all the additions coming to the Anniversary Update, The Arena is the one we’ve known about the longest. However, we’ve received very little new information since the new game mode was announced at XO18. But it looks like that’s about to change. We know that media will be visiting Rare this week to play The Anniversary update – and we expect to see write-ups about those visits in mid-April. Additionally, the Sea of Thieves dev team will be streaming The Arena on April 10th, where the team will “share more details, insights and glimpses from behind the scenes”. Following…

We’ll have to wait a little longer for Pets

They’re not quite ready for prime time. News
Eagle eyed observers would have noticed that Pets were conspicuously absent from the Anniversary Update trailer on Wednesday. At the time, I postulated that, since the mega update was a free update, pets (which will cost real money) were intentionally omitted to avoid confusion. Nope. Executive Producer, Joe Neate, confirmed on Twitter that pets aren’t quite where Rare would like them to be, so they’re taking the time to ensure they get it right. We’re not quite happy with where Pets are at yet. Been testing them with Insiders, taken feedback, had internal reviews, and not confident they’d meet our…

Sea of Thieves announces major “Anniversary Update”

The update will arrive on April 30th. News
The team from Sea of Thieves announced the details of their “mega update” today – now officially called the Anniversary Update. As well as The Arena (most of the details of which we’ve know since it was announced) the video, announcement and promo page give us some more details about things we know, and tip us off to some new things. Tall Tales – Shores of Gold introduces a new epic storyline to the world of Sea of Thieves, delving deeper into the lore of our favourite pirate paradise. Follow a series of narrative adventures surrounding existing and all-new characters, taking you…

Top 10 Sh*t Ideas from the development of Sea of Thieves

Press X to talk to Melto. Roundups
In the midst of his ongoing series of tweets covering the development of Sea of Thieves (full roundup here), Rare designer Gregg Mayles also starting a top ten list of sh*t ideas the team came up with that ultimately didn’t make it to the game. Sometimes you have to fully test an idea in context to get a real handle on how good/fun/worthwhile it is – so don’t view these too harshly. Hindsight is 20/20, after all. 1.  Magic Monkey’s Wonder Window Some ideas we tried were hilariously bad. Setting sail with #1 is ‘Magic Monkey’s Wonder Window’, which allowed…

The Sea of Thieves Insider Program is now live

RIP, Pioneers. News
After a slight delay, the Sea of Thieves Insider Program is now live! (Note: some users may have issues registering or getting the Insider build for the next day or so. Be patient, it’s not going anywhere.) Previously group of players with access to pre-release test builds of the game was known as Pioneers. This was a relatively small, closed group, made up of players originally from the early Alpha testing phases. With the Mega Update on the horizon, which will bring a huge amount of substantial changes to the game, along with the fact that some previous updates had…

A Gold+Rep boost weekend is on the way (updated)

Gold and Glory Weekend: March 15th-18th! Tidbits
Updated: 14 March 2019 The Gold and Glory weekend has now been announced and the countdown is live on the Sea of Thieves site. Pirates who sell loot to any trading company during the event will receive a “huge boost in gold and reputation rewards”. Orignal post: It seems as though some seaofthieves.com site code leaked out a little bit early. This image has popped up on Reddit, and shows a countdown for an upcoming event called “the Gold and Glory weekend”. With “Glory” probably referring to Trading Company Reputation, and “Gold” referring to… well, gold… we expect this to…

We figured out the ship cutouts!

And there’s prototype footage of the feature in action. Tidbits
🚨  Although this is sourced from public information, it may contain heavy spoilers about those cutouts, so if you’re precious about potentially being spoiled, turn back now.  🚨 Since the inclusion of the cut outs at the bow of the ships in the latest build of the game, observers have been trying to figure out what the might be for. Some figure they’re confirmation of fishing, or potentially for mortars, perhaps for swivel guns, or even for deck-mounted harpoons. Eagle eyed reader @PersonalC0ffee reached out to me via Twitter DM with some interesting images captured from early prototype Sea of Thieves gameplay footage….