Battle breaks out across the Sea of Thieves in Season Eight! But this is a conflict that you can wade into at your own discretion: all pirates wishing to take sides will find two distinct Factions clashing on the open sea as this Season begins. Get the full story in the Content Update video below, with bonus viewing available in the reveal livestream and the Season Eight Deep Dive...

Sea of Thieves Season Eight: Official Content Update Video

Duração 9:00

Now read on for details on not just the Battle at hand but everything else landing in this substantial update, from a new Plunder Pass and 100 free levels of Seasonal rewards to the latest accessibility improvements and bucketloads of fixes and adjustments!

The Battle for the Sea of Thieves

Conflict now rages between the Guardians of Fortune, loyal to the Pirate Lord and his allies, and the Servants of the Flame, followers of the newly emboldened Captain Flameheart. Those of each Faction can hunt the other at will, bringing ship combat on demand to the Sea of Thieves...

Season Eight

A new Season means 100 new levels to climb by raising your Renown, with rewards along the way – and an optional Plunder Pass adding even more. New Ledger prizes can also be earned by Emissaries for all Trading Companies, not just Athena’s Fortune and The Reaper’s Bones!

Pirate Emporium

Have you earned a king’s ransom during your time on the seas? Show it by splashing out on the sumptuous new ship set and matching crown. Alternatively, get back in touch with your feral side as the Night Wulf Costume and Weapon Bundle are shipped in from the dark heart of the jungle...

Gameplay Improvements

Cursed Cannonball Balancing

  • Cursed Cannonballs are now more scarcely discovered in island barrels, washed-up crates and Rowboats.

  • Cannonball Crates of the Damned now only award a single Wraith Cannonball due to their immense power.

  • The effect duration of green Cursed Cannonballs that affect other players have now been shortened across the board.

  • Players are now limited to holding only five Cursed Cannonballs at any given time.

Emissary Warning

  • Crews representing a Trading Company as an Emissary will now be shown a notification to remind them that while more rewards can be earned by doing so, they should also expect to become a valuable target for other crews.

Front End Messaging

  • The game’s front end notifications sent from Sea of Thieves Support now convert to the player’s local time zone. 

Outpost Cosmetics

New Hairstyles and Beards

  • The Outpost clothing shop now offers players hairstyles and beards from the Forsaken Ashes set, with the Forsaken Ashes Singed Hair and Forsaken Ashes Frazzled Hair as well as the new Forsaken Ashes Beard. All can be purchased with players’ hard-earned gold.

  • For pirates looking for a ‘cooler’ look, the Up ‘n’ Down Hair, Topknot Hair and Craggy Beard available from the clothing shops may be more their style.

Events

Twitch Drops

  • Continue to unlock even more cosmetics throughout Season Eight with Twitch Drops! Stay tuned to Sea of Thieves social channels to find out when Twitch Drops will be active, some for Partnered streamers and some for all streamers, allowing players to earn a selection of new and classic items from the Eastern Winds Sapphire, Rising Morningstar and Frozen Horizon sets.

  • Find out how to link your accounts and more on our dedicated Twitch Drops page.

Accessibility

Tooltip Narration

  • Tooltips that appear on-screen when interacting with items can now be narrated, providing improved accessibility for those with low vision.

  • With text-to-speech narration already enabled, players can enable tooltip narration within the Language Settings along with configuration options to allow players to define how much of the tooltip is narrated. For more information, head to the Accessibility guide on our support site.

Fixed Issues

Gameplay

  • Players taking fatal damage aboard their ship shortly before entering the Tunnels of the Damned are now returned to life upon arrival in the Tunnels.

  • Players drowning while entering the Tunnels of the Damned are now returned to life upon arrival in the Tunnels.

  • ‘Swim Up’ can now be assigned to any key and not just the spacebar.

  • When players return from the Sunken Kingdom, friendly merfolk carrying treasure will now resurface closer to their ship.

  • Wreckers now appear at shipwrecks while on Lost Shipment Voyages, and while exploring a Shipwreck Graveyard as part of the Legend of the Veil Voyage.

Captains of Adventure

  • When browsing the Shipwright’s Captaincy shop, Voyages that the crew are unable to acquire will now show as locked.

  • Players purchasing or discarding Captain’s Voyages will now find the Captain’s Bookcase visually changes.

  • The Crossed Harpoons Trinket now appears correctly when placed on board the ship.

  • Completing the Emissary Voyages for each Trading Company now correctly progresses the appropriate Voyage Milestones.

  • Completing Emissary Voyages no longer progresses ‘Discovered Quests Completed’ Milestones.

  • Players should now consistently find that the 'Islands Visited' Ship Milestone progresses when sailing their ship towards islands.

  • Completing Wayfinder, Ghost Ship or Lost Shipments Captain’s Voyages will now update the correct Milestones.

  • When leaving and returning to the ship during the Trinket section of the Captaincy tutorial, the Pirate Lord will now be present during his voiceover.

  • Completing Quests from discovered Messages in a Bottle in The Devil’s Roar will now progress ‘Devil’s Roar Voyage Quests Completed’ Milestones.

Pirate Emporium

  • The Bleakheart Banshee Costume visual effects should now be consistently seen by other players.

  • Pirates of all body shapes and sizes will find the head of the Spinal Costume no longer appears squashed.

Environment

  • Small items dropped on Rum Runner Isle are now more visible to players instead of appearing beneath the sand’s surface.

  • Players can no longer walk through rocks on the north side of Plunder Valley.

User Interface

  • Players swapping from mouse to controller input will now find the menu selection consistently follows the actions of the controller.

Accessibility

  • Players enabling ‘Let Games Read to Me’ will now find the ‘Narrate Change Only’ setting is now enabled by default for new players.

Visual and Audio

  • While sailing on a Sloop, players should no longer hear a creaking audio effect repeating from the rear canvas.

  • Icons for Reaper’s Chests and Fort Keys on the ship’s map now appear at the correct size when playing on console.

  • When the Festival of the Damned Lantern is turned on, there are no longer visible issues with the glowing crystals.

Text and Localisation

  • The ‘Scuttle Ship’ notification shown when crews experience repeated defeats by other crews now displays text correctly across all languages.

  • Navigating the ship selection menu within the front end will now display text correctly across all languages.

  • The Captained ship selection screen on the front end now displays the value for ship restoration correctly across all languages.

Performance and Stability

  • Scenarios where crews are stacking large amounts of treasure on board a ship or decorating an island now have optimised server performance, reducing latency, lag spikes, rubberbanding and server correction during gameplay.

  • Improved server stability to reduce scenarios where crews are removed from a game session.


Known Issues

Visual Issues Underwater Following Battle

  • After diving beneath the waves to find a rival crew in the Battle for the Sea of Thieves, players visiting the Sunken Kingdom may experience visual issues when swimming into the depths.

‘Gold Earned’ Milestones

  • Crews earning gold by cashing in an Hourglass of Fate following a Battle will find the ‘Gold Earned’ Milestones do not currently progress.

Reduced Server Performance

  • Players may experience scenarios where they encounter ping spikes at random while playing, resulting in rubberbanding or client stutters. While improvements were most recently released in update 2.5.3, the team continue to work on further improvements for future updates.

Ranged and Melee Weapon Hit Detection

  • In areas of intense action, players may find themselves firing shots or landing strikes that do not cause damage to their targets. While small improvements continue to be delivered during our regular updates, we are continuing to investigate and identify further improvements to the player combat experience.

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 and Installation

Download size:

Xbox Series X: 7.81 GB
Xbox Series S: 5.07 GB
Xbox One X: 7.81 GB
Xbox One: 5.07 GB
Microsoft Store: 7.54 GB
Steam: 6.98 GB

XBOX INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

PC INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

Forum Discussion

You can discuss these release notes in the Forums here.

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

Looking For Crew?

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: