Two weeks have passed since Rare"s new adventure title Sea of Thieves made its way to Xbox One and Windows 10, and it is already time for the game"s second update, which arrived today with gameplay changes, bug fixes, and more.
Sea of Thieves patch 1.0.2 has "significantly increased" the respawn distance of ships, with the change incoming as a response to player feedback. The short respawn distance is something Neowin"s review of the title also touched on. Now, whenever a vessel is sunk by another ship, respawning will occur "outside of visible view of the ship that sank them."
The teleport to ship functionality that mermaids provide has also undergone a change, where players are no longer able to initiate the teleport while holding treasure, and have to set the loot down before doing so. Previously, attempting to use the mermaid while holding treasure items would simply teleport players while leaving treasure floating in the sea, leading to some confused pirates.
Alongside several server and client crash fixes, the update carried some bug fixes as well:
- [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.
Rare also added that it is working on additional optimizations for the game on all platforms. There are still a number of known issues in the game as well, which the developer has listed as follows:
- 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.
The update weighs in around 450MB on both Xbox One and Windows 10, and should begin downloading automatically on both platforms when online.
Sea of Thieves is available for purchase via the Microsoft Store for $59.99 as an Xbox Play Anywhere title, and is also part of Microsoft"s $9.99/mo Xbox Game Pass subscription program. Those interested in winning a free copy of the game may look over here.