It's time for another monthly Sea of Thieves update, with Rare pushing out patch 1.4.4 today for the Xbox One console family and Windows 10 PCs. This update carries another new line of Mercenary Voyages, a buff to the Merchant Alliance trading company payouts, among other changes.
Duke is offering a brand new Mercenary Voyage for daring players with this update named Reaper's Run. This voyage sends all crews that accept it onto the Wanderers Refuge island region, massively increasing the chance of multiple ship encounters.
Daring pirates can also fly the Reaper's Mark flag - which broadcasts their ship location over the entire server - while attempting these new voyages for completing a Legendary Commendation. The new Wandering Reaper ship cosmetics set that has also arrived with this update is tied to having this Commendation, making it quite a difficult set to acquire.
Rare isn't leaving more passive players out to dry either, as two other Mercenary Voyages can also be bought from Duke, with them leading players into other regions. All of these reward heavy voyages cost 5 Doubloons to purchase, but completing the update's four new commendations can net players 90 Doubloons in total.
The studio has also delivered more performance improvements in this update, such as improved loading times, more reliable voice communications, as well as stability improvements.
Here's a list of other changes included in update 1.4.4:
- Floating Treasure - Significantly increased time loot floats for at the water surface before it begins to sink.
- Sword Miss Swing Recovery - When swinging your sword and missing your opponent, there is an increased recovery delay before you can swing again. Players can move freely during this recovery, however, are prevented from attacking.
- Food Barrels - The Shipwrights have been busy and added more food barrels to the ships.
- NPC Dialog Styling - Updated styling when interacting with an NPC during Dialog.
- Colour Contrast Accessibility - Updated the colour contrast of selecting items in the Settings menu to better support accessibility for WCAG standards.
- Service Status Messaging - Our Live Operations team now have the ability to communicate changes to our service status to players in the game as they happen. These messages will appear and persist in the Chat Notification area when sent.
Head over here to see the massive amount of bug fixes included in this update. Be aware however, that there is a known issue where players can get stuck in a loading screen when returning from the Ghost Ship. Rare says other players can vote the stuck player into the brig and release them as a temporary workaround.
Sea of Thieves 1.4.4 update comes in at 3.9GB on Xbox One while Xbox One X and Windows 10 players will have to download 4.9GB. The servers are also now back online, so all interested pirates can jump in and try out the new voyages (or start plundering them) right now.
Don't forget that Sea of Thieves' birthday celebrations are slated to begin on March 20, and Rare has said it has some big plans to announce on that date regarding the game's future.
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