The 15th season of Sea of Thieves content, appropriately named “Wild Things”, is launching on Thursday, Febraury 20th. The team at Rare have been teasing a few details here and there in the build up to the new season, and today they finally released a developer update covering what Sea of Thieves fans should expect.
Presented by the studio’s Production Director, Drew Stevens, the video covers a variety of material pertinent to players, as well as information on the team’s work in the background.
Drew kicks off the video explaining how Season 15’s content will roll out in three separate updates; one in February, March, and April. “This is to “The primary goal here is to slow the rate of change arriving in each update,” Stevens says, “so we can better maintain the health of the game while also giving you all something to look forward to in each of the month’s updates.”
Season 15 focuses on the Hunter’s Call, one of the factions in Sea of Thieves that is focused around hunting, fishing, and cooking. The February update will see two new breeds of Megalodon inhabit the ocean deep, but also an increase to the faction level cap up to 100. crews can now take on voyages for the Hunter’s Call from the captain’s table, with faction specific loot and themed challenges.
In March players will get their hands on the hunting spear, and discover a host of new wildlife. The last update in April brings the opportunity for players to track down wild boars, and undertake a new megalodon hunting voyage.
In the second part of the video, Drew covers a number of performance updates the team at Rare have made, including adjustments to loot spawning and hand ins, the frequency of the recently added Burning Blade world event, and server multithreading.
Before moving on, Drew highlights frame rates, as the team have noticed players with more powerful rigs choosing to uncap theirs. “Sea of Thieves is currently optimised for 30, 60 and 120FPS across PC and console,” he points out, “and you’ll therefore get the best experience when locking your frame rate at one of these level.”
Stevens takes a moment here to address issues that have been plaguing the game more recently, in particular cheaters and griefing, as well as more improvements to game security. “We know that the impact of cheaters is pretty significant at the moment. We feel your pain, and are working hard to continue fighting back against their attacks.”
The final part of the video is the announcement of a new team being founded at Rare, which would see the team recruiting from their many fans. “We know the responsibility of quality delivery falls has to sit with us ,” explains Drew. “In order to do that we’re going to be expanding our team here at Rare, and we’re hiring experienced Sea of Thieves players to form a player experience focused quality team.”
Those are just some of the details from the developer update, and I urge fans to watch it themselves to get the full rundown.
The team at Rare have clearly been hard at work supporting one of Xbox’s most successful new IPs, with the “Wild Things” Season 15 update the next of many free updates. Along with the recent mention of Everwild, courtesy of Phil Spencer and the Xbox Era podcast, it sounds like Rare are having a wild 2025!
What do you think of the content and updates coming to Sea of Thieves with Season 15? Let us know in the comments.
