The devs behind this year’s multiplayer sea shanty simulator, Sea of Thieves, released their latest developer update today. After three major content updates and littler tweaks along the way, the devs are looking at big things for the rest of 2018 and into 2019.
Executive producer Joe Neate started by reminding folks that Festival of the Damned is the spooky update hitting the game on Oct. 31. It’s one of the game’s Bilge Rat Adventures expansions, focusing on the faction of independent pirates dedicated to rumor mongering and exploring the nooks and crannies of the high seas, no matter the danger.
By the time Festival of the Damned drops, Forsaken Shores, the campaign-focused expansion that released in September, will be over. No more Forsaken Shores cosmetics will unlock after that point.
The next major content update comes this November. It’s called Shrouded Spoils and Neate promised a larger teaser video is coming. He also mentioned a few elements of the update that should whet (Wet? Get it? The sea!) your appetite.
Neate’s first bit of news is that more ship customization is coming. He mentioned ship parts like the wheel, cannon, capstone, and so on. These expanded customizations should add a lot of variety to the ships seen during play. A lack of variety has been a major complaint among players since day one.
The second addition is fog in the game world. Though impossibly cool-looking water effects and painterly skies have been part of Sea of Thieves since release, realistic fog should add more variety to traversal. Fog will roll in and out in true-to-life ways and will (obviously) impact visibility when searching for islands on the horizon. This led to speculation that the crow’s nest position on the ship will become much, much more important with the addition of fog.
Shrouded Spoils’ third new feature is commendations specifically for Pirate Legends: the highest rank you can achieve in Sea of Thieves. It’s clear to Neate and the team that endgame players want more endgame content. Ask and ye shall receive.
There is much more to come, according to Neate, but they’ll save the nitty gritty for that Shrouded Spoils video update in the coming weeks.
On Nov. 10, at the XO18 event in Mexico City, the team will reveal what’s next for the open seas piracy romp. Neate teased even larger changes that will change the game in significant ways. These larger changes will require a lot of back and forth with fans on test servers, which Neate seemed excited about.
Neate wrapped up the meaty update by teasing even more (extremely vague) stuff in the future. The whole thing left us very excited about the next few months for Sea of Thieves.
I personally spent a fair few hours in Sea of Thieves for about two weeks after its release. I only bounced off after the rest of 2018’s games flooded in. Alongside the existing updates that already added much needed content, the game’s future looks pretty bright (even through all the fog). It might even be enough for me to slap on an eye patch and jump back onto my leaky ship.
