Sea of Thieves: A Pirate’s Life update is out now – see the patch notes here

Sea of Thieves A Pirate's Life Jack Sparrow Header

Season Three of Sea of Thieves is now live, bringing with it the huge new Pirates of the Caribbean crossover event as well as all the new unlocks and time-limited in-game events that you would expect from a new season of the game’s live service. It’s a big download, so while it’s sailing down your internet tubes, let’s dive into the patch notes below!

It’s a big update with a big download size to match. Here’s how big a download it is across Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC:

  • Xbox Series X: 16.49 GB
  • Xbox Series S: 7.4 GB
  • Xbox One X: 16.49 GB
  • Xbox One: 7.4 GB
  • Windows 10: 18.2 GB
  • Steam: 15.97 GB

Sea of Thieves’ biggest addition comes with the five Tall Tales for the A Pirate’s Life story arc. This sees adventurous pirates embarking on a voyage to rescue Jack Sparrow and then fend off a threat to your way of life in the game. The Tall Tales are free for all players and are not a time-limited component of the game, just find the Castaway at each Outpost to get started.

Sea of Thieves A Pirate's Life Jack Sparrow

There will be new enemies from both below the water and from another plane, as the Ocean Crawlers, Sirens and Phantoms from the five Tall Tales all make their presence known in the rest of the game world.

Preview: Sea of Thieves: A Pirate’s Life is more than just a Pirates of the Caribbean joy ride

Alongside this, Season Three has some time-limited events. The first of these is Flags of Friendship, starting on 1st July. This is intended to make things a little easier for newcomers by tasking experiences pirates with tackling the game’s biggest dangers, from Krakens and Megalodons to Forts and Ashen Lords.

Then there’s all of the rewards. For the free Renown reward track, there are 100 levels granting cosmetics, gold Doubloons and Ancient Coins. Taking on Tall Tales will speed up your progressions to the later rewards, toward the Daring Deceiver clothing and Blue Horizon collectibles. The premium Plunder Pass then includes 11 brand new rewards for those dropping coin on the additional reward track, including Thunderous Fury Figurehead, Flag and Sails, new Versatile Weapon Post and Gold Pouch Trick emotes, the Shining Pegasus costume, Banjo, Cutlass and more.

Of course, the real microtransactions come with the cosmetic Captain Jack Sparrow Crew Set, Captain Jack Sparrow Emote Bundle, Eternal Freedom Ship Collection, Eternal Freedom Weapons, Prison Dog, and more, all of which is tying in with the Pirates of the Caribbean crossover.

There’s a bunch of other fixes, tweaks and changes, so if you want to see all that, expand the following section for the version 2.2.0 patch notes.

Sea of Thieves Season 3 – Version 2.2.0

Updates

Refreshed Front End Menus

  • When launching Sea of Thieves in Season Three, players will now find an improved front end experience, helping new and experienced players alike get into the right sessions more quickly.
  • The Play tab hosts the various game modes including the Maiden Voyage tutorial, Adventure and Arena, all with intuitive instructions to aid setup for newer players. An option for Sea of Thieves: A Pirate’s Life has also been added, allowing players to jump straight into the latest action with their friends, placing them in a Closed Crew directly at the Castaway’s Camp ready to begin a Tall Tale.
  • The Discover tab has an expanded What’s New section to keep you informed of changes taking place across the seas. The Pirate Emporium continues to be available, allowing players to browse and purchase before entering the game.

Accessibility

New Player Accessibility Settings

  • New Sea of Thieves players will now be offered a range of accessibility settings when first loading the game to help tailor the experience to their needs, along with shortcut access to the wider suite of accessibility settings included in the game.
  • New players are now also offered a simple way to ensure Sea of Thieves is suitable for all the family. Enabling Family Mode will disable voice and text communication with other crews you may meet in the open world. These settings can always be re-enabled later from the Settings Menu.

UI Menu Visibility

  • To improve readability of UI menus that overlap, the rear image will no longer use a blur effect and will now show as opaque with the front menu using a darker background.

Pop-up Notifications

  • Within the Accessibility Settings, players can select how long pop-up notifications should appear on-screen using ‘Toast Message Duration’.

Changing Game Language

  • Within the Accessibility Settings on PC, players can now choose a preferred game language independent of the operating system language.

UI Menu Narration

  • When enabling ‘Let Games Read to Me’ in platform settings, navigating through cosmetic chests and shop UI menus will now be narrated for improved accessibility.
  • Within the Quests menu, navigating through the Voyage and Tall Tale inventories will now be narrated.
  • Within the Pirate Log, both Season and Reputation sections will now be narrated.
  • When interacting with Trading Company representatives, menu navigation will now be narrated.
  • Interacting with barrels around the world and navigating through their contents will now be narrated.

Fixed Issues

Gameplay

  • Crews migrating to new servers should no longer become unable to use ship interactions on arrival.
  • Crews migrating servers near a shipwreck will no longer bring undiscovered treasure with them to the new server.
  • ‘Wild Rose’ – On reaching the final chapter of this Tall Tale and returning to the Order of Souls, the Outpost will now load correctly.
  • Swapping emotes while emoting should now correctly change the camera positioning.
  • The ‘Speak to Larinna outside any tavern’ Deed should now complete after speaking with Larinna.
  • After redeeming a crate, players should no longer see a ‘Redeem’ prompt appear at the Merchant Alliance vendor.
  • On Steam, players are no longer able to modify game files in order to exceed the maximum player field of view.

Lost Shipments

  • The Merchant Alliance Lost Shipments map should no longer be blank for a few seconds after opening it.

Emissary Play

  • When a player has voted at an Emissary table, if the vote is still in progress when they leave the Outpost their vote is now removed.
  • Players should no longer be able to vote to end an Emissary session shortly after their ship has sunk.
  • While representing Athena’s Fortune or the Order of Souls as an Emissary, defeating named skeletons at Skeleton Forts and the Fort of Fortune will now earn crews Emissary Grade progression.
  • Killing a Megalodon should now award players with reputation when sailing as an Athena’s Fortune Emissary.

Pirate Emporium

  • The Bear & Bird Ship Bundle in the Pirate Emporium will now correctly show that they have Collector’s Sails and Figurehead available to purchase separately.

Environment

  • While on a Skeleton Galleon, walking into geometry outside the Captain’s cabin should no longer cause players to safe teleport.

Visual and Audio

  • During an Arena contest, the Sea Dog Chest marker should now update correctly on the ship’s map.
  • When sailing, the bow splash visual effects now appear from the correct location.
  • During The Legend of Glitterbeard, players should hear the vocal audio when the tree starts to glow.
  • Toast notifications positioned above dialogue should now move back down when the dialogue has finished.
  • The skeleton runes displayed on the Masked Renegade Hull are now orientated correctly.
  • After killing fauna on the islands, they should now fade out.
  • Commodity Crates should now use the appropriate textures when viewed facing the sun.
  • Browsing the clothing store at an Outpost should no longer show overlapping navigation markers the bottom of the screen.
  • When a player is affected by snake venom, it will now display the full-screen visual effect.

Performance and Stability

  • Improved server stability, reducing scenarios where crews are removed from a game session.
  • Further improvements made to server performance, reducing latency during gameplay.

Known Issues

‘A Pirate’s Life’ Tall Tale – Joining in Progress

  • Joining a crew who have already made progress through checkpoints in the first Tale will spawn players in the incorrect location. For the lost player, dying and returning will bring them to the correct location in the Tale.

‘Lords of the Sea’ Tall Tale – Visual Issues

  • Crews who have recently returned from the Tunnels of the Damned and then begin their journey through the ‘Lords of the Sea’ Tall Tale in the same gameplay session will encounter visual issues. As a workaround, this can be fixed by forcing the game to quit by using Alt+F4 on PC or closing the application on console and then rejoining your session.

Tunnels of the Damned – Rejoining a Session

  • While travelling through the Tunnels of the Damned, losing your connection to the game and rejoining may cause visual issues and cause the migration to the new area to fail, returning you to your starting location.

New Tall Tale Commendations – Tale Visibility

  • Players are able to browse Commendations for ‘The Sunken Pearl’ and ‘Dark Brethren’ Tall Tales before they have completed the preceding Tale. To prevent the experience from being spoiled, avoid reading ahead!

Plunder Pass Reward Unlocking Issue

  • Players who have purchased the Season Three Plunder Pass may find that rewards are not immediately unlocked when the appropriate level of Seasonal progression is reached. Logging out and back in should resolve this and cause the unlocked item to appear in the relevant chest.

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 improvements continue to be delivered during our content updates, this remains a key priority for the team.

Source: Sea of Thieves

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