Tidbits

Making the ‘Sea of Thieves: Origins’ Comics

Bonus: FREE COMICS! Tidbits

On the Sea of Thieves blog this week, the team have detailed the process of bringing the Sea of Thieves: Origins comics to life. Origins is a short series of stand-alone comics that focus on each of the first three Trading Companies. It’s an incredibly collaborative process, with Rare writers suggesting outlines and the comics artists adjusting to the lore and existing game mechanics so the story resonates with players. “The great thing about working on videogame-based comics is finding a new way to celebrate the pre-existing visuals and the narrative. The Sea of Thieves game is rich with striking stylistic characters,…

Skeleton pets!

Get ready for the bones brigade. Tidbits

The Fort of the Damned update is due to go live tomorrow, but we’ve already got our first hint of some incoming cosmetics. The Pirate Emporium page on the official Sea of Thieves website received a stealth update to the banner earlier today, with an image highlighting two new pet variations – both of the skeletal variety. These will no doubt be available to purchase with Ancient Coin, but we’re yet to find out if they’re time-limited. It’s certainly possible given the spooky theme of this month’s update. If you pull out your spy glass you’ll also note the Killer…

Talk Like a Pirate Day: Twitch Drops

Watch a Twitch stream, get some cannons! Tidbits

Talk Like a Pirate Day is arrrrrrrrrrrlmost upon us. To celebrate, Sea of Thieves is partnering with Twitch to give away these spiffy Obsidian Cannons! (We knew they were coming eventually). It’s easy to get these lovely boom-shooters. Here’s how: Head to seaofthieves.com/twitch-drops and link your Sea of Thieves account with your Twitch account. Watch any of the listed streams on Thursday 19th of September (10am BST on September 19th until 10am BST on September 20th) for at least 30 minutes. TIP: You can watch the official weekly Sea of Thieves stream with Captain Falcore as part of the promotion….

Sightings: Ancient Skeletons

Shoot them quick! Tidbits

As part of the introduction of the Pirate Emporium, Rare also brought a new enemy to the game – the Ancient Skeleton. As you explore the world in both Adventure and Arena, you’ll have a rare chance of encountering this beastie. He’ll dig out of the ground with a flourish and make a run for it. If you can capture him, you – and your crew – will earn some Ancient Coin (Rare’s in-game currency available to buy with real money). Now, we’re starting to see live encounters from the game. Reddit user TruEdits killed on on Shipwreck Bay with…

Fire, exclamation mark

Noted leaker James “BIGsheep” Thomas spills the beans again. Tidbits

Attentive Sea of Thieves watchers will know Rare developer, James “BIGsheep” Thomas, as the man whose belligerence gave us mermaid gems, and who also accidentally confirmed parrots as pets on a live stream that time. Well, pirates, he’s done it again. On this week’s weekly stream, James glanced at the chat, and then spilled the beans: I think the biggest thing we’ve announced that’s coming soon is fire Andy Preston quickly looked at him, saying “Is that announced yet?” James: “Are you kidding me?” The reactions are priceless. Look out it's happened again. 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/uJb3z8XeV6 — Sea of News 🏴‍☠️📜🎣…

Sea of Tease Roundup

Reconnect, emotes, pets and more. Tidbits

Sea of Thieves Executive Producer, Drew Stevens, is the most active dev on Reddit – even though many more of the team seem to be heavy lurkers. Drew – aka Sonicbob – usually tends to be most active in the period after game updates. After the release of Black Powder Stashes, he’s dropped in to reply to a few questions and comments. It’s been a while since we’ve had any real “Sea of Tease” from the devs, but there’s a small handful of tidbits here: A reconnect feature is in development A common complaint, especially among solo pirates, is that…

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…

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….

The latest Pirate Times teases a new voyage type

Another reason to be a little bit mercenary. Tidbits

Pictured: another reason, if required, to be a little bit mercenary In the latest Pirate Times, the Sea Of Thieves community team has teased something new coming to the game. In a section titled “Tip-Top Tipple Treasures” we see a graphic of a new voyage type: a scroll adorned with a scorpion seal. From the article: The Pirate Times is informed that a tenacious but unknown rum runner has recently chosen to scatter their stash of illicit alcohol and loot around the Sea of Thieves! All three Trading Companies are interested in this haul, so Duke is working on tracking…

Live Stream: Non-Stop Boombox Action

Questions and answers galore! Tidbits

This was a really fun and entertaining stream with explosions and shenanigans galore. And, lucky for us, a huge amount of Q&A too (despite Jon starting every stream letting the viewers know they won’t be taking questions, nice try Jon). If you have time, definitely give the full video a watch. But if you’re only interesting in the goss, here are the notes: Event Frequency Burger: Is the fort frequency going to stay? Andy: We looked at a bunch of events and things that can happen inside the world – so the forts, the kraken, the megalodon and the…

Sea of Thieves in the Top 10 most searched video games on Google

It’s the most searched new IP on the list. Tidbits

Sea of Thieves has garnered the 7th spot in the trending “video games” search results in Google’s Year In Search 2018. While it’s a genuinely impressive result for a supposedly “dead game“, it’s worth keeping context in mind. According to Google “lists are based on search terms that had the highest spike this year as compared to the previous year.” With this in mind it makes sense that Sea of Thieves might be higher on this list since it launched this year. It is notable though that it’s the highest new IP on the list, and the other franchise games all…

Sea of Tease: New ship-to-ship interactions are on the horizon

New and interesting ways. Tidbits

Reddit user Decoraan spotted this interesting tidbit from the most recent weekly dev live-stream (1:00:13): Joe (reading question): “Have you ever considered boarding ropes?” Hmmmmmm James: Ah, interesting..! Joe: That’s an interesting questions isn’t it. James, have you ever considered boarding ropes in Sea of Thieves? James: Boarding ropes is, ah, it’s an interesting one. I’m not usually that into PvP so, ah, it’s something I’m sure I could look at using? [Gameplay mayhem] Joe: New and interesting ways for interactions between ships and stuff in the future, it’s definitely [something] we’ve got our eye on. Not directly boarding ropes,…

More forts, ships, megs and krakens is a permanent thing

The increase in encounters – introduced in Shrouded Spoils – is here to stay. Tidbits

If you’ve played many of the major Sea of Thieves content updates or Bilge Rat Adventures, you’ll know that it was quite normal for the spawn rates of items or enemies in the game to be increased during the event – the increased numbers of sharks in the lead up to The Hungering Deep, boom-skellies during Gunpowder Skeletons, or mermaid spawns during The Sunken Curse, to name a few. This has lead to some speculation that perhaps the increased encounters that have made Shrouded Spoils so engaging might be reduced after the event. Never fear, pirates. Senior Producer, Drew Stevens,…

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