Sea of Thieves update addresses stalemates and griefing

Rare is putting more distance between respawning ships

Today’s update for Sea of Thieves targets a problem I’ve run into quite a few times now: stalemates.

If your crew has ever set sail toward a skull fort in hopes of stockpiling loads of treasure, you’ve more than likely encountered other ships with the same goal in mind. The ensuing chaos of skeletons firing cannons as two or more player-controlled ships clash around an island fortress is entertaining, don’t get me wrong, but there can come a point where the skirmish just won’t end. You sink them, or they sink you, and then the fallen crew simply respawns with fresh supplies and rejoins the fight.

This is how the developers hope to address that all-too-common scenario (and griefing):

Ship respawn distance – When a ship sinks, we have significantly increased the distance at which the crews new ship will respawn. Ships will now respawn outside of visible view of the ship that sank them. This is in response to lots of player feedback which highlighted that the previous spawn distance was resulting in “griefing” behaviour and stalemates at the forts!

They’re also making the teleport-back-to-ship mechanic a little clearer with respect to treasure:

Mermaid Teleport – Pirates will now have to drop any treasure item they are carrying before being able to see the ‘Teleport back to ship’ option from the mermaid. We saw feedback that players were accidentally leaving treasure behind in the sea, so wanted to make it more clear that when you teleport you leave your treasure behind!

And here’s everything else the 450MB patch does:

Fixed Issues

• [PC Only] Players should no longer experience the 0x80070005 error or get stuck at 99% during installation.
• Players are no longer able to fall through the ship geometry and into the sea if they are to repeatedly jump on the chests/barrel located mid deck
• The voyage image on the captain’s table now displays the rank (promotion) banner in the top right corner, to keep in line with other areas of the game UI.
• When accepting a game invitation whilst matchmaking, the game no longer enters a temporary unresponsive state.
• Bounty Captains will no longer spawn multiple times.

Performance Improvements

• Multiple server and client crash fixes.

Further improvements and optimisations for all platforms are ongoing.

Known Issues

• Players may experience details of their pirate (such as hair colour / scars) looking different from their initial selection.
• Achievements earned prior to March 29th are delayed, but will be awarded once our fix is applied.
• Some players are unable to equip a second weapon. For a potential workaround see our Support Article.
  For an update on these three issues, please read our Launch Update written by Executive Producer, Joe Neate.
• Some players have not received their Black Dog Pack code.
  If you pre-ordered from the official Microsoft Store, please submit a Support ticket through Support. If you pre-ordered from another retailer, please contact them to receive your code.
• Some players cannot see their downloadable content in game.
  Please read our Support Article for a potential workaround for this issue.
• Bounty quest skeletons sometimes do not spawn or cannot be found.
  If you encounter this bug, a potential work around is to sail away from the island until it’s out of range, and then sail back in to trigger the Island Name banners.

Patch Notes – 1.0.2 [Sea of Thieves]