Sea of Thieves’ August Update 2.0.17.2 and its patch notes go live tomorrow, bringing a smaller number of changes alongside live events that mark the start of the Summer of Sea of Thieves.
Update 2.0.17.2 will be smaller than its peers, the live events part of the Summer of Sea of Thieves aiming to compensate for the new features that have been pushed to September.
“As we came off the back of our July release, we had an opportunity to assess our planned set of features for August – and it quickly became apparent that everything was coming in a little hot.”, Executive Producer Joe Neate wrote in a post.
Summer of Sea of Thieves August Update 2.0.17.2 Patch Notes
“Since we started working from home, we’ve definitely had to be a bit more flexible with our plans for each month, and as such we’ve decided to move our key planned features back to our September release.
Because of this, tomorrow’s update focuses on a range of bug fixes and quality of life improvements while rolling out a series of live events to mark the Summer of Sea of Thieves. There will not be a Pirate Emporium refresh as part of this update.”</b>, he continued.
Here are all the changes and additions ushered in by Sea of Thieves’ Update 2.0.17.2, as detailed in its full patch notes:
Live Events
Time-Limited Events
- Summer of Sea of Thieves – Journey across the Sea of Thieves and tackle a range of challenges. Whether you’re Meeting the Locals, Making New Friends or Spreading Mischief, there’s something for every play style. Complete these challenges to earn unique Titles, cosmetics from the Courage Set, emotes and a range of currency rewards.
- Hunters of the Deep – A challenge for only the most fearless of hunters, where Merrick tasks players with hunting mighty Megalodons in exchange for Shark Teeth. Earning enough Shark Teeth will unlock items from the new Shrouded Ghost Ship Collection. Snatch up these rewards before the whole collection heads to the Pirate Emporium!
Weekly Events
- Ashen Expeditions – Tuesdays are heating back up as crews set sail into The Devil’s Roar. From September 1st, brave volcanic destruction in the Sea of Thieves’ most perilous region to earn double the usual rewards for handing in Ashen Treasures. That ought to light a fire under your crew!
- Wreck and Roll – Take a dip on Thursdays and head for those sunken treasure troves. After taking the plunge, why not take a break and catch yourselves a Wrecker or two? Crews will receive boosted rewards for all Shipwrecked items along with any Wrecker fish found in the depths.
Pirate Emporium
Extended Sale!
- The Ashen Winds Emporium Sale has now been extended – and with discounts on ship collections, pets and their outfits, emotes and even the fruity Cronch Weapons, there’s sure to be something for every pirate.
Gameplay Improvements
Skeleton Ship Fleet Rewards
- Two Ashen Keys are now guaranteed to spawn after defeating the final captain ship in a Skeleton Fleet encounter.
- The final Captain Ship will now spawn two extra Skeleton Captain’s Chests and two extra Skeleton Captain’s Skulls. The Skeleton Captain’s Chests have also had their minimum value increased.
- Each Skeleton Ship is now guaranteed to drop at least one of each item, increasing the gold gain dramatically over the course of the encounter.
Updates
World Encounters
- Increased the frequency of Ashen Lord encounters in the world.
Ghost Fleet Battles
- Flameheart will now voice his disapproval if another non-allied crew approaches during a battle with his fleet.
Joining from Invites
- Players will no longer see the front end intro cutscene when joining a game via an invitation.
Accessibility
Voice Translation
- ‘Translate Other Players’ option has been added to Accessibility Settings. When enabled, players from different regions can still be heard when they speak over voice chat. Their speech will also be translated to your language and displayed as text in the notification window.
Disabling Controller Input
- When playing on Windows 10, players now have the option to disable input from a connected controller.
Let Games Read to Me
- Improvements have been made to the ‘Let Games Read to Me’ option with the addition of screen and keybind settings narration.
Fixed Issues
Gameplay
- Throwing a Blunderbomb or firebomb will no longer alter players’ positions in the air or cause them to teleport on land.
- Pirates will no longer be propelled backwards when vomiting.
- Megalodons and sharks should no longer crash into sea rocks, islands and ships when chasing their target.
- Merchant Crates and Castaway Chests attached to harpoons will now persist through server migration and can then be removed.
- When remapping movement keys, the fishing controls will also change.
- The Emissary UI will no longer persist after lowering an Emissary Flag.
- Harpoons can no longer attach to mines dropped by Ghost Ships.
- The Athena’s Fortune reputation page will no longer display Guardian of Athena’s Fortune even at rank 1. This Title will now only appear when it is unlocked at rank 10.
- Players will now safely teleport back to their ships when stuck in the environment on Ancient Spire Outpost.
- Dig sites located on The Devil’s Thirst should only appear in areas accessible by players.
- Skeletons will animate as intended when eating a banana.
Combat and Hit Registration
- Improved cannonball hit registration on rival ships.
- After becoming a little short-sighted in a previous update, skeletons wielding ranged weapons can once again hit sprinting players.
World Encounters
- The Ashen Lords will now animate more smoothly when switching between movement and attacks.
- Once players have defeated the Ashen Lord Warden Chi, they will hear updated voiceover lines from the Ashen Lord which correspond with the subtitles.
- Ghost Fleet battles will no longer activate on islands already populated by players.
Visual and Audio
- The ‘Mute All Other Crew’ Voice Chat option should no longer enable itself during game sessions.
- Voice chat from other crews should no longer be heard when loading into a game.
- While repairing a hole in the ship, players are no longer able to ‘give’ a plank to cancel the repairing audio effects.
- When picking up the Chest of a Thousand Grogs, the drunken audio effects should no longer persist for players upon its release.
- The Bone Crusher Compass, Fearless Bone Crusher Compass and Bone Crusher Pocket Watch are now readable at all times, even at night.
- Players will now hear bespoke sound effects when interacting with Umbra at the Lagoon of Whispers.
- Volume settings will now persist across sessions even when returning to the front end menu.
Tall Tales
- Crews can now have the ‘The Cursed Rogue’, ‘The Legendary Storyteller’, ‘Fate of the Morningstar’ and ‘Revenge of the Morningstar’ Tall Tales active at the same time as another Voyage.
- In the ‘Heart of Fire’ Tall Tale, players will no longer be able to fall through the ground in Flameheart's Lair.
Accessibility
- The front end menu buttons are now underlined in order to be more identifiable than the non-selected buttons for partially sighted players.
- The ‘Change Keybind’ prompt will now be narrated when selected with a mouse.
- When enabling ‘Let Game Read to Me’, the screen narration will now narrate how many values are available and which number you are on.
- When enabling ‘Let Games Read to Me’, the narrator will correctly narrate all buttons across the title screen.
- The ‘Automatically Float in Water’ and ‘Locking Interaction Prompts in View’ settings now persist between sessions.
- When ‘Let Games Read to Me’ is enabled, the loading screen tips will now be read out.
- When enabling ‘Let Games Read to Me’, words that are censored by the profanity filter will no longer be narrated.
- When the ‘Single Stick’ setting is enabled, a description will now explain that the ‘Automatically Float’ setting has also been enabled.
Performance and Stability
- Improved server stability when multiple clients are simultaneously using voice chat.
- On Steam, switching to windowed display no longer hides the window.
- Improved detection of host’s location when creating a custom server, improving network conditions when creating a session.
Known Issues
Increased Latency and Server Correction
- In cases of high server density, some servers can exhibit performance hits leading to increased latency. This may result in lag spikes during gameplay, rubberbanding and server correction.
Players Impacted Following Server Migration
- We are currently tracking a number of player-impacting issues which can occur following a server migration. These include crews migrating near Outposts finding themselves moved to a location where another ship is already present, and issues with ship interaction points following a migration.
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 continues to be a key priority for the team.
Stuck UI Menus
- When interacting with a barrel and moving quickly through its inventory, players may find that the barrel’s state is not updated as items are removed. Players can also experience the Game Options becoming stuck on-screen when exiting a barrel in this state.
A new update also means server downtime. You can keep track of when Sea of Thieves comes back online by visiting our server status article.
For more help with Sea of Thieves, drop by our article covering Twitch Drops, to make sure you don’t miss grabbing any extra cosmetic goodies.
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