Sea of Thieves

Avast!

Ninchilla was going to create this anyway, so I figured I'd save him the ~20 seconds.

:D

Patch notes for the 1.0.3 release - they've reduced damage of the blunderbuss (boo!) but increased it for the Eye of Reach (yay!), but the rest of it is pretty low-level fixes.

I expect the subreddit is frothing with anger that this patch-version update hasn't brought with it gigabytes of new stuff to see and do, or all the conflicting economic changes that have been demanded.

Though on that subject, wasn't there supposed to be an update video this week about the upcoming big-ticket changes? Maybe now that this patch is out, they'll get ahead of the PR curve a little.

I expect so; I figured it'd be end-of-week-ish for the video, but to be honest I forgot it was supposed to be coming. I just hope they stick to their guns on what SoT is.

Still trying to take non-sunset shots, with varying success…

My obsession is more with buildings.

I just set off tonight to do some sailing for its own sake. Along the way I picked up and sold off a couple of bounty skulls, a seafarer's chest, a gunpowder keg and a box of exquisite spices, but most of my active time was spent approaching other players and trying to make friends.

The first two attempts were the most successful - a galleon whose crew watched in presumed bemusement as my sloop crawled past with me dancing behind the wheel, and another solo sloop who responded to my accordion playing with an "Ahoy!". The next, a 2-man sloop crew, sank me; I ran into them again near an outpost where I saw them sink another docked ship before they rammed me, killed me and sank my ship again. (In both these encounters, I had no cargo.)

I then spent a while on the Ferry of the Damned, dancing next to the exit door. One galleon crew came through in its entirety twice; the second time they hung around and we played music for a little while.

Back in the land of the living, I headed to the nearest outpost, sold the spices and gunpowder that were sitting on the beach I'd just spawned on, deliberately ran my ship aground and then waited on the tavern balcony getting drunk until my Ferry galleon friends arrived to sell some stuff. I was refilling my tankard in the tavern when one of them unexpectedly shot me in the back - which I found very disappointing.

We just ran a Merchant Alliance quest, picking up a couple of chickens and running them to the next outpost over. We found a message in a bottle on the chicken island to deliver gunpowder (which we'd actually already picked up) back to our spawn island. Nice little round trip, and we didn't spot a single other ship. It was very chill.

I'd have thrown you an invite, but we weren't hanging around for long. Just an unwind after the epic battle against the dread beast known as… The Self-Assessment Tax Return.

That content discussion video has dropped and I'm… not thrilled.

I mean it's fine - vaguer than I'd like - but I'm worried that, with a minimum of three new "AI threats" planned just in the next couple of months, they're going to make the world even more hostile to solo players in a way that larger crews don't really notice.

There's a lot more left unsaid than explicitly announced though, and I'm sure they know what they're doing; even if Reddit and Twitter weren't keeping their feet to the fire, any modern online game is going to be feeding the developer tons of data about how, when and what people are playing that would let them tailor content.

Rare have put up a blog version of that upcoming content video, and it's equally light on specifics.

Our first content update, The Hungering Deep, will release in May and bring with it a new AI threat to the world. Crews will have to work together to discover and defeat this threat as part of a unique event. We will also be introducing a number of new mechanics to assist players on this adventure, and there will be unique rewards that players can earn as part of this event. Beyond this, we will begin our weekly events programme during May, where we introduce new mechanics and give players fun new ways to play with weekly events and rewards.

I sort of get it, though, that they don't want to spoil stuff?

I'm just hoping it doesn't upset the balance too much - if more non-player stuff suddenly starts attacking as I'm sailing about, that could get frustrating. I'm glad they seem to be sticking to their own intent for the game, though, at least going by the language they're using.

Saw one other sloop, who chased me off a shipwreck (I was on a quest and had only swung past out of curiousity), and at least two, maybe three, galleons. Only managed to dig up and turn in two of the five chests I was after because next door's car alarm went off and we mistook it for our own.

Rare have published patch notes for the 1.04 update, which, once again, doesn't introduce much of note - at least not at my lowly reputation levels.

There's a screenshot of the new Pirate Legend ship decorations, which (according to a player) cost 300,000 gold each for the hull, sails and figurehead.

There are a bunch of minor fixes but nothing big (probably a sign of how stable the game actually was at launch, server issues aside), and it looks like most of the known issues from 1.0.3 are still hanging around.

That's pretty steep, but I guess they need something to spend all that legendary voyage gold on.

Still 12k off my hull paint job, as we've not played in a few days. Maybe I'll get on this evening for a couple of hours.

I was at a LAN party over the weekend, and a friend was trying the game out on my PC, so of course, cue the kraken. He/I got eaten by it, then it sank the ship. Looked fun, though!

The galleon in this picture had just finished a skeleton fort, when it got attacked by the kraken within sight of Galleon's Grave outpost.

And that's when we showed up.

They saw us coming, and anchor-turned to show us their guns, but I managed to slide our sloop in behind them, and aniki opened fire. A couple of them managed to board us, and killed aniki, but I killed them right back - unfortunately, they'd also raised our anchor, and by the time I'd regained control, we were back in the firing line of their port guns.

I swung us back behind the cover of a rock, and pulled up on their rear again, but they were already moving. For some reason, they ran into the wind, giving our sloop the advantage. We caught up, blasting them again, and as they turned across us, a slight miscalculation on the part of the helmsman (me), we rammed them. aniki made it onto their ship; two of them leapt into the water, but didn't make it onto ours.

I eventually managed to circle around to their front, and continued to unload cannon into them as aniki wreaked havoc aboard their ship until they sank.

One of them finally made it onto our ship and killed me. After I respawned, and aniki respawned, we killed the boarder and steered our ship back towards their wreck (they'd raised our anchor, turned our wheel, and left us to drift). By this point, I assume, sharks had gotten them all, because the loot was floating, unguarded, in the sea.

And we took it all.

As we turned towards Galleon's Grave, they appeared on the horizon. I turned off, into the wind (and half-towards them) as aniki leapt ashore and handed in the Stronghold Skull - 2,500 gold. He mermaided back, and we ran south-ish, with no real plan in mind. The galleon kept on our tail, keeping pace remarkably well, but we kept out of their firing line for the most part, despite a couple of close misses.

After what felt like a long, long time, we reached Plunder Outpost. That's about as far as you can get from Galleon's Grave. I swung round the back; aniki swam ashore again, this time with a box of spices. I turned about for another pass, but they'd closed the gap and were approaching the outpost. What's more, two other sloops had turned up - but both on the same side of the island as us.

So we ran, hoping that they'd lose track of us, and I guess they must have, because that screenshot up top is the last I saw of them, disappearing into the mist at sunset. We fled back across the map, east towards Ancient Spire Outpost. Another sloop - maybe one of the pair from before, maybe a third - appeared off to the south as we approached, and turned towards us - but stopped at a shipwreck a short distance away.

So we handed in the loot.

All of the loot.

And when that other sloop showed up, one of the crew swam ashore, and asked if she could deliver her chickens in peace; and I told her that we meant them no harm; and by way of thanks, they gave us a Marauder's Chest and 2 Bounty Skulls.

TL;DR:

That. Was. Awesome.

Oh, and I got a paint job for my hull.

To hell with anybody who says there's nothing to do in Sea of Thieves. I did basically no official content for the last hour or more and had a great time.

Sinking their ship was the second-best bit of the evening; I holed up in the very bottom of their ship next to a couple of major leaks and held them off from repairing it for long enough that the ship went down. But that's not the best bit. Ninchilla left out the best bit.

When they'd come back for revenge, at a point where they were getting uncomfortably close to us, I dropped off our ship, boarded theirs, dropped their anchor and fled into the sea, to mermaid back to our sloop. By the time they got it raised, we had an unassailable lead.

I'm so annoyed with myself for not recording any of it.

…do you think anyone but us actually reads this thread..?

…do you think anyone but us actually reads this thread..?

Shh

I'm reading this and playing it vicariously through you.

Carry on!

Same, it looks great and sounds like you have your own 'Monster Hunter' type of game that has gripped you, good for you guys. :)

Some fool of a sloop opened fire on Sarah and my ship as we first left Golden Sands outpost this evening. The chase that followed wasn't as epic as last night's, but eventually he was dead and sunk, and we moved on.

After that, another (the same?) sloop followed us all the way from Cannon Cove to Snake Island, where he decided to try and ram us. I boarded him and knocked him into the sea. His response was to scuttle his (sadly lootless) ship, and try and board ours. Sarah killed him, we finished our voyage, and logged out.

---

Continuing my series, Taverns of the Sea of Thieves:

Had a couple of close calls from a passing sloop this evening.

I need to get back into this - I'm pretty sure it's been more than a week since I booted it up. This always seems to happen when new stuff gets announced for games I'm playing - I stop until the new stuff hits.

I like looking at the pictures.

First Mate:

Got about an hour's sailing in this morning before work (and a server shutdown at 9am); did one Gold Hoarder mission and sold four(!) gunpowder barrels I found (three on the same island). Didn't see any other ships, but I'm putting that down to the early hour and the imminent server shutdown.

The Sea of Thieves patch notes now include information about the 1.0.6 patch, which is presumably what the server went down for this morning.

Focus appears to be on customization options.

• Regional Stock - Shopkeepers in different regions now only stock certain item sets, due to some mistimed deliveries.
• Strike a Pose - We’ve expanded our clothing range to include the Executive Admiral, Grand Admiral, Rotten Bilge Rat, Castaway Bilge Rat, Corsair Sea Dog, Ruffian Sea Dog and Imperial Sovereign sets.
• Ship Shape - Multiple sets of ship cosmetics have been added to the shipwright stock. Now you can purchase and equip Grand Admiral, Castaway Bilge Rat, Ruffian Sea Dog and Imperial Sovereign ship customisation sets.
• Ohh, Shiny! - Visit the weapon shops at the many outposts to find their stocks of Grand Admiral, Castaway Bilge Rat, Ruffian Sea Dog and Imperial Sovereign weapons. Fancy a new weapon style? We’re sure one of these will take your fancy!

• “Launch Crew” Eye of Reach - In celebration of being at sea for a month, we've added a special weapon to the store. This limited edition item will only be available for two weeks, so grab yours while you still can at a very reasonable price of 1 Gold!

Just came here to post that. Woo, stuff! #content

Just hopped online for a quick look. There seems to be a fair bit of variety here, but the "new" figureheads and weapons seem to just be recolours, which is a bit disappointing. There's no new equipment. However, most of the new clothing looks to be unique.

The "Launch Crew" Eye of Reach is 1 gold.

Bilge Rat stuff is everywhere, the other three sets are split by region:
The Wilds: Sea Dog;
Ancient Isles: Sovereign;
Shores of Plenty: Admiral.
This includes the original sets, too - if you want any Admiral stuff, you need to go to Shores of Plenty, etc. The new Sea Dog stuff is the best, in my opinion, but the Imperial Sovereign set is conquistador armor, so that's pretty cool.

EDIT: The new Bilge Rat peg legs are pretty cool:

I am constantly amazed by how on target their art is. It's a brilliant style that's been consistently produced. Marvelous work and a real reminder that actually, when given the time and the team, Rare really are rather good at this videogame malarky.

Other people are starting to buy all the new stuff and post screenshots on the subreddit, so:

Grand Admiral set:

Corsair Sea Dog:

I tried the other Sea Dog jacket and the Imperial Sovereign boots, but they clash with the rest of my gear.

I'm going to need to do a lot of missions to afford any of this stuff…

Well, if you hadn't been slacking…

New developer update video:

Most interesting: private crews slated for next week!

More screenshots.

Lots more screenshots.

So….

What do you actually do in Sea of Thieves?

Take screenshots.

…

Oh, you mean generally.

You spawn in (solo, or in a crew) in a tavern on one of the outpost islands. They have shops (where you can buy clothes, weapon skins, etc.) and Merchant Companies. The Merchant Companies give you quests ("voyages"), which involve following maps to treasure, killing skeleton pirates, or collecting certain animals or trade goods. Handing in treasure, skulls, or trade goods to the appropriate Company awards gold and rep. As your rep increases, you can buy Company-specific equipment skins and outfit variants.

Every so often, a skull-shaped cloud appears in the sky over one of the game's Fortresses, to indicate it's been taken over by a Skeleton Captain. If you go there and fight your way through enough minion waves, the Captain spawns; kill him, and you get a key to the vault, which has loads of loot in it.

At any point, while doing any of this, you can be attacked by other players. There are up to 6 ships in the world at a time, all doing their own thing, and at any point, you can decide to try and ruin someone's day, or they yours. Any loot is up for grabs by any player until the point it's handed in; so if you're killed and your ship is sunk, it's highly likely that the other crew are just going to abscond with it all while you respawn on a distant island with a new, treasure-free vessel. Any damage you take can be repaired by picking up wooden planks and hammering them over cannonball holes, then you can use your bucket to bail out any water that's accumulated in the lower decks.

You've got a lot of tools at your disposal as well as that - you have a lantern, a compass, a stopwatch, and you can play shanties on either an accordion or a hurdy-gurdy if you feel like being completely unhelpful while sailing.

The sailing is my favourite bit: instead of controlling the ship, as with most games, you're always just a single person - so if you want to turn the ship, you need to use the wheel. If you want to trim the sails, angle them into the wind, raise or lower the anchor, or man the cannons, you can do that, too, but it means actually walking over to the right bit of the ship to interact with. It's not hugely complicated, but you do have to pay some kind of attention as to what's going on with wind and sail direction as well as where you want to go (which involves walking to the map table, checking your location against where you want to be, then getting the heading and letting whoever's on helm know).

I think that's about it? @aniki might be able to think of more.

The only other thing I can think of that @Ninchilla hasn't mentioned is salvaging stuff from shipwrecks.

If you spot gulls circling over the ocean, it's usually an indicator of a sinking non-player ship (currently the only non-player ships in the game). Pull up next to it, jump into the water and swim down to hopefully find some treasure, a bounty skull or two, or maybe some rare spices - which are then traded in as normal for reputation and gold.

As with the skeleton forts, though, the gulls are visible to anyone sailing nearby - so you might not be the only crew looking to profit from the loot.

Also maybe worth expanding on the treasure hunting - there are two different kinds of "map". One is just a map of an island (you have to figure out which one) with red crosses to mark the spot you need to dig; the other is a riddle which gives you instructions in often-painful rhymes to find the chest.

The treasure- and skeleton-hunting voyages can also have a three or four maps and a couple of "chapters"to complete, although by and large you'll still just be sailing to an island, completing a minor task and then moving on.

You can also occasionally find missions on islands, as messages in bottles or in books left by shipwrecked sailors.

The non-UI visual cues sound really fascinating. What's the UI actually like? I'm guessing from the screenshots it's minimal, but then again it could be a photomode?

No, all you have on the screen is your health, and the bar disappears if you've got full health. Everything else has to be read from the environment, or from the items in your inventory - time from your pocket watch, direction from your compass, maps from the in-world objects. (You can also use the secondary fire for most of them to show other players.)

The only unrealistic concession to game design is the ship's map, which is able to scroll and zoom, like it's a full-touchscreen desk.

You get an ammo count, too, if you have a gun as your active weapon.

It's been over a week - I know you've all missed this.

Rare have posted full details about The Hungering Deep, although they're still keeping tight-lipped about the titular AI threat.

They're finally adding the drum instrument, as well as flags for the top of your mast, pirate scars, and personalizable tattoos.

A couple of teaser bits are already in-game; the drum and the speaking horn are both on the launch screen now, and Merrick (the guy from the teaser video) is sitting sozzled on Shark Bait Cove:

Other shots I took while I was there:

The Hungering Deep launched on Tuesday, to all your breathless excitement, I'm sure. Sarah and I ran through the mission part last night - it's a brief*, but fairly enjoyable, jaunt around most of the game world, following clues to taverns and uncharted islands to learn how and where to summon The Hungering One, the new "AI threat" (boss).

We haven't fought it yet - it needs at least 5 players to summon, meaning you need to find a friendly(ish) crew to help.

They also added flags for the top of the mainmast, to signal (or disguise) intent, a new drum instrument, and a speaking horn, which vastly increases the voice chat range, allowing ship-to-ship chat, taunts, and intimidation. There's a new clothing set, a new figurehead/hull/sail set, and plain-coloured sails (red, yellow, green, blue, black) that are waaay cheaper than the existing patterns, but still allow some customisation.

*depending on wind speed and direction…

I really need to get back into this. How soloable is the mission content?

100%. The only thing you need other players for is summoning the Hungering One.

I hung about at Shark Bait Cove for about 20 minutes this evening, to see if I could luck into a meg run, but there weren't any other ships in the area; eventually I gave up, then Sarah joined me and we set out on a Merchant Alliance voyage.

Along the way, we found four shipwrecks, which between them gave us 2 bottle quests, and just about every level of chest, skull, and merchant item (no spices, but everything else). Turned out very profitable, and bumped me up to 26/25/25 without having to kill a single skeleton.

Still didn't see a single other vessel the entire time, though. There was a skull fort up, but it was active so long I don't think anyone could have been clearing it.

It's been too long since we sailed a galleon, too.