I'd hope the latter - it would be cool to have one of these things hang around, rather than just spawning specifically to attack a targeted player crew, although that's undoubtedly more difficult to program.
This does suggest that there'll be something to do with outposts, though - maybe they'll attack islands, somehow?
Last night, I managed perhaps my best boarding skirmish ever; the sound didn't record, unfortunately, but:
Unlikely, but if anyone fancied this that doesn't already have it, I have a spare code going. BAFTA sent me one, but the Xbox One I bought at the weekend came with one as well. So, it's going if anyone wants it.
The newest update for this - Shrouded Spoils - is out today. I played a little bit of it in the Pioneer beta; the sea fog is very cool, and if you find it at the right time, it'll make chases very interesting.
Tonight in Sea of Thieves, I stabbed a megalodon to death while standing on its back.
We also turned in a ridiculous number of Captain's Chests for the Gilded Gold Hoarder Quest, but I'm still about 80,000 gold away from half the stuff I'm after. Took down two skeleton ships and another meg as well, saw a load of other players' ships but didn't actually interact with any of them.
There's an "invite your friends" thing in Sea of Thieves for the next week:
Between February 6th and 13th, all players who own Sea of Thieves (or have obtained it through Game Pass), provided they have joined the free Sea of Thieves Insider Programme, can invite three friends to play for free until the end of the promotional period.
During this period, there will be a Mercenary Voyage available to give players a taste of what Sea of Thieves is all about!
So here are my three codes for anyone here who's wanting to give it a shot:
V7D2V-J6YCD-MXV99-GHV22-T3WVZJMP73-HX49C-HT4KY-9MW6T-HJPPZWMHFD-WFGDM-PF7W9-HMVR3-3D9WZYour friends can redeem these codes by heading to ‘Use a Code’ in the Store on their Xbox One console, or ‘Redeem a Code’ on Xbox.com or the Microsoft Store app.
Still not set up my Xbox, so I'm out for this. But when I finally get my own place and get it set up, there will be thieving of the seas aplenty.
Lots of changes to combat, rolling out in today's update.
Right, I have Gamepass, I have Gold, I have this.
Recommended way to start out?
(I've tried a couple of times, but not really managed to achieve anything)
Now that it's open to everyone, I've signed up for the Sea of Thieves Insider programme – it basically replaces their Pioneers closed beta group – and even though I've not played it yet, (I don't think this breaks the NDA) the release notes are wild.
Quite excited to get in and try some of this stuff out.
Fishing! Harpoons! Actual story?!
I loaded this up yesterday and went to find a chest with my level 1, plain-clothsed pirate.
When I came back to my ship a third time (which was parked (moored?) with a couple of chests inside), someone had drawn a cock on my map with water rings, and left me what turned out to be some quite expensive treasure.
After I'd cashed it all in, I went below deck to see if they'd left any more… and found three pirate legends boarding up all the holes I'd made in my hull (I'm a noob, don't judge). They must have been there the whole time, I just hadn't realised. They called me a 'silly sausage' over chat, then nicked my ship.
What a great game. 
Soooo… How do you get those blue coins?
Also I bought some quests but they'd gone when I logged back in, do you have to complete quests in one session? Presumably the blue coin quests take a fair while?
Once you start a voyage, you have to finish it, but if you just buy it it'll be in the "Voyages" menu until you start it or drop it.
Blue coins - doubloons - are from Bilge Rat events. If you look in the Reputation tab, there should be a list.
One of my regular crew-mates was at TwitchCon Europe over the weekend and nabbed us codes for the Killer Instinct-inspired Spinal figurehead, which looks pretty awesome:
Last night I went solo slooping for a while, and attracted the attention of some Legends in an alliance – a brigantine and a sloop – when I got too close (after not checking my heading and mistaking their ship lights for an outpost). The sloop rammed me, so I ran off, patched myself up and followed them for a while.
When they'd raised sails at Sailor's Bounty, I made a beeline (with the wind) between their ships, hopped off and dropped a powder keg on the brigantine while my sloop hit theirs. I hid on the island while their sloop chased my crewless ship, then hopped onto the brig, dropped its sails and ran it aground on the island before steering out to sea.
I got shot by someone respawning on the brigantine before I could be sure it sank, though.
This is OK. But holy shit the grind is real.
It's supposed to be something you play for the fun of it, I think, rather than for specific gear or anything. Pirate Legend is a reward for dedication, it was never supposed to be the goal of the thing.
But… its hours for even a small cosmetic item. Drip feed us… something?
Yeah, the early hours of the game amount to a lot of effort for very little reward. I get that they want things to be aspirational, but a little more variety in the pricing of items wouldn't go amiss – even though everything's cosmetic, it wouldn't hurt to have "tiers".
It used to be even worse, didn't it? They cut the prices by like half when the skeleton ships first showed up.
I was trying to explain to my 10 year old, why, after 3 evenings of play we couldn't afford a hat. In the same time, playing Fortnight he'd have unlocked 140 items of tat.
It's a nice game in may ways. I like the core systems. Looks very pretty. But… I do think it tries to hide a very shallow core with as much fluff as it can. It's very much a game as good as the group you play it with I expect.
This evening's shenanigans saw us potter around doing not much of anything specific. Got lamped by a galleon because we had the temerity to avoid a storm by the same route they were using; raided a shipwreck and left the loot sitting on top of it, not realising until we'd hit the outpost; took out a megalodon and a skeleton galleon; and ended the evening by sinking a brigantine crewed, judging by their cannon aim, by pretty green players, with honestly nothing of value aboard.
It's very much a game as good as the group you play it with I expect.
100%.
Did some solo slooping this evening; I'm… not well practised.
It's very much a game as good as the group you play it with I expect.
Yeah, I'd say that's definitely a fair assessment.
Did some solo slooping this evening; I'm… not well practised.
You should've said – one of our regulars couldn't make it tonight 'cos of a work thing; we'd have been glad of the extra body.
Ah, I was only on for an hour or so after E (finally) went to bed. I just did one cargo run, found a skull on a shipwreck, ran around at an outpost, and called it a night.
Send me a message if you ever do need someone to fill out the crew, though. I'm sure I can be convinced.
Alllll byyyyyy myyyyyyseyyyyeeeyyylf
Time for a doyouinverts comeback gig?
The patch notes are out, though maintenance has been extended to 6pm.
I'm out tonight, but I'll try and be on from around 9pm tomorrow (toddler willing) if anyone wants to crew up.
I spent a couple of hours sailing around and fishing - caught enough splashtails to get the Scurvy Bilge Rat rod, which was my main goal for the evening. Think I'm almost at level 3 with the Hunter's Call faction.
I briefly considered starting the Tall Tale, but my regular crew should be doing that tomorrow night and I didn't want to get ahead of them. (I've already done it in the Insider build a couple of times anyway.)
E went to bed mercifully early this evening, so I'm already on. Just practicing fishing for now, but if anyone wants to check out the Tall Tales, I'll be around a while - just send me a message/invite on XBL (Ninchilla, if we're not already friends), or (one of) you can just drop straight in on my sloop.
A couple of hours fishing under my belt, and it's fine, but I'm not sure how worthwhile it is. It's as time-consuming as any other fishing minigame I've played, but requires more attention and effort than, say, WoW ever did. The cooked meat has the dual advantages of both healing for more, and being two-use - effectively doubling the amount of food you can carry - but also requires going much farther out of your way to get the raw meat, and then taking the time to cook it on top of that.
Rep gains with the hunter faction seem glacial, too; the first fish/meat of a type give a much bigger boost than subsequent hand-ins, even for rarer fish, and I'm not sure how much of a useful alternative it's going to prove as a path to Legend compared to the existing factions (which are easier to string together, voyage-wise).
Haven't done any of the Tall Tales yet; I think they'd be more interesting in a crew, and I burned out a bit on the first couple in the Insider build.
[Fishing]'s fine, but I'm not sure how worthwhile it is… Rep gains with the hunter faction seem glacial
I suspect that gaining reputation will be more down to achieving the commendation milestones than individual hand-ins – particularly since the fish you actually catch tends to be pretty random in most cases.
But then I also feel like the fishing is something to do alongside other tasks, as a down-time break between stabbing skeletons or digging treasure. That said, I did have a great time sailing my solo sloop into a raging storm so I could catch one of the rarer fish.
Haven't done any of the Tall Tales yet; I think they'd be more interesting in a crew, and I burned out a bit on the first couple in the Insider build.
We finished the first one tonight – it's pretty satisfying, and I'm surprised at just how thematically appropriate it all felt, with a full four-man crew scouring an island for clues. I'm very interested to see how the subsequent quests pan out, though – turns out I'd done about 80% of this one solo on the Insider build, so there weren't many surprises.
Only two of our crew made it past the server issues tonight, so myself and our regular bo'sun ended up just tootling around in an under-staffed galleon, fishing - while the other two players sat in the voice channel lamenting the variously-coloured beards they were getting.
I caught some weird looking fish.
Got the new story quest, found the first bit, found the second, got to an island and the message 'Tale failed, token has been lost' popped up. The book and the token are no longer in my inventory, and I've been kicked off the mission.
Soooo… I think I just wasted an hour there? I really do try hard to like Sea of Thieves. I just wish it wouldn't make it so difficult.
Yeah, you kind of have to already know what you're doing a bit with the Tall Tales, which is a bit of a pain; it sounds like you might have just left something behind. The crab token thing doesn't go into your inventory, btw - it's an object you have to manually carry, like any other piece of treasure.
I've googled a guide and I definitely picked up the required token. It was in a chest alongside some other pages. I brought the chest on to land, double checked it was empty after picking up the token and pages, and even dove down to make sure I hadn't missed anything.
Must just be one of the joys of 'always online' games. Your inventory is dealt with server-side, and prone to hijinks.
Dunno, then. If you want to give it another go, I'll likely be on from around 9pm this evening, and I need to complete it another twice to unlock the cannons.
I blitzed the Shroudbreaker Tale over lunchtime - took about 40 minutes, including an unplanned kraken escape as soon as I left port at the start. If you run into other players with mischief on their minds it can be a bit more of an ordeal.
Never seen anyone get that "token lost" message though, MPH – sounds like you were just very unlucky. 
I got it on the second one, when I was hit by a server migration without one of the items on my ship.
Well, it took about two or four hours longer than it could have, thanks to a diversion or eight, but we finished the first Tall Tale for the fifth time, and the cannons look pretty good!
Also, we did a lot of fishing, and kept shooting other ships. At one point aniki snuck onto the evening's nemises' brigantine as they were docked at an outpost, stole all their fish, and sold their best bit of loot.