Sea of Thieves Round-Up: January 2022
Sam 'Foc'sle' Foxall (Copywriter)
Posted in: General Updates on 07 Feb 2022
Yes, only one month into 2022 and we’ve already given you a tantalising peek at what’s coming in Season Six, revealed our new narrative-focused Adventures and held our first ever Community Day – all while swearing off grog and meat. New year, new us and all that. So hold on to your tricorns and buckle up your boots as we barrel head-first into a look back at January’s antics in Sea of Thieves!
Content Update
After we’d scattered the sawdust and cleaned up the party poppers from the end of the Grogmanay celebrations, it was time to welcome in our usual monthly update to add another bunch of ongoing quality of life fixes, squish the odd bug that had crept in during the festive period, drop a few more hints about the Community Day at the end of January (more on that later!) and of course restock the Pirate Emporium shelves.
This first batch of 2022 Emporium goodies saw us looking to the stars with the astral Lodestar cosmetics, along with celebrating pirates tying the knot with the Wedding Party Emote Bundle and bringing back the Lunar Festival Pet Outfits for another fleeting New Year appearance! To marvel at every teeny-tiny change we made in this update, please cast your eyes over the release notes.
Of course, just a few days after this update we dropped a cheeky tease of the big 2022 Preview Event that was to follow before the end of the month, unveiling much, much more of the Sea of Thieves roadmap for this year…
News and Features
Down on the news deck, the ticker was working double-time on a cascade of January stories to leave you agog. After a short Christmas break, our Community and Creator stages burst back into life with a Community Spotlight for accessibility consultant SightlessKombat and a Creator Spotlight for botanist buccaneer CocoMayy. The workers at the Hat of Unfeasibly Glorious Fame factory also got back to work quickly, with eight new entrants making their way onto the Community Hub, along with a flurry of hats being given out over the course of Sea of Thieves' inaugural Community Day!
If you were in the mood for a bargain this month, Sea of Thieves shed some pounds as part of the Lunar New Year Sales on both Xbox and Steam – hopefully some of you leapt on it like a tiger. Or should you have missed it and need a contemplative tune to listen to while you wistfully take to the grog, look no further than our latest Sea of Thieves soundtrack release, 'A Star to Sail By'.
Capping off the month and serving as a celebration of all you courageous corsairs, our first Sea of Thieves Community Day welcomed a host of escapades across the seas – and while there were supporting activities like free login bonuses and a merch sale, the true highlight was the community spirit involved and adventures shared to help to raise the Community Day Emissary Grade, in turn triggering magnificent in-game gold and rep multipliers. Despite the meddling of a certain fruit-bearded buccaneer keeping players off the seas, you lot absolutely smashed our expectations, pushing the number of tagged tweets so high that Grade 5 was reached in a flash!
Speaking of a sudden flash, someone forgot to swap out the dodgy bulb on the segue alarm, it keeps blinking angrily at us – talk among yourselves while we fix it.
Videos and Streams
And we’re back. Enough talking, you up in the corner. Our big video reveal of this month was, of course, the 2022 Preview Event. Hosted by a rogue’s gallery of Rare faces, this grand video odyssey ran through our plans for Sea of Thieves in 2022, revealing Adventures and Mysteries, showing off the Sea Forts coming in Season Six, calling time on The Arena and debuting the cinematic trailer for the first Adventure, ‘Shrouded Islands’, coming on February 17th. Seeing you lorehounds immediately get to work crafting theories, we’re impressed but also slightly scared.
For the Twitch devotees, January continued the rollout of Twilight Hunter togs via Twitch Drops (along with the Gilded Phoenix Tankard for those who tuned in to any participating Sea of Thieves streamer on Community Day). We even chucked in the Flirt Emote – for when you’re looking all dark and mysterious in your full Twilight Hunter gear and want to catch the attention of that dashing Athena’s Fortune Emissary from across the tavern.
Social Channels
Between all the fun of announcing the next 12 months of fun for Sea of Thieves, complete with its own roadmap, there was still the usual blend of exclusive goodies and cheeky nonsense to be found on our social channels. For those looking to fully embrace the Community Day spirit we released a list of suggested challenges, a special set of wallpapers and other visual phantasmagoria, while at other times we asked everyone to reveal their resolutions for the New Year, spied a certain white Megalodon for the briefest of moments, encouraged judicious scrolling and had everyone guessing words, as seems to be the Internet’s current obsession.
Like the troopers they are, our regular hashtags continued their unending content collation quests: #TriviaTuesday had us learning more about Dark Relics and chief fog fearer Wonda among other things, while #SoTGear had us oohing and aahing at yet more flashy cosmetics ranging from the Merchant Pathfinder Sails to the Ashen Lord Tattoos.
With our New Year, New You #SoTShot theme being full of people reinventing themselves for 2022, we went a little less introspective and asked people to take a load off with our Sitting Pretty theme for mid-January. Following some fantastic photos of sedentary sailors, we’re hoping February’s theme of Sightseeing will now get you back up off your backsides and out exploring the seas. If you’re looking for ideas for scenic locales, #SundayVibes is always good for inspiration – with January’s tour taking in the views at spots like Sea Dog’s Rest, the Lagoon of Whispers and Lonely Isle, in a cruise perfect for introverts.
Oh, and Happy New Year! We know it’s February now, but still.
One month down, 11 more to go! If you’ve managed to keep to your New Year’s resolutions so far, well done – we hope one of them was to follow all the Sea of Thieves social channels. It wasn’t? Shocking. If you need a reminder, they’re Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and the official Forums and Discord server for discussing such important topics like the Pirate Lord’s favourite crisp flavour. For our money, it’s prawn cocktail but we could be convinced of cheese and onion. Answers on a crisp-stained postcard please.
