Sea of Thieves has just revealed the launch time of its next update. May 27th will see server downtime from 10am BST so that the “Lost Treasures update can be safely unearthed,” and asks players to “Please plan your Voyages accordingly!”
The Lost Treasures Update is set to mainly bring quality of life changes to the game but the developers are keen to point out that player engagement is also a top priority with events scheduled between updates.
Sea of Thieves: The Lost Treasures Patch Notes
On PC, players can expect a download size of 9.39 GB GB. Here are all the changes and additions that Sea of Thieves received in its The Lost Treasures update:
Improving Tall Tales
Tall Tales are a great way to explore the astonishing stories of past pirates on the Sea of Thieves, leading to many unique encounters, locations and challenges. With Lost Treasures, the Tall Tales experience has been improved to make the journey even smoother.
- Tall Tale Checkpoints – From the original Shores of Gold series to the more recent releases of ‘The Seabound Soul’ and ‘Heart of Fire’, all Tall Tales now allow you to save progress and pick up where you left off. Completing a Chapter automatically saves a checkpoint. Lost a Tale item in a surprise Kraken encounter? Met a ruthless crew of Reapers? Or just want to play through at your own pace? Resume from your checkpoint and carry on!
- Quest Inventory – The Voyage Inventory has been replaced with a new Quest Inventory, storing Voyages and Tall Tale Checkpoints separately. The new Tall Tale Checkpoint tab can now hold one Checkpoint Voyage per Tall Tale, whereas the Voyage Tab remains unchanged.
- Ship’s Map Markers – When ‘Show Tall Tales on Map Table’ is active, players can now hover over a Tall Tale icon on the ship’s map which offers a prompt (‘Y’ on console and ‘Right Click’ on PC) to pop out a Voyage card displaying key information and where to begin.
Regular Events
Pirates love a challenge, especially when there’s loot up for grabs! A range of regular events are now on offer for players to tackle throughout the Lost Treasures update. For more information on all these, head to our dedicated Events Hub.
- Daily Bounties – Each day’s new Bounty provides a rewarding challenge, whether it tasks players to defeat a seafaring threat, cash in specific rewards or just drink with other crews in the tavern. Check the What’s New in-game messaging or our Events Hub to see today’s Daily Bounty!
- Gold Rush – Every day now has two separate Gold Rush hours that boost rewards for every item cashed in. With Gold Rush hours occurring at 18:00-19:00 BST and 18:00-19:00 PDT, be sure to plan your route and find the best time to cash in that haul!
- Fort Nights – Friday Nights are now Fort Nights! Head to an active Skeleton Fort or brave the dreaded Fort of the Damned and storm those vaults. From 19:00-07:00 BST, the value of all Stronghold items will be boosted.
Pirate Emporium
To celebrate everyone’s favourite fun-loving fishy friend, the Pirate Emporium has been stocked with new items on a Ruby Splashtail theme!
- Free Giveaway Emote – You’ll find the new Three Sheets to the Wind emote available for free in the Pirate Emporium. See you on the seas!
- Ruby Splashtail Ship Collection – Show your love for everyone’s favourite fish with this colourful Ship Collection. A Ruby Splashtail Bundle is also on offer which includes all the regular ship cosmetics at a discount to hook you in!
- Ruby Splashtail Monarch Costume – Dress like the mythical Splashtail Monarch with this complete one-item ensemble. You too can be part man, part fish, all pirate!
- Ruby Splashtail Fishing Rod – Launching at a special discount to celebrate the return of the Hunter's Haul event, you can show off your catch of the day with this colourful fishing rod!
- Lost Treasures Sale! – Holding off on that pet outfit or out to refresh your pirate on a budget? Head to the new Sale tab in the Emporium to see the discounts available.
This Lost Treasures Sale is time-limited for the duration of the Lost Treasures update, so snatch up these bargains while they last!
- Splashtail Monarch Bundle (Store Only) – Available only from the Xbox and Microsoft Stores. This bundle includes the highly distinctive all-in-one Ruby Splashtail Monarch Costume, 1000 Ancient Coins and a free 25,000 gold bonus for use in the Outpost shops! Head to the Store to find out more.
- Feline Finery Bundle (Store Only) – Available only from the Xbox and Microsoft Stores. This bundle includes the Cavalier Wildcat with a Sovereign Wildcat Outfit, plus the Sovereign Cutlass, Hat, Jacket, Sails, Pegleg and Trousers for your pirate. It also includes 550 Ancient Coins and a free 10,000 gold bonus for use in the Outpost shops! Head to the Store to find out more.
Black Market
Duke continues to pass his time in the tavern, kicking back with a grog or five. Fear not, he hasn’t forgotten to stock the Black Market with new items for your hard-earned gold and Doubloons!
- Aristocrat Equipment – This month, feel more dignified as you head out onto the seas. The Aristocrat Fishing Rod, Lantern, Compass, Spyglass, Shovel, Bucket, Speaking Trumpet, Tankard and Pocket Watch are all available for Doubloons.
- Nightshine Parrot Clothing – Feathers are about to fly! Spend some gold to acquire the Nightshine Parrot Eyepatch, Hook, Pegleg, Trousers, Gloves, Belt and Boots.
Outpost Cosmetics
The Outpost shipwrights have finally received a long-lost shipment of ship customisations that will allow pirates to complete a wide range of sets. Head to the shipwright on any Outpost to see what you can add to your collection.
- Bilge Rat Ship Set – The previously unavailable Cannons, Capstan and Wheel are now purchasable for gold, and the Flag is available for free!
- Scurvy Bilge Rat Ship Set – The previously unavailable Cannons, Capstan, Figurehead, Flag and Wheel are now purchasable for gold.
- Castaway Bilge Rat Ship Set – The previously unavailable Cannons, Capstan, Figurehead, Flag and Wheel are now purchasable for gold.
- Sea Dog Ship Set – The previously unavailable Flag is now purchasable for gold.
- Rogue Sea Dog Ship Set – The previously unavailable Cannons, Capstan, Flag and Wheel are now purchasable for gold once unlocked by reaching certain ranks within the Order of Souls.
- Ruffian Sea Dog Ship Set – The previously unavailable Cannons, Capstan, Figurehead, Flag and Wheel are now purchasable for gold once unlocked by reaching certain ranks within the Order of Souls. The Flag is purchasable for gold at any time.
- Sovereign Ship Set – The previously unavailable Flag is now purchasable for gold.
- Royal Sovereign Ship Set – The previously unavailable Cannons, Capstan, Flag and Wheel are now purchasable for gold once unlocked by reaching certain ranks within the Gold Hoarders. The Flag is purchasable for gold at any time.
- Imperial Sovereign Ship Set – The previously unavailable Cannons, Capstan, Figurehead, Flag and Wheel are now purchasable for gold once unlocked by reaching certain ranks within the Gold Hoarders. The Flag is available for purchase using Gold at any time!
- Admiral Ship Set – The previously unavailable Flag is now purchasable for gold.
- Grand Admiral Ship Set – The previously unavailable Cannons, Capstan, Figurehead, Flag and Wheel are now purchasable for gold once unlocked by reaching certain ranks within the Merchant Alliance. The Flag is purchasable for gold at any time.
- Ceremonial Admiral Ship Set – The previously unavailable Cannons, Capstan, Flag and Wheel are now purchasable for gold once unlocked by reaching certain ranks within the Merchant Alliance. The Flag is purchasable for gold at any time.
Gameplay Improvements
- Ferry of the Damned Armoury – A new Armoury has been added to the Ferry, allowing you to change your equipped weapons before respawning.
- Alliance Nameplates – When you form an Alliance with another crew, the allied crews’ nameplates will become purple to help identify those in your Alliance.
- Rowboat Storage Interaction – The keybinds for interacting with the Rowboat Storage Chest have been changed to improve the interaction between sitting and accessing the chest. Interacting with the chest is now done using ‘R’ on keyboard and ‘Y’ on controller.
- Mermaid Recovery – When swimming in open water, the distance at which your mermaid appears has been reduced, allowing you to return to your ship more quickly.
- Animation Quality Graphics Setting – A new graphics setting has been added for PC, allowing players to adjust the character animation quality. On higher-spec machines, this will provide a smoother experience when multiple players are on-screen, though higher settings may impact CPU performance.
- Default Settings for New Players – New players entering Sea of Thieves will now find that both ‘Crew Status Tags’ and ‘Sticky Radial Items’ settings are enabled by default, improving their initial onboarding experience. Existing players will not have their settings changed.
Updates
- Athena’s Fortune Emissary Quest – Athena’s Fortune Emissary Quests no longer contain a Cargo Run map but provide extra dig locations on X Marks the Spot maps, resulting in more Athena's Fortune-specific rewards from the Quest!
- Athena’s Fortune Emissary Progression – Progressing as an Athena’s Fortune Emissary has been rebalanced, requiring players to perform more actions to increase their Emissary Grade.
- Ending an Emissary Session – The gold awarded when ending an Emissary session via the voting table has been reduced at lower Grades, encouraging players to reach higher Grades for their payout.
- Emissary Grade Multipliers – The multiplier bonus for rewards cashed in has been rebalanced. Grade 1 no longer provides a multiplier bonus, encouraging players to reach higher grades for their rewards. The bonus has been shared between Grades 2 and 3 to compensate. Grades 4 and 5 remain unchanged.
- Order of Souls Emissary Quest – Order of Souls Emissary Quests can now offer a much wider range of islands when tasking crews to hunt down Skeleton Bounties.
- Merchant Alliance Emissary Quest – Merchant Alliance Emissary Quests are now provided with two maps to increase variety.
- Emissary Quest Icons – Emissary Quests in the Quest Radial now have a bespoke icon.
- Ritual Skull Availability – Access to Ritual Skulls has been rebalanced, with Ritual Skull Voyages now limited to one purchase per month. Ritual Skulls also have a chance to be found from Skeleton Orders dropped by emergent Skeleton Captains, and continue to be found inside Ashen Chests from Skeleton Forts and Skeleton Ships.
- Chests of Rage – Chests of Rage can now be found washed up across the Sea of Thieves. They may be found in Shipwrecks and Skeleton Ships, dropped by a defeated Megalodon or Kraken or discovered from a Message in a Bottle.
- Skeleton Captain Rewards – Emergent Skeleton Captains that drop Riddle Maps should now reward players with a Collector’s Chest containing a variety of loot.
- Sloop Kraken Encounters – When encountering a Kraken on a Sloop, tentacles are now weaker and take less damage. Kraken tentacles wrapping your ship also take less damage before they let go.
- Brigantine and Galleon Kraken Encounters – When encountering a Kraken on a Brig or Galleon, tentacles no longer try to cover the lower deck to prevent access. When a tentacle releases your ship, the damage dealt has been made more consistent.
- Sloop Megalodon Encounters – Megalodons encountered while on a Sloop are now less likely to attack if not provoked.
- Arena Ship Supplies – When starting a session or returning after sinking, ship supplies in The Arena have been increased. Crews should now have ample food, cannonballs and wood supplies, ready for battle.
- Arena Dig Locations – When discovering a buried Glorious Sea Dogs chest in The Arena, the dig location has been reduced, requiring players to dig at the beacon to unearth the chest.
- Crew Status Tag Range – The distance at which gamertags can be seen when ‘Crew Status Tags’ is enabled has now been reduced.
- Simplified Chinese Support – Sea of Thieves now supports Simplified Chinese localisation across the entire game.
- Text Chat Censoring – When players try to send a text message that will be censored, a warning notification will appear.
- Text Size Accessibility – Text sizes and button prompts across the game have been increased to improve accessibility.
- In-Game Platform Accessibility Settings – Within the game’s accessibility settings, players now have improved control of Text-To-Speech (TTS), Speech-To-Text (STT) and Let Games Read To Me (LGRTM), previously only configurable within the Xbox platform settings.
- For Text-To-Speech and Let Games Read To Me, the default is set to ‘Not Overridden’ and will use the Xbox platform setting. However, setting this to ‘Enabled’ or ‘Disabled’ will force the feature on/off and override the Xbox platform setting.
- For Speech-To-Text, the default is set to ‘Not Overridden’ and will use the Xbox platform setting. However, setting this to ‘Disabled’ will force this feature off and override the Xbox platform setting.
Fixed Issues
Gameplay
- When abandoned at sea with an active mermaid, climbing on board a rival’s ship will now cause that mermaid to disappear.
- Respawning on your ship after death or by mermaid is no longer affected by having treasure items on player spawn points, reducing scenarios where players would not arrive on their ship.
- Reaching rank 50 with The Reaper’s Bones now counts towards Pirate Legend status.
- Players can now take water from the water barrel on the ship from any angle.
- When choosing from the Cannonball Radial during cannon fire, the correct cannonball will now be loaded for the next shot.
- Players are now able to add wood to campfires.
- When defeating the Ghost of Graymarrow during the Fort of the Damned, all supporting Flames of Fate Skeletons are now destroyed.
- The ‘Allow Friends to Join Me’ setting now persists between sessions.
- After defeating a Megalodon, its rewards will once again be released from the depths to float up rather than appearing directly on the surface.
- When water is boiling inside the Galleon, it now cools at a much slower rate.
- Resolved an issue with Windows 10 hardware detection that could cause some graphics settings to be set to incorrect levels for your spec. Following this fix, please check your graphics settings are correct!
- Swimming up to the back of one on the ships in the Pirate Legend Hideout no longer pushes you through the world.
- A prompt will now appear when passing pets, loot and items to another player.
- Changing Game Settings with sliders using a mouse will now correctly save the settings when leaving the menu.
- Adjusted layout of the promotion offers in Company shops to prevent text being cut off.
- The order of the cosmetic items purchasable in the Athena’s Fortune Ghost and Pirate Legend shops is now alphabetical.
- When disconnecting from an Xbox-only server on Xbox and moving to PC, players will no longer receive a ‘beard’ error but will receive a message explaining they need to change their settings or use a controller.
- During the initial Company onboarding dialogue from the Mysterious Stranger, leaving the proximity of the tavern and returning should no longer cause two Mysterious Strangers to be present.
- Using a Rowboat after holding the Mysterious Key no longer causes the oars to appear upside-down.
- Opening text chat now closes all open radial menus.
- When radial menus are bound to ‘E’ or ‘R’ and ‘Toggle Radial Menus’ is set to On, the radial menus will no open and close as expected.
Combat
- Improvements to hit registration when shooting at swimming players.
- Improvements to hit registration when shooting at players using interactive items on ships.
- The Galleon, Brigantine and Sloop hulls have been modified around the tops of ladders, allowing players to hit targets through the ladder cut-out in the hull.
- Performing a block-sword lunge then quickly entering block on landing will now correctly display the player in block stance to their opponent.
- Attacking with a cutlass while blocking then quickly stowing your blade no longer causes your player shadow to show an incorrect stance.
Trading Company Emissaries
- Emissary crews leaving the game should no longer prevent an Emissary Flag from dropping from their sunken ship.
- The Emissary Tables now display a ship if an Emissary crew migrates onto the server.
- Players are now able to harpoon Emissary Flags from the water.
- Placing loot into an open Collector’s Chest on a ship or attached Rowboat now counts towards Emissary Grade.
- The Commendation for handing in an Emissary Flag now has a clearer description to reinforce the message that players must be an Emissary to earn it.
- A toast will pop up when killing the Skeleton Captains during a Grade 5 Order of Souls Voyage.
- Players will now receive the correct Emissary Grade Progression when picking up a Collector’s Chest.
- The Athena’s Fortune Emissary Tables are now positioned consistently across all Outposts.
- Emissary Tables are no longer present in The Arena.
Tall Tales
- Players will hear intended audio and music when interacting with the skeleton cage as part of ‘The Art of the Trickster’, ‘The Fate of the Morningstar’ and ‘Heart of Fire’.
- Tall Tales map markers now adapt to various screen resolutions.
- ‘The Shroudbreaker’ – Beginning this Tall Tale during a new player’s onboarding should no longer cause the Mysterious Stranger’s dialogue to overlap.
- ‘The Shroudbreaker’ – The Vault altar will continue to show dig site locations even if the player migrates beforehand.
- ‘The Shroudbreaker’ – The Vault altar will continue to show dig site locations even if players leave the Vault area and return.
- ‘The Cursed Rogue’ – The Tall Tale voiceover no longer cuts off during combat encounters.
- ‘Stars of a Thief’ – The player choices when talking to Sudds will no longer be in quotation marks.
- ‘Shores of Gold’ – After placing Medallions in the Compass Vault, leaving and returning to the Vault should no longer cause them to rotate or disappear.
- ‘The Seabound Soul’ – The failure banner is no longer missing ornaments if the Tale is failed by losing Flameheart’s skull.
- ‘The Seabound Soul’ – After opening the sarcophagus, the tooltip telling players to open it will no longer appear.
- ‘The Seabound Soul’ – If a player quits before killing Captain Adara, she will despawn from the island and won’t persist when no Tall Tale is active.
Reviving
- Returning from the Ferry of the Damned while a crewmate is being revived should no longer cause the revived player to appear stuck in a downed state.
- Players now take damage from fire if they die and are revived while still standing in it.
- If a limping player is killed and then revived, they will no longer have the limping effect.
- Players will now hear the ‘revive in progress’ SFX when another player is being revived.
- Venom damage over time effect now ends when a player loses all health and does not persist through revival.
Pirate Emporium
- The Collector Cutthroat Sails once again emit a glow.
- The fuse on the Omen and Reaper’s Bones Cannon has been moved slightly to prevent clipping.
- The Bilge Rat Dance emote now plays smoothly and no longer appears to skip a frame near the start.
- During the Romantic Dance emote, the hands no longer have a gap between them and properly form a heart across a range of body types.
- Pets no longer appear in unnatural positions when sitting on any surface of the ship.
- Cats now turn smoothly when music is played while they face away from you.
Visual and Audio Effects
- Players should no longer become permanently stuck as a green skeleton when loading into the game or returning from the Ferry of the Damned, though this effect will remain in place as the player arrives.
- Sound no longer becomes distorted and increased in volume when a player surfaces from water or is briefly submerged by a wave.
- The bloom brightness on the Ghost equipment and weapons has been dimmed to make it less intrusive during gameplay.
- Placing the Ritual Skull in the cage no longer causes the skull to disappear.
- Players will no longer hear Skeleton Ship music inside the Pirate Legend Hideout when a Skeleton Ship battle is active in the world.
- VFX are now visible when hitting the deck of a Sloop or Galleon with a Blunderbomb explosion.
- Tavern fireplace VFX no longer flicker occasionally.
- Defeating a Skeleton Lord now plays the full SFX.
Performance and Stability
- Improvements to server stability focused on reducing lag spikes while sailing.
- Improvements to client stability focused on reducing stutters and potential stalls when approaching other crews out at sea.
Known Issues
- 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.
- 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.
- Joining a Session – Players Receiving Groomedbeard – On attempting to join a session either via Session Rejoin, an invite or joining in progress, some players may receive a Groomedbeard error and be unable to join.
- Visual Issues – Nvidia RTX GPUs – Some players with Nvidia RTX GPUs may see visual issues in the sea when set to Mythical Graphics Quality.
A developer diary video released last week went into some of these details and also announced the arrival of Sea of Thieves onto Steam. There’s still no set date for that but the game is now on the Steam store as “Coming Soon.”
