Hello, Librarian Husky here! We’re just 3 weeks away from the big, bad, evil villain that we’ve been waiting to interact with for over 6 years: Captain Flameheart. He is set to make his red debut in Sea of Thieves. Yes, we all love his floating flame head, but starting on July 25th, we’ll be able to meet him in person. Good Lord, that was a day. Anyway, with this event, the launch of season 13, in my mind, marks the beginning of the next chapter in the Sea of Thieves story.

Reviewing Previous Seasons

I thought I’d take some time to review all the previous seasons of Sea of Thieves and rank them on a tier list based on the Impact on the game at large, as well as smaller, more Quality of life improvements that nowadays we simply can’t live without. Now, disclaimer, this is my own Personal opinion as a Sea of Thieves player. I don’t expect our opinions to align exactly, and we may disagree entirely. Post your tier list in the comments if you feel like it, as well, to compare.

Season 1: The Beginning

Let’s start, of course, with season 1. First off, can you believe the debut of seasons was back in January 2021? Of course, Sea of Thieves is not the first game ever to utilize a Battle pass, or what’s known as a reward track system, in their game. Gamers often point to Fortnite as the game that launched it all, and though it did bring it to the mainstream, it was actually Valve, yes, Lord Gaben himself, who brought the first couple of Battle passes for Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2. Could you imagine a world where instead of Battle passes in Sea of Thieves, we ended up with something like a Loot box system instead?

The Plunder Pass

So, season 1 is released, and for the first time ever, we get a Plunder pass where players progress through by earning Renown by performing in-game actions. Now, before I talk more about the season itself, let me just say…

Appreciation for the Renown System

I love the Renown system because I’ve played other games before, and trust me when I say things could be way worse. Take, for example, Fallout 76, which has something called the Score system. In their system, you earn points to progress their Battle pass, but only a certain number of points per day and only by performing specific actions that the game wants you to do. What happens if you miss a day? You miss out on those day points, and your window of completing the Battle pass shrinks.

Comparing Renown System with Other Games

Compare that to Sea of Thieves, where if I knew I was going to be away from the game for a few weeks, I could grind out the entirety of the season pass in a day or two because nearly every action, from putting Loot on your ship to killing Skeletons to completing World events or even just fishing, all gives you Renown toward your progress. Now, I have other gripes about the seasons, which we’ll get into later, but this is not one of them. Kudos to you, Rare.

Season 1 Events

In season 1, we did have several events in the game, including Champions of Souls, a Festival of Fishing, and Vault Raiders. Each of these time-limited events offered an opportunity to earn cosmetics and titles for your pirate. You’ll notice that these live campaigns sort of drop off as time goes on, and there are players on both sides of the spectrum on this.

Merchant Alliance’s New Voyage

The Merchant Alliance Trading Company got a new voyage for the first time since the game’s launch: Lost Shipments. Players would track down a shipwreck from clues found in the water and on washed-up beaches, unlock the captain’s cabin for merchant Loot, and pick up the merchant manifest to complete the voyage. Don’t get me wrong, getting a new voyage for merchants was awesome after years of dealing with either trade goods or animals.

Evaluation of Season 1

As a benchmark for what to expect for season content drops in the future, it didn’t make the best first impression. I’m going to give Season 1 a C grade. Great implementation of the Renown system, but the lack of a truly impactful content drop really hampers the grade here.

Season 2 Overview

Moving on to Season 2, which, if I had my say, would have been Seasons 1 and 2 combined. The highlight of this season was a new world event, the Fort of Fortune, which served as another avenue to the most sought-after piece of Loot in the game, the Chest of Legends. After years of watching people tackle the Fort of the Damned, we had this new event that would spawn randomly and evoke a sense of the original skull forts back in Year 1, where everyone wanted to get to them.

Limited Time Event

There was only one limited-time event during this season: Reapers versus the World, which actually lasted the entirety of the season.

Season 2 Challenges and Events

I appreciated that there were 20 total challenges that players could complete for rewards. The way Rare spread out the challenges so that each month was focused on a different faction, from Gold Hoarder to Order of Souls to Merchants, and then with the Reapers involved with all of them, really made for a great time. I hope that Rare brings this style of event back in the future.

Introduction of Commodities

Season 2 also introduced another feature to the Merchant Alliance Trading Company: Commodities. This new Loot item has players purchasing goods from one merchant company representative at an outpost and delivering them to another company representative at a different outpost. There were even trade routes added to the system so that certain Commodities were either in high or low demand, incentivizing players to go to the correct outpost for maximum profit.

Evaluation of Commodities System

Truthfully, I love this system and wish Rare would do more with it. It’s one of the few game loops in Sea of Thieves that has zero combat, with fishing being the other major one that comes to mind. Anything that gives players choices in how they want to make their fortunes is A-OK by me. Sadly, Commodities haven’t really been looked at since their release, save for the Loot values being nerfed within the first few weeks of launch.

Quality of Life Improvements

One last note on Season 2: it also brought a huge Quality of life improvement to starting a voyage on the seas, which was resource crates.

Quality of Life Improvement: Resource Crates

You had to go out and find a storage crate in the wild and then bring it back to an outpost to fill it. With Season 2’s launch, you could buy a storage crate or other resource crates like cannonballs, wood, or fruit directly from the merchant representative and stock up on supplies before even starting your first voyage. Anything that helps speed up the time to sail is a win in my book.

Season 2 Evaluation

Season 2 gets a B. New world event types have led to the Fort of Fortune being a staple of conflict on the seas, especially considering what a certain later season did to improve it even further. New Loot, new non-combat-related treasure grind, and new Quality of life improvements made it a winner.

Introduction to Season 3

This leads us to Season 3, which, when you look at it, you have to consider from the lens of “A Pirate’s Life” and outside “A Pirate’s Life.” Let’s be honest, the launch of “A Pirate’s Life” was the apex of Sea of Thieves. It had never had as many eyeballs on it since its launch until that point in time, and it hasn’t had as many since, save for the recent PS5 launch.

Impact of “A Pirate’s Life”

And for good reason: it’s the Pirates of the Caribbean IP, the series that brought pirates into the mainstream in the 2000s. Before this, I had only seen two pirate movies in my life. One was “Hook,” a family-focused take on Disney’s Peter Pan that starred Robin Williams as Peter Pan and Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook.

Quality of Life Improvement: Resource Crates

You had to go out and find a storage crate in the wild and then bring it back to an outpost to fill it. With Season 2’s launch, you could buy a storage crate or other resource crates like cannonballs, wood, or fruit directly from the merchant representative and stock up on supplies before even starting your first voyage. Anything that helps speed up the time to sail is a win in my book.

Season 2 Evaluation

Season 2 gets a B. New world event types have led to the Fort of Fortune being a staple of conflict on the seas, especially considering what a certain later season did to improve it even further. New Loot, new non-combat-related treasure grind, and new Quality of life improvements made it a winner.

Introduction to Season 3

This leads us to Season 3, which, when you look at it, you have to consider from the lens of “A Pirate’s Life” and outside “A Pirate’s Life.” Let’s be honest, the launch of “A Pirate’s Life” was the apex of Sea of Thieves. It had never had as many eyeballs on it since its launch until that point in time, and it hasn’t had as many since, save for the recent PS5 launch.

Impact of “A Pirate’s Life”

And for good reason: it’s the Pirates of the Caribbean IP, the series that brought pirates into the mainstream in the 2000s. Before this, I had only seen two pirate movies in my life. One was “Hook,” a family-focused take on Disney’s Peter Pan that starred Robin Williams as Peter Pan and Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook.

Season 3 Evaluation

It’s stuck the landing that I could have. This is probably going to be controversial, but I’m going to give Season 3 an A. The story is phenomenal, but it’s isolated away from the rest of the game, and there really isn’t a reason to go back to do them again after you’ve completed all the commendations.

Future Integration Hopes

I hope that one day we’ll be able to see more integration here. Imagine multiple crews running around Dead Man’s Grotto or a full server all doing Lords of the Sea at the same time. Meanwhile, the main adventure mode didn’t really gain anything other than the new enemy types unless you count the “A Pirate’s Life” and Emporium items that were put into the game.

Season 4 Overview

Next up, we’ve got Season 4, which hailed the arrival of the Sunken Kingdom in the form of Shrines and Treasuries that players could explore under the waves. From an exploration perspective, these were huge additions to the game, similar to The Devil’s Roar, in my opinion.

Challenges for Solo Players

The one thing that held them back from the same level of esteem, though, was simply that if you were a solo player, you ran a huge risk in trying to navigate these Shrines and Treasuries because you were leaving your sloop back on the surface alone with nothing to guard it against enemy attack. This sort of restriction did limit the enthusiasm with which I approached the content personally because I mostly play Sea of Thieves solo.

Season 4 Evaluation

I did enjoy the Feast of Bounty, which gave us a few different accessories like makeup, scars, and so on. The best reward from the season was the Sunken Kingdom curse. Its level of corruption and glow really checks the right boxes for me. I was not a fan of having to go all over the place for these journals, but it was certainly better than having to complete every Shores of Gold Tall Tale five times over for the Gold Curse. Oh, and sloops got a bed instead of a brig, but you couldn’t do anything with them anyway, so GG’s. Season 4 is a D for me. I love the expansion to the underworld of the game, but as a primarily solo player, I’m not going down there. Absolutely beautiful to look at, though.

Season 5 Overview

Let me get this out of the way: I love Season 5. I feel like it gets a bad rap. Let me break down all the different reasons Season 5 is at least an A tier for me.

Burying Treasure

Sea of Thieves came out in March of 2018, but it took until December 2021 for us to get a burying mechanic in the game. I have used this feature so many times to hide valuable Loot from opposing crews that I knew were looking for a big score. Yes, I know the burying mechanic was supposed to go hand in hand with the quest board, but we’ll get to that. The fact that players could steal treasure maps from one another is exactly what I want to see in a pirates game.

Stealing Treasure Maps

Back when the game first came out, the ability to steal treasure maps from one another was a feature that many players wanted to see implemented.

Season 5 Features and Updates

I thought that if you sank another player, you’d get their quests, so seeing this feature was a very nice and welcome surprise. Fireworks are fun, don’t lie to yourselves. If they weren’t just so damn expensive to buy from the merchant, I’d keep a regular supply of them on board my ship.

Minor but Memorable Additions

We got sitting and sleeping, and yes, they’re definitely meme-worthy as far as content updates go. Sitting, in particular, bothers me because you can look at your character sitting and it’s the same pose, the same facial expression every single time. Like, what if you’re trying to act like you’re in the tavern sitting down drinking some grog? Nope, sad face. Or what if you want to sit on the bow of your ship and gaze wistfully at the sunset? Nope, sad face. Give me some character in my sitting.

Quality of Life Improvements

The biggest Quality of life feature update for me was simple: take all. God, how did we survive without the take all function? I don’t even want to remember it. I mentioned earlier that anything that decreases the time to sail is a huge benefit in my eyes, and this one feature, as small as it sounds, made any gameplay experience in Sea of Thieves ten times better because of the take all function. It was that impactful.

Community Days and Sea of Thieves Adventures

Every season since has featured a Community Day and eventually expanded into a Community Weekend. The first Community Day turned into a day and a half after the popularity of the boost was so great that many players were unable to access the game, only getting the infamous strawberry-bearded error at login.

Introduction of Sea of Thieves Adventures

Right before the end of Season 5, we saw the debut of Sea of Thieves Adventures, a new experience in the game’s main adventure mode where time-limited voyages would be made available to players that would further move along the Sea of Thieves storyline instead of having static Tall Tales. The first, “Shrouded Islands,” also introduced the character Belle into the game, having only previously been seen in marketing materials.

Opinions on Adventures

There are a lot of mixed opinions on Adventures, again with this idea of FOMO still hanging in the air. Personally, I enjoyed them and felt like my character was interacting more directly with the rest of the Sea of Thieves universe rather than just following the trail of something.

Season 5 Evaluation

Season 5 is an A for me. I loved most of the new quality-of-life features, but there really wasn’t a piece of content that was released that could push it to the foundation of S. Players were told that in advance, but it still would have been nice.

Sea Forts: A New Way to Make Money

For the first time ever, brand new pirates could start their journeys and not have to rely on voyages or World events. Yes, Shrines and Treasuries were out there as well, but Sea Forts were specifically made to be soloable pieces of content where you could finish the fort and come away with some Loot from each of the major starting trading companies.

Potential and Missed Opportunities

I wish you could do more with Sea Forts. I remember when they first came out, they were teased as places that players could use and “claim as their own,” which basically amounted to using the extra cooking pans. Imagine if crews could claim Sea Forts as hideouts or even as slowly producing gold machines where the longer you held a Sea Fort, the more gold it could potentially produce for you. I still think there are so many opportunities for these zones.

Farewell to Arena Mode

At the start of Season 6, we also said farewell to Arena mode in Sea of Thieves. It had already stopped being actively developed back in December of 2020, and according to Rare personnel, it had been a boondoggle for them to try and invest their time and effort in both it and the main adventure mode. You could argue that there was never an equal amount of attention put into Arena as there was in Adventure, and I would personally say that’s true.

Comparison to Fallout 76

Both Sea of Thieves and Fallout 76 came out in 2018 and had mediocre at best launches. One of the ways that each development team thought to recover from this was to add a PVP mode: Fallout 76 with Nuclear Winter and Sea of Thieves with Arena. Both games removed these modes within just a few years. Now, they’re both still going strong six years after their launches, but each game’s older community still remembers their PVP modes mostly fondly.

Continuing the Adventure Storyline

Sea of Thieves continued with its Adventure storyline and even celebrated 1 million Pirate Legends in April of 2022 before revealing the new Athena Voyage, Legends of the Veil, which replaced the older Athena voyages. This became the go-to piece of content for Pirate Legends looking to level Athena’s Fortune.

Personal Opinion on Athena Voyages

Personally, I haven’t been a huge fan of any of the Athena’s Fortune voyages, but if I had to choose one, I would go with Legend of the Veil. It offers a different flavor by randomizing the twists and giving you the opportunity to see that tornado in the distance and know there’s a Chest of Legends just sitting there, waiting for somebody to come by and steal it.

Seasonal Update Delays

It was in Season 6 that we had our first significant delay in seasonal updates. Season 7 was going to be all about adding brand new mechanics into the game, and that had been proving difficult to fine-tune.

Season 6 Evaluation

Fair warning, I would give Season 6 a C. Sea Forts were good but could have been so much better, and the length of the season really hampered it in the long run.

Introduction to Season 7

Season 7 brought captaincy, and I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. Personally, I’ve been wanting to name my ship and have it carry the legacy of my pirate since the beginning. I remember in one of the first previews where John McMurtry talked about what kind of pirate you can be, and up until that point, everyone pretty much played the same pirate just with different cosmetics. Now, there was the potential to be different, or at least that’s what I thought at the time.

Features and Disappointments

In the end, captaincy did give players the opportunity to showcase pieces of their career in Sea of Thieves in the form of trinkets. However, bigger pieces like some form of pirate infamy or a bounty system remained off the table.

Quality of Life Improvements

The biggest Quality of life improvement by far has to be the Sovereign’s tents on every outpost. For years, players were used to the idea of having to turn in Loot one at a time to the individual trading companies. If you had managed to snag a large stack, it was almost a punishment to have to turn it all in, especially if you were solo. Now, with captaincy and Sovereigns, you just park your ship at the tent, harpoon the Loot, and sell it all at once. It was a godsend for players and even allowed for more potential shenanigans with various tuck plays now viable at the tents as well.

Season 7 Evaluation

Having each piece of Loot Impact the reputation of the corresponding trading company was a boost. However, a lot of Season 7 was spent fine-tuning the captaincy update, fixing issues with milestone tracking, adjusting progression, and other bug fixes. Additionally, something that was occurring between Seasons 6 and 7 culminated in September 2022 with the completion of the game’s first mystery: “Who killed DeMarco?”

Personal Take on Mysteries

Personally, I haven’t been a fan of the mysteries presented, mostly due to how much it relies on being off-game versus in-game, but that could be a whole other article by itself. Since this one’s already long, we’ll just move on.

Overall Impression of Season 7

I’ll give Season 7 a B. I like the concept of captaincy, and it’s definitely something that has persisted and grown in the years since. Some aspects of it, like Captain’s voyages, haven’t made it through, but in most cases, I love being able to hop onto a pirate ship, see their ship name across their crest, and take a peek at the various trinkets to get a sense of their own Sea of Thieves journey.

Season 8 Overview

Season 8 holds a special place in my heart since that was the season in which I first started to create content in Sea of Thieves. Besides that, I’m not going to beat around the bush—it’s an S-tier season. Hourglass changed the way players could decide how to play Sea of Thieves. Feeling like getting into a fight right away? Jump in the Hourglass. Only have a few minutes of spare time? Jump in the Hourglass. Missing the thrill of Arena?

Hourglass Feature Introduction

I know it’s not the same, trust me, but you’d at least jump into Hourglass to try it. It was a massive win for Rare. Like any other system in Sea of Thieves, it had its cracks and exploits that players would eventually find, such as fighting at the Shores of Gold where someone didn’t have a checkpoint. Of course, the rising number of cheaters in the game was a significant issue.

Hit Detection Issues

Hit detection, another area of opportunity in Sea of Thieves, was also a major pain point during the season. Many players found issues with how the game registered their attacks on opponents in Hourglass. To be fair, it had always had its share of ups and downs, but now with Hourglass being introduced to the mass player base, its shortcomings were pretty apparent.

Continuous Improvements

There have been several updates to how the game registers attacks, and the team continues to work on it today. The grind for the PVP curses is still a constant source of content for many players, especially newer ones, as they continuously enter the game through sources like Xbox Game Pass and the recent PS5 launch. Even if the season had no other major source of content, Hourglass still gave it a huge shot in the arm that endures today. Again, S-tier.

Season 9 Overview

Season 9 is going to be a tough one because there’s a lot to love about it. First off, the Chest of Fortune: for the first time since the game’s launch back in 2018, we had a new Loot item worth more than the Chest of Legends. On top of that, this chest was tied to cosmetic progression over the course of multiple seasons. This incentivized players to constantly be on the lookout for wherever the Chest of Fortune would be because it was also going to be on the move.

Introduction of the Chest of Fortune

Some locations were better than others for sure, but for its debut, it could only be found at the Fort of Fortune, making for an excellent pairing.

World Event Scaling

Second, world event scaling was an amazing Quality of life improvement for Sea of Thieves, especially for smaller crews. Before, all World events acted the same regardless of how many people were on the crew. Now, an efficient solo world event could be done in roughly the same amount of time as an efficient galleon world event, creating an easier access point for players to be involved.

Quality of Life Improvements in Season 9

Being able to enjoy content is always going to get high marks from me. Third, harpoons now unload Loot automatically, another Quality of life improvement focused on speeding up the gameplay loop. Before, you would harpoon a treasure and then either yourself or another crewmate would have to manually take the treasure off the harpoon and place it on the deck of your ship. Now, it’s basically like a machine gun, rapidly capturing all the Loot and organizing it around your harpoon like a small crescent moon.

Mixed Reactions

This feature was a little more controversial, as a small but vocal portion of the player base felt it was taking away from the experience of the game. For me, again as a primarily solo player, I have nothing but praise for it.

Eliminating the Red Sea Tactic

Fourth, I told you I liked a lot about this season: no more Red Sea running. In the past, you may have been chasing your opponents on the seas only for them to sail their ship directly into the Red Sea, causing their ship to sink but also preventing you from acquiring the Loot that had been on board. Now, if a ship heads into the Red Sea, all the treasure resurfaces back in safe waters for easy pickup. Problem solved.

Season 9 Duration and Delays

Season 9 sounds great, right? So why the hesitation? Because Season 9 was long—217 days, over 7 months. This was due to a similar reason for the Season 6 extension: the features coming in Season 10, specifically guilds and Safer Seas, were having difficulty getting finalized, so Rare was forced to extend Season 9 twice in order to make up for it.

The Legend of Monkey Island

The Legend of Monkey Island was something that I respect for the work put into it, but I personally didn’t find myself as attached to it as I did to A Pirate’s Life. I know that there is a hardcore fan base for Monkey Island that absolutely loved every bit of it, and for them, the effort that Rare put into bringing those characters to life was fantastic.

Monthly Cadence of Tall Tales

Something that Rare did a little differently this time with Tall Tales was to release them at a monthly cadence versus all at once like they did with A Pirate’s Life. I would be extremely curious to see whether or not they found that to be more effective in player retention in the long run.

Season 9 Events and Reflections

Once I finished the accommodations, I didn’t find much reason to go back. We did have several limited-time events, including the fifth-anniversary celebrations of the game, a Captain’s Week, another Legends Week, and a mildly buggy event called Wish You Were Here, and of course, another Community Weekend. Things were spread out fairly well over the course of several months, but nothing could really stop players from feeling the ick over the lengthy season. For me, if I don’t take the delays into account, Season 9 was a solid B season, maybe even an A. But taking into account the 7 months, I have to drop it down to a C.

Season 10: The So-Called Super Season

I’m going to be 100% honest here: Rare needed to knock it out of the park with Season 10 if they wanted to get the player base back on board after the lengthy Season 9, and that just didn’t happen. Season 10 was split into three content delivery periods. The first month was all about guilds.

Guild System

Guilds, in the format delivered and currently in place today, are basically just an upgraded captaincy. There’s an emissary system, and people can have a plaque on their ship with their guild name on it. But even in a guild system, guild members feel isolated from one another, only seeing their ship’s name on a static image showing off that they recently set sail for the guild and completed some milestones. There’s nothing in the guilds that felt like the full guild of 24 people were together on their journey.

Opportunities and Challenges in Season 10

It’s something that I still feel is the largest area of opportunity for Sea of Thieves right now. The second month saw the release of the Skull of Siren Song Voyage. I personally thought this was going to be a fantastic event, evoking a sense of how Arena used to work with multiple ships looking to capture the skull and return to Briggsy.

Player Behavior and Event Challenges

What I didn’t understand was that given the choice between fighting and not fighting, the majority of players would choose not to fight. What does that mean for the Skull of Siren Song? At launch, the mission was available on a near-constant basis. Within just a few minutes of a skull turn-in, another Skull of Siren Song voyage was ready to get underway.

Player Strategy and Convenience

Because of that and because the cosmetic rewards were based around digging up Loot items and turning in the skull, it was simply more convenient for players to hop from one server to another to find a Skull of Siren Song voyage that wasn’t being actively contested and then complete that. Compared to having to fight over the skull, this made sense for players, especially if they had a limited amount of time to play the game. I just didn’t see it coming, and I think neither did Rare.

Issues with Rewards

Another issue that didn’t get a resolution until the next season was that the skull was just a simple piece of treasure to turn in. It didn’t count for any of the companies, nor did it give any emissary value, not even for the guilds. So once you completed your commendations, there really wasn’t any reason to keep going after it. This has been rectified somewhat nowadays.

Skull of Siren Song Voyage

The second month saw the release of the Skull of Siren Song Voyage. I personally thought this was going to be a fantastic event, evoking a sense of how Arena used to work with multiple ships looking to capture the skull and return to Briggsy.

Player Behavior and Event Challenges

What I didn’t understand was that given the choice between fighting and not fighting, the majority of players would choose not to fight. What does that mean for the Skull of Siren Song? At launch, the mission was available on a near-constant basis. Within just a few minutes of a skull turn-in, another Skull of Siren Song voyage was ready to get underway.

Player Strategy and Convenience

Because of that and because the cosmetic rewards were based around digging up Loot items and turning in the skull, it was simply more convenient for players to hop from one server to another to find a Skull of Siren Song voyage that wasn’t being actively contested and then complete that. Compared to having to fight over the skull, this made sense for players, especially if they had a limited amount of time to play the game. I just didn’t see it coming, and I think neither did Rare.

Issues with Rewards

Another issue that didn’t get a resolution until the next season was that the skull was just a simple piece of treasure to turn in. It didn’t count for any of the companies, nor did it give any emissary value, not even for the guilds. So once you completed your commendations, there really wasn’t any reason to keep going after it. This has been rectified somewhat nowadays.

Encouraging High Seas Participation

That being said, I do hope Safer Seas players make their way into High Seas someday to enjoy the rest of the content that they’re missing out on. On a more positive side, we did get a few more extra Quality of life improvements that stand the test of time: collector’s chest treasure scooping, extra cooking stoves, better fruit crate contents than just bananas (though I do love me some bananas), and also, don’t put the Chest of Fortune in the Fort of the Damned again, thanks.

Adjusting to Changes

In hindsight, it’s become a natural part of the game, just like anything else. Since you can’t dive with treasure on board your ship, it forces ships on the sea to carry treasure until they sell, so if you do come across someone, there’s a likelihood they have something on board.

Voyage Revamps

I did appreciate the revamped voyages though, 100%. Every starting trading company got a huge upgrade when it comes to their voyages, and letting players decide whether to go for a small island or a large island is a nice Quality of life perk. Eventually, we would see even Athena voyages get a similar upgrade, though that didn’t happen until the next season.

Changes to Emissary Voyages

Admittedly, I did not like the fact that if we lowered our Emissary flag, we would lose our Emissary voyages, which meant no more stacking Emissary voyages. But I understand why this change was made.

Impact on Old Commendations

One thing I did not like about Season 11 is that it made a few old commendations much harder to complete, including humble and generous gifts, as well as a few message in a bottle quests like fruit and wood crates or gunpowder barrels.

Pacing and Accessibility

I’m giving Season 11 an A. You could tell there was a huge improvement in pacing for the game, and the majority of players appreciated the ease of access in getting the content faster. There were also a few hiccups, including a pretty funny bug that prevented skeleton ships from repairing, which meant easy skeleton fleets while the Chest of Fortune was at the skeleton fleet—you really can’t make this stuff up.

Personal Experience and Highlights

Sadly, I was away for most of this season for personal reasons, but I did manage to get at least the season pass done before the end.

PS5 Launch and Its Impact

PS5 players also got the best version of Sea of Thieves to date, not having to wade through over six years of content updates just to get to what they have today. This allowed them to enter the game with clear eyes and unjaded minds. And of course, with Safer Seas and even console-only servers, they could learn at their own pace before joining the High Seas and the rest of the community should they choose. It was a win all around.

New Weapons and Combat Mechanics

Now, I’m still getting used to the two new weapons: the throwing knives and the double-barrel pistol. I know Rare is also tweaking the combat mechanics of each to make sure that they can stand toe-to-toe with the other weapons players have available to them. But I’m just not sure if they’re for me or if it’s just hesitation on my part.

New Weapons and Mechanics

They’re new; time will tell on this. I will say that I love scattershot and bone caller. Scattershot is fun because many times it comes across as unexpected when it’s used, causing other players to panic. In other cases, I’ve used scattershot to speed up a few PvE encounters with skeleton ships and ghost ships. Bone caller is just fun to use, both in PvE and PvP, and yes, I am team bone caller and hourglass—sorry, not sorry.

Horn of Fair Winds

Now, the Horn of Fair Winds, on the other hand, I just don’t know why we can’t get a guaranteed spawn of it somewhere. I think a perfect place for it would be in the Siren Skull chest right next to the skull itself. Yes, we’d have to rethink its mechanics when under the effect of the siren’s lures, but it would certainly increase participation in that particular event, at least for another period of time.

Harpoon Tightropes

I’m also a big fan of harpoon tightropes. The idea that I can just dash across a rope, get to an enemy ship, grab Loot, and dash back just screams pirate shenanigans to me. When I’m trying to get to a certain point on the island, I can just harpoon there instead of trying to cannon over and potentially miss my landing or, worse, bounce off and end up in the water.

Initial Hiccups

The season did start off with two pretty big hiccups: open crew had been disabled during the PS5 launch, and guild access was disabled. Both were able to come back over the course of a week or so, but that definitely dinged the impression that incoming players had of Sea of Thieves for sure. But the game did end up being the top-selling game on PS5 for a period of time, so all’s well that ends well, right?

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