08/14 The Dark Relics Patch Breakdown

Patch 2.0.6 A Dark New Monthly Event

The latest addition to Sea of Thieves is here in update 2.0.6, bringing with it bug fixes, quality of life additions, new features, and the Dark Relics event- a new set of Order of Souls voyages and commendations that reward doubloons and new cosmetics- along with the cursed new “Reaper’s Chest”! In this week’s blog update, I break down everything in the latest patch as well as the Developer Update and Weekly Dev Stream- all the Sea of Thieves information you need.

CHECK OUT MY GUIDE TO THE DARK RELICS EVENT HERE

Content Update Video

Patch Breakdown

Read the full 2.0.6 patch notes here

New Event

Dark Relics is a new set of limited time voyages and commendations that require you to track down some stolen mystic artifacts. There is a Dark Relic Voyage for each of the world regions, including the Devil’s Roar exclusively for Pirate Legends to purchase. Doubloons are awarded for completing these, as well as returning the five varieties of Dark Relics, selling valuable Ritual Skulls, and tracking down the new cursed Reaper’s Chest. There are also limited time cosmetics available during the event (which ends on September 11).
Check out my full Guide to Dark Relics here.

New Features

• Reaper’s Chest- The cursed Reaper’s Chest can spawn in shipwrecks. They are marked by a beam of light into the sky, and also as a Reaper Icon on all player’s map tables. Finding one makes your ship appear on other player’s map tables, and they can be sold to Duke for 15 Doubloons
• Harpoon Rowboats- Rowboats that you find in the world have a chance of having a front mounted harpoon gun.
• Barrels of Plenty- Floating barrels found at sea will now include a range of loot items floating with them, including treasure, resource crates, and even gunpowder barrels… watch where you’re sailing!

Quality of Life Improvements/Balancing

• Hit Registration- swinging the sword or shooting a firearm should be more responsive and more accurately registered server side
• Controller Configuration- New settings menu options for controllers! With “Gamepad Look Deadzone” you can adjust the deadzone on the right stick to make it respond to input faster or slower. With “Gamepad Response Curve”, you tweak the mapping between input and looking with the right stick. With a value of 1, aiming is equally as sensitive the more or less you push the right stick. With a value above 1, you have more accuracy near the centre of the stick and less accuracy the more you push it- this allows for finer aiming adjustments.
• Harpoons- Floating meat can now be harpooned, as can Gunpowder kegs without exploding them on impact

Arena Improvements

• Arena Matchmaking Improvements- When entering the Arena as an Open Crew, players will now be prioritised to load into a Tavern that is waiting to start rather than into an active contest.
• Improvements to Muting Other Players- Players now have the option on the “All Other Crews” menu to see every other player in an Arena lobby and mute them individually, in addition to the “Mute All Other Crews” option
• Scrambling Gamertags- Players now have a new option ‘Scramble Gamertags’. This Scrambles Your Gamertag, Your Crew Members Gamertags and any Gamertags of Pirates you meet out in the open world. If anyone else on your server enables this feature then the scrambled names will match for everyone allowing players to strategise and shotcall as before. If you encounter another player in the world who has chosen to scramble their Gamertag, their true Gamertag will still be visible to you to ensure you know who you are playing with.

Skeleton Balancing

• Gunpowder Skeletons- Have been reduced in frequency. On Pirate Legend voyages, some skeletons may be carrying the Stronghold Gunpowder Barrels!
• Skeleton Lords- Lords fought on Tall Tales can now chain together their attacks more effectively
• Skeleton Balancing- On higher rank voyages, skeletons health has been reduced but more skeletons will attack at once. Emergent skeletons (not tied to a voyage) will spawn less frequency

You can view the full patch notes here

Developer Update

Executive Producer Joe Neate’s weekly address to the community, further breaking down the Dark Relics update:

• The plan with monthly updates is to release on the second Wednesday of every month. Next update is September 11th
• The Voyages, Commendations, and Rewards around Dark Relics are time limited for the next month.
• The Reaper’s Chest and the commendations around it are not time limited
• GAMESCOM is next week in Germany, and Sea of Thieves Arena will be playable on the show floor, but as a twist they will have Duo Sloops available to play. The best crews each day have a chance to win some cool swag

Weekly Dev Stream

Community Video Manager Jon McFarlane is joined by Senior Designer Andrew Preston, Game Designer Steven Dillon, and community guest CrReaM, as they complete Tall Tale #7: Fate of the Morningstar, and field a few questions from the chat:

How long were you in development before the public could play it?
We started development in June 2014, and began a closed technical alpha in the end of 2016.

Did the voice of the Ferryman change from before Tall Tales?
Yes, it used to be our Audio Director Jon Vincent, but we hired professional voice actors for Tall Tales. It’s now Francis Magee, also the voice of Stitcher Jim

Please fix Hit Registration
There are updates to this coming in tomorrow’s (August 14th) update

If the Ferryman crawled into his coffin to die, who buried him?
Andy: Hmmm… all may be revealed ;)

What’s the Ferryman’s real name?
Maybe it’s just Ferryman- like “Prince”

Will we see any content introduced in Monthly Updates persist after the event?
That will happen in instances where it makes sense. If it’s a new feature or mechanic it will probably persist, but if it’s just a way we’ve mixed up existing features for something new to do, it probably will not.

Will we see any more tales utilizing the Ferryman’s Lamp?
Yes

With how exciting Tall Tales are, will we ever see extra special voyages added to the three main companies?
Cannot confirm or deny, but it’s something we’ve been actively talking a lot about very recently, thinking of ways we could improve voyages using the Tall Tales system. It would be very cool in the future

Have you ever thought of being able to purchase goods, sugar, tea, silks, etc and be part of a goods economy?
We have spoken about stuff like that, like a self sustained economy that fluctuates based on what people are buying and selling, but it’s only ever been talked about and never gotten passed that. But we’ve got many years of development yet!

Are you allowed to say something about when Pets are coming?
No- but they are coming! And it’s not far off…

Will we ever get the Wailing Sails back again?
(Teasingly) It would be smart to think of a way to bring back items that have come before…

Can we get some kind of mutiny system or PvP bounty system?
Andy: That would be pretty cool, something like that

Has Sea of Thieves grown bigger than you guys thought?
Andy: Honestly yes. We’d always dreamed it would have a big community and be very watchable, and we’d always hoped it’d be big. We were surprised by how big it’s gotten.

Now that we’ve had this success and have this template, we know we can build on it for years and it has so much potential.

Will there be more added to fishing/new fish?
I don’t know, there’s been a great reception to fishing

Will we ever see the “Land of Five Winds” region added to the map? or Land of Merfolk?
Andy: *whistles*
Jon: Mike is very passionate about the merfolk lore
Andy: It’d be cool to investigate a series of Tall Tales about merfolk and underwater in the future

Please allow us to slap each other with fish
Andy: that would be very nice, we did have that in the original prototype where you could melee with any item you’d picked up including fish

CrReaM what would you like to see in the game?
CrReam: more player ships per server
Andy: *covertly shows Jon his phone in response to question*
Jon: Ah ha. I got shown two words I can’t say.

(Brigantine talk)
Andy: I actually made a change to the brigantine ship design two days before we shipped it with Cursed Sails campaign. We originally put the Crow’s Nest on the front mast of the ship because we thought it would be unique, but Insider Testing didn’t like that the rear mast would obstruct your view from the nest. There are two planks above the stairwell added just before it shipped so that it was easier to get on the ladder without falling downstairs

Can we get the Ferryman’s Lantern as a cosmetic?
It’s a no for now