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This week's Sea of Thieves developer update outlines plans for pets, emotes, new ship cosmetics, combat adjustments and more.
Piratical pets will appear in the shop: cats, parrots, dogs, rabbits, the humble honey badger and more are available. Sea of Thieves' executive producer Joe Neate says the animal companions are ‘much closer now to the place that we really want them’, so Insiders can expect to see them back on the high seas soon.
Emotes will appear at the same time as pets, accompanied by some new ship cosmetics, and as all sailors know, aesthetics is by far the most important statistic for the boat. It’s unknown what the cosmetics will be, but judging by the Perfect Dark and Banjo Kazooie figureheads, perhaps we will get some more references to other Rare titles.
Pets, emotes and so on are sold through microtransactions at the shop, though not in loot boxes or anything of the like, so players get exactly what they want to pay for. Additionally, the items won’t give players a gameplay edge over others. Neate says that the items are ‘completely optional’ and won’t separate the player base into haves and have nots.
Through the new cross-play option players can choose if they want to sail alongside everyone or just those who are also using a controller. Hit box detection will be improved now that melee combat is sorted, and the Arena mode will no longer use sloops, brigantines and galleons because it simply didn’t work the way the developers had envisioned. They are experimenting with different Arena structures for the time being.
This content update for the multiplayer pirate adventure will be arriving soon but to keep idle hands and hooks at bay, this month’s Black Powder Stashes missions barrelled onto deck last week.
Sea of Thieves is out now for PC and Xbox One, and also available through Xbox Game Pass too.
