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A new year is upon us, but before we can completely pack away the holiday decorations we have one last thing we need to do: round up the delights of December! The final month of the year is always jam-packed, so join us as we bid a final farewell to all its expeditions, events and excitements while filling you in on anything you might have missed…

Content Update Cast your mind back all the way to the beginning of December (no small feat, we know) and you’ll remember our Pirate Legends were getting a little love with the return of {LINK REMOVED}Legends Week. Although it wasn’t just for Legends – anyone hoping to rank up with Athena’s Fortune or just get their hands on a little extra gold could set out on a hunt for special Legendary Message in a Bott... Read more

As we hoist the anchor on January (and a brand new year), Sea of Thieves is alive with fresh adventures and thrilling Events! From high-stakes Voyages to haunting melodies, here’s everything you need to know to make the most of this month.

Reaper Gunpowder Runs – Friday, January 17th – Monday, January 20th

Prepare for explosive action with the Reaper Gunpowder Runs, an exciting Event designed to ignite chaos and competition across the Sea of Thieves! In this time-limited Event, pirates will gain access to an exclusive Voyage that focuses on gathering Gunpowder Barrels of all kinds.

During the Event, any Gunpowder Barrels delivered to The Reaper's Bones will fetch a hefty boost in gold and reputation, but that’s not all! Every Gunpowder Barrel you pick up on this Voyage will help nudge your Reaper’s Bones Emissary Grade higher, making each explosive find a tool for chaos and profit.

‘Sirens’ Lament’ Release – Fri... Read more

Pirates of Mischief Grapple Gun Improvements

• The maximum range of the Grapple Gun has been increased to match the ship’s harpoon, providing players with greater scope for traversal and various sneaky plays.
  
• The speed of a fired arrowhead is now much quicker, reducing the need for players to lead their shots and also reducing the time after a failed shot before it can be fired again.
  
• Acceleration is now increased when grappling to a solid surface, with players moving faster the further they travel.

Blowpipe Improvements

• Players can now quickly cycle through available dart types via a new keybind, Dart Radial Input. This same key can also be held to summon the full Dart Radial. By default, this is bound to ‘H’ on keyboard and Right on ...

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The end of the year is creeping ever closer and now that we’re in the final stretch, we’ve got a few more jobs to do before we sign off for the holidays. Like this one: filling you in on everything you may have missed in November! It was a surprisingly busy month for a mid-Season update, so let’s get right to business…

Content Update Due to earlier issues with some Season 14 launch content, the {LINK REMOVED}November update ended up including a whole host of postponed features, including traps, hanging points and the much-missed disguises. We later hotfixed in a few other {LINK REMOVED}... Read more

As we sail into December, the Sea of Thieves is alive with fresh adventures and holiday cheer! From thrilling events to brand new features, there’s plenty in store to keep you voyaging through the season: prepare for festive challenges, unique rewards and community events to end the year with a bang.

Holiday Decorations – from Sunday, December 1st

Kick off December with some suitable festive cheer, as Sea of Thieves’ Outposts get into the holiday spirit!

Legends Week – Monday, December 2nd – Monday, December 9th

Seasoned sailors are in for a treat with the next Legends Week. Get double gold and reputation for handing in Athena's Fortune treasure, seek Legendary Messages in a Bottle and complete the Voyages within to earn rewards (and unlock the Life of a Legend Tattoo). Tackle Legendary Daily Deeds for additional payouts too!

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Fixed Issues Traps

• Players are no longer able to retrieve additional resources when disarming an item-loaded trap.
  
• Traps deployed should now remain in place and not disappear unexpectedly during gameplay. Once deployed, a trap should now last for hours if left undisturbed and only be removed when triggered, replaced by a new trap when players reach their limit of two or when players leave the server.
  
• Players are consistently limited to deploying two traps and can no longer place additional traps by disconnecting and rejoining a session.
  
• Traps deployed by other crews will now consistently be removed when they dive to a new server, scuttle to new seas or migrate naturally to another server.

Voyage of Luck

• Crews diving for the Voyage of Luck should no longer experience an extended wait while underwater.

Performance and Stability

• Furthe...

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Happy Community Weekend Week, everyone! As we detailed at the start of the month, this Season’s Community Weekend runs from November 23rd from 25th, with a boatload of thrilling things going on to excite seasoned sailors and swabbies alike. This 48-hour frenzy of fun kicks off at 11am UTC on Saturday 23rd and ends 11am UTC on Monday 25th.

If you’d like to keep the Event’s shenanigans a secret until you log in on Saturday, now’s the time to stop reading – but if you’re intrigued by what’s on offer, then please, read on…

Persuade the Emissary Grade If you’re new here and aren’t sure how the Community Emissary Grade works, don’t worry, we’re here to tell you! To raise this special Grade, players are tasked with tuning in to Twitch to level up the generosity of the multiplier, with the total Sea of Thieves watch time powering its progress. Simply put: all you need to do to help raise this Grade – and increase in-game rewards – is watch any of your favourite conten... Read more

Pirates of Mischief Our November game update sees Season 14’s stealthy feature set finally unleashed in force, providing players with plentiful tools to wreak mischief upon one another. For an overview of this Season’s furtive features, head to our dedicated {LINK REMOVED}Season 14 page.

Disguises

• While crouched, players can access the stealth menu to put on a disguise and blend into the environment as a barrel or treasure chest. Unlike hide emotes, disguises allow players to sneak around the world, albeit at a much slower pace.
  
• New disguises can be unlocked t...

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It’s safe to say that players faced some unexpectedly rough waters this October. The Season 14 update didn’t land as smoothly as planned, and as a result there’s still work to be done before the Season’s over. Nevertheless, there was plenty of October activity to report on, so we’re here once again to deliver your usual round-up!

Content Update With the end of Season 13 rapidly approaching as we entered October, it seemed only fair to give everyone who hadn’t maxed out their Seasonal Renown a helping hand. That meant unleashing a weekend of {LINK REMOVED}boosted Renown (and gold) for all players, followed by a spree of single-use {LINK REMOVED}... Read more

While October was certainly an eventful month on the Sea of Thieves, the waves are looking a little calmer as we head into November. That means we’re ready to look ahead and share a calendar of the events coming your way over the next month!

Golden Scallywag Awards – extended to Monday, November 25th

Following Season 14’s slightly shaky start, the entry period for the Golden Scallywag Awards has been extended. Mischievous pirates now have until November 25th to submit their sneaks, tucks, traps and more to be in with a chance of scooping a real-life statuette and in-game Trinket and Title. For more information, see the competition {LINK REMOVED}announcement article.

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Pirates of Mischief As shared in our recent Season 14 update, the team disabled a number of features in order to protect players from high-impact issues and for the team to work on improving the quality bar. With this hotfix, crouching is once again available. The Known Issues section identifies issues that will be addressed in future updates.

Crouching and Stealth

• Players will once again be able to switch their stance from standing to a low crouch, slowing their movement, hiding them from some nearby enemy threats, concealing their player name and generally making them stealthier for the purposes of sneaking around.
  
• Crouched players will be harder to hit as they can duck shots in combat and will be braced against knockback, reducing its effect.

Fixed Issues Gameplay

• Players will once again be prevented from walking directly through enemy threats.
  
• Players are now preve...

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Following the long-awaited arrival of Captain Flameheart and his Burning Blade flagship in Season 13, this subsequent Season sees the focus shift back to expanding the sandbox with more tools and features, delivering new ways to play and options for achieving your devious pirate goals. Read on to find out exactly what’s possible as Season 14 slips out of the shadows…


The Armoury Expands For the second time this year, two new loadout options have arrived to complement the classic Sea of Thieves arsenal. In line with Season 14’s stealthy theme, these latest additions are the versatile Grapple Gun and the near-silent blowpipe, both offering alternatives to the traditionally quite direct pirate approach to looting and fighting.

Despite the name, the Grapple Gun functions more like a tool than a weapon. It can tar... Read more

Pirates of Mischief Ready to get stealthy? Season 14 delivers tools, weapons, tricks and abilities that open up ingenious new ways to achieve your aims on the Sea of Thieves! For an overview of this Season’s furtive new features, head to our dedicated {LINK REMOVED}Season 14 page.

Grapple Gun

• The Armoury now stocks the Grapple Gun which players can choose for one of their two loadout slots, replacing a combat-focused weapon with a new traversal tool. This tool comes with five arrowheads and can be reloaded at any Ammo Crate.
  
• Players can grapple items or other ...

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The rains of autumn are rolling in over the green fields of Rare HQ, which means it’s once again time to set pen to paper and share with you all the latest news from the Sea of Thieves. September was a hectic month of updates, events and glimpses at the upcoming Season 14, so there’s no shortage of things to cover…

Content Update We kept the September update pretty lean and mean ahead of the upcoming full Season release, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t well-stocked with adjustments, improvements and ironclad cosmetics. As always, you can have a read of the {LINK REMOVED}release notes – and the {LINK REMOVED}... Read more

The Sea of Thieves community thrives on its creativity, but we also know you’re not immune to skulduggery and shenanigans when the opportunity arises – that’s part of being a pirate, after all. That’s why, with Season 14 just over the horizon, we’ve decided the time is right to celebrate the most audacious antics you have to offer with a dedicated set of awards. (We might even wear bowties, you’ll have to wait and see.)

Why now? Well, the theme of Season 14 is ‘Making Mischief’ – not to mention its subtitle, which is a choice we’ve made to cut to the heart of each Season so everyone can tell at a glance what its focus will be. We’ll be offering detailed looks at the upcoming tricks and traps over the next week, but there’s no reason not to start stretching those prank-playing muscles right away, especially if you’ve already got something to show that you’re particularly proud of.

In a nutshell, we’ll be scouring social channels for entries that fall into one of... Read more

Season 13 has sure been a hot one, and not just because it ran over actual real-world summer. In game, the Burning Blade and its huge fireballs {LINK REMOVED}burst onto the seas, offering a brand new type of World Event and spreading heat-tinged combat in its wake. Elsewhere, the heat continued with Production Director Drew delivering information often referred to as containing some level of spice, with a change to the blunderbuss being considered high on the Scoville charts.

It's time to bring the... Read more

Fixed Issues
Throwing Knives

• Knives thrown at a crewmate will now pass through them rather than becoming stuck to the player.
  
• Knives will no longer become stuck in a capstan or other ship interaction point when thrown.

The Burning Blade

• For crews pledged to the Burning Blade, there is now a short grace period after the Captain leaves the game before the ship begins to sink, to protect from temporary disconnections.
  
• When a crew in control of the Burning Blade purposefully leaves the game, the ship will now sink naturally and will not appear to others to have been handed in at The Reaper’s Hideout.
  
• Crews pledged to the Burning Blade who use a Mermaid or Statue to return to their ship will no longer find their Obsidian Skeleton crew missing.

Player Communication

• Text chat now protects players from anyone attempting to s...

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Gameplay Improvements Sprinting with One-Handed Items

• Players are now able to sprint while carrying one-handed treasure items and discovered weapons. During sprinting, the item will now be stowed on a player’s belt, fully visible to other players.
  
• The majority of held weapons discoverable around the world can now also be stowed while sprinting, such as the Trident of Dark Tides and Ashen Winds Skull. The Skull of Siren Song is the exception, and players will not be able to sprint while wielding it.

Blunderbuss Balancing

• With the new identity of the Blunderbuss now settling into live play, the team have been fine-tuning the weapon’s power. The focus here remains in defensive play styles, with these changes further swaying the knockback powe...

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It had to be this particular weekend, of course, following on from Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19th. So brace for impact because we’re about to come at you again with the latest celebratory get-together on the seas, running from 11am UTC on Saturday, September 21st to the same time on Monday, September 23rd!

As always, the Community Weekend vibe runs both ways and we encourage players to save something to share with us and their fellow pirates while it’s in progress, whether we’re talking adventures, creations, ideas or good old-fashioned sentiment – all while enjoying everything else that’s going on, from freebies and discounts to special Voyages and Plunder. But let’s kick off with that all-important Community Emissary Grade…

Practising Twitchcraft You know the drill: while Community Weekend is live, log in to Twitch and tune in to any streamer in the {LINK REMOVED}... Read more

The sunny delights of August are finally heading over the horizon, which means it’s once more time to have a quick sit down and reminisce over everything we managed to get done last month. Grog rations are always plentiful on the Sea of Thieves, so fill up your tankards, settle in and let’s get right to it…

Content Update Things were a bit warm at the beginning of the month, so naturally sailors might have been a bit hesitant to head into the middle of the {LINK REMOVED}arid, volcanic Devil’s Roar. Sail that way they did, though, when word got around that ... Read more