Sea of Thieves 2024 Preview Event

Welcome to the Sea of Thieves 2024 preview event, where we're going to give you your first look at  

some of the exciting features coming to Sea of Thieves this year.

We are going to share information around what's coming in Seasons 12 and 13,

as well as even further into the future with a sneak peek behind the curtain on Season 14.  

So grab a grog and get ready for adventure, as we reveal some of the incredible  bounty of features headed to Sea of Thieves in 2024!

Sea of Thieves is a pirate sandbox adventure game, where players create those stories together

and in the world of Sea of Thieves there are tools  and items that may seem simple on the surface,

but when they're in the hands of real players  who are playing in their own way and bringing  

their creativity, it really showcases that the  sandbox is more than the sum of its parts, as  

it creates these memorable stories.

This year, in 2024, our focus is on giving you more tools, more possibilities,

and with that freedom out on the waves give you the possibilities to have these

amazing moments and really changing up the core moment to moment gameplay of the sandbox

The kind of main aims for Season 12 are  about mixing up the meta and how players enjoy  

all of the different aspects of Sea of Thieves. So  as part of Season 12 we're going to be adding two  

new weapons and three new tools for players to use.

an area we haven't really delved into since launch is adding new weapons to the game.

new weapons that give you new tactical choices and strategies out there on your adventures.

So in Season 12 we're going to be adding the Double Barrel Pistol and throwing knives.

The Double Barrel flintlock is a new type of pistol weapon where you can fire  

two shots individually before you need to reload,  or you can charge them together and release them  

at once for a more powerful shot.

We wanted to kind of create this new weapon archetype that's  

a bit shorter range but a faster fire-rate, but  perhaps not as powerful or damaging as the  

flintlock pistol, but then it has those kind of  blunderbuss-like qualities as well, where you can  

do the charge shot to release two pellets at the same time. 

Accompanying that Double Barrel flintlock with another weapon like the cutlass, for example, for a finishing blow

can lead to a fast time to kill for a player  to be able to quickly take down a target.

Season 12 also brings in the throwing knives  as a weapon. Now these can be used as a melee  

item, they have a light and a heavy melee action,  but they can also be thrown and used at range as well.

You can use it to kind of like stab players  with like a quick attack, but that doesn't do much  

damage, or you can charge it to like pull it into  this kind of, more dangerous stabbing motion that  

will slow the players movement down and give  this like really high damage attack for if you  

like sneak up behind players. And then finally, it  has the ability to kind of flip the knife over  

catch it and then throw it at distance against  players which again kind of feels like a trick  

shot and it'll do a lot of damage as well.

When you throw a throwing knife, and if you miss, you  

can actually go in the world and it'll stick  into any of the geometry and you can just pull  

it out and then it'll replenish your ammo. So  I think personally, for me, this is really good  

because sometimes I miss, as I'm sure some of us  do, uh so you can then just go ahead and pick it up again.

So you get these wonderful moments  where a pirate might throw a knife at you but  

then you can retrieve that knife and throw it  back to them, so it'll really mix up the kind  

of combat scenarios you can expect out in the  world and when boarding other ships.

There are three new tools in Season 12: the Wind Caller, the  scattershot and the Bone Caller.

With the scattershot, the way that it's different to a standard  cannonball is, it's a collection of four cannonballs,  

but they're much smaller. They have a much shorter  falloff range and a really wide spread, allowing  

you to hit a target with multiple projectiles at  the same time. And it does really small amounts  

of damage to the ship just like a level one  size hole so like, really quick for players to  

repair, but it can kind of overwhelm a crew quite quickly.  

Basically if you get up close with the scattershot and you can get a few onto your enemy, 

they're gonna have a lot of holes, and they're going to have a pretty bad time.

What it will do is really eat up an opponent's resources  

they' need to use more wood to repair the  many holes that the scattershot puts into the hull.

So the Bone Caller is an awesome new  throwable that players can wield, and they can  

throw that on the floor and when it smashes all  these kind of bones come out and then skeletons  

spawn around the player in allegiance to them, and  they'll actually fight beside the player against  

enemy players and enemy AI.

Now you might not be going straight for just a normal cannonball or

or a chainshot, you might in fact go straight for  the Bone Caller so you can have some skellies that  

are on your side on that ship sort of messing things up for that crew.

You could use fire to fight fire,

so if somebody shoots a Bone Caller across the  sea at your ship and they spawn in, if you have  

your own Bone Caller you could throw that down on  the deck and have your own skellies go and fight  

those, uh, to take them out for you so that you don't have to.  

I mostly play solo and to be able to spawn

literally anything that is friendly to my cause while I'm playing is a massive positive so I'm kind of

looking forward to that, and I'm sure that other players will find ways to make use of it as well.

The Wind Caller is a new horn-shaped  shell that players can blow into to summon the  

power of the winds. So imagine the scenario that  you're heading fully into the wind and you're  

either chasing someone or you're trying to get  away from someone, now you can use this tool to  

blow wind into your sails and go even beyond full-billow in speed.

Players can also use it to kind of knock players back off their ship or on land, so they can kind of target a player,  

blow into the Wind Caller and it will throw them back into the air.

You can use it as a means of propulsion for yourself in the water but also for rowing boats, so you can either use it 

while you're in the water swimming and you'll  blast along like a really fast water boatman, or

you can stand on a rowing boat and blast out  the back like a speed boat basically.

You can put out fires, and you can do it quickly.  So you can just essentially walk around, your

entire ship is caught on fire, and just put out  all the fires as you walk around.

And they can even use it to, like, stop their fall damage.  Like say you're falling a great distance and 

you use the Wind Caller below you it'll, like, cushion your fall so you're like land safely as well.

There is, like, a finite charge for how long the  Wind Caller can last for, so you have to use it wisely.

So Season 12 also introduces ziplines  onto several of the islands around Sea of Thieves.

So you may have seen these as they debuted in  the Monkey Island Tall Tales and they're a really  

fun and exhilarating way to traverse, so it's  really cool to be able to bring those to the  

wider Sea of Thieves world.

So we've been looking across all the islands of the Sea of Thieves and  

looking at the most ideal places to kind of mix  up the traversal opportunities uh within all of  

the islands, to add these ziplines across them.  So we've added ziplines to like, the Outpost to 

get down to your ship quickly, we've added them to  the Skeleton Forts that allow you to kind of zipline 

between two positions to kind of escape the  skeletons or get close to them when they first 

spawn, or just general kind of ziplines across the islands for like fast traversal when moving chests around the islands quickly.

For example on Ancient Spire Outpost, now you've got to clunk down some 

cliffs in order to get your ship. Now you'll be able  to just go and get on the zipline and go flying 

all the way down to the jetty next to your ship.

So alongside adding completely brand new tools 

to the Sea of Thieves sandbox, there's also the opportunity  for us to go back and add completely brand new 

functionality to existing tools.

So another cool new feature that we're adding for Season 12 is 

the ability to balance on harpoon lines. So you  can shoot that harpoon line at another ship or 

another Island and then jump onto it and then like,  balance across. Depending on the angle in which you 

fire the harpoon, it'll either be like too steep  to climb up it, but if you're on the other end 

you can actually jump on the harpoon line and  like slide down it really quickly back to your ship. 

We're really confident this will lead to some  really inventive player boarding tactics out there 

in the sandbox, as well as giving you new ways to traverse the islands.

With all this that we're adding in Season 12, it gives players more opportunities to create those stories, as we're really enriching 

the sandbox of every session. 

So we're always really excited to add new tools and mechanics

to Sea of Thieves, but we're always mindful that  we want to make sure that the game's health is in  

a really good position as well, that the integrity  of Sea of Thieves is there for our players. And since 

we're adding new weapons into Sea of Thieves, we're very  mindful that we want to ensure that the hit 

registration in our game is as rock solid as  it can be, and this is an ongoing thing for us 

as a development team: we're constantly putting  time and effort into this area to try and make it 

as robust as possible.

In the past we've borrowed time from feature teams to address issues in the 

core experience, but it's always taking a backseat  to the features that those teams are working on.

In 2024, this is changing. We're securing a dedicated  team to focus on the health of the game, bringing 

fixes and Improvement to the things that matter  most to our players as soon as they're ready 

as part of our regular monthly updates. This is  going to be a key focus for the team this year 

we want your Sea of Thieves experience to be  the best that it can be. Adding new loadout 

choices as part of upcoming Seasons shows our  commitment to making encounters between players 

a more dynamic and fun experience. But crucially,  this all has to operate on a stable combat system 

we know that there's still plenty of work to  do here, but this remains a top priority for 

our team. March's update delivered Easy Anti-Cheat,  an industry-leading anti-cheat solution designed 

by Epic. This solution evolves over time, keeping  up with cheat developers, blocking them at every 

turn. This is really though just the first step  at improving the player experience here in Sea of Thieves.

We want to focus this year on making Sea of Thieves play better than ever before, whether that 

be improving the performance of the game  across the variety of hardware it runs on, 

ensuring that it's a safe place to play with a  focus on cheating, but also ensuring that our 

hit registration is as reliable as possible in  all of your adventures out there in the sandbox.

So Captain Flameheart has been a staple  and important character of Sea of Thieves for many 

years, appearing in our novels and appearing  in our many Tall Tales and expanded fiction. 

With Season 13, this brings the return of Captain  Flameheart to the Sea of Thieves.

As Flameheart has been resurrected, so has his Burning Blade ship,  and it's back in more monstrous and terrifying 

form than ever before. So we've reimagined it for  Season 13, and it looks incredible. It almost looks 

like a living entity itself.

So traditionally World Events have been at set locations throughout the world.

The Burning Blade is a little different. The Burning Blade is a ship, and therefore moves around the world.

But the twist is, when you've defeated the ship you have the option to board

it and pledge yourself and your crew to Flameheart, enter into his service and become the

crew of The Burning Blade, essentially becoming a  player-created World Event yourselves.

So obviously we have to go in big with this one. At a base it  is larger and more formidable than any ship we've

seen on the waves. This ship has ten cannons, it has  a statue room dedicated to Flameheart at the back,

it has a balcony where Flameheart likes to take in  the view every morning with his coffee and most

importantly it's got a massive flamethrower  at the front. Players will be able to pull a

lever on their ship and fire two massive balls of  fire out the front of their ship, which is really

interesting because we've never actually had an  offensive weapon that's frontal facing before so I think

this is going to create some really interesting  dynamic naval combat situations.

So once you take over the Burning Blade you are on this really  powerful warship, and you have a skeleton crew 

helping you as well, so even smaller crews have  every chance of crewing the Burning Blade because

the skeletons will come to your aid. So you could  have skeletons repairing while you're on the

cannons firing at enemies, which is excellent.  But it's not just about sailing around the

world, which of course you can do. It's about  completing orders in service of Captain Flameheart.

So around the world there'll be numerous  Skeleton Camps. You'll notice the Reapers have

been conducting excavations on the surface, and  they've been dragging up all sorts of Ancient

artifacts and Ancient secrets from below the  surface. Underground there's basically a chamber

with a prism that the players can control to draw  out constellations on the ceiling in order to

help the ritual come to completion and get that knowledge of the Ancients.

Each of these temples contains the secrets of the Ancients, secrets that Flameheart wants above anything else, and as part

of taking control of the ship you'll be able to sail  around the world, visit these ancient temples deep

below these Skeleton Camps, engaging new puzzle  gameplay, discover treasures. But what you're  

really after is the Orb of Secrets, a new treasure  artifact that Flameheart wants. Collecting these 

secrets will add Tribute to the Burning Blade ship.

The more Tribute that you collect, the more

value will be aboard the Burning Blade. But you  will lose the Burning Blade if it sinks or when

you choose to go and cash that Tribute in to  Flameheart. So it's really up to you how long

you think you can hold on to it with that risk  reward, because everybody in the world is going to

be coming for you, they're going to know you're in  there and know you've got high value, so it really

becomes this dynamic player-created World Event  with players versus players in the sandbox.

So even though you can visit these Skeleton Camps  while in control of the Burning Blade, it's not

only tightly wedded to that new gameplay. Players  can also visit them anytime in their adventures. So

should players visit these Skeleton Camps when  they're not the crew of The Burning Blade, the

skeletons won't be too happy that you found a way  inside these Camps, and you'll be engaging in a

combat-focused encounter to discover its secrets.

What's really exciting about Season 13 is the

interplay of the features and the way that they'll  bring players together and combine to create new

stories. And whether you're the crew of The Burning  Blade who wants to protect it or everyone else

who wants to take it down and steal that value,  everything in Season 13 will bring you together.

So towards the end of the year we have Season 14, and while it's very early for us to talk about we

wanted to share some of our thinking here, because  it is totally aligned with this vision for what

2024 can be, this laser focus on the sandbox and  mechanics that add to the variety of stories you

can encounter in Sea of Thieves.

Internally we're referring to Season 14 as pirates of mischief.

Sea of Thieves has always had this playful, mischievous  and funny sense of humor, and with Season 14 we're

expanding on that. The two main areas that we're  exploring are new ways to stealth and new ways

to cause mischief in the world.

So I think a real aspect of the Sea of Thieves experience

that we haven't dived too deep into previously  is the idea of being a stealthy pirate. So when

you think about Stealth in Sea of Thieves and  enhancing that, imagine being able to crouch and

move around the world silently, or the ability to  hang off the side of an enemy ship.

When we were having these initial conversations about Season 14 the first thing I thought of was the cardboard

boxes in Metal Gear Solid. Could we allow players  to climb into chests and if they choose they can

actually scuttle around with their little legs  out the button. And also if they choose to you

know, keep the ruse up, could other players come  along and pick them up like a normal loot chest

or treasure chest or whatever and take it onto  their ship?

So another cool thing that we've been working on is is the blow dart, which is another new weapon that players can wield from the armory

and use that to kind of sneak aboard enemy ships  and fire kind of these custom darts into players

that will do different effects.

So imagine a blow dart that tracks whatever it sticks to, whether

that's a ship, a chest, an item, a player. Ones that  could potentially like lure skeletons to like a

specific position so you can throw a firebomb in  there or, you know, explode a gunpowder keg. Or darts

that can trigger specific sound effects, which is  quite evil and cunning where you could board an

enemy ship and shoot the capstan and it sounds like  it's dropping or shoot the ladders and it sounds 

like someone's climbing up them. And then thinking  about some of the ways that we want to add more

mischief to the world, one of these is the idea  of traps. So much like the kind of blunderbombs

or firebombs, we've been thinking about them being  this kind of throwable trap that players can kind

of throw into the world, think of it like like a  like a spring trap that players can place on the 

islands to trap skeletons on a bounty or on a Fort,  or they could place it at the top of their ladders

to prevent players from boarding their ships and  get caught in this trap. Along with these we're

also bringing a really exciting new tool, and it's  the grapple gun, which is a dual purpose rifle.

So it allows you to traverse the environment much  quicker, 'cos you're able to grapple yourself up to

a ledge for example, but you can also harpoon items  and other players in. So some of the new cool uses

we've seen from the grapple gun in our early play  test are, you know, players firing themselves out of

the cannon towards another ship to try and board  them and perhaps overcooking it and then using

the grapple gun to fire it at the deck and propel  themselves down onto it, or jumping off their ship

to like an oncoming ship and then using the  grapple gun to kind of grapple up and onto

their ship so that they can board them and  drop their anchor, or have a fight with them.

To make sure that the grapple gun is balanced it  does have ammunition. You'll have arrow heads, and

these essentially break off when you successfully  use the grapple gun, meaning you can't continuously

keep grappling, there is a skill to using the  gun successfully, and accurately, and efficiently.

So when we think about 2024, we really think about  getting to the very heart of what makes Sea of Thieves

great. That is your stories powered by that design  philosophy of tools not rules. Seasons 12, 13 and 14

are fully exploring that, giving you new options,  new tools and fundamentally new possibilities,  

that make this game unique and special. I think  when you look at the year ahead for Sea of Thieves  

our plans for Season 12, Season 13 and Season 14,  it's kind of making the shift away from these big  

kind of systemic changes to Sea of Thieves and  returning back to the core of what makes  

Sea of Thieves so special. The heart of Sea of Thieves, about  giving players new tools to create new stories out there in the world.

We're ultimately shaking up the  meta, giving players new tools to learn and master  

and I can't wait to see what combinations players  start settling on before we shake it back up again.

While everything that you're seeing today is still  work in progress and possibly subject to change  

in some ways, we will be giving more insights onto  how these things are developing as we come closer  

to launch for each of them. With the richness of  all these new Seasons, and of course PlayStation  

pirates joining us as well, it is such an exciting  year for Sea of Thieves in 2024.  

Thank you for joining us for the Sea of Thieves 2024  Preview Event, we hope you've enjoyed this  

sneak peek at what's coming throughout the rest  of the year. There's still a lot more to reveal  

for these Seasons, so keep an eye on the horizon  as we'll have more to share closer to each Season's launch.

For more information and to keep up to  date with what's new in Sea of Thieves, check  

out our social channel. So until our paths cross  again, happy sailing! And we'll see you on the seas.

[Serene music]

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