It has been a couple of weeks since Rare pushed out the Forsaken Shores major content update to Sea of Thieves, introducing a new volcanic region for pirates to venture into. With that campaign still up and running, the studio pushed out the 1.3.1 update today, bringing in the new voyage type for the Merchant Alliance trading company among other changes.
For those unaware, the new Cargo Run voyage missions will add in a brand new method of earning money and reputation in Sea of Thieves. Players will essentially be ferrying cargo across the seas between various NPCs as part of it, but there are some additional risks involved compared to other voyages.
Other than making sure the delivery isn't delayed, the goods themselves have to be protected. For instance, rum bottles can break quite easily by being on a rough sailing ship, while cloth will spoil if it becomes wet, making the new rowboat an essential tool for transporting goods. On the bright side, Cargo Runs can also be completed while performing other voyages at the same time, so this is a good way to make some extra coin while hunting for treasure.
Elsewhere, Rare has increased the rewards pirates will get for defeating skeleton ships, and rowboats will now suffer much more damage from gunpowder barrels than before. Rowboats will also be much easier to push towards water in case they are stuck.
Here is the massive list of bugs that Rare has managed to solve during the past two weeks:
- Rowboats now cast appropriate reflections in water.
- Rowboats no longer get damaged when detaching from a ship.
- Player sitting in the middle of the Rowboat can now see players sitting at the back of the Rowboat.
- Removed overlapping audio when rowing.
- Damaged Rowboats no longer appear pristine upon returning to them after venturing far away.
- Rowboats no longer inherit damage decals from other sources (such as damaged ships or shipwrecks) when in close vicinity.
- Looking as far left/right as possible whilst rowing a Rowboat will no longer result in the camera becoming occasionally unlocked and rotating 360 degrees.
- When placing larger items on the Rowboat, water splash VFX will no longer occur.
- Audio when rowing a Rowboat over large distances (especially the squeaking) is now less repetitive.
- Available titles now show up in the clothing shop on Morrow's Peak Outpost.
- Fixed issue with horizontal water planes being cut off whilst a ship is sinking.
- Players no longer get permanently drunk when migrating servers whilst holding the Chest of a Thousand Grogs.
- Players should no longer get an unfinishable riddle quest on Fetcher's Rest.
- Audio will no longer drop out when climbing the ladder onto a Brigantine.
- View Gamer Card option under Crew Settings will now respond correctly to a left mouse click.
- Geysers will no longer appear on top of chests.
- Flooding at the back of a Sloop will appear visually correct when sinking.
- The ocean will appear completely black when a Kraken encounter begins.
- Looking through the scope of an Eye of Reach will no longer trigger the sound effect multiple times.
- Upon loading into a session, the loading music will now commence as soon as the loading screen appears.
- Sailing away from your ship on a Rowboat will no longer cause a mermaid to spawn.
- The ocean will no longer appear separated from the sky when viewing the horizon from within a storm.
- The glow of the Kraken lantern will no longer appear too bright in HDR.
- Sail ropes will no longer appear disjointed from the sails when a player returns from the Ferry.
- There is no longer a gap at the bottom of the volcano on Devil’s Thirst.
- Collision has been corrected on the Devil’s Thirst volcano so players can no longer fall into the model.
- Player will no longer temporarily lose access to some ship barrels if their first banana, plank or cannonball of the session is washed up or given to them.
- Available titles now correctly appear in the clothing shop on Morrow's Peak Outpost.
- Titles will no longer incorrectly appear on Seaposts.
And here are the issues still present and being worked on:
- Oars can appear to disconnect from the Rowboat along with the player, only visible in third-person.
- We have a fix for this coming in the next update.
- Migrating server (indicated by the on-screen riddle) with a message in a bottle / barrel map in your map radial causes any in-progress voyages to no longer count towards commendation objectives.
- We have a fix for this coming in the next update.
- Merchant Alliance crates on board a ship that sinks will not float to the surface and cannot be picked up.
- We are working on a fix for this issue.
- Mermaid Statues have been temporarily disabled due to performance issues.
- Improvements to this are being investigated, and the intention is to re-enable these as soon as possible.
The size of the Sea of Thieves 1.3.1 update is 1.37GB on the Xbox One family of consoles, while Windows 10 users will only need to download 502MB. The game should update automatically in the background or whenever it is launched. The servers are also up and running right now, so any pirates interested in running some Cargo Runs, maybe in the Devil's Roar even, can jump in right now to do so.
