Release Notes

Sea of Thieves’ colossal April content update has docked at port, ushering in an age of Emissaries, The Reaper’s Bones and… cats? Check out the official trailer to find out what this month’s significantly stacked stash of new content has in store!

Decisions, decisions. Whether you choose to set sail as an Emissary for your favourite Outpost Trading Company, strike fear into the hearts of seafarers as a Reaper or make your mark in the overhauled Arena, this update is making waves that will be felt across the Sea of Thieves forever!

• Player Reviving – Players will no longer die immediately from fatal damage, giving crewmates a chance to revive them. This wait can be bypassed by players in Adventure mode by electing to ‘Offer Your Soul’ to the Ferryman and head straight to the Ferry of the Damned.

• Crew Status Tags – Players now have the option to see what their crewmates are doing even from a distance via icons next to their gamertag, whether it’s carrying treasure, bailing water or steering the ship. This can be accessed in Gameplay Settings by enabling ‘Crew Status Tags’.

• Tall Tale Map Markers – Players can now opt to show Tall Tale locations on the ship’s map by selecting ‘Show Tall Tales on Map’ in the Gameplay Settings menu. This setting is currently on by default.

• Cutlass Damage Balancing – When attacking with a cutlass, players will now deal more damage per strike. Regular strikes now deal 25 damage, increased from 20. Heavy strikes now deal 60 damage, increased from 50.

• Pets Reacting to Other Players – Pets will now react to the actions performed by other players you encounter in the world.

• Harpoon Detach – Launching a Blunderbomb at a harpoon will now cause it to detach from its target.

• Improved Ladder Boarding – After climbing a ladder, players are now able to initiate a new action much more quickly.

• New Player Voyage Onboarding – When first purchasing a Voyage as a new player, you are provided with pop-ups teaching you how to vote and begin your first Voyage.

• New Player Ship Damage Onboarding – New players will receive pop-ups explaining how to repair their ship if it takes damage.

• Skeleton Fort Rewards – After completing a Skeleton Fort and unlocking the vault, crews will now find fewer Gifts and Mermaid Gems.

• Rewards for Emergent Encounters – Defeating an emergent threat such as Megalodon or Skeleton Ship will now result in higher-value loot drops.

• Athena’s Fortune Shop and Shipwright – The Athena’s Fortune shop and shipwright have been upgraded to a newer layout style which has reduced the number of tabs, making it easier to navigate.

• Improved Controller UI Accessibility – To improve accessibility when using a controller, face buttons shown within the UI now have revised iconography with better colour contrast.

• Colour Contrast Improvements – Info tips found at the bottom of Settings screens and some icons have had their colours revised to better support contrast ratio guidelines.

• Cursed Cannonball Effects – Cursed Cannonballs loaded into cannons now have improved visual effects.

General

• Players previously affected by cosmetics not persisting between sessions should now find that their loadout has been repaired, and cosmetics should now save correctly across sessions.

• Placing a Fort of the Damned Key inside a Collector’s Chest will no longer hide the icon on the ship’s map.

• Players should no longer become partially invisible when triggering a safe teleport while interacting with objects in the world.

• Using a mouse scroll wheel when navigating the Settings menu now works as expected.

• The Reaper’s Hideout is now located correctly on the ship’s map table.

• Players can no longer attach a harpoon to a partially unearthed Chest of Rage.

• Players no longer need to leave then board their ship again for button prompts to reappear after dying.

• When selling Collector’s Chests to any Trading Company, players will now only receive gold.

• The Particle Settings option, once set, now persists between sessions.

• Players are now able to hand one another the Crate of Precious Gemstones.

• When approaching Smuggler’s Bay, the island will now load in more smoothly and not cause a potential hitch on lower spec machines.

• On Molten Sands Fortress it is no longer possible to clip through a rock and lose the Fort Key.

• Using emotes during the Maiden Voyage no longer causes the camera to drop to ground level.

• The Megalodon has once again found its voice and now growls when spawning.

• Players should no longer be able to fall through a hole near the peak of Molten Sands Fortress volcano.

• Improved visual effects for fire when seen in first-person view.

• Revised visual effects added to candles to reduce popping.

• The Flintlock of the Ashen Dragon is now correctly named in the Armoury.

Combat

• While charging a heavy strike, damage received from any source will now correctly cancel the strike without resulting in animation and player movement issues.

• When striking with a cutlass from block, repeated strikes will no longer fail to show the cutlass swing animation in first-person view.

• Blunderbombs should no longer be automatically equipped after throwing a firebomb.

• Firebombs will now inflict impact damage as well as the fire status effect on members of your crew.

• Attacking a Gold Skeleton with a cutlass now causes a stun effect on the attacking player.

Tall Tales

• ‘Stars of a Thief’ – Picking up the Totem in this Tall Tale no longer causes the notes next to the statue to occasionally disappear.

• ‘Revenge of the Morningstar’ – The Morningstar uniform will now be properly aligned in the Collector’s Chest.

• ‘Shores of Gold’ – After voting on the Quest Book, Grace will no longer duplicate after speaking.

• ‘The Seabound Soul’ – The third skull retrieved is now correctly localised in non-English languages.

• ‘Heart of Fire’ – Skeletons in the combat room located in the right-hand trap run will now always be able to reach players in order to attack.

• ‘Heart of Fire’ – Players with curses equipped will now display a shadow in Flameheart’s Lair.

• ‘Heart of Fire’ – Players will no longer be stopped from progressing through the trap rooms due to barrels not respawning firebombs taken by a previous crew. Firebombs will now respawn inside barrels when a new crew approaches.

• ‘Heart of Fire’ – When a player is underwater looking at a Chest of Rage, they will now be able to see the visual effects from the chest’s explosion.

• ‘Heart of Fire’ – Players will no longer get stuck on a pile of skulls next to the middle door.

• ‘Heart of Fire’ – Collision has been added to the rock at the entrance to the fourth water section.

• ‘Heart of Fire’ – Players hit by geysers in the catacombs will no longer be thrown through solid surfaces.

• ‘Heart of Fire’ – Improved player collision with rocks in the three-door and stepping stones areas of the catacombs.

• ‘Heart of Fire’ – Players should no longer become stuck on a crystal in the first fight area of the left-hand trap run.

Pirate Emporium

• Performing emotes after equipping items should no longer cause hands to be misaligned on medium/large male pirates.

• The arms on large pirates have been moved apart slightly in some emotes so they no longer clip into their bodies or clothing while emoting.

• The emote names shown in the radial menu now match those in the Pirate Emporium for the Lost Pirate and Crab Dance Bundles.

Ships of Fortune

• Various Trading Company and Emissary balancing issues, improvements and fixes have already been applied: see separate release notes.

• Joining a Session: Players Receiving Groomedbeard – Some players may find that upon attempting to join a session either via session rejoin, an invite or joining in progress, they receive a Groomedbeard error and are unable to join.

• Ship Combat: Incorrect Cannonball Loading – When using the radial to switch between cannonball types during ship combat, selecting a new type too quickly may result in a regular cannonball being loaded instead.

• Visual Issues: Nvidia RTX GPUs – An issue has been identified on a range of Nvidia RTX GPUs that causes gridlines to be visible in the sea when the game is set to Mythical graphics quality.

• Reaper's Bones Rank 50 – Players are currently unable to reach Pirate Legend by hitting Rank 50 in The Reaper's Bones alongside two other Trading Companies.

The team is aware of all these issues and working on resolutions for a future update. To learn more about known issues in Sea of Thieves currently being tracked and their status, head over to our Known Issues support site article.

Download size:

Xbox One: 6.8 GB
Xbox One X: 11.42 GB
Windows 10: 11.42 GB

XBOX INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

PC INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

You can discuss these release notes in the Forums here.

You can leave your feedback on the game in general here.

Looking for new crewmates? We've got a bunch of places you can visit to seek out like-minded pirates, so sail on over to these official Sea of Thieves hangouts:

• Forums
• Xbox Club
• Verified Discord