Just as Rare promised last week, the Sea of Thieves Season 14 content update has gone live, and pirates sea-wide can now jump into a wealth of new stealth and mischief-focused features. While most of the announced additions have arrived to the multiplayer adventuring game, a few elements have been disabled at the last moment.
The new grapple gun may be the most impressive new item in the update, letting pirate crews use the hand-held tool to both grab far away items and pull themselves to far locations with ease. Players will have to give up one of their weapon loadout slots to equip this though.
Next, the blowpipe has landed with an array of darts. This silent weapon offers explosive black powder darts, poison darts that do damage over time, and even lure darts that glints like treasure in the distance, with AI enemies even being drawn there. Rare is also teasing a new type of ammo called the Mimic dart too, which will be coming later during the season with a unique disguising effect.
Continuing the stealthy theme, crouching is now finally possible in Sea of Thieves. When switching to this stance, player names are concealed, and also lets them hide more easily. This can also be used in combat for ducking under fire, and will also serve as a way to brace against knock-back damage.
While crouched, pirate crews can also access the brand-new disguise menu too. This allows them to take the shape of chests and barrels players might find in the open world, offering plenty of shenanigan opportunities. Lastly, the new Merfruit food item can be cooked and eaten to temporarily remove the friendly Merfolk that tend to hang around pirates to take them back to their own vessels, offering another way to avoid detection.
As for the last-minute disabled features, Traps and hanging from ledges will now be coming at a later date. While revealed in the recent announcement trailer as coming as part of this season, "due to high player impact issues discovered in the final stages of testing before launch," Rare has opted to hold back the additions.
Of course, plenty of fresh cosmetic items for earning and purchasing, commendations to pursue, and a battle pass are here as part of the season too. Read about all that, and all the bug fixes, in the patch notes here.
Sea of Thieves Season 14 is now available on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Cloud Play, Game Pass, and PlayStation 5.