Here is my fifth content drop idea. Please note, this drop is as if the previous four exist in the game. You can find them below:

Scholars of Curses - New Trading Company / 16 New Loot Types
The Fractured Isles - New Tool / Encounter / World Event
Trial of Fools - New Gameplay / Enemies / Vanity Items
Turned Tides - New Encounter/Area/Voyage Type

Warning I've written the full campaign below, this is a lot of text.

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Raised Chains

-Lore-

The Ferry of the Damned has vanished from the Sea of Thieves, the only remnants is the plaque that once sat above the portal back to the land of the living. An unlikely alliance between pirates and trading companies must band together. Otherwise death may once again mean the end of a pirate.

Along this master voyage, old foes resurface. Shadowy figures of those defeated will once again emerge from the depths. Tales of legendary pirates will become true.

-Objective-

• Introduce a story driven campaign.
• Bring together all gameplay elements currently in the game.
• Revisiting elements of previous campaigns.
• Create a new experience using existing mechanics.
• Bring a more challenging voyages for seasoned players.

-Overview-

The Raised Chains is a campaign targeted at players who are familiar with base mechanics of the game. The entry requirements below are designed so new players won’t start the campaign without knowing;

• Must be level 10 with the three base trading companies.
• Must have done at least 1 voyage for the three expanded companies.
• Must have completed at least 5 Bilge Rat commendations.
• Must have died at least 3 times in the game (will become clear why).

The campaign will begin once the player dies for the first time after all criteria is met. It will appear as a voyage in the players inventory. It can also be tracked by the commendation screen. This will help track when a player completes part of the campaign they may not be up to with other crews.

The update will also introduce a notice board to all outposts, this will have multiple uses. Its primary use is to help players find others in the server to assist in their campaign.

The campaign itself will be divided into four acts, each ending with a major battle. Each act will be divided into four to five chapters. If a player logs out unlike regular voyages their progress will be saved to the start of the chapter they are on.

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New Mechanic – Notice Board

The notice board will appear at all outposts and will be linked across the server. Meaning if a player posts a notice it will appear on all the boards for someone to claim. Its uses are as follows;

• Discard found voyages for other crews to complete.
• Notify crews server wide of a meeting place to form an alliance. Additional information can be added to show goals of the alliance.
• Display where your crew is in Raised Sails incase another crew wishes to assist.

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Raised Chains – Act 1

The Damned Sea - Chapter 1

• Player starts campaign upon death and entering Sea of the Damned.
• They’ll now be in a rowboat with remnants of a destroyed ship around them.
• A plaque will be shinning in the water (as treasure does normally).
• Inspecting it will give the player their first riddle, directing them to a tavern.
• They’ll speak to Duke and then The Mysterious Stranger.
• They’ll be instructed to retrieve the plaque.
• On attempting to do so they’ll receive a curse and fail to bring the plaque through.
• Duke will remind the player about the rumour of Flameheart stealing a cannon from the Ferryman which in turn was stolen by Warsmith.

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A Salty Request - Chapter 2

• The player will seek out Wonda, who will inform of Salty’s possible whereabouts if they help her with a cargo run.
• Cargo run is unique, moving flammable material that can’t be in light for too long or it’ll become damaged and eventually explode. Also they’ll be moving gunpowder kegs.
  Shadow of a pirate can protect the cargo meaning the pirate can carry the cargo with their back to the sun.
  Once completed this will become a possible cargo run in the future once the player is level 20 with Merchant Alliance.
• Wonda will tell the player where Salty is at Wander’s Refuge.
• On their journey to Wander’s Refuge the player will first encounter the Deadalodon. A skeletal/ghostly version of the original Hungering One.
  This can’t harm the player, similar effect to “Ship in a Bottle” from Scholars of Curses.
• Once they find Salty he says he’ll help them find Flamerheart’s wreck if they bring him parrot feathers.

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My Feathered Friends - Chapter 3

• The player’s master voyage updates instructing them to head to a Merchant Alliance representative.
• Merchant Alliance refuses to help unless if there is a demand for parrots.
• Player can talk to all vendors on the island until they have four requests.
• Once returning to Merchant Alliance they’ll receive an animal gathering voyage.
  These require the player get bait from the tavern as well as cages from the trading company.

The voyage itself is optional, if abandoned can be repurchased from merchant alliance.

Once completed parrots will be added to animals gathering voyages once the player reaches level 25 with Merchant Alliance.

• While at sea their ship will be attacked by the Deadalodon again, this time it can do damage to the ship. But the player can’t damage it back. Forcing them to run.
• After the player brings Salty feathers (either as an alive parrot or can be collected from a dead parrot) he’ll agree to help.

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War of Sea - Chapter 4

• Salty will lead them to empty south-west corner of the map.
• Here a fleet encounter will begin. On the final wave Salty will abandon ship.

First wave 3 sloops.

Second wave 1 sloop, 1 galleon.

Final wave 2 galleons. Warsmith’s galleon has no ladders and is armoured. (Warsmith’s ship is less aggressive until the other galleon is sunk).

The player can’t actually sink Warsmith, instead once they’ve endured the battle for so long the Deadalodon will appear and attack Warsmith’s ship.

• Warsmith will dive ending the counter, the Undeadalodon will dive also.
• The player’s master voyage will update telling them to return to Duke.

Some rewards will float at the end of the counter to be cashed in.

There’ll also be cosmetics unlocked themed around parrots.

A title will become unlocked.

(Sometime after the campaign is released, armoured Skellie galleons will appear in fleets.)

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Raised Chains – Act 2

A Slayer’s Son - Chapter 5

• The player will travel back to Duke to begin the second act.
• The player will mention the Deadalodon in which they’ll be told Merrick may hold the answers. Sending them to Shark Bait Cove.
• There the player will find a the painting and a new journal from Merrick. Leading the player to several islands. Hunting journals on the way to follow Merrick’s journey.
• Eventually they’ll end up on Shark Tooth Key where they’ll find Derrick.
• He’ll inform them Merrick has retired, but has passed his tales onto him.
• Deep in the ocean to the west is wreck that holds tons of cursed artifacts.

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Depths of Booty - Chapter 6

• Seagulls will be above the wreck, but are only visible if someone in the crew has reached this point of the voyage.
• Upon diving the players will be able to see a light very deep in the ocean. This is impossible to reach even when consuming bananas.
• On returning to Derrick he’ll suggest finding out the merfolk’s secret, sending them to The Sunken Grove to the north.
• The blocked entrance in the center of the island can be blasted open with a keg and the player can enter and dive. To find a hidden cave.
• Inscriptions on the walls indicate the merfolk curse can be temporarily applied with a song, which can only be played with a specific instrument.
• Returning to Derrick he’ll remind them about the Fools who have arrived with instruments of all kinds. As well as the Scholars who know all about curses.

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Trial of The Fool King - Chapter 7

• The player can speak to a Fool at any of the outposts. Once they describe the instrument to the fools, they are told that nothing like that instrument exists. But their master may be able to make one.
• The player is given the option to take a master trial key or take it at a later time. If the key is lost a new one must be bought.
• The player must enter and get to at least the 15th level of the trial when the Fool King will appear and offer them an ultimate challenge.
• This will be only three floors but the trials are much harder and are hybrid floors of two of the trial types (skill, survival, puzzle, memory).
• Once completed these floors will appear after reaching level 10 in a trial run. Completing them grant extra rewards compared to regular floors.
• The Fool King will give the player this new instrument which is a cross between uilleann pipes and a hurdy gurdy, with a slot for a gem in the center.

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Crusade of Curses - Chapter 8

• After the player speaks to a representative of the Scholars they are told the ship they are seeking is actually the wreck of their ship. They agree to help if the player brings the remainder of the lost treasure to them.
• They give the player a special compass of curses which directs them Mermaid’s Hideaway.
• Upon arriving the player has to play the instrument in the underwater cavern, some merfolk will appear and will sing a harmony.
• The player will mimic this, then teaching them the new song.
• The compass then directs the player to the most nearby mermaid statue for them to collect the gem inside.
• Now when holding a gem it gives the player the option to consume it which will place into the slot on their instrument.
• When playing the instrument with a gem inserted it will increase movement speed in the water as well as giving the player the ability to breath underwater.
• However it will also make the surface of the water glow the colour of the gem and the music can be heard from the surface.
• The gem will slowly lose its glow and degrade from ruby to emerald to sapphire. After this the gem will become gray and lose all effects, it can be sold for 250g.
• Finally the player will use the new tool to dive to the Scholars wreck and reclaim their treasure.
• The Scholars voyages can now lead players to deep wrecks which hold more rewards. Prior to sending them there it will send them to a mermaid statue.

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War of Rubble - Chapter 9

• When speaking to the Scholars they’ll gift the player a new type of cursed cannon ball which has a blue glow. They’ll also mention the odd looking parrot that was hiding behind the bar.

This new cursed cannonball type can be found in barrels once the full campaign is complete.

Its main effect is that it can collide with ghostly creatures.

Its effect on regular ships is that it will make an initial hole but actually pass through the ship and make an exit hole also.

• Salty can be found behind the tavern, he’ll say that he lied about leading them to the wreck. He’s actually in a way linked to Warsmith and knew she was still “alive” and wanted them to finish the job.
• He gives them her new location but mentions she has commandeered a Husk and made some improvements compared to the regular Husks. Recommending stocking up on resources, especially grapples, and highly recommends forming an alliance.
• He also lets them know that the Husk is currently dived as the Deadalodon is circling the area.
• Once ready for battle the player can collect a crate of cursed cannonballs from the Scholars. During this chapter a new crate can be bought once all the balls have been depleted.
• Salty send the player to just north of Old Faithful Isle which is where the battle begins
• First the Deadalodon will attack, the battle is the same as a regular megalodon battle. Except it can only be hurt by the cursed balls. It will also occasionally vanish and reappear.
• A few moments after it is defeated. The Husk will rise from the depths. Similar to the galleon there are plates of armour on the fort, meaning the player can’t shoot grapples here until the armour is first destroyed. The Husk itself is more aggressive moves more frantically.
• Once The Husk is defeated a sloop will rise from the sea.
• On the captain wave of the fort, a mixture of skellie types will spawn as well as two random captains.
• On unlocking the treasure room Warsmith will be inside. Upon defeating her, her skull will remain there will also be a journal in this room.
• The players master voyage will update telling them bring the journal to the Order of Souls.

There will be treasure to collected in the treasure room, inside the Husk and from the Deadalodon when it is defeated.

A new title will be unlocked.

Cosmetics themed around merfolk and deep sea will be unlocked to be purchased.

A new ghostly shark figurehead and sails can be unlocked.

New cannon cosmetics can be unlocked.

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Raised Chains – Act 3

Order of Five – Chapter 10

• The player can bring the journal to any Order of Souls representative to begin act 3.
• They will be told that the journal written in an ancient pirate code that they can’t decipher. They know the location of five cursed pirate captains that hold the answers if their skulls were returned.
• A new voyage will be added to the players inventory in the form of two maps and one cursed compass.
• The cursed compass will direct them to a location where an golden galleon will spawn. It can shoot up to three different types of cursed cannonballs. (These will cycle through, not all effects can be fired at once).
• One map will take them to an island with a wave of each of five harder variant skellie types. (mechanical, plant, shadow, gold, barnacled). The final wave will be a new hybrid type, such as golden shadow, along with 3 keg skellies.
• The other map will send them to and island with a bunch of normal skellies, followed by three hybrid captains at once.
• The skulls dropped have a high chance of hosting a curse.

After all five are cashed in the player will receive a translated journal. This can be accessed from their inventory. It will hold lots of snippets of lore hinting towards future content, but the main purpose will reveal the location of Flameheart. Which is on course outside the Devil’s Shroud.

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Shroudbreaker - Chapter 11

• If the player is stuck their master voyage will tell them to speak to Duke once more who will remind them of Captain Morrow’s figurehead that cut through the Shroud.
• This will send the player to speak with Captain Morrow on Morrow’s Peak Outpost.
• She inform the player that the figurehead was shattered across the Roar possibly even further. The magic is held in the figurehead itself and unless if they had some way of tracking magic it was impossible.
• The Scholars inform this isn’t something they’ve looked for before they’d need a sample to create a tracker. They suggest the location of some pieces.

It could be possible that part of the figurehead is in the water near a volcano, the steam is what could’ve cleared the Shroud.

More could be at the bottom of the oceans.

Some could be buried in the beaches.

Some possibly some had made its way west. Which is what caused the Shroud to disperse there, but it’s location there would be impossible to find at the moment.

• They recommend speaking to people to find out if anything has been found near any active volcanoes.
• With this the player can travel to the various islands and speak with NPCs, or manually check the volcanoes. Eventually they’ll find out enough information that the land sometimes changes under sea when a volcano erupts, also no one had explored the volcano at Y25.
• Here when the volcano erupts the player can find an opening under sea to a secret cave. (meaning they’ll have to endure the heat to get inside). Inside they can find part of the figure head and collect it, there’ll be an opening full steam in the cave. When the player enters this they’ll be fired out the volcano into the sea.
• The piece can be returned to the Scholars who will give them a compass to another piece which is deep underwater.
• They’ll inform them that their compasses seem to have stopped working on the curse, but rumours are the Gold Hoarder may have tracked a piece down and have a map to its location. The maps received will have a ton of “Xs” on some of these will be fakes and instead will act as a geyser, spawn some skellies, or have the effect of a cursed cannonball.
  Once this voyage is completed, these effects are added to level 35 Gold Hoarder voyages.
• The player are informed the final piece must be in the Groaning Expanse.

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Swamp of Sorrows - Chapter 12

• Arriving at the outpost in the Groaning Expanse the player will first need to map the area if they haven’t already.
• The mapmaker will inform them that something odd had been spotted but she won’t disclose the information until you complete a special voyage for her.
• This will be like a smaller Athena’s Voyage, with one map for each trading company. The player does however have to turn in these items to the mapmaker and receive less money for them. Failure to do so means the voyage will need to be repeated.
• Once completed this type of voyage can be purchased at all times.
• They will always feature one cursed item.
• For the voyage in the master campaign there will always be three Chest of Sorrows from one island.
• The mapmaker will reveal she had the piece all along and give them it as a final reward.
• The parts will need to be given to any shipwright who tells the player to return in one in-game day. They mention that someone looked like they were moving in above the Order of Souls, however they’re not open for business yet.

Going to the door of this location the player can see an “Under Contruction” type sign as well as a small table that says free samples. This is a hint to future content, the sample is a potion that temporarily turns the player into a skellie, but also grants them ability to stay deep in the Shroud without being hurt.

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War of Fury - Chapter 13

• When the figurehead is completed it can be added to the players ship. The shipwright informs the player that they had someone test it. And its power only seemed to work one location, elsewhere the ship was still affected by the Shroud.
• They also remind the player about the potion samples.
• Now the player has the location of Flameheart’s base, the means to travel there and the ability to survive on the ground there, they can begin their voyage.
• The area north of the Devil’s Roar can now be entered, the Shroud in game now appears more like it is described in the lore, as a thick fog.
• There’s several uninhabited islands in this northern area but only one that appears to have structures on it carved into the rock. Visiting any of the other islands they’ll find hints to the correct island.
• On arriving on the correct island (called Treasure Trove Cove) there’ll be tons of a new skellie type roaming.
  These are scorched skellies, similar to golden skellies they can be debuffed by a bucket of water. They hold the same health as a regular bandanna skellie, are faster than regular skellies and cause damage when near a player even if they’re not attacking.
• It is possible for a player to sneak through the camp without combat, whenever too much damage is dealt to a player the potion effects will wear off. So they will have to be weary getting too close to skellies for too long.
• In the treasure room is a single crate with a similar appearance to the Box of Wonderous Secrets. When this is collected all skellies on the island will become aggressive. Forcing the player to fight their way back through if they hadn’t killed them already. The island will also act as an active volcano with lava flows, geysers and earthquakes appears. Flameheart himself is nowhere to be seen.
• When the crate is picked up the players master voyage will update telling them to bring it to Captain Morrow
• Returning the box to Captain Morrow will grant the player a large cash reward, she mentions there were some gauntlets inside that weren’t her style, along with a skull.

This will end Act 3, rewards are;

The gold received from Captain Morrow

A new title.

The ability to collect free sample potions.

More cosmetics themed around the Devil Roar and Groaning Expanse.

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Raised Chains – Act 4

Lost at Sea – Chapter 14

The player can return to Duke and report that Flameheart was a dead end. He’ll inform the player that there are rumours that Flameheart has returned to the Sea of Thieves. He’ll also recommend that they take the skull they found to the Order of Souls.

If this is lost it can be collected again from Captain Morrow, it is impossible to sell this skull. Trying to cash it in will automatically trigger the dialogue with the Order of Souls.

They’ll inform the player that the memories show a skellie receiving a box with glowing inscriptions on it from a skeleton with a flame inside its ribcage. It then shows it later being slain by a man wearing the same pedant as Captain Morrow, who had chains wrapped around his arms. The last thing the skellie sees was him leaving with the same box as the first memory.

Speaking to Captain Morrow, she’ll remind the player of Stitcher Jim who betrayed her crew and his own as he was secretly working for the Gold Hoarder. She recommends speaking to the Gold Hoarders representatives.

They’ll say not speak of Stitcher Jim, as he had betrayed them and stole the box after he found out it held the secrets on how to bring things back from the land of the dead.

The players master voyage will update hinting about the use of the gauntlets that they had found.

If the player enters the Sea of the Damned while wearing the gauntlets they’ll be able to successfully bring the plaque through the portal.

Bringing this to the Mysterious Stranger they’ll tell the player how to find the Ferry of the Damned. They give the player sands of the dead and say to speak to the Scholars who will give them a compass leading there. They’ll end the conversation advising them to speak to Captain Morrow again.

The Scholars will also tell the players that the Ferry of the Damned may have similar properties to the Deadalodon. They say they’ve been working on a new tool to help in the battle, the cursed keg. The first one is free to the player, if it is destroyed a new one can be purchased.

The keg gifted to the player has no effect to other players. For regular/skellie ships it will only fill the lower deck with a bit of water.

If a player has three cursed cannonballs of one type they can exchange these for cursed kegs.

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Unlikely Alliance – Optional Chapter

Speaking to Captain Morrow she’ll tell the player she’s heard what she’s up against and advise to not go alone. She’ll assist in the battle if she has a crew and ship.

For the ship the player will have to pay a high fee any shipwright

The first crew member is Derrick, he’ll agree to help if you kill a Megalodon for him. This will have a set spawn location and holds no loot.

The second crew member is Wonda, if the player hasn’t already completed her cargo run they can do this now. Otherwise she’ll say she’ll join.

The final crew member is someone from the Bilge Rats, who Duke will let you recruit if you have completed a certain number commendations with the Bilge Rats.

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Stitcher’s Fleet - Chapter 15

The compass will lead the player to open sea to the south-west of Shark Bait Cove.

Once the player enters the correct area, fog will form making a large circle around their ship. If the player has recruited the Unlikely Alliance they will emerge from the fog to the south. Then the first battle will begin.

This battle is similar to a skellie fleet.

• The first wave will have 3 sloops. An armoured sloop, a ghostly sloop and a golden sloop.
• The second will be two galleons, one armoured and one golden.
• When the battle is finished the Unlikely Alliance will return into the fog and then the fog will disperse.

The player’s master voyage will change, the font and style of writing will be different. It will tell the player congratulations for getting this far, when they are ready for the final battle play the merfolks song with four other pirates.

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War of Storms – Chapter 16

When the song is played the battle will begin. The fog will reappear along with the Unlikely Alliance.

The Ferry of the Damned will erupt from the sea and float in the sky. Chains will hang from it as it flies around, these can be used to board the ship. When the ship is hit with a blue cursed cannonball it can temporarily can be hit by regular cannons. If the player boards it and detonates the cursed keg, this will allow it be permanently hit with regular cannons. There is no crew on the ship, everything is functional though with a ghostly presence controlling it.

After so much damage is done the ship will instead sail in the sea. The curse that stops cannonballs will no longer apply. A storm will begin in the area and the ship will become more aggressive.

Once the ship is finally defeated a Kraken tentacle will appear from the sea and wrap around it. Before pulling it to the depths.

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The Raised Chains – Chapter 17

This encounter will start immediately after the previous, if the player sinks during this battle they will not need to repeat Chapter 16. It can be reinitiated the same way.

Lightning will strike the sea and it will turn a dark inky black. All ships will be slowed down.

The Krakens tentacles will emerge from the depths each of them wrapped in glowing chains, with very few openings. These act as shield to the Kraken.

All eight tentacles have to be defeated. The Krakens body will emerge, and begin to attack the ship similar to how the megalodon does. Both its eyes glowing a deep green hue.

When it is finally defeated, the Kraken will leave and in the sea will be the steering wheel of the Ferry of the Damned.

This can be taken to The Mysterious Stranger for your final reward.

A large sum of all currencies in the game.

A large amount of XP for all trading companies.

A new title.

New cosmetics and ship cosmetics themed around the Ferry of the Damned

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Summary of Rewards

Lots of gold staggered throughout the acts

Expanded voyages for all trading companies once the relevant chapter is completed.

Cosmetics themed to each of the acts.

Greater challenges can appear to the player once certain chapters are completed.

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The End

I actually began to write this a few weeks back with the speculation of "Small Snails," but held off posting for several reasons. Primarily because I was waiting for the anniversary trailer to drop, but also I was reading through Athena's Fortune and the comic series. I wanted to try avoid topics that may actually be coming in the near future, and change the story accordingly. Somethings may have changed in game since writing it.

Thanks for reading! The next post I'm writing is called Encaged Eclipse.

I previously posted on Twitter why I think a Sea of Thieves sequel is happening, so I've laid out everything here on the forums that I would like to see added to the game if that were to actually happen.

(This is a replacement of the last post I made that had similar ideas, I just cleaned it up and expanded on it since I've come up with more ideas)

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~ New Social Space and Central Hub ~

Dedicated Social Hub/Island - Port Royal

An extremely large pirate paradise. Basically the "Capital" of the Sea of Thieves world. The purpose of this shared space would strictly be for socializing and immersion. This place would function similar to "The Tower" from Destiny. You can also choose to start your session here, do some minigames or shopping, before sailing into the Sea of Thieves. It could evolve throughout the year with seasonal decorations and event themes, making it feel like a dynamic, ever-changing part of the world. No gold or reputation would be earnable here. It would be a very large port town where dozens of players and crews can hang out, fish, shop, play minigames, and even find other crews to play with. This would not only be a great way to start your session, but also overhaul the current open crew system by acting as an in-game LFG experience, and of course be an area where you can relax and tell your stories.

This would also be where your very own rentable player home would be, with the ability to change ship types mid-session. SoT player homes would be inspired by Elder Scrolls Online player housing, WoW's new player homes, & Club Penguin igloos. These will be long-term, highly customizable, and expensive player homes to work on and spend your gold throughout your Sea of Thieves career (and to show off to people, of course).

Port Royal would naturally feature taverns, markets, workshops, and a variety of other buildings to fill the space and make it feel like a living port town. It would also include its own long-term commendation category in the Reputation Tab, encouraging players to socialize and visit frequently. Player housing decorations and furniture could be purchased exclusively at Port Royal, but unlocked through commendations earned out in the High Seas.

When you’re ready to set sail into the map you know and love, you simply head down to the docks, choose the ship you wish to sail, and select your starting outpost within the Sea of Thieves. After a short loading screen (similar to entering a Tall Tale) you’d appear at your chosen outpost and begin your adventure. And if you want to end your session at Port Royal, you could dive and merge into it (losing your treasure as normal) or sailing through a portal rock that leads back to the capital. Either way, this shared space can fit perfectly into Sea of Thieves and add a meaningful new layer to the sandbox.

~ Games ~

• Liar's Dice: A fast-paced, 2-10 player game of deception involving five hidden dice per player. Players bid on the total count across all their dice. The objective is to be the last player with dice, eliminating others by saying "liar" on bids that overstate the total.

• Cribbage: A classic 2-4 player card game where the objective is to be the first to score 121 points.

• Five Finger Fillet: A game where you place your hand down on a table, and use a knife to stab back and forth between your fingers, trying not to hit your fingers. Players can compete to see who can last the longest.

• Cho-Han: One crewmate acting as a dice dealer, rolls any number of dice. All other players simply bet on whether the total will be odd, or even.

• Karnath: A 2 player game where both players rolls a dice. The player with the highest roll takes the first turn. The goal is to be the first to reach an agreed total of points. A player can roll as often they'd like within their turn, but if they roll a 7 they lose all points accrued during that turn.

• Keel Haul Hold 'Em: (Two cards are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt face up in three stages. The stages consist of a series of three cards, later an additional single card, and a final card. Each player seeks the best five card poker hand).

• Boxing Brawls & Arm Wrestling: Friendly duals between players. These will have spectators and involve new unarmed punching mechanics.

~ Activities ~

• Fishing Competitions: Relax at the docks while NPC musicians play shanties nearby. Compete to see who can catch a fish the fastest. Loser gets fish slapped. A persistent leaderboard tracks the most successful fishermen in Port Royal, similar to a fishing derby.

• Fashion Show: At the ports stage, pirates can host their own fashion shows. The audience votes for their favorite look, and winning outfits are immortalized on a growing wall of past winners.

• Hide & Seek: Using Season 14’s disguise mechanics, players can opt into a organized Hide & Seek match that takes place throughout the port. The pirate who avoids detection the longest wins.

• Parkour Races: We saw during Monkey Island that players were competing for the fastest time in the Mêlée Island Spectacular. Port Royal can capitalize on this and have similar areas in town where players can do the same and race for the fastest times, with a persistent Top 10 leaderboard across instances.

~ Notable Areas ~

• Museum/Gallery: This building serves as a celebration of the community and the legends forged across the Sea of Thieves. It would feature multiple wings and exhibit halls where players can walk through curated collections of winning #SoTShot entries, community-created artwork, and iconic in-game moments captured over the years. The gallery could rotate exhibits seasonally, and have Interactive plaques beside each display could show the creator’s gamertag, and a short description of the story behind the image. Players could even “Arr!" pieces they love, (basically liking or upvoting) This space wouldn’t just be decoration. It would act as an archive of the community’s creativity. Something that Rare already loves to do outside of the game. It would be great if we can have that in the game.

• Hall of Legends: A marble chamber dedicated to members of the community who left a lasting mark upon the Sea of Thieves community. This could give the devs a chance to revive "player immortalizations" in a much easier way. The hall could feature interactive statues, paintings, plaques, books, etc. This would allow players to read an account of their accomplishment. It could even be dynamic and rotate these immortalizations so players are there before new legends take their place. Also gives everyone a chance to someday make it into the Hall of Legends.

• The Grand Emporium: A much more lavish shop that still acts as the current emporium, but feels like an physical multi-level luxury store rather than just a menu. This place would turn emporium shopping into a social and immersive experience, which will result in more people buying from the emporium too. So win win. Many things can be on display here to look at in depth so players can make a more informed purchase with their Ancient Coins.

• Cathedral: We saw how loved the church on Mêlée Island was when it came out. Many players wished they could have brought more people there to host events, weddings, do shots, etc. This place would be a large church that serves as a ceremonial and cultural landmark within Port Royal. This is where pirates can gather for community events, honor fallen crews, etc. When a pirate reaches Pirate Legend out on the waves, it's the cathedral bells that ring across the town, marking the achievement for everyone there and making the moment feel actually legendary. This is similar to the mechanics in Team Fortress 2 where server wide notifications appear when a player recieves a golden pan, or accepts an in-game proposal.

---

~ New World Regions ~

The Frozen Horizon

~ Overview ~

• Located to the North
• Glacier Cliffs & Fjords
• Ruined Stone Castles
• Nordic & Viking style longhouses, npcs, and enemies.
• Blizzards and Freezing water
• Freezing water slows your ship
• Small, floating Icebergs puts holes in your hull if sailed through
• New temperature meter (Lower Temp = Health Drain)
• Player movement is slowed by 15% throughout this region

~ Creatures ~

• Draugrs
• Trolls
• Wolves
• Ravens
• Polar Bears
• Ice Wraiths
• Mini Boss: Sea Serpant
• Fish: Halibut, Salmon, Herring

~ Voyages ~

• Sub-Zero Supply Runs
  The Merchant Alliance contracts you to bring ice and other resources only obtainable from The Frozen Horizon to our Outposts and Ports throughout the Sea of Thieves.
• Draugr Warbands
  Undead vikings have risen and want to begin their conquest once again. Fight off warbands of different enemy types using fire and return their Runic Tablets to the Jarl
• "The Raid on Runestone Keep"
  Sail to a large ruined castle is crawling with trolls, wraiths, and draugrs. Level up with the Jarl to obtain permission to raid this new player activated end game raid requiring multiple crews to defeat "Icebeard". Must fight a Frost Sea Serpant on the way there.

The Sunscorched Dunes

~ Overview ~

• Located to the West
• A very large land mass that is a warm desert like climate.
• Oases with resupply barrels and water to lower temperature.
• Sandstorms and Quicksand Pits
• Also uses temperature meter (Higher Temp = Health Drain)
• Buried Villages
• Pyramids with tombs
• Sandstone Forts
• Merchant Alliance Caravans

~ Creatures ~

• Scorpions
• Mummies
• Sand Stalkers
• Camels
• Giant Tortoises
• Vultures
• Beetles
• Mini Boss: Crystal Golems
• Fish: Sunfish, Groupers, Angelfish

~ Voyages ~

• Lost Caravan Riddles
  The Merchant Alliance contracts you to locate their lost shipments and unbury old trade routes used by the ancients
• Oasis Defenses
  Protect one of 5 Oases from being attacked by both the elements and enemies. Fight off waves of Scorpions, Mummies, and Vultures from disabling this spot to players and Npcs, all while a sandstorm is happening
• Crystal Cave Expedition
  Located throughout the underground cave system, you'll need to kill crystal golems, and mine various gems and ores to bring back to the Gold Hoarders

Sea Of Five Winds

~ Overview ~

• Located to the South
• Several Islands inspired by East Asian architecture and culture
• Bamboo groves and dense forests
• Super Tall Mountains with Fog
• Waterfalls & River Systems
• Typhoons, and constant light rain on land
• Sacred Temples
• Shogun Strongholds
• Kabuki Pirates & Npcs

~ Creatures ~

• Eastern Winds Cultists
• Cranes
• Pandas
• Fireflies
• Butterflies
• Bears
• Komodo Dragons
• Frogs
• Deer
• Fish: Koi, Carp, Tuna
• Mini Boss: Giant Crab

~ Voyages ~

• Junk Fleet Battles
  5 junk boat vessels are crewed by human pirates. You must try to sink them all, as they try to shoot cannons, ram, board, and steal your supplies. All while in a typhoon. Your goal is to collect as many supplies as possible for the frequently attacked port town in the Sea of Five Winds. Turn in these supplies for a hefty sum, or choose to keep them for yourself.
• Stronghold Heists
  You and other crews have been contracted to go into Shogun Stronghold, and locate the plans the Kabuki Pirates drew up. These plans contain information about the GMU and the outside world, so they are important and valuable. This is a stealth-only mission. If the Kabuki pirates are alerted, they will flee and you will receive nothing. And you will need to restart the heist.

---

~ Ship Types ~

Player Ship Types

• Dinghy or Gunboat
  Solo only, light, stealthy, quick and agile, but vulnerable
• Man-Of-War
  5-6 players, 4 masts, 12 cannons, multiple deck levels, very slow, robust
• Junk Boat
  3 players, Asian inspired ship, flat-bottomed, quick like a brig, but a bit more robust

Skeleton Ship Types

• Skeletal Brigantine
  We should have gotten these with Cursed Sails in 2018
• Skeletal Man-Of-War
  Large scale roaming skeleton ship, similar to The Burning Blade it will show up on the map and can be either taken over or sunk. (Good immersion/roleplay opportunity if you and your crew have the skeleton curse)

Sunken Ship Types

• Sunken Sloop: (Slightly more common than galleons)
• Sunken Brigantine: (Asset already used on Melee Island)
• Sunken Man-Of-War: (Very rare, but encourages players to check all shipwrecks they see)
• Sunken Junk Boat: (Only found in The Sea of Five Winds)

---

~ New Resources and Consumables~

• Cloth - Used to repair your ships sails to maintain high speeds in wind
• Iron Plate - Used to temporarily fortify your ships hull
• Apples - 1 bite = 75 HP
• Grapes - 2 bites = 25 HP per, 50 HP total
• Cooked Crab - Tier 1 meat, 50 HP + 25% Regeneration
• Brewable Grogs - (Basically potions) This adds a small crafting system to the game. Example: "Bilge Brew" (increases bucketing & repair speed for 1 minute)
• Bait Bomb - Attracts sharks to specific area when thrown

---

~ Technical Updates ~

• Higher tick rate
  Tick Rates are currently 32-64. 32 being on land, and 64 being on ships. The higher the tick rate, the higher responsive controls, accurate hit registration, and smoother player movement is.
• Reduced file size for the game as much as possible
  After optimizing the code, this should make the game install much smaller. You could go further with this by adding options for what to install. (Pirates Life Tall Tales, Monkey Island Tall Tales, or just the Core Game)
• Upgrade from UE4 to UE5
  Unreal Engine 5 has much better memory management than 4, along with faster/better compatibility across Microsoft Azure Servers
• Optimize code, textures, meshes, and shaders.
  The game currently uses C++20, but C++26 is coming this year and it has much more optimizations and ease of use for programmers than C++20 does.
• Drop last-gen console support
  Rare has a 10 year contract with Microsoft to keep the almost 13 year old console as a platform to play Sea of Thieves on, however once that's up I think it should be sunset. (None of these features are likely to happen in the next 2 years anyway)
• Increase ship count across servers
  With the 3 new regions I proposed added, increase ship count as technical improvements allow, hopefully around 15 ships. It sounds like a lot, but with those regions added, the game will feel much more lively, and player interactions would be at an all time high.

---

~ Quality of Life ~

• Expand the gameplay loop using mechanics that already exist (Tall tale rope cutting, LOTV destroying buildings, etc.)
• Better Clothing & Vanity Chest UI with faster navigation, a search bar, and Favorite/Hide option
• Moveable HUD elements for those on wider aspect ratio monitors
• Dynamic Gamertags: White: = neutral. Orange: = Threatening. Red = In active conflict/battle
• Outfit saving and presets
• Ability to open/close jackets in clothing chest
• More lore, at a much faster pace than we currently get it, and more in game than outside of game.
• Crew Finder Board in Port Royal
• Inspect Weapon animations
• Overhall the text/chat box: Add options to speak to guilds, crew, local, etc. As well as filtering for spam messages. And allow us to see the history of messages too
• Storage Crate Filtering
• Storm tracking on map table
• Audio cues for low health (Heartbeat or something)
• Get rid of useless resources in barrels
• True 1:1 aiming and raw input option in settings
• More Ambient Sea Life: Whales, Seals, Dolphins, Manta Rays, Sea Serpents, Sea Turtles, Hammerheads
• More Ambient Land Life: Goats, Dodo Birds, Iguanas, Crabs, Monkeys
• Variants of Krakens (Similar to Megs)
• Variants of Merfolk and Sirens (Different body types like seen in the cinematic trailer)
• More Instruments: Fiddle, Flute, (Piano in Player Home and Port Royal)
• Prioritization of new, meaningful systems and mechanics instead of reskinned content
• Open the physical Sea Dogs Arena at K12 so we can go inside and cry in the hot tub
• Focus on replayability when shipping content.
• Rotate events on a regular basis. (Fight Nights Friday, Mega Stash Monday, Smugglers Heist Sunday, Last Ship Standing Saturday, etc.)
• In-game calendar for events, updates, twitch drops, etc.
• Release all the cosmetics we have yet to ever see in game
• Allow the customization of your guilds branding on flags
• Option to rope swing to another ship when in a certain vicinity

---

Sea of Thieves has always been at its best when the community helped shape the future in those early days. If you look at some of the older posts on the forums here, it's actually amazing just how much was eventually added from several of those. We've also recently got 110 FOV, quickswap is back (kinda), Insider NDA removal, Unban wave, HitReg improvements, etc. Rare can & does listen, they are just limited by many factors in the current state of Sea of Thieves. And with Everwild's cancelation and the studio hit with many layoffs, things can't just happen overnight.

That being said, the game could be so much more, and there is no other game that feels and plays like Sea of Thieves. It really is special; there just need to be some fresh mechanics, new places to see, new things to do, technical improvements, and this game could be the largest open world multiplayer game of all time. I really believe that.

If a sequel or remaster ever does happen, I’d love for it to reflect what players actually want to see and experience, so feel free to express what you'd like to see as well, all ideas are welcome!

Let's get this out of the way first, tall tales is a great addition tho the game. Now, I have done a quick review of them before, while I was in the process of these voyages but I feel I should give it a better analysis of its weak points

First, the current tall tales don't make much logical sense, by this I mean that they don't coincide with the reputation you gain with some factions for the tall tales that basically allow you to initiate the voyage. For one of the tall tales (Think its the 2nd one) you start a super secret voyage for the order of souls... now for someone who is a rep lvl 1-10 this doesn't make sense as you are told about a secret that only a small circle of the order of souls know, a secret that seems should only be told to those who are highly trusted by the order yet here they are giving it out to any lad getting his feet wet.

Fix: Any new tall tales needs to make logical sense, make reputation an actual valuable thing with some tales being locked out if your rep lvl is too low with that faction. Some NPC that initiate a voyage like the tavern keeper might not need a rep lvl while others like the gold hoarders might require a certain rep lvl before initiating the voyage itself.

2ndly, Tall tales are great to get your feet wet, they are long (Bad), and fairly simple. The 1st voyage has a water chamber puzzle that is fairly simple and the failure rate is extremely low with water rising really slowly but this holds for the other water chambers found in the other chapters of the tall tales (Except the last one). However, I believe tall tales takes too long and the rewards, not worth the voyage.

Fix: The Idea that most of the adventuring should take place on up to a max of 3 islands should hold, however, in each island, crews should be able to do about 3 or 4 mini games. Tall tales provides some interesting mini game already like the water chambers, or the platforming on the last tall tale, or even the arena skelly battles, but they should really expand those mini games (won't talk about it here, mini game implementation is something I've already discussed before) and upon completing each INDIVIDUAL mini game, the crew should be REWARDED. This leads to my next point--->

3rd: Rewards should be in the form of TREASURE and NOT GOLD. As it stands, the current tall tale rewards players at the end of a long voyage with a few measly gold, this is bad. It makes tall tales completely PVE orientated and takes forever to even receive this reward. In fact, who is even given out this reward? I mean I get the selling skulls for gold but why do you immediately get like 3k gold for completing a voyage, who is given this gold out? makes no sense.

SO a quick overview of how this would work...

New tall tale voyages should have a story that can be completed in one sitting (Unless reserved for legendary pirates)

with about 3- 5 mini games in between each island

for a total of 3 or less islands per voyage that is open to everyone.

For completing each mini game a reward of varying uniqueness of 1-2 treasure should be given based on rep lvl with quality of the treasure also being anchored to rep lvl of the crew.

For completing a voyage (and the final mini game wether its a boss battle or something else) should reward about 5- 10 treasure items (also based on rep lvl).

Players can at anytime choose to stop said voyage at anytime by selling their current loot at any outpost and cancelling the voyage.

I understand that this is a very long and demanding idea that I'm requesting but I do it out of passion for this game. Overall you got some great mini games devs, but I have a long list of mini games for you guys to choose, and I'm sure you all might have an even longer list of interesting mini games you can come up with. Just don't be afraid, or better said, Please make it so that whichever mini games are chosen, that they are implemented with a randomizer system. HAVING TO DO THE SAME VOYAGE 5 TIMES IS NOT FUN. By randomizing the mini games found on each island you really increase the replay-ability of your voyages. Find ways to change up the mini game and the story for the voyage will change too. How cool is it if the first time completing it leads to a treasure room with a dead captain next to it, the mystery of the cursed crew and the lost captain has been solved, but the next time you reach the last mini game of the voyage you don't find them so less dead, and a boss battle begins!

4th: boss battles are too repetitive, I liked the current unique animations that each boss had but it was the same moves for all of them. An annoying nearly unavoidable ground pound that also needs to be fixed by having its range reduced SIGNIFICANTLY, a teleportation ability, and a summoning ability.

Fix: There are more abilities out there. I offered a few like volleying fire balls, oozing ghastly plasma that blinds players vision, fire breath, shadow invisibility (That can be seen again with. a lantern or any light source). I'm sure the devs can come up with more ideas for this. and for the LOVE OF THE SEA!!! please stop all bosses from eating bananas, unless they are some sort of shaman or healer lord please remove this system, it's a pain to deal with. These current fights are taking way too long to complete sometimes. 5 gun powder barrels to the face and nothing should still be standing.

With that said I'm loving the direction of the game, Although it took forever, the final tall tale was relatively what I had in mind for this game, now it just needs a lot of polishing. Tall tales feels like the mid stages of alpha testing, it's good to get your feet wet and the story drags forever, but only because the system needs a lot of polishing. It's. good alpha though, it has a lot of potential and certainly has that pirate magic feeling to it that could bring doves of people to the game, with that said, you now have my first and most sincere Thank You since the game came out, I am looking forward to it being the first of many.

(Updated as of 28/03/2026)

We all speculate about the future of Sea of Thieves, whether that’s a sequel, remaster, or a complete overhaul. So I wanted to lay out everything from my personal wishlist here on the forums of what I'd like to see from a sequel if Rare ever did decide to make one...

---

~ New Social Spaces and Hubs ~

Dedicated Social Hub/Island - Port Royal

An extremely large pirate paradise. Basically the "Capital" of the Sea of Thieves world. The purpose of this shared space would strictly be for socializing and immersion. This place would function similar to "The Tower" from Destiny. You can also choose to start your session here, do some minigames or shopping, before sailing into the Sea of Thieves. It could evolve throughout the year with seasonal decorations and event themes, making it feel like a dynamic, ever-changing part of the world. No gold or reputation would be earnable here. It would be a very large port town where dozens of players and crews can hang out, fish, shop, play minigames, and even find other crews to play with. This would not only be a great way to start your session, but also overhaul the current open crew system by acting as an in-game LFG experience, and of course be an area where you can relax and tell your stories.

This would also be where your very own rentable player home would be, with the ability to change ship types mid-session. SoT player homes would be inspired by Elder Scrolls Online player housing, WoW's new player homes, & Club Penguin igloos. These will be long-term, highly customizable, and expensive player homes to work on and spend your gold throughout your Sea of Thieves career (and to show off to people, of course).

Port Royal would naturally feature taverns, markets, workshops, and a variety of other buildings to fill the space and make it feel like a living port town. It would also include its own long-term commendation category in the Reputation Tab, encouraging players to socialize and visit frequently. Player housing decorations and furniture could be purchased exclusively at Port Royal, but unlocked through commendations earned out in the High Seas.

When you’re ready to set sail into the map you know and love, you simply head down to the docks, choose the ship you wish to sail, and select your starting outpost within the Sea of Thieves. After a short loading screen (similar to entering a Tall Tale) you’d appear at your chosen outpost and begin your adventure. And if you want to end your session at Port Royal, you could dive and merge into it (losing your treasure as normal) or sailing through a portal rock that leads back to the capital. Either way, this shared space can fit perfectly into Sea of Thieves and add a meaningful new layer to the sandbox.

~ Games ~

• Liar's Dice: A fast-paced, 2-10 player game of deception involving five hidden dice per player. Players bid on the total count across all their dice. The objective is to be the last player with dice, eliminating others by saying "liar" on bids that overstate the total.

• Cribbage: A classic 2-4 player card game where the objective is to be the first to score 121 points.

• Five Finger Fillet: A game where you place your hand down on a table, and use a knife to stab back and forth between your fingers, trying not to hit your fingers. Players can compete to see who can last the longest.

• Cho-Han: One crewmate acting as a dice dealer, rolls any number of dice. All other players simply bet on whether the total will be odd, or even.

• Karnath: A 2 player game where both players rolls a dice. The player with the highest roll takes the first turn. The goal is to be the first to reach an agreed total of points. A player can roll as often they'd like within their turn, but if they roll a 7 they lose all points accrued during that turn.

• Keel Haul Hold 'Em: (Two cards are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt face up in three stages. The stages consist of a series of three cards, later an additional single card, and a final card. Each player seeks the best five card poker hand).

• Boxing Brawls & Arm Wrestling: Friendly duals between players. These will have spectators and involve new unarmed punching mechanics.

~ Activities ~

• Fishing Competitions: Relax at the docks while NPC musicians play shanties nearby. Compete to see who can catch a fish the fastest. Loser gets fish slapped. A persistent leaderboard tracks the most successful fishermen in Port Royal, similar to a fishing derby.

• Fashion Show: At the ports stage, pirates can host their own fashion shows. The audience votes for their favorite look, and winning outfits are immortalized on a growing wall of past winners.

• Hide & Seek: Using Season 14’s disguise mechanics, players can opt into a organized Hide & Seek match that takes place throughout the port. The pirate who avoids detection the longest wins.

• Parkour Races: We saw during Monkey Island that players were competing for the fastest time in the Mêlée Island Spectacular. Port Royal can capitalize on this and have similar areas in town where players can do the same and race for the fastest times, with a persistent Top 10 leaderboard across instances.

~ Notable Areas ~

• Museum/Gallery: This building serves as a celebration of the community and the legends forged across the Sea of Thieves. It would feature multiple wings and exhibit halls where players can walk through curated collections of winning #SoTShot entries, community-created artwork, and iconic in-game moments captured over the years. The gallery could rotate exhibits seasonally, and have Interactive plaques beside each display could show the creator’s gamertag, and a short description of the story behind the image. Players could even “Arr!" pieces they love, (basically liking or upvoting) This space wouldn’t just be decoration. It would act as an archive of the community’s creativity. Something that Rare already loves to do outside of the game. It would be great if we can have that in the game.

• Hall of Legends: A marble chamber dedicated to members of the community who left a lasting mark upon the Sea of Thieves community. This could give the devs a chance to revive "player immortalizations" in a much easier way. The hall could feature interactive statues, paintings, plaques, books, etc. This would allow players to read an account of their accomplishment. It could even be dynamic and rotate these immortalizations so players are there before new legends take their place. Also gives everyone a chance to someday make it into the Hall of Legends.

• The Grand Emporium: A much more lavish shop that still acts as the current emporium, but feels like an physical multi-level luxury store rather than just a menu. This place would turn emporium shopping into a social and immersive experience, which will result in more people buying from the emporium too. So win win. Many things can be on display here to look at in depth so players can make a more informed purchase with their Ancient Coins.

• Cathedral: We saw how loved the church on Mêlée Island was when it came out. Many players wished they could have brought more people there to host events, weddings, do shots, etc. This place would be a large church that serves as a ceremonial and cultural landmark within Port Royal. This is where pirates can gather for community events, honor fallen crews, etc. When a pirate reaches Pirate Legend out on the waves, it's the cathedral bells that ring across the town, marking the achievement for everyone there and making the moment feel actually legendary. This is similar to the mechanics in Team Fortress 2 where server wide notifications appear when a player recieves a golden pan, or accepts an in-game proposal.

---

~ New World Regions ~

The Frozen Horizon

~ Overview ~

• Located to the North
• Glacier Cliffs & Fjords
• Ruined Stone Castles
• Nordic & Viking style longhouses, npcs, and enemies.
• Blizzards and Freezing water
• Freezing water slows your ship
• Small, floating Icebergs puts holes in your hull if sailed through
• New temperature meter (Lower Temp = Health Drain)
• Player movement is slowed by 15% throughout this region

~ Ambient Creatures/New enemies ~

• Ravens
• Puffins
• Snowy Stoats
• Ice Wraiths
• Draugrs
• Trolls
• Fish: Halibut, Salmon, Herring
• Mini Boss: Sea Serpant

~ Merchant/Hunter's Call Creatures~

• Wolves
• Penguins
• Polar Bears
• Snow hares
• Arctic Yaks

~ Voyages ~

• Sub-Zero Supply Runs
  The Merchant Alliance contracts you to bring ice and other resources only obtainable from The Frozen Horizon to our Outposts and Ports throughout the Sea of Thieves.
• Draugr Warbands
  Undead vikings have risen and want to begin their conquest once again. Fight off warbands of different enemy types using fire and return their Runic Tablets to the Jarl
• "The Raid on Runestone Keep"
  Sail to a large ruined castle is crawling with trolls, wraiths, and draugrs. Level up with the Jarl to obtain permission to raid this new player activated end game raid requiring multiple crews to defeat "Icebeard". Must fight a Frost Sea Serpant on the way there.

Sunscorched Dunes

~ Overview ~

• Located to the West
• A very large land mass that is a warm desert like climate with cactus.
• Oases with resupply barrels and water to lower temperature.
• Sandstorms and Quicksand Pits
• Also uses temperature meter (Higher Temp = Health Drain)
• Buried Villages
• Pyramids with tombs
• Sandstone Forts
• Merchant Alliance Caravans
• Dust devils

~ Ambient Creatures/New enemies ~

• Scorpions
• Beetles
• Desert Pocket Mice
• Cave Spiders
• Sand Stalkers
• Mummies

~ Merchant/Hunter's Call Creatures ~

• Frilled Lizard: Chases you, spits poision, & can be killed for meat or captured and sold
• Desert Goat: Rams players. Horns can be harvestable and sold
• Camel
• Giant Tortoises
• Vultures
• Fish: Sunfish, Groupers, Angelfish
• Mini Boss: Crystal Golems

~ Voyages ~

• Lost Caravan Riddles
  The Merchant Alliance contracts you to locate their lost shipments and unbury old trade routes used by the ancients
• Oasis Defenses
  Protect one of 5 Oases from being attacked by both the elements and enemies. Fight off waves of Scorpions, Mummies, and Vultures from disabling this spot to players and Npcs, all while a sandstorm is happening
• Crystal Cave Expedition
  Located throughout the underground cave system, you'll need to kill crystal golems, dodge stalagmites falling from ceilings and mine various gems and ores to bring back to the Gold Hoarders

Sea Of Five Winds

~ Overview ~

• Located to the South
• Several Islands inspired by East Asian architecture and culture
• Bamboo groves and dense forests
• Super Tall Mountains with Fog
• Waterfalls & River Systems
• Typhoons, and constant light rain on land
• Sacred Temples
• Shogun Strongholds
• Kabuki Pirates & Npcs

~ Ambient Creatures/New enemies ~

• Pandas (Ambient due to asia's laws)
• Fireflies
• Butterflies
• Frogs
• Eastern Winds Cultists

~ Merchant/Hunter's Call Creatures~

• Quail
• Tapir
• Giant Salamander
• Large Mantis
• Cranes
• Sun bears
• Komodo Dragons
• Deer
• Fish: Koi, Tuna, Pufferfish
• Mini Boss: Giant Crab

~ Voyages ~

• Junk Fleet Battles
  5 junk boat vessels are crewed by human pirates. You must try to sink them all, as they try to shoot cannons, ram, board, and steal your supplies. All while in a typhoon. Your goal is to collect as many supplies as possible for the frequently attacked port town in the Sea of Five Winds. Turn in these supplies for a hefty sum, or choose to keep them for yourself.
• Stronghold Heists
  You and other crews have been contracted to go into Shogun Stronghold, and locate the plans the Kabuki Pirates drew up. These plans contain information about the GMU and the outside world, so they are important and valuable. This is a stealth-only mission. If the Kabuki pirates are alerted, they will flee and you will receive nothing. And you will need to restart the heist.

Drowned Dominion

~ Overview ~

• The Merfolk empire located underneath the current map
• Accessible by swimming down far enough (Same elevation as the Shrines & Treasuries)
• Swimming Megs and Krakens above the cities
• Several type of interactable Merfolk Npcs
• Sea anemones with schools of fish
• Looks similar to the underwater shrines, but in perfect condition as the mer haven't abandon this place.
• Merfolk Sanctuaries & Coral Palaces/Buildings and Domes
• Lots of ancient shipwrecks and deep trenches
• Because Mer have no use for gold or doubloons, Sand Dollars would be a new currency that we can collect and spend in this region.

~ Ambient Creatures/New enemies ~

• Merfolk of various body types and clothing
• Merfolk Princess (Daughter of the Siren King & Queen and leader of the Mer. Similar to what the Pirate Lord and Flamheart is, but for non pirates)
• Fish: Anglerfish, Lanternfish, Starfish,

~ Merchant/Hunter's Call Creatures~

• Giant Clams with pearls with different rarities
• Glowing Squids
• Ocotopus
• Eels
• Deep Sea Cucumbers
• Nautilus
• Glimmerfish

~ Voyages ~

• Stop the Sirens Spread
  You'll be charged with helping stop the merfolk from turning into Sirens by communicating with them using a new mechanic. Merfolks earrings. When equipped, these give you the ability to hear and talk with merfolk in this region. If not, it will be scrambled dialogue. You'll go to various places throughout the Sea of Thieves to collect items to aid in the ritual needed to cure merfolk before they turn into sirens.
• Daughter of the Depths
  Because this is now scrapped for Season 19, this would be a great addition to add as part of this region. This could be expanded as a legend of the veil style voyage: You'd gather coordinates for a siren shrine, and you'd be given a keg with a timer that you need to place somewhere in that shrine to disable it, stopping further siren plots. The siren queen knows about this, so you'll have to fight Dark Brethren sirens and ocean crawlers. The final boss would be the Daughter of the Depths kraken.

Neverland

~ Overview ~

• Located second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning
• The very large island of Neverland, home of Peter Pan & Captain Hook
• Giant ancient trees with rope bridges, pirate hideouts, and treehouse villages high above the jungle floor.
• Players can temporarily gain flight or gliding abilities through pixie dust mechanics.
• Crocodile-infested waters surrounding pirate harbors and caves.
• Locations: Hangman's Tree, Mermaid Lagoon, Skull Rock, Cannibal Cove, Crocodile Creek, Indian Camp, etc.
• Neverland only works as a location if the Cap'n ends up being Hook, and we get a crossover.

~ Ambient Creatures/New enemies ~

• Lost Boys
• Pixies
• Hook’s Pirates
• Shadow creatures

~ Merchant/Hunter's Call Creatures ~

• Crocodiles
• Giant Starfish
• Fish: Entz, Emperor Fish, Seahorse

~ Voyages ~

• Pixie Dust Runs
  The pixies of Neverland have had their dust stolen by Hook’s pirates. Crews must track jars of enchanted dust across several Neverland locations, fighting Hook’s crew and solving puzzles. Completing the voyage restores Neverland and rewards players with rare pixie dust used for temporary flight abilities only available here on Neverland.

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~ Ship Types / Customization ~

Player Ship Types

• Dinghy or Gunboat
  Solo only, light, stealthy, quick and agile, but vulnerable
• Man-Of-War
  5-6 players, 4 masts, 12 cannons, multiple deck levels, very slow, robust
• Junk Boat
  3 players, Asian inspired ship, flat-bottomed, quick like a brig, but a bit more robust

Skeleton Ship Types

• Skeletal Brigantine
  We should have gotten these with Cursed Sails in 2018
• Skeletal Man-Of-War
  Large scale roaming skeleton ship, similar to The Burning Blade it will show up on the map and can be either taken over or sunk. (Good immersion/roleplay opportunity if you and your crew have the skeleton curse)

Sunken Ship Types

• Sunken Sloop: (Slightly more common than galleons)
• Sunken Brigantine: (Asset already used on Melee Island)
• Sunken Man-Of-War: (Very rare, but encourages players to check all shipwrecks they see)
• Sunken Junk Boat: (Only found in The Sea of Five Winds)

Expanded Ship Customization

• Lantern Shapes & Designs
• Map & Map Table Designs
• Harpoon Designs
• Mast Designs
• Ship curses: (Ghost curse, Shores of Gold, etc.)

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~ New Resources and Consumables~

• Cloth - Used to repair your ships sails to maintain high speeds in wind
• Iron Plate - Used to temporarily fortify your ships hull
• Apples - 1 bite = 75 HP
• Grapes - 2 bites = 25 HP per, 50 HP total
• Cooked Crab - Tier 1 meat, 50 HP + 25% Regeneration
• Brewable Grogs - (Basically potions) This adds a small crafting system to the game. Example: "Bilge Brew" (increases bucketing & repair speed for 1 minute) "Siren's Sip" (Allow breathing underwater for 3 minutes)
• Bait Bomb - Attracts sharks to specific area when thrown

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~ More Creatures In The Current World ~

Aside from the new creatures added in the new regions, there should be an expansion on various animals that are found throughout the world we already know

Ambient Life

• Iguanas
• Spiders
• Crabs
• Monkeys

Merchant/Hunter's Call

• Dodo Birds
• Goats
• Whales: Blue Whale, Ocra, Beluga
• Seals
• Dolphins
• Manta/Sting Rays
• Sea Turtles
• Sharks: Hammerhead, Tiger, Sawshark
• Dodo Birds

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~ Technical Updates ~

• Higher tick rate
  Tick Rates are currently 32-64. 32 being on land, and 64 being on ships. The higher the tick rate, the higher responsive controls, accurate hit registration, and smoother player movement is.
• Reduced file size for the game as much as possible
  After optimizing the code, this should make the game install much smaller. You could go further with this by adding options for what to install. (Pirates Life Tall Tales, Monkey Island Tall Tales, or just the Core Game)
• Upgrade from UE4 to UE5
  Unreal Engine 5 has much better memory management than 4, along with faster/better compatibility across Microsoft Azure Servers
• Optimize code, textures, meshes, and shaders.
  The game currently uses C++20, but C++26 is coming this year and it has much more optimizations and ease of use for programmers than C++20 does.
• Drop last-gen console support
  Rare has a 10 year contract with Microsoft to keep the almost 13 year old console as a platform to play Sea of Thieves on, however once that's up I think it should be sunset. (None of these features are likely to happen in the next 2 years anyway)
• Increase ship count across servers
  With the 3 new regions I proposed added, increase ship count as technical improvements allow, hopefully around 15 ships. It sounds like a lot, but with those regions added, the game will feel much more lively, and player interactions would be at an all time high.

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~ Quality of Life ~

• Expand the gameplay loop using mechanics that already exist (Tall tale rope cutting, LOTV destroying buildings, etc.)
• Better Clothing & Vanity Chest UI with faster navigation, a search bar, and Favorite/Hide option
• Moveable HUD elements for those on wider aspect ratio monitors
• Dynamic Gamertags: White: = neutral. Orange: = Threatening. Red = In active conflict/battle
• Outfit saving and presets
• Ability to open/close jackets in clothing chest
• More lore, at a much faster pace than we currently get it, and more in game than outside of game.
• Crew Finder Board in Port Royal
• Inspect Weapon animations
• Overhall the text/chat box: Add options to speak to guilds, crew, local, etc. As well as filtering for spam messages. And allow us to see the history of messages too
• Storage Crate Filtering
• Storm tracking on map table
• Audio cues for low health (Heartbeat or something)
• Get rid of useless resources in barrels
• True 1:1 aiming and raw input option in settings
• Variants of Krakens (Similar to Megs)
• Variants of Merfolk and Sirens (Different body types like seen in the cinematic trailer)
• More Instruments: Fiddle, Flute, (Piano in Player Home and Port Royal)
• Prioritization of new, meaningful systems and mechanics instead of reskinned content
• Open the physical Sea Dogs Arena at K12 so we can go inside and cry in the hot tub
• Focus on replayability when shipping content.
• Writing on the map
• Rotate events on a regular basis. (Fight Nights Friday, Mega Stash Monday, Smugglers Heist Sunday, Last Ship Standing Saturday, etc.)
• In-game calendar for events, updates, twitch drops, etc.
• Release all the cosmetics we have yet to ever see in game
• Allow the customization of your guilds branding on flags
• Option to rope swing to another ship when in a certain vicinity
• "Walk The Plank" In addition to Voting to brig someone, you can also vote to have a crew member OR another player on your ship, walk the plank
• Open and Closing Captain's Quarters door
• Add map icons for which animals spawn on which island

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Sea of Thieves has always been at its best when the community helped shape the future in those early days. If you look at some of the older posts on the forums here, it's amazing how much was eventually added from several of those. We've also recently got 110 FOV, quickswap is back (kinda), Insider NDA removal, Unban wave, HitReg improvements, etc. Rare can & does listen, they are just limited by many factors in the current state of Sea of Thieves. And with Everwild's cancelation and the studio hit with many layoffs, things can't just happen overnight.

That being said, the game could be so much more, and there is no other game that feels and plays like Sea of Thieves. It really is special; there just need to be some fresh mechanics, new places to see, new things to do, technical changes & improvements, and this game could be the largest shared open world multiplayer game of all time. I really believe that.

If a sequel or remaster ever does happen, I’d love for it to reflect what players actually want to see and experience, so feel free to express what you'd like to see as well!

With the temporary removal of washed up items, many complaints have surfaced about the current state of player exploration. Beyond sight seeing and maybe some lore discovery, SoT does not offer the player much in return for exploring its beautiful landscapes, other than some washed up items on beaches (once that feature returns).

I would like to offer a content suggestion that I think could change that: Pirate Tombs.

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Overview

Each of the large islands present in SoT could contain a large labyrinth below them that serves as a Pirate Tomb. The islands that have a tomb could include (but are not limited to)

• Smugglers Bay
• Old Faithful Island
• Lone Cove
• Crescent Isle
• Cannon Cove
• Kraken's Fall
• Wanderers Refuge
• Plunder Valley
• Crook's Hollow
• Discover Ridge
• Thieves Haven
• Devil's Ridge

The Pirate Tomb would contain multiple floors that are made up of puzzles/riddles that must be solved for the crew to progress through the tomb. These floors could also have traps in them as well.

The Pirate Tomb would contain loot along the way and in the final chamber.

A Pirate Captain would lie in wait for the crew to try and steal the treasure he/she wanted to take with them to the afterlife.

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Spawning a Pirate Tomb

The idea is to promote exploration, so it makes no sense if these Pirate Tombs are always active because then players will know exactly where to go. Instead, the tombs should activate randomly, and give no worldly indication (unlike Skeleton Forts) that they are up. Players will simply stumble across them while exploring the larger islands.

Exploring islands should reward the player

It also makes no sense to have the entrance in one location, because players will simply check the same spot every time they pass an island. Instead, each island should have multiple locations where the tomb entrance can spawn. Each entrance on the island can lead to the same tomb, but the initial "door" location should vary. If we consider the entrance to look like the archway in the picture above, these could be added inside of caves, in the sides of rocks, etc.

Entrance in rocks (red), in cave (yellow), underwater tunnel (orange). All connect to the same Pirate Tomb

Furthermore, players should be able to be made aware of these tombs by talking to NPCs, or finding journals in the world. Tavern keepers can tell players when they have heard of a new tomb discovered nearby (but not give exact locations). NPCs at campfires can explain to players that they were on an expedition to explore a tomb before they got marooned. You get the idea.

Taverns are a great place to get the latest scoop on recently discovered Pirate Tombs

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Progressing through the Pirate Tomb

I was thinking that the Pirate Tomb would consist of multiple floors (3-5). Each floor is chosen randomly from a set of pre-made floors. With a large enough set of pre-floors each Tomb should feel decently unique when considering all of the floors together.

The crown jewel of these tombs is that the floors all have puzzles/riddles that need to be solved before the players can advance to the next floor. I was hoping that the puzzle would resemble the types of puzzles seen in Uncharted, Golden Sun, Zelda, etc.

An example from Uncharted of what a floor could look like

The floors could also contain traps that, once activated, spawn a wave of skeletons that attack the players, or simple damage the players who activated it. It should be noted that the tomb floors are focused on exploration and puzzle solving so the waves don't necessarily have to have any special skeletons. Save the fighting for the burial chamber...

To make the puzzles and floors more interesting, treasure should be available on each floor, that requires you to solve the puzzle a different way if you want to get to the next floor. Here's an example below (couldn't get a great picture)

The player starts on the bottom left. The exit is to the top left, but a chest is on the ledge to the top right. The player must solve the puzzle two times to get both. From Golden Sun

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The Burial Chamber

The whole idea of the Pirate Tomb is to make it to the burial chamber. Here, deceased Skeleton Captain will engage the player in battle after emerging from their coffin (all Skyrim draugr-like). For some possible fight mechanics suggestions, see my post on Ghost Ship Raids where I list several different skeleton fight mechanics.

Some possible skeletons the players can fight in the burial chamber

Defeating the Skeleton Captain will reward the crew with a cursed skull: Ancient Legend Skull. This skull will spawn skeletons around the player holding it while they are on land (not including outposts). Its turn in value is similar to the cursed chests (Chest of Sorrow and Chest of a Thousand Grogs).

The skull should have distinct features that make it obvious it has a special effect

In addition to the cursed skull, the burial chamber should have a random assortment of loot for the crew to pilfer. The amount of loot should be slightly less than a skull fort because there are treasures on the floors leading to the burial chamber.

A SoT legend hideout concept art but it kind of works here too

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Please leave some comments with suggestions and feedback. If you liked this idea, please check out some of my other suggestions.

• Ghost Ship Raid
• Eye-of-Reach QoL changes
• Tattered Sails Cosmetic
• Decoder Pin + Sextant

It depends, the first step for me is observation. If I notice they are trigger happy, do things without asking, and are impatient to start things, I stay quiet and let them learn on their own. If one wishes to learn, they must first be ready to learn, people who don't have patience in this game are in for a rude awakening, everything in this game is about patience, awareness, and planning (Skill is always learned after and in conjunction to these things). One wrong move or you don't plan ahead of time, or you're not aware and rushing through things and the game will punish you.

With that said, if a player is patient and willing to learn, then they pass my first step, and I provide them with a summary or an overview of everything the game has to offer and the basics on how to play the game. I also warn them at this point what they are getting into. They will practice with sails, bailing water, repairing, and learning awareness. A good defense is a good offense, and defensive play is always appreciated when compared to offensive play.

Once that's done I let them pick their own voyage. If they have already done the regular basic voyages, then I don't ask them to choose those, I ask them to pick one from, the selection of what the game has to offer including tall tales, vaults, or the lost merchant voyages. I also use the time spent on sailing from objective to objective to go into depth about the game's mechanics including combat, awareness, strategies, and mastering ship sailing. The treasure amount shows the potential reward that they can receive if they continue playing.

Finally if they still choose to stay on in the game after that voyage and they are ready, I introduce them to some ship combat vs npc. And if we both still want to push for one final experience, I try to expose them to pvp combat.

With the release of the content road map, a lot of speculation has circled the forums and Reddit suggesting a ghost ship in the 'Cursed Sails' update. The intention of this post is to offer a possible implementation for a Ghost Ship world event. Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment! Buckle up, this one is long...

I apologize for any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors in this post.

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Table of Contents

• Appearance of the Ghost Ship
• Encountering the Ghost Ship
• The Flow of the Ghost Ship Event
• Rewards from the Ghost Ship

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Appearance of the Ghost Ship

General Appearance

Ethereal Aura (because duh)

The Ghost Ship emits a green, ghostly aura similar to the Order of Souls skulls.

Ghostly green aura

A Ghost Ship is a Weathered Ship

Is it really a Ghost Ship if it doesn't have tattered sails and yet still catch the wind because of its ghostly powers? While we're at it, put some holes in its hull as well!

Tattered/weathered sails

Size and Firepower

It's bigger. It's badder. It's too much for Mr. Incredible!

If the green glow and tattered sails weren't enough to shiver your timbers, the Ghost Ship [hopefully] makes the Galleon feel like a sloop. I'm talking four decks tall that are all longer and wider than its Galleon counterparts. After all, we're going to be battling undead pirate crews inside of this thing!

Suns Out Guns Out. Night time? Oh well...

By the way, three of those four decks... armed with 12 cannons (6 per side), ready to send every last sailor to Davy Jones' locker!
The lowest deck is underwater so no cannons

To get an idea for the size I'm talking about, take a look at the HMS Victory (although it might have only had 3 decks?) If this is unreasonable, I will settle for using @ShootHere4EXP's 6-man Galleon model.

HMS Victory

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Encountering the Ghost Ship

I've done a lot of thinking about how the Ghost Ship encounter should work and frankly I don't think there is a single "best" answer. So here are some things that I think will make the ghost ship encounter the best it can be for all players.

Spawning the Ghost Ship

A Pirate's Nightmare

The ghost ship is only active at night. It can only spawn/appear at night and if no one is on board at sunrise it will fade away. However, if there is at least one player from any crew on board when the sun starts to rise, the Ghost Ship will remain active until it is defeated or no pirates remain on board. When the ship is active, clouds in the sky follow it and reflect the ships green glow.
Obviously from a gameplay perspective this is not mandatory but I feel like it keeps the theme of a Ghost Ship true to form.

Out of Nowhere

The spawn location of the Ghost Ship is randomized but always in deep water, not too close to any islands or rocks. This could be pretty much anywhere, but I included the below picture as an example. This is where the Ghost Ship starts its voyage.

Anywhere you see the boat is a potential spawn area (like I said, could be anywhere really). Map image by @Rare-Thief

Sailing Forever, Sailing Wherever

The Ghost Ship is always sailing. It does not chase after players but does fire at players as they get close (like the Skeleton Stronghold). For simplicity, the Ghost Ship has pre-defined sailing paths between it's possible spawn locations. However, which path it's taking is random and it has the chance to change paths every time it reaches a spawn point. Also, since the paths loop, the direction can be randomized as well. Let's look at an example:

I know it's a jumbled mess, sorry! Map image by @Rare-Thief

So let's say the Ghost Ship spawns in the bottom left (C:24) and initially is following the blue path in the upward direction. It sails until it gets to the spawn point at D:3, and RNG works its magic and decides it wants to switch paths to the red path. Now, instead of sailing to I:17, the Ghost Ship will sail to either L:6 or N:13 depending on which direction on the red path RNGesus wants it to go.

What happens if the Ghost Ship disappears during the day? It's still sailing! Even though you can't see it, the ship is still following the same sailing rules. This means that when evening rolls back around, it won't necessarily be at any of the designated spawn points because the spawn points are only where the ship's journey starts. The ship can reappear while en route to a spawn point!

The routes can be completely different, I was just trying to convey the idea of predetermined sailing patterns.

Dead Man's Rest

The crew of the undead can only take so much. After the ship is defeated there should be a cooldown time similar to the Skeleton Strongholds. Strongholds respawn around 1 week in-game time (3 hours IRL). I would suggest a respawn time of somewhere between 8-9 in-game days. Depending on how good you guys think the rewards are compared to the Stronghold, let me know what you think the respawn time should be.

Engaging the Ghost Ship

What is Dead May Never Die (is this SoT or GoT)

The Ghost Ship cannot be sunk. Cannonballs do not put holes in the Ghost Ship, but they do help to vanquish the undead on board (so maybe dead things do die...).

So How Do We Kill It?

We will go over the specific in the next section but long story short... you have to impregnate that son of a... ship.

As the Ghost Ship is sailing, your crew will have to get on board to defeat it, all the while sailing your ship along with the Ghost Ship (I guess you don't have to but you'd better not die if you leave it behind). Oh, and it's going to be shooting you with cannon balls (and maybe even cursed cannon balls). Don't worry, there won't be (12x3) 36 cannons shooting at you at the same time. Mostly because there are only 6 per side per deck. But there won't be 18 shooting you either. Only the active deck will have cannons manned by skeletons. This does mean that cannons will be shooting at your ship for pretty much the entire duration of the event.

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The Flow of the Ghost Ship Event

Overview

Dejavu - I've Seen This All Before

The Ghost Ship will spawn "waves" of skeletons just like Skeleton Strongholds. There are two waves per deck. The first wave contains skeletons manning the cannons and regular skeletons waiting for your arrival. Once this wave is cleared, a second wave will spawn. This wave contains a mixture of normal skeletons, leaf skeletons, shadow skeletons, and gold skeletons (so basically all currently existing skeletons), and a fresh batch of skeletons on the cannons. Most importantly, this wave will spawn a skeleton officer.

Skeleton Officers??

Basically a skeleton captain but we can't call them that because there is only one captain on this ship! These skeletons will have more advanced AI and distinct combat mechanics to create more interesting fights. And of course, they have more health than the other skeletons which means they will take quite a few wacks to be killed. Once the skeleton officer on each deck is defeated the next deck will open up for the crew to continue on with the Ghost Ship event.

The Main Deck

Chaos

The first deck that your crew will have to clear is the main deck. The great thing about the main deck is it gives us more vertical room for fighting than the rest of the decks. Skeletons will jump down from the rat lines to engage you in combat! They'll open hatches in the floor of the deck and come up from below! Nowhere is safe!

The Helmsman

The officer you get to fight on the main deck is The Helmsman! He steers the ship!

This is from the Sea of Thieves artwork by Rare

The Helmsman wields a large axe that is slow but has a long range and deals heavy damage. He has two main mechanics.

• Wheel of Heads
• Enraged Mode

The wheel on his back has four skulls on it. A normal white skull, a metal gold skull, a ghostly black skull, and a (you guessed it) greenish leafy skull. At different times the wheel on his back will rotate, and whichever skull appears where his head should be, he takes on the properties of that skeleton type.

The white skull is a little different since normal skeletons don't have special traits. When the white skull is active The Helmsman becomes enraged. While enraged he can dash forward (indicated by an animation before hand giving players time to react) and hit you. He can also Smash the deck with his axe, sending splinters flying in a line that damage players that they hit (a ranged attack). Have fun :)

The Upper Middle Deck (2nd Deck)

Is that a... barrel?

Aye matey! Some pesky skeletons are rolling cannon ball barrels down the length of the deck! Don't get hit, or you'll be dead! You'll have to avoid being rolled over by these barrels while you fight off the two waves of skeletons spawning on this deck. Oh, and don't forget there are skeletons firing away at your crewmates on board your ship.

The Boatswain

Next you get to fight the Boatswain. He is in charge of the ships equipment. That explains why he told the crew to start pushing barrels everywhere and why he has those ropes...

This is from the Sea of Thieves artwork by Rare

The Boatswain carries a cutlass but also has a pet crab he likes to use as a weapon. What's up with his squid leg? Once again, two main mechanics

• A squid leg and crab chest?
• Rope nets...

From time to time, the Boatswain's crab pet will leap towards players, damaging you if you get hit (ranged attack). This will be preceded by an animation so that players have an opportunity to dodge the attack. Also from time to time, the Boatswain will kick with his squid-leg, shooting ink at the players. If they are hit, their screen will be covered with ink (like when you are hit with vomit)!

From time to time, the Boatswain will throw out a large net that will disable players for a short period of time. You really don't want to get hit by this! It will also have a short animation to indicate that the attack is about to occur so that players have a chance to dodge it. If a player is hit, the Boatswain's crab pet will immediately rush to attack the captured player. The Boatswain is left vulnerable for a few seconds after using this.

The Lower Middle Deck (3rd Deck)

Burning Skeletons and Boom Boom Barrels

That's right, this floor of the ship is laden with gunpowder barrels and a new type of skeleton! Burning skeletons are already on fire and unfortunately for you, impervious to explosions.

A fire skeleton, thanks google

The Gunner

The Gunner is the guy commanding all of those skeletons to blast your ship to kingdom come. He seems nice.

This is from the Sea of Thieves artwork by Rare

The Gunner carries a hand cannon everywhere he goes, but he also has a sword for some reason. Suddenly those boom boom barrels surrounding you are very dangerous. The Gunners main mechanics are:

• Hand Cannon
• Flags

The Gunner will use his hand-cannon to blast away at you. And he's impervious to explosions as well, so he's not afraid to hit some barrels! If you get to close he'll knock you away with the flag poles on his back and go back to shooting!

After you deal enough damage, his hand-cannon will break :( But now he'll come after you with his sword in one hand and flag in the other. The flag pole has a very large range for attacking so watch out!

The Bottom Deck

We're leaking

Occasionally this deck will fill with water and you'll have to battle the skeletons on it underwater! Hey... is that a brig in the back?

The Master-at-Arms

For the final deck, you will have to fight The Master-at-Arms. He is in charge of law-enforcement on the ship. Maybe that explains the brig?

This is from the Sea of Thieves artwork by Rare

The master at arms has no conventional weapons. Instead, he uses the chains around his arms as whips to lash out at challengers from a distance. Taking him out won't be easy because of the following mechanics:

• Chains
• More Chains

Occasionally, The Master-at-Arms will throw both his chains at players. If they are hit, the chains will wrap around their legs, immobilizing them for a period of time. The Master-at-Arms will leap to chained players and unleash a barrage of melee attacks. During this time he is vulnerable to attack.

Occasionally, The Master-at-Arms will throw a chain lasso at players. If they are hit, they will be pulled into the brig and locked in until they can fight off a few skeletons that materialize inside.

The Captains Cabin

The End is Near

So, you've cleared all four decks and are ready to take on the Captain of the Ghost Ship? Not so fast buddy.

The First Mate

Before you can face the Captain, the First Mate appears on the main deck. It's time to duke it out with the second-in-command of the Ghost Ship!

This is from the Sea of Thieves artwork by Rare

The First Mate wields a deadly Blunder-axe. It double as a Blunderbuss and axe, and he's itching to show you how to use it as both! What combat mechanics will you witness in this fight?

• 2 is better than 1
• 2 heads, two hearts?

At random times during the fight, the second head of The First Mate and his 2 extra arms will detach from the main body. This half-skeleton will crawl around the deck quickly, grabbing players and immobilizing them. This is especially dangerous because it gives the main body a perfect chance to use his Blunder-axe on a target that can't retreat! After a certain amount of time the two bodies will recombine.

So you think you killed The First Mate? Nope. The second head is still around, crawling with his two arms and jumping around the deck. His hook hand doesn't feel very good if he's able to cut you with it during his leaps.

The Captains Cabin Again!

The Final Battle

This time the door to the Captains Cabin is open and you're face to face with the leader of the Ghost Ship! He summons the final remaining members of his crew to aid him in his fight.

The Captain!

He wasn't voted captain for no reason. This guy is scary and he means business!

This is from the Sea of Thieves artwork by Rare

The Captain of the Ghost Ship wields two cutlasses (I know the picture only has one but that's lame). He also has undead parrots that seem to follow his orders. Not sure what that's about... He also has four flintlocks holstered on his body. This is going to be one doozy of a fight!

• Twin Cutlass Tornado
• Feast of Birds
• Captain's Call
• Spectral Recruitment
• High Noon, JK that's copyrighted. Flintlock Fury

Preceded by an animation, the Captain will begin to spin around with cutlasses pointed outwards. He can move freely while spinning and deals massive damage to players that are unfortunate to run into him. He is invulnerable during this time.

Occasionally, the Ghost Ship Captain commands his three undead parrots to attack players. The fly towards players and peck them repeatedly for a small portion of damage each time. The birds can be hit with swords and guns in mid air to stop their attack. They return to the pirate captain and heal him based on the amount of damage they did to your crew.

Throughout the fight, the Captain can summon crewmembers back from the dead (the dead-dead?) throughout the fight. He only spawns regular skeletons. This ability is channeled and can be interrupted by the players with sword lunge attacks.

The Captain let's out a howl and his swords start to glow green. For a short period of time, if he hits you with his sword you become a specter. You are unable to attack him or leave your ship and you take slow damage over time.

The Captain throws his cutlasses to the ground and grabs his pistols. For the next few seconds he launches rapid fire flintlock attacks at random members of the crew while screaming. When he is finished he holsters his flintlocks and picks his cutlasses back off the ground. During this time he looks winded and is very vulnerable to attacks.

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Rewards From The Ghost Ship

Overview

Progressive Rewards

I have noticed a few people on the forums and Reddit complain that they have been attacked while doing Skeleton Strongholds. When these situations arise, you are forced to either run away and get nothing, or fight and win and get everything. I don't have a problem with that, but while brainstorming ideas for rewards I thought it might be possible to reward players who are only able to complete part of the Ghost Ship. That way, if they feel like they can't protect their treasure, they can quite while they're ahead and leave with some smaller rewards for doing part of the ship.

On each deck of the ship there is a locked door with small rewards behind it. Clearing the deck opens the door.

The Main Deck

First Tier Rewards

The Helmsman is guaranteed to drop a Fowl Skull with a chance to drop a higher tier skull instead. Clearing the main deck rewards the player with at least a Castaway Chest and a Crate of Fine Surgar but with the chance to spawn a higher tier chest/crate instead.

The Upper Middle Deck (2nd Deck)

Second Tier Rewards

The Boatswain is guaranteed to drop a Disgraced Skull or higher tier skull instead. Clearing the 2nd deck rewards the player with at least a Seafarer Chest and a Create of Rare Tea but with the chance to spawn a higher tier chest/crate instead.

The Lower Middle Deck (3rd Deck)

Third Tier Rewards

The Gunner is guaranteed to drop a Hateful Skull or higher tier skull instead. Clearing the 3rd deck rewards the player with at least a Marauder Chest and a Create of Exotic Silks but with the chance to spawn a higher tier chest/crate instead.

The Bottom Deck (4th Deck)

Fourth Tier Rewards

The Master-at-Arms is guaranteed to drop a Villainous Skull. Clearing the 4th deck rewards the player with a Captains Chest and Crate of Exotic Silks.

The Captains Cabin

New Rewards

Killing the First Mate grants the players a Cursed Skull. I'll let you guys look at some of the other threads with cursed skull suggestions to determine exactly what you want it to do.

Killing the Captain grants the players an Undead Parrot that can be turned in to the Merchant Alliance and a Cursed Chest (grog or sorrows). Also, Cursed Cannonballs could be a potential reward.

The Ultimate Rewards

Random Cosmetics

If your crew killed every single officer on the ship (no other crew dealt the final blow to any of them) you will be rewarded with a Ghost Chest. This chest, upon opening, grants every member of the crew one random Ghost Ship Cosmetic (not necessarily the same one to each member). These include

• Tattered Sails (various colors, only get one at a time)
• Ghost Ship Cannon cosmetic
• Ghost Ship Lantern cosmetic (for ship, not player)
• Ghost Ship Flag cosmetic (various colors, only get one at a time)
• Ghost Ship Outfit piece (one piece at a time)
• infinite possibilities for more

---

That's all I got. Sorry if it seems like it got sloppy near the end. I was getting tired lol. Please, comment below and let me know your thoughts. Constructive criticism is appreciated!

This is another thing I talked about in another thread, but I wanted to organize my thoughts on it, add in some new things, and let it have its own discussion.

Table of Contents/Summaries
Main Additions (at least read this for general responses) - This first section goes over what this proposed update would actually add into the game
UI Overhaul - Going over all the UI additions and changes for guilds to make this update work
Guild Types Explained - This section goes further into detail on what guild types could be
LFGuild Details - This section goes more in depth on the LFGuild system
Deeper Dive on Guild Competition - This section goes into more depth on the proposed ledger changes & the guild division system
Why this update makes sense (at least read this for general responses) - This goes in-depth into the why behind this update idea

Main Additions:
This update would split the three guild slots player have access to into a Faction Guild, focused on the big 3 (DB, Reapers, Athena) and Hourglass, Trading Guild, focused on the 4 remaining trading companies, and an Adventure Guild, focused on various activities or aspects of the game (like Wes, alliances, and all the other things that aren't sorted nicely into the trading companies). Current guild would either become legacy or be able to choose what type of guild to become. Before a new season begins or upon creation, guild owners would be able to choose a new focus for their guild within their chosen category. These focuses would give guild members access to weekly tasks that give all sorts of experience towards the (far too many) leveling areas. Also as part of these focuses, guilds would be able to participate in "Guild Competitions" Guild owners would be allowed to sign up the guild up for competitions at the beginning of seasons. These competitions would not add much in the way of actual content to the game, rather they would focus on encouraging inter-guild rivalries and competition. Guilds would automatically be sorted into divisions based on size, rep, ledger participation, server region, etc. Points in these competitions would be specific to the guilds focus for that season. For example, a reapers faction guild would be gain points by participating in hourglass and winning matches. At the end of the season the top guilds of each division would receive an exclusive title. It should have some indication of their division as well. For example, Division One Champion of the Chalice (for reapers). Also the top guilds would receive an exclusive trinket (for example, a chalice would be cool for the Reapers, and it ties in nicely with the title). Similar to the SoTShot titles, I think it would be cool if the titles upgraded with successive wins. To go along with these updates there would be a proper guild ranking section in the main menu, similar to how many other FPS games have top 500/10000 leaderboards. Also in this section there would be a new LFGuild that is directly built into the game, rather than the one in the forums. Players would be able to sort based on guild type, focus, level, division, etc. Most players don't know about the LFGuild in here and it doesn't offer many tools for discoverability. Putting it right in the game would make it much easier. Expanded utility for guild leaders/owners to see participation would also be really nice. The last thing added in this section would be a guild announcement channel and guild chat directly baked into the game. Players shouldn't have to rely on discord only to do this kind of thing, especially in a game like SoT where you're likely to meet and recruit players directly from the game, where it's difficult to get people into outside things like discord. A helpful tool in this system would be a poll btw. Also there should be a section for guild specific rules. The last thing for this general overview is the updates to the ledger. This is a really simple addition, just make it so the top 500 or so ledger positions get a special in game indicator. This is an idea from Splatoon, where top 500 players get a special icon beneath their character when it's introducing teams. It just gives being top 500 a "cool factor" that pushes people to be competitive. It sends a message to opponents too.

UI Overhaul
I already went into a lot of the additions but here they are again. On the main menu of SoT there would be a guild section that would have the LFGuild, top guild comp/ledger leaderboards, guild chat/announcements, guild tasks, and the current boats for joining the game. This could all obviously all be organized quite well. For example, the LFGuild and top ledger positions could be in the same section (similar to how Clash of Clans works). You could also put the different divisions of Guild Comps and that players guild comp info (including tasks) in the same section. Or put the tasks in the same section as the guild roster. The guild chat and announcements would obviously be in the same section. Finally the guild boats could be made into much smaller profiles that could be expanded and viewed, rather than the pages and pages we have now. This would just be essential to give everything a place. In game I don't think you would need most of these, probably just keep the divisions, leaderboards, and tasks. Maybe the chat could be included, but I think really only the announcements and rules are essential from that feature set.

Guild Types Explained
There are 3 different proposed guild types so I'll be breaking it up into 3 paragraphs, starting with Faction Guilds, then TC Guilds, then Adventure Guilds.

Faction Guild would focus on the currently two faction companies, Reaper and Athena, and their HG counterparts. If there are more factions added in the future such as DB or Sovs, they would be included here. These guilds would be posed like groups that fight in the war of SoT, bringing that into the game some more. This guild slot should be locked behind Pirate Legend, as you really can't do a lot with the Athena side or any Hourglass related stuff without PL, so it just kinda makes sense. These guild would obtain a majority of their points through Hourglass wins, with streaks and emissary flags providing extra benefits. PvE would take a secondary role, allowing casual players to still get rewards, but not letting them reach top divisions. The tasks would also be focused on hourglass primarily, with some stuff relating to LotV/BB, just not a lot. The idea of these faction guilds is to give a place for top players to compete within the game, primarily through the division system I'll go more in depth on later.

Trading Company Guilds would focus on the 4 main trading companies, HC, GH, Merchants, and OoS, as well as any future ones that could be added. So long as they aren't factions. These trading company guilds would focus on completing quests and collecting loot for these trading companies. Rather than being posed like guilds being a part of the war of SoT, these would be seen as competitions between guilds that work for these trading companies. These guilds would be unlocked from first playing the game. This would help encourage players to associate with a TC more, really becoming a gold hoarder to merchant, rather than making it just feel like a grind. It also gives guilds a specific goal for each season, ensuring players are all focused on similar tasks and encouraging people to play with each other.

Adventure Guilds would focus on specific aspects of the game that don't fall nicely into the trading companies or factions. Here are some examples of potential adventure guild focuses; World Events, Safe Seas, Alliances, commendations, tall tales. Stuff like Hourglass or fishing, though being general activities, wouldn't be included because there would already be the Faction Guilds for HG and fishing is a Hunters Call activity. These could be posed as listed under the Bilge Rats company. You could include a variety of tasks that all relate to the different focuses. This really gives players a reason to revisit older content or random activities, or find likeminded groups of players easily. For example a player that wishes to get commendations done would be able to join a comm guild and work on stuff with them for the season. This is the most casual level of guilds, mainly having players just do what they think is fun or want to get accomplished. I could very easily see "helper" guilds pop up for some of this stuff, like tall tales or commendations that have a core set of players that just help new players. A very casual idea.

LFGuild Details
There is a guild owner/leader focused section and one for guild people trying to join guilds.

The LFGuild system would allow guild owners to set (pre-determined) requirements for joining the guild. For example a faction guild would have the baseline requirement of being PL across the board, and then guild owners could set increasing allegiance requirements up to like 500 total or something. This is just a quality of life feature. Sure it's mean to people, but it saves guild owners from having to go through massive amounts of new player requests. Especially with the leaderboard system, as the most visible and desired slots would be in top guilds. Hours, rep, allegiance, play activity, server region, etc could all be factors available for guild owners/leaders to see and set requirements for. Guild owners could pick whether to leave the guild as open, open to friends, or invite only. This would let open "helper" guilds be able to keep their guild open for all kinds of player to join, but also let ultra competitive top division focused guilds review people before letting them join, and of course there would be all kinds of uses in-between these extreme examples. Also guilds should be allowed to write a short welcome description for what they do. Finally guild owners/leaders should be able to see stats from their guild mates activity (doesn't have to be super specific), rather than it being left up to guess work. For top guilds it's important to be able to make decisions about who to keep/cut and not having tools for that is really annoying.

For people trying to join guilds they would be able to sort by guild type (faction, TC, adventure), guild focus, guild division/ledger ranking, guild requirements, server region, and whatever other factors you could think of. This would let players easily find guilds that might align with their vision and allow players to find a group quite easily. Players that only play on the weekends could find a guild based on all these factors and then check the guild descriptions to find one that plays at similar times as them. I think since this update would add chats and other features directly into the game, it would be easy for players to find a group that fits them and that they can play with constantly. This could really help the "solo epidemic" in SoT and of course stuff like "helper" guilds would likely show up, giving tutorials on specific aspects of the game to newer players. This all would help get players involved in the community quickly and create a lot more guild identity.

Deep Dive on Guild Competitions
I'm going to first go over the general mechanics of this, then the rewards, then go into the details on divisions.

Guild competitions would be opt in, allowing guild leaders to decide whether it's something they're interested in. I could see many different styles of guilds arising as part of this update, and just having like division 200 where all of them are generally inactive is pointless. The opt in window would be at the end of the last season/beginning of the new season. I think divisions should be server region dependent, so that these guilds have a good chance of actually meeting each other. I don't know how many total guilds there are, but I think targeting somewhere around 15-25 guilds per division would be ideal. This would be enough to make it feel like a real competition, while also making it so players can actually recognize the other guilds.

I already went into the rewards a little bit in the summary portion, but I will restate it. I think the top 3 guilds of each division should get an exclusive title. For example, the reapers might call the #1 guild the Champion, then #2 the Master, and the #3 slot the Warden. Everyone would get a title just commemorating their participation (like servant). These titles would start with the division the guild competed in. It would also upgrade with successive wins, similar to the SoTShot titles. A title for the #1 division 1 guild for reapers might be something like "Division One Champion of the Reaper Bones" and upgrade to "Division One Champion of Chalice" after another win, then maybe Flameheart could be the last one. I think 5 wins for the max title is realistic, that's already like 5 seasons worth of time, if someone was able to do it in a row meaning it would likely last years. This could end up with a lot of titles if players ended up in a lot of different places, so just automatically defaulting to the highest division of each title upgrade would probably be smart. Ex: you can have a D2 level 2 one and a D1 level 1 title, but you cannot have a D2 level one title, because you already have the D1 version. Perhaps a waterfall style, instead of the podiums would work better for the title distribution. For example you would have #1 get the highest honors, then 2 - 5 get the next highest, then 6-10 get the next highest. Depends how many people are in the guilds tho. The other thing that would be awarded is a trinket. A basic wooden base would be given to all players, with a bronze, silver, and gold base getting distributed in the same way as the titles. It would also be cool if the division number was carved into the base or put as a plaque. These trinkets would relate to the guilds focus, like a flowing chalice for reapers or mini PL-gate for Athena's. It'd be especially cool if they were animated, dunno how that impacts performance tho. That's enough on rewards tho lol.

The divisions would be determined by a variety of factors such as the number of people in a guild, the guilds past ledger/competition positions, average hours and experience (like levels) of the guild members, activity metrics, etc. I already mentioned targeting around 15-25 guilds per division would be ideal, so just sorting guilds by this and then cutting them into nice sizes would work well. The divisions are really important for encouraging guilds to actually compete with each other, as the endless and mostly unviewable ledger makes it impossible to have any real competitions except at the very top level. This division system would hopefully let people have good competition at all skill levels while maintaining meaningful and cool rewards. The only other thing I have to add with divisions is that it would be cool if you could see the division of a guild when the captaincy banners pop up, as well as having an indicator for being top 500 on the guild ledger.

Why this update makes sense
S10 on release brought guilds into the game, a long time requested feature, that was really rather well received. While the actual content in the update was lackluster to say the least, the wider community was able to make something special of it. However as we get further and further away from S10, we're seeing guilds matter less and less. What was once a semi competitive scene has dwindled into a more convenient way to join friends. Many people have stopped caring about ledger positions or their level. I had 3 goals with these additions, keep it light on the game world, add a lot more utility and features to guilds that the community found necessary directly into the game, and finally implement a system that brings back and maintains that competitive spirit, for all players.

All of these features and additions focus on adding player incentives and utility to the game, not direct content. While this might be perceived as a flaw, I think in the case of guilds it is actually a benefit. It's not a realistic expectation for Rare to be able to implement separate guild servers or specific guild content. Arena was removed for this same reason, instead being "replaced" with hourglass, which is all on the same adventure server. I don't see Rare wanting to go down this same path as it massively hurt the player base's feelings and was an all around L for the game. Opening themselves up to this same vulnerability would be bad. And so if they aren't going to do private servers or more than one ship content, it limits any guild activities in the sandbox to being a maximum of 4 people. 4 people out of 24 will just never feel like a "guild" a crew? sure. But not a guild. And so adding specific sandbox content that requires being in a guild just seemed foolish to me, it doesn't make sense since they could never capture that feeling. So that's what led to me prioritizing all features being QoL out of sandbox expansions. The idea is to massively expand the utility of the guilds and their feature set so that it can be a constant benefit, similar to how the ship features already implemented are.

The second design fundamental of this was to add a lot of the "requirements" players found were necessary to effectively run guilds directly into the game. Almost every single strong guild uses a discord server for their guild communication, so adding a similar feature set directly into SoT would really benefit the many many on the spot, less planned, more casual guilds. While I'm sure SoT wouldn't be able to offer all the same features and options discord does, it would be a great first step. This is the same kind reasoning behind things like the LFGuild and other UI changes. Implementing these key features, even with diminished utility (like the chat) would be incredible for the casual players who don't want to go through the effort of setting up a discord and corralling their members into it. We could even see expanded features and utility from what we have now in some cases, like the LFGuild could be significantly more powerful than the current version.

The last design goal was finding ways to bring the exhilarating and fun competitive guild experience I had the pleasure of participating in to broader audiences. When S10 released there was a great race to the illusive D10 guilds. I was pretty active in the community in the time and was able to get a group of really strong hourglass players to pursue that goal with me. We were top 100 at the end of every single ledger and even top 50 once, and were able to get D10 towards the end of S10. The experience of managing my guild and pushing everyone to be the best was honestly the best time I ever had on SoT. This experience was not shared by a majority of the player base though. Realistically only cheaters, alliance server players, and HG grinders could ever aspire to be near the top of that ledger. The wonder of fighting the guild just one spot above you was exhilarating. Rivalries and connections were made between us, streamer guilds, and the top players in the game. We all got better as a result of the grind and found ourselves near the top. We might encounter different people and they would talk about how our guild was so common in the NAW region. I mean it was really a magical time. Guild competitions would offer the experience to all manner of guilds by creating smaller groups based on activity, size, server region, and play style. This would allow this kind of competition to exist for gold hoarder players rather than just HG players (and the unsavory lot). And the upgrading rewards would offer incentives to try and keep the top spot for multiple seasons in a row. I mean if the experience I had with guilds could be captured and shared with all the players, in any form, it would be incredible. This was the best way I thought of for making that experience available to all players.

Also something I couldn't really fit into those overarching themes, the reason there's 3 guild "types" is so that guilds aren't competing for a players attention. Rather they can just join one for a specific type of session and play in it if that's what they're interested in doing. Most players only use 1 guild, or maybe 2 if they've maxed one out, so adding guild types helps remove some of the decision and encourages players to actually use all their guild slots. If a player wants to play HG then they got a guild slot for that, if a player wants to do quests they got a guild slot for that, if a player wants to get comms they got a slot for that. Just works out nicer imo.

Hi everyone,

As we announced today during our Sea of Thieves 2022 Preview Event, we’ve made the difficult decision to close down The Arena mode within Sea of Thieves. We wanted to take some time here to talk everyone through this and how we will be going about it. We understand that some people will feel frustrated, so we wanted to give you some more of the reasoning behind it and explain what it means going forward.

Making This Decision

Firstly, this was an extremely tough decision, but we firmly believe it’s the right one to allow us to focus on our plans for the central free-roaming Adventure mode. Despite the efforts of a hugely talented team, The Arena unfortunately never met the goals we originally had for it – either in creating a genuine alternative way to play Sea of Thieves with a competitive spin, or a short session experience if you didn’t have the time to commit to an open-ended Adventure session.

As we’ve shared before, only 2% of our players’ time is spent in The Arena on a consistent basis, and this has never really changed. We recognise that some criticism we might receive here is that we didn’t invest enough in The Arena to give it the best chance of success alongside the continued growth of Adventure. The reality is that as a new platform, The Arena regretfully never became popular enough to justify focusing our creative efforts there, beyond our initial efforts to refine the experience to appeal to a broader audience.

While we’re incredibly proud of where the game is now and the decisions we’ve made since launch back in 2018, we look back at The Arena with pride mixed with regret that we didn’t manage to reach the wider audience that would have allowed us to keep building upon its foundations.

We learned a lot from the launch and development of The Arena, but one thing that really stands out is that launching a competitive mode is a far bigger investment and requires a far bigger creative focus than we realised going in. Despite sharing a lot of the same mechanics as Adventure, it is an entirely different experience, and one that would have required a huge amount of mindshare and development effort to stand alongside it – and given the disparity in audience sizes, it just became impossible to justify.

One other factor is particularly important. In December 2020, we announced that we had stopped active development on The Arena. Despite this, over the last couple of years, the work we’ve been doing to expand the overall Sea of Thieves experience with new mechanics, areas, quests and more has had an ongoing knock-on effect on The Arena, due to just how much is shared between the two modes. As a result, The Arena has required considerable development work just to keep it functioning in its base state, and would continue to represent a significant ongoing workload for us – which is ultimately what leads us to the decision we’ve shared with you today.

The Arena Community

We understand that this will be a huge disappointment to our small but dedicated community of Arena-focused players. We want to say thank you to everyone who has played and supported The Arena, from those who have just dabbled to those who have run competitive events and built up communities, such as the Notorious Arena League and Sea of Champions. It has been genuinely incredible to see the skill level of some of the players who sprang up around The Arena, and how this played out in the spirit we love to see: with fairness and respect for each other always at the forefront. You are wonderful and creative communities, and we’d love to work with you on moving forward in a world without The Arena.

We are committed to making sure that the efforts of our Arena-playing community are recognised and rewarded even after The Arena has gone, as detailed below.

Closing The Arena

What follows is an overview of how we plan to close The Arena, with details of rewards for people who have previously played, and answers to key questions we expect to arise from this decision.

The Arena will be closed at the start of Season Six, slated for March 10th, 2022.

To celebrate The Arena’s run and reward those who played, we will be making the most of the as-yet unreleased ship cosmetics from this game mode.

Everyone who has already reached or passed Sea Dogs rank 5 will be rewarded with the following Arena ship cosmetics to use in Adventure mode:

• The Azure Scout

• The Flaming Jackal

• The Golden Chaser

• The Lucky Rover

• The Regal Hound

Those super-dedicated Arena players who have already reached Sea Dogs rank 50 will receive The Good Boy ship cosmetics as a rare bonus in addition to the sets listed above.

All six of these cosmetic sets consist of four items: hull, figurehead, sails and flag.

The cutoff point for being eligible for these rewards was today, January 27th at 6pm UK time. Rewards will be distributed after the closure of The Arena on March 10th.

Key Questions

Can I still play The Arena and earn Sea Dog cosmetics/Titles/Commendations before March 10th?

• Yes, you can still play The Arena, move up through the ranks, earn Commendations and unlock the ability to purchase cosmetics and Titles until we close this game mode on March 10th.

Can I retroactively earn any of the ship cosmetics listed above as part of The Arena’s closure?

• We have made the decision to give out these ship cosmetics as a reward for participation in The Arena up to now, so you will no longer be able to head into The Arena and earn them. They are to show our gratitude to everyone who has supported and enjoyed The Arena up to this point.

What will happen to any Sea Dogs cosmetics I’ve already purchased when The Arena closes?

• Any items already purchased from the Sea Dogs will remain in your inventory and still be equipable.

What happens if I have unlocked Sea Dogs cosmetics or Titles in the shop but haven't purchased them before The Arena closes?

• You can still purchase the Titles and cosmetics you have unlocked from the appropriate Outpost shop.

This also includes the Pirate Legend weapon set and Victorious Sea Dog Blunderbuss in the Pirate Legend Hideout.

• Any Sea Dogs items that you have not yet unlocked will no longer be visible to you in the shops.

What does this mean for the Pirate Legend weapons and Victorious Sea Dog Blunderbuss when The Arena closes?

If you have unlocked these weapons for purchase, they will remain purchasable. If you have not unlocked these items, they will no longer be visible to you in the shops.

To allow players to complete the Pirate Legend set, a new Pirate Legend weapon set is in production and will be made available for players to earn during Season Six. More information on how to earn the Legendary Fortune Flintlock, Eye of Reach, Blunderbuss and Cutlass will come later, so stay tuned for an update. These weapons will be available for all players to earn, so those who’ve already unlocked the original weapons will be able to earn the new variants too.
https://freeimage.host/i/0ZkQIe

If I reach or have reached rank 50 with the Sea Dogs, will this still count towards Pirate Legend?

• Yes, reaching rank 50 with the Sea Dogs will still count on your journey towards Pirate Legend.

What happens to any Xbox achievements that could only be earned in The Arena?

After thorough investigation, we were unable to find a fair and elegant way to repurpose the Arena-centric achievements for use in Sea of Thieves’ sandbox Adventure mode. We were unwilling to compromise in a way that would disrespect the efforts of players who fully met the original criteria, so alongside retiring The Arena as a game mode, we will also be retiring the accompanying achievements. These will be marked as Legacy Achievements on Xbox, and will no longer be visible or earnable on the Steam platform after March 10th.

The following two achievements will remain technically unlockable for Xbox players beyond The Arena’s retirement:

Master of the Arena
Awarded to pirates who purchase the Arena Master Sea Dogs Promotion, available only to those who have hit level 50 in the Sea Dogs Trading Company.

Glorious Sea Dog
Awarded to pirates who purchase the Glorious Sea Dogs Hat, Jacket, Hook and Gloves – items only available to those who’ve unlocked the Professional Sea Dog Grade V Commendation.

Both of these achievements are awarded based on the purchasing of Sea Dogs items, so those who qualify to purchase them can still do so after The Arena has been removed from the game. To be eligible, you must meet the stated criteria before March 10th to guarantee the availability of the items and associated achievements. However, please note that as mentioned above, this will not be the case for Steam players due to The Arena’s achievements being removed from that platform on March 10th.

What about The Midnight Prowl?

• The Midnight Prowl isn't part of the celebration plan, but we've not forgotten about it and this won't be the last that you hear of it.

I’d like to close by saying thank you for reading this far, and for your understanding as you take this news on board. We know that not everyone is going to agree with this decision, but we truly believe it’s the best one for the overall future of Sea of Thieves. We are genuinely excited about the plans for Adventure mode that we’ve talked about today, as well as some of the other amazing things we’re yet to reveal. We look forward to 2022 being another huge year for the game and we’re filled with excitement for the adventures we’re yet to have with you all!

We will be leaving this thread unlocked for the time being but we ask that you please keep it respectful and on-topic. Ask questions, share your Arena memories but please be aware that this decision has been made and will not be reversed and that we will not tolerate any attacks or aggression towards the hugely passionate Sea of Thieves team who continue to give it everything they’ve got.

Thank you for your ongoing support and we'll see you on the seas!

j0toro

Unknown Tale of The Legends fall
Yarrrr fellow Sailors.

I wanted to share with you a story and adventure I had today. It will be a long read but bear with me, because after playing this game for over 400 hours I have to say it was the most exciting thing that happened to me so far :D

So today's morning I was bored and decided to sail a bit. Started looking for a crew, but couldn't really find anyone so I decided to sail a bit as a solo sloop. I spawned at the Ancient Spire outpost. I gathered resources and see what else to do. I saw Fort Skull to the North (Skull Keep). And I'm just thinking "Hmm - solo fort with a sloop? Yeee, what the hells. Let's try it". So I set sail. On the way, I found 3 wreckages with some loots. When getting closer I saw galleon docked at the fort. I decided to first sail to the outpost then to sail this few loots and then try the fort. Maybe we can do the alliance and do the fort together (who am I kidding, but well). I sold my small loot at the Galleon's Grave Outpost and set sail to the fort.

As I was getting closer, the galleon turned around and started shooting at me without any hesitation. I tried talking to them, that I don't wanna fight, that maybe we could form an alliance and do the fort together. They refused, they tried to board me, so I'm "ok". So I killed both boarders and started shooting back at them. But I didn't really care at this time so I just shoot at them without steering the sloop. I hit the fort, they killed me with cannonballs and before I respawned my sloop sank. I respawned at Old Faithful Isle. I look to the horizon - the skull is still there. So I hop back on the sloop and set sail back to the fort thinking "Hey. I still got nothing to lose."

Meanwhile, the Fort got covered by the Storm. But I decided to try it anyway. Besides, what chances have a solo sloop vs storm, fort, and Galleon? Non existing :D

So I'm sailing bravely into the storm, trying to somehow navigate, fix the holes while taking out the water. When I reached the fort, The Storm almost passed over - we were at the edge of it. At that time I realized two things:

They didn't saw me coming, thanks to the Storm.

They finished the fort because the skull was gone.

So I raised the sailes, sailed to the back of the Galleon, docked right next to it, jump to the Galleon, and one shot first enemy I saw. I quickly glanced if there is any loot available - but there was none. But I see at the beach of the fort rest of the Galleon's crew with the rowboat and the loot from the fort. So I quickly jump down, hit another guy from the crew, but since they were 3 at once, they killed me right away. At this moment I also realized another thing - the whole crew of the Galleon was composed of LEGENDS (you know - shiny clothes, shiny ship etc. :D)

So while resting at the ghost ship I'm just thinking like "Well. I tried, but I think it's over." Yet I knew I'll have 1 more shot, because they couldn't sink my sloop so fast, due to it being docked (on anchor) right next to the Galleon. Ok - my time is up. Time to respawn.

When I respawned on my sloop I saw the enemies took my sloop and hit it on the rocks next to the fort. I could tell they didn't take me seriously, because they crashed my sloop RIGHT NEXT to the Galleon. Seeing that I realized it's pointless to save the sloop, I'll just go for the ONE THING THAT COULDN'T WORK.

I'm gonna kill them all and steal the ROWBOAT full of the loot from the fort.

It was hell crazy idea but I went to execute it. I quickly jumped to the water, swim underwater to the rowboat. Then I emerged and quickly one shoot closest enemy from Blunderbuss. Right after that, another enemy came same story - blunderbuss to the face. 2 down - 2 to go. Okay - I can do it. I take out a banana and I see the 3rd enemy right in front of me. "Frack, too close, too fast". But I was lucky and he takes out the sniper rifle.

"Poor guy" I just think while blunderbussing his face to oblivion. Three down, 1 to go. I can't see him - okay. Quickly - the rowboat. I jump into the rowboat, and I receive hit. I look around - I spotted the 4th crew member on the ship aiming to me from the sniper rifle. 2nd hit - I'm barely alive. Quickly - banana. I jump off the rowboat and just move left and right while healing myself. Once fully healed I quickly jump back to the boat and try to barely maneuver it to the open water (it was locked between beach/tower and the Galleon. Another shot - missed.

"Damn - quick. My time is running out". I'm thinking to myself. My hands on the keyboard are shaking like crazy. My heart is about to jump out of my chest. "YES. I did it". I finally managed to free the rowboat and sail to the open seas. But I'm thinking to myself again "Okay, let's be honest - it can't work. I'm gonna swim a bit away, but they 'll respawn, lower the sailes, quickly catch up to me, kill me and get the loot. But even so - I managed to do the impossible and make a fool out of the Galleon full of The Legends. I'm proud of myself".

Sailing away from the fort and the Legends galleon in a rowboat with full loot (except exploding barrel)

At first, I started sailing to the nearest outpost - The Galleon's Grave Outpost. Just to get to any outpost as fast as I can to sell those things before they catch me. But while sailing away from the fort and seeing the Galleon lowering the sails to chase I started thinking "But wait a minute. That's exactly what they'll think I'll do so they will sail in this direction as well." So I immediately started to turn and swim random other direction.

I look to the horizon. I see the Galleon closing. "Damn - it's over. But I'm not going down without a fight". So I keep swimming quickly thinking what to do. Finally, I decided that even if they catch me - I can't allow them to get all the loot back. So I get up from the boat - look around, take some "middle range chest" and throw it aboard. And I keep swimming. I turned and started swimming back to the fort. Few minutes pass, and I keep turning left and right, getting closer to the fort. And this point I realized something weird - "They can't see me. They really don't know where I am!! WTH??!" I'm starting to analyze - because they rowboat is so small, I got often covered by waves and those hid me away from their prying eyes of the Legends (just like the Eye of The Sauron").

I get to the fort and I keep swimming West towards Isle of the Last Words. My hands are still shaking, my heart is pumping and all the muscles in my body are tight. When I reached the Isle, I look at the horizon and froze. "Oh my God, no". Luckily it wasn't the Galleon since they were still searching for me but couldn't find me. But I saw another Fort Skull. DIRECTLY the same way I was rowing. I quickly started panicking and turning to a random direction (it happened to be North) just to leave the path of the doom. Because I knew if the Galleon will give up looking for me, they will just swim directly to this skull and find me "by the way". So I swim north, and I see The Galleon going this way. "Damn - I'm screwed." - I think to myself. So I quickly sail to nearest rock to hide behind it, wait a bit and then keep sailing north.

While rowing north and being almost at The Sunken Grove I see the Legends Galleon swimming towards the skull directly through the Isle of the Last Words. As I predicted, If I would stay there they would catch me. When I decided that I'm relatively safe, I started to calm down and look for the nearest outpost. "Yes - I found it. It's The Dagger Tooth Outpost".

I take out the compass, and I start swimming towards the outpost.

A rough estimation of my escape in the rowboat.

After a while, I got into the outpost and I sold all the look for almost 20k gold.

Hell - it was the most exciting 20k gold I ever earned. And the rush of the adrenaline, while sailing the rowboat alone and running away from 4 man crew of The Legends, was super stressful. My hands were shaking and my heart pumping. I'm sorry I don't have more screens or recording of it, but I was too stressed to think about that in the heat of the moment. I was just praying to pull it through.

Overview of the rowboat after reaching the outpost (The Stronghold skull is under the plank)

If you guys managed to read up to this point I hoped you enjoyed the story.

And if this crew by some chance read this post - I'm sorry guys for stealing the loot but I tried to approach peacefully. ^^ Thanks for the encounter tho ^^

And to the Rare crew - thanks guys for such a "lack of content and no emotion game" that after over 400hours of playtime this game still can bring so much excitement :D

Keep sailing guys. Sea is vast and full of adventures :D

Yarrrr! Ninja Panda Inquisition out ^_^