Yesterday I wrote about Animal Crossing, one of the games that I’ve been playing regularly for years. Today, I decided to write about the other one, Sea of Thieves. If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you know how much I like that game. It was my game of the year back in 2018 when it first came out and has only gotten better as more features have been added over the years. I thought I’d take a little time to talk about some of the newest stuff and what I thought of them.

Since the release of the game, there has always been four weapons to choose from. The cutlass, the blunderbuss, the eye of reach, and the pistol. Starting a couple seasons ago, they finally added two new weapons, the double barreled pistol and the throwing knives. And then again with the season that’s going on right now, two more weapons were added, the grapple gun and the blow pipe. It’s been pretty wild to have brand new weapons to be messing around with in a game that was so set in stone in that regard for such a long time.

The throwing knives and the double barreled pistol are both pretty cool, but I have to admit I’m much more impressed with this season’s additions. The grapple gun gives you a handheld harpoon that you can use to reach places you couldn’t previously or the grab far off treasures or players and bring them to you. Like most of the weapons though, you only get five shots with it before needing to find an ammo box to reload. This makes for an interesting trade off, as it’s not a particularly offensive weapon choice, but is taking up one of your two precious weapon slots. I really like messing around with it, but find that in big fights, I’d still rather have bullets.

The blow pipe is a really interesting addition. It’s a pipe that the player can shoot darts out of that have different effects. One causes an explosion, one poisons enemies, and the last one creates a light that attracts enemies. This has proven to be extremely over-powered in skeleton fights. Suddenly, the gold skeletons that were always such a pain to deal with are easily dispatched by both the explosive and the poison darts. The ones that cause the light are a lot of fun too. If you hit a skeleton with it, it causes all the other skeletons to start attacking him. Despite how over-powered it is, I really hope they don’t adjust it. It’s so much fun as is.

There’s been some really cool random items you can find added as well. There’s a new throwable that summons three skeletons that help you out. I haven’t had too many chances to use this, but it’s fun and so different from what we had in the games previously. There’s also the Horn of Fair Winds, a conch shell that you can blow a large gust of air out of. This has a surprising amount of uses. You can use it to slow a fall down. You can blow someone off your boat. You can propel yourself through the water. You can blow directly into the sails of your ship to give it a big speed boost. I’ve only stumbled onto it a couple times, but it’s great. I’m always super excited to see it.

Another big addition this season is sneaking. Clicking in the right stick makes you crouch, something that is weird to think has never been in the game before. Doing this makes you harder to see and also hides your Gamertag from being displayed over your head. When this feature was rolled out, you could also apply disguises, like a barrel or a treasure chest, to try to trick other players. There was something wrong though, and the developers ended up taking sneaking out of the game entirely for a few days. When they brought it back, they didn’t include the disguises. I’m hoping we’ll be seeing those again shortly.

I love Sea of Thieves and it’s really impressive how far the game has come since it first released. These newest additions are some of the most transformative we’ve seen, and I’m glad to see that there’s still so many fresh ideas over at Rare. I’ll be continuing to play as always and am looking forward to seeing what they come up with next.