Sea of Thieves

Players can now wield trusty hunting spears which can be aimed and thrown, dealing damage to roaming wildlife and other players alike. Spears can also be retrieved when embedded in a solid surface and thrown again.

Hunting spears can even be loaded into a ship’s cannons for extra power and fired at players or other ships. When fired into a ship, the spear will lodge in the hull, causing a small damage hole. Removing it will increase the hole size, so be prepared to repair!

Hunting parties looking to stock up their ship should visit The Hunter’s Call representatives, who will sell hunting spears up to a limit of five. Hunting spears can also be discovered washed up on shores, within shipwrecks and among the rewards earned when defeating Skeleton Ships.Ambient Wildlife

While sailing the open seas, crews may now find they are joined by seagulls who fly alongside the ship as it sails. These birds will disperse if they sense danger!

While out exploring islands, players may now stumble upon small lizards basking in the daytime sun.

Crews creeping into a dark cave may disturb a flock of bats, who will promptly flee from their hiding spot.

Players exploring the shallows near islands may now come face to face with a smack of jellyfish. While these floating jellies may seem threatening, fear not, they’re harmless!Wild Seas Commendations and Rewards

With the introduction of the hunting spear, new Commendations have been added within the Reputation tab to challenge aspiring hunters. Explore the new challenges under Wild Seas to unlock exotic wildlife-themed weapons.Fishing Voyage Improvements

The Fishing Maps provided on Captain’s Fishing Voyages now provide crews with only a partial piece of the island near the fishing location, making it more of a challenge to locate the fishing spots.

Crews on a Fishing Voyage will no longer find they are attacked by emergent threats on the island with the fishing spots.Ancient Megalodon Balancing

The Feared Redmaw and Barnacled Dread now take reduced damage from a blowpipe’s Poison Dart.

The Sloop, Brigantine and Galleon have been rebuilt behind the scenes, breaking up each ship into smaller parts, allowing them to be loaded in sections by the server. This work will provide server performance improvements when ships are created at the start of a session, in addition to ships arriving on a server after diving or naturally through server migration.

Performance optimisations have been made to Storage Crates and Resource Barrels, addressing spikes in framerate when repeatedly interacting with their inventories over longer sessions.

Performance improvements have been made to the way treasure items floating in water are managed across the server.

Further performance improvements have been made to how Trinkets are loaded when approaching Captained ships. Trinkets are now gradually loaded in over time and will only fully load when much closer to the ship, further reducing the performance impact when approaching ships at sea.

A new management system is now in operation on the server, controlling the activation of certain events and encounters to ensure that the server has the necessary resources to safely operate the activity. Encounters with an emergent Megalodon are now controlled by this system, with further events to follow in future updates.

In addition to the above areas, this update includes a range of smaller optimisations to game performance that provide improvements across the broader experience.

Players navigating to Frame Rate Lock within the Video settings will now find supporting information clearly advising them to lock their frame rate for a more consistent experience.Lifting Outpost Trap Restrictions

Traps can now be placed in and around the Outpost taverns, allowing crews to lie in wait for unsuspecting players.

Players triggering a nearby trap when arriving in the tavern at the start of their game session will remain unharmed and not suffer damage while ‘waking up’.Grapple Gun Animations