Release Notes

Grapple Gun Improvements

• The maximum range of the Grapple Gun has been increased to match the ship’s harpoon, providing players with greater scope for traversal and various sneaky plays.

• The speed of a fired arrowhead is now much quicker, reducing the need for players to lead their shots and also reducing the time after a failed shot before it can be fired again.

• Acceleration is now increased when grappling to a solid surface, with players moving faster the further they travel.

Blowpipe Improvements

• Players can now quickly cycle through available dart types via a new keybind, Dart Radial Input. This same key can also be held to summon the full Dart Radial. By default, this is bound to ‘H’ on keyboard and Right on D-pad when using a controller – players already using these keys for other actions will need to rebind their controls to prevent issues from occurring.

• Players now have a choice on how the blowpipe acts when running out of a specific dart type. By default it will switch to the next type, but by using Auto Switch Dart Type in the Input Settings, players can prevent this automatic switch.

Merfruit Improvements

• Enchanted Merfruit will no longer be selected when using the food keybind to switch and cycle through food within a player’s inventory to prevent accidental eating. Uncooked Merfruit will continue to be selected when cycling through food.

• Enchanted Merfruit can now be placed inside Fruit Crates for safekeeping.

Mimic Dart – Delayed

• As shared in our recent State of Play, while this new ammo type for the blowpipe was announced in previous updates, it has not yet reached the quality bar where the team would be happy to release it. This feature will continue to be worked on for release in a future update.

• While this feature is disabled, a range of Pirates of Mischief Commendations are visible but unable to be progressed and the Lucky Hand Blowpipe, Real Dead Ringer Trinkets and Part of the Hive Title remain locked.

Safer Seas Rewards and Reputation

• Players choosing to sail on Safer Seas will now find it a more rewarding experience during their early stages of progression with the Trading Companies. Gold and reputation will now be earned at 100% (up from 30%), equivalent to their value on High Seas.

• To balance this, progression with each Trading Company is now capped at rank 25 (down from 40). To continue earning reputation and progress past rank 25 with a Trading Company, players will need to venture onto High Seas.

• While players who choose to remain on Safer Seas will be unable to climb all the way to Pirate Legend, they are still free to take on the Voyages to which they already have access and will continue to earn the same gold rewards as on High Seas.

Detection Improvements for Ban Evasion

• Starting with December’s update, detection improvements will begin rolling out behind the scenes targeting players who evade game bans to regain access to Sea of Thieves. These improvements will be deployed in phases over the coming months to systematically crack down on banned players and prevent them from returning to the seas.

Show off your personal style with purchases from the Pirate Emporium! Pick up exclusive cosmetics such as ship liveries, costumes, weapons, pets and emotes using your Ancient Coins, purchasable with real money. Head to the Pirate Emporium page to browse and buy the latest additions!

New Emporium Items – Now in Stock!

• Dreamers’ Dust Ship Collection

• Dreamers’ Dust Weapon Bundle

• Dreamers’ Dust Ship’s Crest

• Dreamers’ Dust Lantern

• Dreamers’ Dust Costume Set

• New Glacial Curse Pets: Fox, Owl, Parakeet and Alsatian

• Motley Mariner Cannon Flare 

• Menacing Weapon Pose Emote

• Ice Sculpture Emote (free!)

Returning Emporium Items

• Bonechiller Weapon Bundle, now with additional weapons (time-limited, will return next year)

• Bonechiller Ship Collection and Ship’s Crest (time-limited, will return next year) 

• Bonechiller Costume Set (time-limited, will return next year)

• Festival of Giving Weapons (time-limited, will return next year)

• Festival of Giving Pet Outfits (time-limited, will return next year)

Pirate Emporium Homepage Improvements

• The Pirate Emporium homepage now features a carousel to better highlight new items arriving in the store.

• Beneath the carousel are three dedicated tiles for themed content, showcasing items from Sea of Thieves: A Pirate’s Life and Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island. With these dedicated spaces now accessible from the homepage, they have been removed from the top navigation to ease browsing.

Pirate Emporium Plunder Pass Improvements

• Selecting the Plunder Pass within the Emporium now allows players to see all items that can be earned by progressing through the 100 levels of Renown for the active Season before making their purchase.

New Outpost Stock!

• The Outpost weaponsmiths now stock the Bone Crusher and Sea Dog Heavy Swords and Rapiers.

• The Outpost clothing shops now offer Stately Shirts in four fetching colours for all pirates to purchase.

Gameplay

• Pigs will no longer flee from players holding Merfruit.

• The aim on the Seasoned Sailor Pistol has been improved, ensuring shots now align with the tip of the barrel.

Performance and Stability

• Performance improvements have been made to the game client, providing a small overall improvement to framerates.

• Further improvements have been made to game stability to reduce scenarios where players unexpectedly exit the game or become disconnected from their session.

Pirates of Mischief

• Players completing the necessary criteria to progress the Pirates of Mischief Commendations will now find they are able to purchase disguises once the Commendations are fully unlocked. Some players with prior progress may remain temporarily blocked as the team works behind the scenes to sync their progress.

• Pirates extinguishing Black Powder Darts attached to them should now consistently progress the Wash Out Commendation.

• Attacking enemy Bone Caller Skeletons with Poison Darts should now progress the Poisonous Pirate Commendation.

Disguises

• Using a disguise while under the effect of sickness will now pause the symptoms and prevent a bout of vomiting from breaking a player’s disguise.

• The Chest of the Damned disguise visual effects now appear correctly when on a moving ship.

• Players in disguises will no longer make loud footsteps while moving around the deck of a ship.

Blowpipe and Darts

• Picking up an ammo pouch will now consistently restock all blowpipe darts.  

• Kill markers now appear when defeating enemies with blowpipe darts.  

• Controller vibration has been improved while using the blowpipe, addressing incorrect feedback when aiming and reloading.

• Darts are now damaged by explosives, and those embedded in a target can also be damaged consistently by gunshots.

• Shooting a Gunpowder Barrel with a Poison Dart should no longer trigger the fuse visual effects.

• Black Powder Darts embedded in players should now be consistently extinguished when doused with water.

• The glint of a Lure Dart now appears in the same colour for all players in the session.

Crouching and Stealth

• Players hanging from the side of a ship while it dives to a Voyage or Hourglass of Fate battle will no longer find themselves stuck in a drowning state.

• Exiting a hanging point while crouching will no longer cause a player to equip their weapon.

• Players will now find it easier to hide when out of sight of common enemies and Skeleton Captains.

• When multiple players interact with the same hanging point simultaneously, they will now retain the ability to crouch afterwards.

• Cancelling the action to bail water by using crouch no longer causes the resulting splash audio effect to be heard incorrectly.

• Players will no longer exit crouch when picking up a Trident of Dark Tides.

• Exiting crouch with a stashed item will no longer result in the item appearing to intersect with the player.

• Players can no longer crouch while holding the fishing rod fully drawn back before casting.  

• Players switching quickly to a lantern after crouching will no longer see the light emitted below them as if they were still crouching.

• Players crouching while holding items are no longer able to interact with areas of the ship such as the capstan, maintaining consistency with held items.

• Players crouching with an open chest will now correctly display the contents to nearby players and items can be added and retrieved.

Traps

• When disarming a loaded trap with limited inventory space, players will retrieve the trap first before any loaded items.

• When attempting to deploy a trap in a restricted location, players will now have the trap returned to their inventory.

• Players who temporarily disconnect from a session with deployed traps will now find the traps stay active for a short grace period for the player to rejoin the session before they are removed.

• Traps are now triggered instantly by gunshots or melee attacks, but when this sets off a chain reaction of deployed traps there will be a short delay between triggers.

• Players standing stationary near a trap now take the same damage as players moving when it is triggered.

• Traps loaded with a Jigball or Wearyball should now consistently affect the pirate triggering the trap.

• While below deck on a ship, players can no longer set traps through the ceiling on the floor above.

• Traps buried in the same spot by multiple players will no longer disappear.

Environment

• Grapple Guns no longer allow players to move beneath surfaces or reach outside the map at various Skeleton Camps.  

• Kraken’s Fall no longer has part of the environment sticking out from the geometry.

• Players are now prevented from moving through the ceiling or interacting with objects on the floors above while navigating Sea Forts.

• The coconuts inside crates at Port Merrick now appear correctly.

• Players can now pick up the Mysterious Journal from all potential locations on Crescent Isle.

• ‘The Lair of LeChuck’ – Players can no longer reach past the boundaries of the map by using the Grapple Gun.

User Interface

• Large Guilds with 30 ships pledged should now load consistently when selected.

• Captains should find that when meeting the criteria for a Ship Milestone, that Milestone and associated reward are now unlocked.

• Players choosing to block communication through Xbox Family Settings should no longer find the UI becomes unresponsive after attempting to send messages using text chat.

• When equipping the Radiant Comet Capstan, the prompt to use the capstan is now placed in the correct location.

• ‘Maiden Voyage’ – The correct prompt is now shown when handing the Old Sailor’s Chest to the Pirate Lord.

Visual and Audio

• Items used in various emotes such as flowers and buckets should now consistently appear at their intended size.

• Equipping the Shadow Tide Wheel no longer hides the ship’s compass when sailing on a Brigantine or Sloop.

• The sight on the Lodestar Blowpipe is now correctly aligned.

• Obsidian Bone Crusher and Inner Sanctum Hulls equipped to a Brigantine now display correctly.  

• Characters’ faces no longer appear to be missing parts when wearing a mask combined with the Forest’s Blessing Costume or Barrel Bombardier Costume.

• Ponytail hairstyles now display correctly from all angles.

• When equipping the Wheel of Noble Captaincy, it will now be displayed with the correct shadows.

• The Iron Turtle and Lucky Hand Grapple Guns no longer intersect with the player camera when fired.

• The speaking trumpet’s shadow now appears properly across all graphic settings.

Text and Localisation

• Localisation quality improvements have been made to a range of items within the Pirate Emporium across multiple languages.

Blowpipe Keybinding

• Players who already have actions bound to ‘H’ on keyboard or Right on D-pad when using a controller may find they are unable to perform these actions following this update. This can be resolved by rebinding the actions from the Game Settings.

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 Series X: 4.84 GB
Xbox Series S: 4.08 GB
Xbox One X: 4.84 GB
Xbox One: 4.08 GB
Microsoft Store: 4.32 GB
Steam: 3.47 GB
PlayStation®5: 1.73 GB

XBOX INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

PC INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS CAN BE FOUND HERE.

PS5® INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS CAN BE FOUND HERE.