Sea of Thieves recently crossed two million players, and as more gamers experience the title, new problems emerge. One of the most pressing concerns at the moment has to be the fact that ships respawn too close to where they were sunk. This can be frustrating for an inexperienced crew because encountering the same vessel again and again, and possibly losing loot again and again, can be disheartening to say the least. It might even be enough for some gamers to quit altogether.
Today, Rare released a 450 MB patch for Sea of Thieves on Xbox One and Windows 10. The update finally fixes the ship respawn issue and much more. It's great to see that the studio is listening to customer feedback. Hopefully the conversation will continue into the future and influence the type of missions the title gets too.
You can read about all of the major changes and known issues in today's patch below.
Major Changes
- The ship respawn distance has been increased. When a ship sinks, it will now reappear at a significantly increased distance to reduce repeated conflicts. Ships will now respawn outside of visible view of the vessel that sank them. This is in response to lots of player feedback which highlighted that the previous spawn distance was resulting in griefing and stalemates at forts.
- Mermaid teleport has been fixed. It's no longer possible to accidentally teleport to your ship from the mermaid while holding treasure. Players should no longer accidentally leave treasure in the sea.
Bugs Fixed
- PC players won't get stuck at 99% installation anymore.
- Players are no longer able to fall through the ship geometry and into the sea if they repeatedly jump on certain objects.
- The voyage image on the captain's table now displays the rank banner in the top right corner.
- Matchmaking doesn't cause the game to freeze.
- Bounty Captains no longer spawn multiple times.
Performance Improvements
- Fixed numerous causes that resulted in crashes.
- General improvements to performance and stability with more to come.
Known Issues
- Player appearance such as hair color and scars may look different than their initial selection.
- Achievements earned prior to March 29, 2018 are delayed, but will be awarded soon.
- Some players are unable to equip a second weapon.
- Some players have not received their Black Dog Pack codes.
- Some players can't see their downloadable content.
- Bounty quest skeletons sometimes don't spawn.
Sea of Thieves is an exploration-based pirate game which launched on March 20. Rare is known for many famous franchises including Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, and GoldenEye. However, in recent years, the team focused on developing Kinect games for Xbox One and Xbox 360. This was a curious decision, so when Phil Spencer became Head of Xbox in 2014, he assigned Rare a new project. Sea of Thieves is a shift for the developer and a concept the team hasn't tackled before.
The game is currently available at retailers for $59.99 or as part of the monthly $9.99 Xbox Game Pass subscription. Players who purchase an Xbox One X also receive a free copy of Sea of Thieves with their purchase for a limited time.
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