Rare teases new content for Sea of Thieves

We had a chat with Rare studio head Craig Duncan at E3 where we discussed all the new content coming to Sea of Thieves and what players can expect in the future.

Rare had quite a busy E3 announcing two new expansions as well as a slew of other details about updates and new mechanics coming to the game. The first of these expansions is The Cursed Sails, which is coming in July. This will add AI skeleton crews to the game which players can battle with. They'll also bring cursed cannonballs with them, a new mechanic in the Sea of Thieves. These mystical cannonballs will have status effects that are imbued on the target upon impact. This could be anything from disabling all comms to burdening the ship making it sink faster. A new 3-person ship will also be added to better accommodate smaller crews who still want that big ship feel.

The next expansion will be The Forsaken Shore, due out in September. This will add a totally new perilous region for players to explore that's off the edge of the map through the devil's shroud. The rowboat will also be added as part of the update, so crews can drop anchor and row over to islands instead of having to swim or even fire themselves out of cannons. These announcements come shortly after the recent release of the Hungering Deep expansion after some players aired concerns about the amount of content available at launch.

"We made some very bold decisions in Sea of Thieves," said Duncan. "We made a game that was like no other game... we wanted to make a game about discovery where we're not going to hand-hold you through game."

It's clear that the team over at Rare are focused on delivering a steady flow of content to Sea of Thieves with a three team rotation working on various updates at any one time. The game has already received eight updates and one full expansion in the 10 weeks since release. As a game as a service, Sea of Thieves is an ever-changing world and Rare want to continue to build on that concept by working closely with the community.

"When everyone played at launch every ship looked the same," explained Duncan. "It was a white sail, wooden ship, but you go play the game now and we've got pirate legends in the world, so you'll see these ships that have these fantastic figureheads and great paint jobs and great sails and when you encounter one of them in the world you have that invoking feeling that we wanted."

They've achieved this through immortalising players in the world making community part of the lore of the universe. They also released a whole bunch of stats during their E3 presentation that focussed on the achievements of the community they've created, stating 4 million players had amassed a total of 91 million play hours with 1.5 million friendships forged in the game.

"As a game maker what I've heard continuously here in everyone I've spoken to is Sea of Thieves is a game I play with my wife or lets me connect with my brother or it's a game I play with my kids or I've made friends and now I've got a community of people to play with and that's the vision of what our game is," Duncan told Gamereactor.

The Hungering Deep team are now working a new top secret piece of DLC scheduled for later in the year, although no details of this have been released yet.