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

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,…

How the Mermaids made their way back into Sea of Thieves

“I feel like you can lay the blame at my door.” Tidbits
Not long after Shrouded Spoils arrived, Rare coder James Thomas hinted that he’d tell the story of why the Mermaids were removed from the game for Forsaken Shores, and how they made their way back in. One day (probably this week) I’ll reveal the petulant tale of how I held these mermaid statues hostage until they were given a purpose. — James Thomas (@BIGsheep) November 28, 2018 Later that week James dropped some fantastic behind the scenes info, which gives some great insight into how the team at Rare are developing Sea of Thieves. We’re reproduced the thread here: James…

What’s up with Forts and Skelly Ships?

Improvements to how Forts stack behind Skelly Ships are in the works. Tidbits
Since the end of Cursed Sails, and the introduction of the fort-like Skeleton Ship encounters (signified by the cloud ship), you will have noticed that Skull Forts no longer activate until the Skelly Ships are cleared. Because the payouts for defeating the fleet captain were initially half what they were during the event (they’ve since been increased), pirates have been much less likely to tackle the Skelly Ships, meaning a huge reduction in Forts activating overall. Senior Producer, Drew Stevens, dropped by one of the many Reddit threads discussing this topic to shed some light on the situation. Hey Everyone, I’ve…

Blocktober

See what those now-familiar islands looked like as low-poly placeholders. Tidbits
In October 2017 Michael Barclay, from Naughty Dog, started the Twitter hashtag #Blocktober with the goal of showcasing the rarely seen stages of game development where rough versions of objects and mechanics are put into action, giving devs an idea of how those systems play together. Luckily for Sea of Thieves watchers, Design Director, Mike (Chappers) Chapman, joined in the festivities by sharing some screenshots and information from early in the development of the game. Read on to sea Snake Island like you’ve never seen it before! Mike Chapman: Time to get involved with #Blocktober! Here’s one the first islands that…