The latest Sea of Thieves update is live, address ship respawn death issues and nerfs the Blunderbuss

Rare has just released a brand new update for Sea of Thieves on Xbox One and PC in a bid to improve players swashbuckling adventures. With a download size clocking in at 1.2 GB for both platforms, the update comes off of the back of the studio’s recent blog post, which promised to deliver several tweaks and changes to iron out issues players have been encountering at sea.

One of the most noteworthy features of the update is the ‘message from beyond’ addition. Players will now see a message from the Ferryman nailed to the door post on the Ferry of the Damned. The post will instruct players how to scuttle their ship to get out of a hairy situation, saying “this is a reminder to players that if their ship and/or crew is in a position they want to get out of, simply going to “My Crew” in the settings page and voting to “Scuttle Ship” will sink the ship and start the crew in a new location.”

This feature is Rare’s way of trying to help players combat the recent issue surrounding endless killing respawn cycles. Hopefully this will go some way to tackling enemy ship invaders who could rather frustratingly keep on killing crew members as they respawn.

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The studio has also been checking what weapons players have frequently been choosing and looking at the damage dealt to make some balancing changes. The Blunderbuss, which packs a mighty punch at close-range, has been given a bit of a damage reduction, while the Eye of Reach sniper-like weapon has been given an increase. Going forward, Rare plans to closely monitor weapon damage stats to keep tweaking it further as needed.

And some fixed issues will also help reduce the salt levels when any pirating escapades get cut short without warning after a server goes down. Players will now get at least a 30 minute advance warning before a server shuts down. Hopefully this is something players won’t have to see all too often since the studio is working on countering server shutdowns unless it’s for maintenance, but having some warning if it does happen is better than no warning at all.

Implemented performance improvements will counter poor ping times reported in South America, as well as multiple reported server crashes. A couple of adjustments to the PC side of things has been brought in, including increased mouse sensitivity for better aiming and mouse scrolling rebinding controls. While some of the more annoying issues are still being resolved, the update is a good start.

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Heather Wald is the Evergreen Editor, Games at GamesRadar+. Her writing career began on a student-led magazine at Bath Spa University, where she earned a BA (Hons) in English literature. Heather landed her first role writing about tech and games for Stuff Magazine shortly after graduating with an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University. Now with almost seven years of experience working with GamesRadar+ on the features team, Heather helps to develop, maintain, and expand the evergreen features that exist on the site for games, as well as spearhead the Indie Spotlight series. You'll also see her contribute op-eds, interview-led features, and more. In her spare time, you'll likely find Heather tucking into RPGs and indie games, reading romance novels, and drinking lots of tea.