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The time has come: the resurrected Captain Flameheart is making moves to seize control of the Sea of Thieves. He’s returned from his long banishment with a plan, and his sights are set on retrieving long-forgotten Ancient secrets. Two of the most powerful tools at his disposal as this mission begins are his monstrous flagship, the Burning Blade... and you!


Turn Towards the Dark Yes, not only can the Burning Blade be found roaming the seas with fire in its belly and Obsidian Skeletons swarming its decks, Season 13 allows you to board it and declare yourself its new crew once you’ve dulled its fury with a suitable show of strength.

This means pledging yourself to Flameheart’s service, but the rewards are tempting. With ten cannons, a skeletal support crew, Obsidian Ashen Winds Skulls in the hold and the Ashen Roar fir... Read more

The Flame Rises Captain Flameheart has returned, but the real star of Season 13 is his fiery flagship, awaiting crews who have what it takes to claim it for themselves! For an overview of this new Season’s headline features, head to our dedicated {LINK REMOVED}Season 13 page.

The Burning Blade

• Ready your crew and take on the Burning Blade World Event! Easily spotted from afar with its telltale burning braziers and skyward beacon, this infernal ten-cannon warship will take a seasoned crew to take it on.
  
• Players who subdue the ship’s Obsidian Skeleton crew can c...

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Whether it’s {LINK REMOVED}Season 12, launching on {LINK REMOVED}PlayStation®5, a recent {LINK REMOVED}Community Weekend, tweaks to ship speed... Read more

Hello! It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these lookbacks, so just give us a second to dust off the inkwell and make sure we didn’t leave any pineapple and Pondie sandwiches lurking under the pile of unsolved bottle maps.

All clear. There’s still a bit of a smell but we can’t spot anything… oh well!

Right, Season 12 Community Weekend. From 11am UTC on June 15th to the same time on June 17th, we hosted the second Sea of Thieves Community Weekend of 2024, but the first to welcome in our {LINK REMOVED}pirates on PlayStation®5! How did you all find it? It’s no good talking, these are words typed a few days ago at least, they don’t have ears. Judging from the responses and numbers we’ve seen, though, we’d say a lot of you had a right lovely... Read more

Gameplay Improvements Ship Speed Rebalancing

• The Sloop, Brigantine and Galleon have all received a set of speed changes, balancing each ship type and placing more emphasis on ship direction and sail management during naval encounters.
  
• In a straight tailwind scenario, the Galleon with its three sails angled to the wind will now gain the advantage, followed by the Brigantine, then Sloop.
  
• In a straight headwind, the Sloop will have less wind resistance from its single sail and will be at an advantage over the Brigantine, and then the slower Galleon.
  
• Sidewind and crosswind scenarios will also now favour the Galleon when all sails are catching the maximum amount of wind. However, Galleon crews who mismanage the wind will suffer the largest penalty.

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We can scarcely believe that we’re already into the warm tides of June, but even as we turn our attention to the upcoming delights of the month ahead, we still have one more task to complete before we fully say farewell to May: the regular round-up. So please take a moment to join us in celebrating everything that happened last month in the world of Sea of Thieves…

Content Update After the major updates in April, it was a relatively quiet monthly update this time around. Following a {LINK REMOVED}small hotfix at the beginning of the month, May’s main update introduced numerous tweaks and improvements to recently implemented {LINK REMOVED}... Read more

It’s been just over a month since Sea of Thieves launched globally on PlayStation®5 – and wow, what a rollercoaster it’s been. We’ve been inspired, entertained and truly heartwarmed by the way our community has embraced the new, blue pirates who’ve set sail on our waters of late. Thank you to everyone who’s been a part of Sea of Thieves’ journey since Season 12 kicked off – it’s been such a special time here in the studio, and we can’t wait to continue this wild ride with such a spirited and united community on board.

A New Dawn And unite, you all did – we can’t quite believe how many of you have come together to indulge in the camaraderie of crossplay. Since we launched on PS5®, a whopping 1,797,963 crossplay crew sessions have taken place, adding up to an outrageous amount of seafaring shenanigans – with 7,283,307 hours of playtime covered in these sessions. That’s the equivalent of 831 years – you could only just finish all of G... Read more

Well, it’s been a while since we last sat down to put together a Spotlight Showcase! Worry not though, we haven’t forgotten anyone during the intervening months, and now we’re here to bring you a bumper crop of all the Spotlights you might have missed since we last checked in. Let’s go!


First on our list from back in the mists of July is a Community Spotlight with renowned sail scrapbooker {LINK REMOVED}Captain Butterfinger! Alongside his efforts to catalogue the wonderful and varied sails of the Sea of Thieves, he took the opportunity to tell us about his favourite moments from playing the game and his excursions into a certain series of simian... Read more

As spring progresses ever onward outside the windows, things haven’t slowed down for a moment inside Rare HQ! April was absolutely jam-packed with news and updates, including a PlayStation®5 launch for the very first time in our studio history, so let’s not waste time with any more preamble. From the top, here’s everything you might have missed last month!

Content Update Our main update wasn’t due until the very end of April, so we aimed to tide everyone over in the meantime with a Gold & Glory Weekend. What better way to make sure you all had a chance to get your hands on those ... Read more

Sea of Thieves’ Seasons keep on turning, and the arrival of Season 12 on April 30th is a real milestone, coinciding with a huge wave of players sailing in on PlayStation®5 for the first time. This alone would mix up the everyday interactions that take place out there on the waves, but we haven’t even begun to describe the game-changing features delivered by Season 12 itself!


Go on the Attack… Every pirate’s choice of arms to carry into battle is about to be expanded, as the Double Barrel Pistol and throwing knives become available to drop into weapon slots. The Double Barrel Pistol requires a closer range and deals less damage per shot than the standard pistol, but makes up for it with rate of fire and the ability to charge and unleash both shots at once.

Throwing knives, meanwhile, offer even more options: q... Read more

The War Chest New weapons waiting to be mastered and tools to take your tactics to the next level! Try your luck with fresh loadouts and feel the rush while riding the ziplines. To learn more about this new Season’s headline features, head over to our {LINK REMOVED}dedicated Season 12 page.

Throwing Knives

• These new weapons in the pirate armoury come as a set of five, which are wielded one at a time when equipped and can be restocked from any Ammo Chest.
  
• Wielding a throwing knife allows players to stab enemies with a quick melee attack or charge for a devastat...

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This 2.10.3 update lays the groundwork for the full Season 12 launch coming up on April 30th, while also introducing the first pirates on PlayStation®5 to the world of Sea of Thieves during an Early Access period. Be sure to extend a warm welcome if you meet them on the seas!

Fates of Fortune Chest of Fortune

• The Chest of Fortune has been returned to the locked Vault of the formidable Fort of Fortune. Keep a keen eye on the horizon for the ominous red skull cloud in the sky when it becomes active.
  
• Crews who retrieve Chests of Fortune can now earn the next Grade of the Fortune’s Favour Commendation, unlocking access to the Fates of Fortune Lantern, Spyglass, Compass and Bucket.

Reaper’s Chests

• Crews chasing down the tell-tale beacon of...

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As I’m sure you can imagine, when it comes to Sea of Thieves my days are full of numbers. Development costs, active servers, days until the next update… Sometimes, though, a truly extraordinary number stands out – a number like 40 million, which I’m incredibly pleased to say is the number of pirates who’ve now set sail in Sea of Thieves!

40 million players across Xbox, Windows 10 and Steam is an amazing milestone to be able to talk about, and of course it wouldn’t have happened without you – our brilliant, positive and welcoming community, who continue to surprise and impress us with your creativity and antics out on the waves.

That said, I also want to take this opportunity to offer heartfelt thanks to the team, who’ve worked so hard to deliver over a hundred free updates since launch and have plenty more excitement and innovation on the horizon. Season 12 is almost here, and the new additions like throwing knives and the Bone Caller are going to trans... Read more

Our From Concept to Cosmetic series has a somewhat storied history when it comes to talking about lanterns that capture the imagination of players. Indeed, the very first instalment covered the creation of the original lantern MVP: {LINK REMOVED}the mighty Orb. Since that first step into the world of cosmetic design, we’ve branched out into all kinds of wonders, from {LINK REMOVED}punk fashion and {LINK REMOVED}... Read more

As April showers clamour to make themselves known, we’ve realised it’s probably time to tick the Round-Up off our monthly to-do list and catch you up on all the major happenings of the last month. And thus, here we are! Settle in, obtain a beverage of your choosing and let’s get to it.

Content Update As always, a new month meant a new content update, complete with handy {LINK REMOVED}release notes containing all the details. This one was headlined by the arrival of the much-anticipated anti-cheat system, the ability for players with no live se... Read more

Six years! Who’d have thought it? It was on this day in 2018 that Sea of Thieves came crashing into the world and we’re still here cooking up new features, you’re still here playing them and we love you for that, and the seas are about to get busier than ever when PlayStation®5 players join in with our ungovernable shenanigans next month.

So how are we marking the anniversary this year? Mainly by letting you in on a whole treasure trove of secrets. We’ve got plenty planned for the next few Seasons and thought you might enjoy a taster of what’s on the horizon, which you can get simply by tuning in to the special 2024 Preview Event video on our ... Read more

As Season 11 bobs along, occasionally dipping below the waves so it can crash back above them in dramatic fashion, we’re slowly ticking off the usual Seasonal activities. But if there’s one thing that players keep asking about in our social replies that’s yet to make its debut, it’s Anti-Cheat. Good news you lot, that’s just arrived in the March update!

If there’s another thing we see the odd mention of (not so many it’s annoying, but just enough that it causes a little irritation right on the small of the back where you just can’t scratch no mat... Read more

Game Improvements Easy Anti-Cheat

• Sea of Thieves is now protected by Easy Anti-Cheat, the industry-leading anti-cheat solution designed by Epic Games to identify and address instances of hacking and cheating in multiplayer games.
  
• This anti-cheat solution will be updated outside of Sea of Thieves’ regular update schedule to keep in sync with cheat developers.

Updates Virtual Keyboard Support

• Players summoning the Virtual Keyboard inside the game will now find that a range of new languages are supported: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean and Russian.

Message of the Day

• Players will now experience a Message of the Day when arriving in the front end menu, highlighting curr...

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Spring is just starting to bloom here at Rare HQ, which means it’s time we got around to the brisk business of rounding up February’s developments! It was a briskly busy month that boasted some extremely exciting announcements, so let’s jump right into the recap…

Content Update As always, we had a monthly update ready to go, this time integrating Sea of Thieves with the latest Xbox Game Development Kit, making some visual and technical tweaks to various systems – and, most importantly, introducing the first Collector’s Pet fox as the Reaper’s Heart set expanded again in the month of love. For a full rundown of all February’s changes and additions, or just to find out what on earth GDK integration actually means, stop by the relevant {LINK REMOVED}releas... Read more

Game Improvements GDK Integration

• Sea of Thieves now operates on the latest Xbox GDK (Game Development Kit). Players on PC are encouraged to update to the latest graphics drivers to ensure the best compatibility and performance.
  
• Sea of Thieves now supports DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 where supported by the hardware. While the title will now auto-detect and optimise the experience, players can also choose within the game settings.
  
• General client performance improvements should be seen throughout the experience, with PC players seeing the largest improvements.

Updates Improved Athena’s Fortune Voyages

• The Voyage of Legends and Ashen Voyage of Legends have now been refreshed, providing a shorter session experience and c...

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