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Sea of Thieves Release Notes - 2.8.4

[h3]The Legend of Monkey Island[/h3]
Voyage deep into the Caribbean with Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island – an original story told across three Tall Tales, and a hilarious, heartfelt love letter to the iconic Monkey Island game series. The first of these Tall Tales is available to play now!

‘The Journey to Mêlée Island’
  • An ambitious new arrival at the Outposts is seeking help to hunt down Guybrush Threepwood, who disappeared while sailing to the Sea of Thieves. Via the Sea of the Damned, you’ll journey to the fabled Mêlée Island, where Guybrush is now revered as a legendary pirate of unparalleled talents. Clearly, something is very wrong…
  • New Commendations, achievements and rewards have been added with this update, marking your progress as you make your way through ‘The Journey to Mêlée Island’ Tall Tale.
  • To find out much more, head to our dedicated page on The Legend of Monkey Island.

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[h3]Pirate Emporium[/h3]
Show off your personal style with purchases from the Pirate Emporium! Pick up cosmetics such as ship liveries, costumes, weapons, pets and emotes using your Ancient Coins, purchasable with real money. Head to the Pirate Emporium page to find out more about the latest arrivals.

New Items – Now in Stock!
  • LeChuck’s Legacy Ship Collection
  • LeChuck’s Legacy Ship’s Crest
  • LeChuck’s Legacy Weapon Bundle
  • LeChuck Costume Set
  • Piranha Poodle Pet
  • Mêlée Island Painting Bundle
  • Pocket Seagull Emote
  • Close Call Weapon Pose Emote
  • Spin and Shoot Emote (free!)
  • Brooding Buccaneer Bundle (Steam Store)

[h3]Outpost Cosmetics [/h3]
New Weaponsmith Stock
  • The Outpost weaponsmiths now stock a range of new swords. Pirates can pick up the Wailing Barnacle Heavy Sword, Wailing Barnacle Rapier, Silent Barnacle Heavy Sword and Silent Barnacle Rapier, all available to purchase with gold.

[h3]Accessibility [/h3]
Narration Playback Speed
  • Players using ‘Let Games Read to Me’ now have additional control within the Settings menu to adjust the playback speed of the narration to whatever is most convenient and comfortable for them.
Riddle Map Narration
  • Players using ‘Let Games Read to Me’ will find that when raising a Riddle Map, the text found on the parchment will now be narrated.

[h3]Fixed Issues[/h3]
Gameplay
  • Crews sinking a rival ship will now find that any resource barrels and treasure items left floating in the water are brought along with them after migrating servers.
  • Pirates are once again able to place recovered Captain’s Logbooks into a Collector’s Chest.
Battle for the Sea of Thieves
  • Crews are now consistently able to purchase Resource Crates and Captain’s Supplies upon arrival at the Outpost after losing a battle.
  • The ship’s wheel will no longer be affected by storm conditions when diving below the waves or resurfacing for a battle.
Captains of Adventure
  • Players who were eligible to receive the Gilded Sovereign Captain’s Table by reaching Class 50 in any Pirate Milestone prior to Captain’s Week will now find the item has been distributed to their accounts.
  • Trinkets that are knocked out of place prior to migrating servers can once again be interacted with upon arrival.
Visual and Audio
  • Pirates’ hands no longer intersect with the stock of the Beachcomber's Bounty Eye of Reach or Blunderbuss.
  • The lanterns on the Dark Warsmith Ship’s Crest are now attached correctly and move with the ship.
  • Equipping any regular pirate cosmetics while wearing the Skeleton Curse will no longer cause those items to be displayed together.
  • Taking to a water slide should now show the correct visual splashes while descending.
  • The Party Boat Cutlass now displays visual trails when swung.
  • Watching a video from the What’s New section should no longer overlay button images on the video.
Text and Localisation
  • Clues recovered during a Lost Shipment Voyage are no longer cut off at the edge of the parchment.
Performance and Stability
  • Players will no longer experience instability when switching between video content in the What’s New section of the front end.
  • Players on Steam Deck will no longer experience instability when attempting to play the intro video or browse the What’s New section on the front end.
  • Ongoing improvements to server stability to reduce instances where players are disconnected from their session.

[h3]Known Issues[/h3]
To learn more about known issues in Sea of Thieves currently being tracked and their status, head over to our Known Issues support site article.

[h3]Download and Installation[/h3]
Download Size:
  • Steam: 14.64 GB

Sea of Thieves Spotlight Showcase #6

With the warm winds of June in our sails, the time has once again come to look back on the pirates who’ve recently stepped into our Spotlight to share their experiences on the Sea of Thieves. Since we last caught up with you in March, the brave souls below have faced our questions with nary a quiver, including noted cosplayers, gifted artists and community staples. Let’s find out what they all had to say…


First up was the costume connoisseur TizzyTam! In this Creator Spotlight, the cosplaying corsair regaled us with tales of her history with Crash Bandicoot, her experiences at SoTFest ’22 (including hosting) and how important it is to be yourself and not cave in to pressure from others. But do you think Sir Arthur Pendragon and Jar Jar Binks are synonymous? We have our doubts.


Later in March we lined up another Creator Spotlight, this time checking in with one of the community’s favourite yarn-spinners, Cliff the Story Guy. Taking a break from his usual schedule of sharing stories and guides on YouTube, Cliff delved into what brought him to video production in the first place and how his experiences shape his approach to content creation.


Next on our list, we returned to the world of streaming with the help of a recent inductee into the Sea of Thieves Partner Programme, LadyHaradaNiwa! Another pillar of the cosplay community and a big Belle fan, she discussed her journey to also becoming a Twitch Partner, how she got her channel name and what advice she’d offer to other upcoming content creators.


For our first Community Spotlight in this batch, we took the time to check in with artist and ten-time #SoTShot winner zNiinjaa to find out just what his secret is. Alongside reminiscing over The Arena, he discussed some of his favourite pieces of art and achievements in Sea of Thieves, as well as an unusual tattoo subject. Do you have any pirate-themed body mods?


As we moved into May, the Creator Spotlight highlighted event organiser and Nightmare mode hopeful LDSylvr. The conversation ranged from events like The Boomer Games and Captains of the Sylvr’d Waters to surviving tornadoes. If you’ve ever wondered why someone would undertake the mammoth task of trying to reach Pirate Legend without dying, give it a read…


May’s Community Spotlight saw us featuring our avian friend Owlet! Unsurprisingly, we did end up touching on the topic of his famous daily owl requests and appearance in the Voyage of a Lifetime documentary, but we also heard about his work in musical theatre and how he briefly became Emperor of Tamriel. Not a bad promotion for a weekend’s worth of work.


Forging ahead into June, we kept the Community Spotlights coming with a Wh1zzrr_ encounter, chatting to her just ahead of her entry into the Partner Programme ranks. As a TikTok-based pirate tipster and trainer, Wh1zzrr_ told us the tale of how she carved out this niche for herself before going on to mention her other interests in writing, museum-hopping and more.


In our final Spotlight for this catch-up batch, we hopped on deck with the fightin’ pirate AweCoop to hear about his adventures from well over a decade of creating content. Trusted friendships, time management, tennis and maintaining a healthy balance of trash-talking vs. wholesome encounters were other subjects we criss-crossed over the course of the conversation.
[hr][/hr]And thus, with a full four months’ worth of recent Spotlights under our belts, we call an end to the sixth Spotlight Showcase! As always, the full interviews can be found by clicking through to the Sea of Thieves website, all packed with interesting insights and fun facts about some of the community’s favourite faces. If you’re hungry for even more, you can read up on all our previous Community, Creator and Legend Spotlights via our News page, or catch the highlights in our previous Showcases.

We’ll be back with even more Spotlight fun in the next few weeks, so keep an eye on all the usual channels. Until then, farewell and may the wind be in your sails!

Sea of Thieves Round-Up: June 2023

We always say it was a busy month, but June really was a busy month, wasn’t it? With a Mystery, an Event, a Showcase and an Adventure, there was hardly a moment to catch your breath, but fear not: the latest round-up is here to fill you in on anything you missed. All you need to do is sit back, pour yourself a responsible drink and join us on the latest little trip down memory lane.

[h3]Content Update[/h3]
We entered June with the community scrambling to uncover clues to solve the final stage of The Hoarder’s Hunt. The devilish schemes of ‘H’ had those hunters baffled for days, with the tempting promise of a golden skull only making the end goal more enticing. It took some time – and more code decryption than you’d usually expect to perform in your day-to-day life – but the Mystery was eventually cracked and the final chest opened! Of ‘H’ himself there was no sign, only one last letter left behind in farewell.

Elsewhere on the Outposts, the Sovereigns were a bit put out by all the attention the Gold Hoarders were getting, so they were only too happy to align themselves with a new Event. Captain’s Week offered opportunities for Captains across the waves to reap boosted rewards from their treasure and purchase ships at a discount – but even better, handing in those treasures to the Sovereigns allowed pirates to add the glistening Captain’s Rapier and Captain’s Heavy Sword to their armoury.

It was a good thing too, as they’d soon be called upon to take up arms again. With the launch of our latest time-limited Adventure, a summons by a powerful figure sent players out across the waves in search of a stolen artefact. After some reluctant help from the Order of Souls, the Adventure concluded with the discovery of a hidden vault and the realisation that not everything was as it seemed...


[h3]News and Features[/h3]
If you checked in to the Xbox Games Showcase early in June, you’ll already know our biggest news of the month: The Legend of Monkey Island is coming to Sea of Thieves! With the first of these new Tall Tales due to land later this month, our announcement article give some hints at what’s to come, along with all the details you’ll need to make sure you don’t miss a thing.

Meanwhile, as Captain’s Week swept in with a gaggle of new ship owners, it seemed only reasonable to help speed them along with a handy-dandy guide to all the perks their new Captaincy status afforded them. Have you been making the best use of your ship-owning benefits?

There was also another selection of Spotlights to enjoy: this month we were joined by famed community builder and guide Wh1zzrr_ and competitive pro AweCoop to hear about their journey on the seas and any advice they were willing to share. And finally, rounding out the month, the Sea of Thieves Security Team stopped by to share some of their latest work in ensuring the seas stay safe and fair for all in our first Fair Play Update column.


[h3]Videos and Streams[/h3]
With various reveals and announcements happening, you might expect that our video roster for June was filled with trailers – and it was! – but first, we took some time for a little introspection. Since ‘We Shall Sail Together’ reached 10 million streams on Spotify at the tail end of May, we started the month by speaking to one of the musical maestros behind the shanty. Did you know the opening lyrics of ‘Who Shall Not Be Returning’ were originally written for ‘We Shall Sail Together’? Now you do!

Oh, and if that wasn’t enough music news for you, June also saw ‘Return of the Damned’ added to the streaming platform of your choice for assistance in making all those big life decisions. Does it really help? Probably not, but making them will feel a lot more epic with this playing in the background.

With those inspiring shanties fresh in our minds, it was then time to reveal our latest crossover and what better way to do so than with a snazzy announcement trailer? Premiered at the Xbox Games Showcase, this video offered everyone their first glimpse into the wonderful world of Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island. Not long now…

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[h3]Social Channels [/h3]
In what should come as a surprise to no-one, Captain’s Week had us musing on eternal questions like how we’d choose whose ship to sail on, or what’s the best name for a ship, or even which Trinkets are better than all the rest. Needless to say, we came to no conclusions, but we did get to enjoy some surprisingly in-depth art critiques of everyone’s paintings.

Steering us into safer, if no less competitive waters, we closed out the Mysterious Moments #SoTShot competition early in the month with a series of spooky scenes. Later, everything got a lot more colourful as entries poured in for the Pirate Pride category and a new round of exceptional photographers earned their Golden Hour Sails. We even had a few extra sails to give away this month to anyone who could come up with an outstanding suggestion for future #SoTShot themes.

That wasn’t the only giveaway either, as one lucky Twitter user won themselves a copy of the newly compiled Sea of Thieves: Origins – Champion of Souls graphic novel! Alongside the latest round of Twitch Drops and a host of new Community Hub winners, June was clearly a good time to pick up some prizes.



And that, finally, brings us to the end of June! Was there anything we missed? What was your favourite part? What would you do if you were a fish? So many questions to consider. While you mull over these conundrums for the ages, feel free to head on over to our social channels on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or Twitch, or join the official Forums or Discord. That way you’ll be able to keep up with all our latest news revelations and Subjects of Discourse as they arise, and ping over any feedback you want to share. Otherwise, we’ll be back in a month with all the joys of July – see you then!

[hr][/hr][h3]Previously in 2023: [/h3]
Sea of Thieves Round-Up: May 2023 Sea of Thieves Round-Up: April 2023 Sea of Thieves Round-Up: March 2023 Sea of Thieves Round-Up: February 2023 Sea of Thieves Round-Up: January 2023

The Hoarder’s Hunt – Solving the Mystery

After a month-long parade of riddles, enigmatic clues and listening really hard to a parrot, The Hoarder’s Hunt has reached its conclusion. With a real-life golden skull, silver keys and Reaper’s Mark medallions up for grabs, the competition to outwit the mysterious ‘H’ was certainly fierce, but things didn’t always unfurl exactly how the puppet-master intended – so let’s take a look back at exactly how Sea of Thieves’ second Mystery reached its end…

[h3]Stage One: Skin of Gold[/h3]
The Mystery began with a taunt from ‘H’ to the Gold Hoarders, warning them not to let pirates get involved in what was to come (as if). Several words in the message were capitalised, and the note was accompanied by a post on Instagram showing a banana, precisely bruised to show an image of the Gold Hoarder.

This cryptic story pushed players through to the Instagram account of Banana Bruiser who, as their name suggests, had plenty more edible art on display. One image in particular showed the creation of the Gold Hoarder banana, and thirteen mysterious symbols.

Some cursory cryptology and the note from ‘H’ revealed these symbols were intended to be decoded with a Pigpen cipher, and once translated they read ‘bitlysotfruit’ – a shortened internet URL that led to five images, each with more Pigpen symbols, a symbol of a fruit found in-game and an intriguing Spotify logo.

The angle at which a Pigpen symbol should be rotated is critical, and pirates were able to glean that information by aligning the fruits with an image posted on the Sea of Thieves Twitter account, giving a total of 16 scrambled letters. Pirates began to speculate that these should be decoded via a Vigenère cipher, which shifts letters ahead in the alphabet according to a keyword.

Where was that keyword? Scouring the canvases in the Sea of Thieves Spotify account soon revealed six more hidden letters spelling out ‘BOUNTY’, but the order of the original 16 still needed to be taken into consideration. Here, most pirates seemingly missed another clue available via Spotify – this time, the #BeMorePirate playlist, which had recently received a sneaky shuffle.

Now fittingly headlined with New Order, the first letter of each remaining song in the playlist spelled out ‘POM’, ‘COC’, ‘MAN’, ‘BAN’, ‘PIN’, hinting at the order in which the letters associated with each fruit should be entered into the Vigenère cipher. Even so, with only so many possible combinations to work through, the community cleverly put the undecoded clues in alphabetical order and soon decrypted the phrase ‘ZEROUTCFOURFIVET’ – or, when written another way, 0UTC45T – the first keyword to enter back on the Sea of Thieves website.

With this accomplished, pirates raced to grab their Voyages for Larinna and set sail with the clues from ‘H’ in hand, ultimately digging up the Plated Silver Key from beneath the tallest tree at Lone Cove. Then it was time for a well-deserved rest before the next stage of the Mystery began…


[h3]Stage Two: A Feathered Fortune[/h3]
When a second note from ‘H’ arrived, they seemed to have birds on the brain. As soon as Stage Two began, ‘A Message from ‘H’’ began to broadcast on the official Sea of Thieves Twitch channel, showing a pair of parrots in the tavern squawking various, apparently random words.

During the stream, one of the birds took a fancy to a rather bruised banana, revealing another series of Pigpen symbols – by now, pirates immediately knew to translate them to ‘WHATTHREEWORDS’, suggesting that only a couple of the screeched phrases would be needed.

Oddly, though, the YouTube video of the stream seemed to be sending players to Google Maps instead of a more understandable location… In fact, what3words.com is a website that converts three-word phrases into map coordinates, so the true trick was to work out which three phrases resulted in locations that would mean something to pirates.

There were a lot of combinations to try, but by working together the community divined that ‘TURKEY GOAT LIVES’ equated to the Cutty Sark – once a British tea clipper, now a maritime museum. Exploring the community’s uploaded photos of the surrounding area via Google Street View revealed a perched parrot, a Gold Hoarder symbol and more Pigpen, which was promptly decoded into another shortened URL.

Things now took a musical turn, as a parchment covered in parrot prints turned out to be a cuneiform cipher hiding the lyrics of Sea of Thieves shanty ‘We Shall Sail Together’, albeit viewed through a purely phonetic lens. The last line of the parchment, however, was entirely new and read ‘Xbox Wire marks the spot’.

That Xbox news site had recently published an article about The Hoarder’s Hunt, and a thorough examination of the accompanying artwork revealed that not all was as it should be. A miniscule X was distorting the picture, and examining it in an image editor showed its true colours – in this case, the hexadecimal colour value ‘#2FACED’. Like 0UTC45T before it, this could also be read as another veiled insult from ‘H’, and 2FACED was duly confirmed to be the second of the Mystery’s keywords.

The hunt for the Argent Silver Key could now begin, with the musings of ‘H’ guiding pirates to Plunder Valley. Their interference in a game meant for the Gold Hoarders was not going to go unnoticed much longer…


[h3]Stage Three: Portrait of Plunder[/h3]
In this third stage, ‘H’ revealed previously unseen artistic talent which he used to further his schemes. The newest note was accompanied by images of Gold Hoarder portraits, some of which had been scuffed with unusual scratch marks.

There were dozens of these to discover; some on social channels, others in videos or developers’ tweets. Pirates gathered up the portraits, once again turned to the Pigpen cipher and realised that many of these scratches were the parrots’ words from the last stage of the Mystery. What hidden value did they still possess?

Quite a lot, as it happens. Correctly combined by pairing parchments, these phrases were determined to be the identities of Twitter accounts – @WashedRobot, @frost_locker and @rockeddiet, each of which had posted a painting of a crew playing cards, titled ‘A Pirate Hand’. These images appeared identical at first glance, but it didn’t take long for players to spot a key difference in each painting (specifically, unique Roman numerals), nor to notice that the accounts’ profiles seemed to be teasing a new website address. However, one key piece was still missing…

Following the remaining Pigpen clues took pirates to Instagram, where a striking 3D image containing a skull and cannonball with a blue bird atop them clued artistic admirers into the existence of a fourth Twitter account. @SkullCannonball possessed not only a fourth version of ‘A Pirate Hand’, but the information in their profile allowed for the completion of the partial web address. Pirates flocked to ‘youareapiratepuppet.com’ in earnest, but there was still more to uncover.

Studying the cards being held in each painting variation unearthed the word ‘HEARTLESS’, which certainly seemed like the kind of term ‘H’ would use. Appending it to the newly discovered URL gave ‘youareapiratepuppet.com/heartless’, a page which held an abstract kind of map, first glimpsed alongside the parrots, and a new riddle to solve.

Applying some keen anagramming skills to the capitalised words in the riddle to form Sea of Thieves phrases and places, then pairing those with their co-ordinates on the adjacent map, led to the sequence ‘B07R1SSGJ5’. When searched for online, results included Amazon’s ASIN for the Sea of Thieves: Origins comic ‘The Price of Gold’, a sure sign pirates were on the right track.

Next, by treating certain suspect details in the paintings and map image as inputs for an Arnold cipher (historically used to pull specific terms from larger volumes of text), pirates were able to focus on a particular page, panel and word – ‘grudge’. Appending this to the piratepuppet.com URL just as they had with ‘heartless’, a new webpage and the final keyword, 3DGURG, were located.

In-game, the Sterling Silver Key was retrieved from Kraken’s Fall and returned to the Gold Hoarders. With all three keys found, the chest was opened at last – only to reveal another, smaller chest! ‘H’ was clearly not to be trusted, and this meant that the final stage of The Hoarder’s Hunt would be what revealed both the final key and the true treasure.


[h3]Stage Four: The Crowning Glory[/h3]
As the last stage began and another note from ‘H’ berated pirates for interfering in his scheme, the Sea of Thieves account tweeted out a short, Pigpen-dotted addendum from ‘H’ bidding pirates to find him, and a mysterious chest decked out with seafaring symbols.

Meanwhile, @SkullCannonball and the other accounts that had previously hosted paintings revealed themselves to be under the control of ‘H’, then unleashed fresh puzzles of their own: a riddle, a star chart, a word grid and a story full of jumbled words.

As if that wasn’t enough, each of the accounts now guided players to a map fragment covered in markings, which when pieced together correctly made an ‘H’ in the centre. The remaining markings could be overlaid with the original treasure chest image – a fact that would become important later…

Not content with dispensing map fragments, revised profiles on these four accounts also clued pirates into the need for a Foursquare cipher, populating it with the three Voyage-unlocking keywords discovered in the prior stages, and the standard alphabet in the fourth square.

One by one, three of the accounts’ puzzles fell to pirate ingenuity, revealing the phrases ‘Monarch’, ‘Eagle’ and ‘Snake’. Writing these out in sequence and plucking eight appropriate letters (indicated via the Pigpen) revealed a new pirate phrase in the making, and although pirates didn’t yet have all the pieces they needed, they were confident enough to head back to Twitter in search of ‘H’.

Sure enough, a new @HSeesAll account held a lengthy riddle surrounded by coins that left everyone stumped for a while, at least until a second note surfaced with suspiciously similar traits. This proved that players were on the right track, while also confirming that the word grid puzzle still held a crucial piece of information.

At this point, the cunning ‘H’ almost got the best of our pirates. Each of the clues that players had uncovered corresponded to a symbol on or around the chest image, with the fourth symbol being hinted at by a new phrase, ‘AFORECLOUD’, that had already been found in the word grid. That same word grid now needed to be treated as a word search.

Hidden within the heart of the grid’s many recognisable words was a seemingly meaningless sequence, ‘LOSSURRIC’. Words in word searches can be laid out in any direction, and immediately before ‘cirrus’, the cloud, was ‘Sol’, the sun. If pirates had located all four symbols around the chest – the Monarch, the Eagle, the Snake and the Sun – and drawn an X between them, they would have spied their starting point on the overlaid map: Booty Isle.

But even though they didn’t have a clear origin for a journey, nothing will keep a pirate from forging into the unknown. By returning to @HSeesAll’s riddle, treating the first letter of each line as a compass bearing and the number of words in each line as squares on the Sea of Thieves map, pirates soon found themselves aiming for Tribute Peak.

One last, spoken message from ‘H’ now confirmed the significance of the coins surrounding their riddle. By counting the cash piles and taking the appropriate letters from the phrase TRIBUTEPEAK, pirates were able to spell out ‘bait’, ‘trap’, ‘break’ and ‘retake’, a lengthy phrase that served as the keyword for the final Voyage.

Heading out onto the open waves, players saw the final clues fall one by one as they took a whirlwind tour of many of the game’s iconic landmarks. The Hoarder’s Hunt was complete at last, although ‘H’ – finally unmasking himself as the embittered outcast Hogarth, once of the Gold Hoarders and last seen in their Sea of Thieves: Origins comic miniseries mentioned above – remains at large.

Congratulations to our lucky winners, and thanks to all to set sail and joined The Hoarder’s Hunt!

Sea of Thieves Fair Play Update – Spring 2023

It’s been just over five years since Sea of Thieves set sail and, in this time, we have always striven to maintain a safe, inclusive and fair environment for our players. This includes consistently allocating resources to combat both cheating and toxic behaviour.

[h3]Cheating and Hacking[/h3]
In recent months we’ve seen an increase in player reports around cheating, and we wanted to take this opportunity to offer an honest and transparent view into our efforts in this space.

To paraphrase the Sea of Thieves Code of Conduct, Rare has a zero-tolerance approach to any form of in-game hacking or cheating, and any transgression can result in permanent enforcement action. Your reports alone have resulted in the termination of over 7,000 accounts in the last 12 months, with nearly 5,000 bans in the last six months of players confirmed to be cheating in-game.

Further to this, our security team have issued permanent bans to an additional 8,000 accounts in the last 12 months as a result of internal cheat detection and anti-tampering measures.

In addition to enforcement action, we also work diligently behind the scenes to detect and block newly developed and evolving cheats. This includes (but is not limited to) the cheats/hacks listed below:
  • A hack that allowed players to move at an incredibly high rate of speed. Often used to evade attacks, chase down ships or transport items.
  • A hack that allowed players to grab loot from a greater distance than intended.
  • The ability to grant items to a player’s account without the prerequisites to do so – this also resulted in the termination of 4,500 accounts that were detected to be using this exploit.
  • A cheat that enabled the ability to bucket water from your own ship directly into the hull of another ship.
  • Blocking exploits used to earn gold in order to earn inordinately high scores within the Emissary Ledger.

[h3]Toxic Behaviour[/h3]
We have always been clear around what we expect from our community, and we take reports of in-game toxicity incredibly seriously. Our moderation teams work tirelessly in this area to ensure that Sea of Thieves remains a welcoming and inclusive place.

In the past 12 months as a response to player reports, we have manually issued over 8,500 suspensions to accounts that have demonstrated negative behaviours towards fellow players. In addition to general rules around bad behaviour and non-discriminatory language, we have enabled more stringent action around the use of discriminatory language. For example, the use of hate speech will result in players receiving our harshest suspension and an immediate final warning.

We also run regular sweeps of both pet names and ship names that do not meet our community standards to issue enforcement action to players. In order to streamline this process, we recently added an in-game reporting feature (see May’s release notes) which allows players to report the gamertag, ship name or pet name of any player they come into contact with. These reports are then reviewed by our moderation team who can take any necessary action.

The items mentioned in this update are just a small selection of the actions and improvements our security and moderation teams regularly make. Rest assured, we are always listening to your invaluable feedback and will continue to use this to guide our efforts to bring meaningful change.

While stamping out cheating and toxicity remains a top priority within Rare, the overwhelming majority of the millions of players within our community help to maintain the safe and inclusive environment of which we are so proud, and to this majority we say thank you. We will never stop striving to maintain the integrity of the game you care so passionately about.

See you on the seas.

The Sea of Thieves Security Team