Rather than keeping everything under our tricorn hat for 2022, we decided to pull back the curtain in today’s Sea of Thieves 2022 Preview Event and give you all a look at our plans for the months ahead. Granted, we’ve still got some surprises stashed away deep within our trunk of wonders, but we’d thought you’d like a broad heads-up as to where our ship is sailing next.
So if you haven’t already seen it and dissected it frame by frame, settle in now and find out what’s over the horizon with our Creative Director Mike Chapman and a host of other Sea of Thieves team faces!
As you’ve just heard, the first big change coming to Sea of Thieves in 2022 is the arrival of new narrative-driven content in the form of Adventures and Mysteries to complement our regular Seasonal releases. A new Adventure is planned to begin roughly once a month, providing a new story for you and your crew to head out and participate in.
These are time-limited experiences like our previous Events, and each one will last for at least two weeks, giving you ample time to get involved in moving the story along. Each Adventure comes with an introductory cinematic trailer (see below for Adventure 1’s, revealed in our Preview Event) to set up the events of the story.
We also plan to have a finale Adventure in each Season, which will last three weeks and impact not just the lore but the world of Sea of Thieves, depending on the combined efforts and choices of the community. You don’t have to wait long for the first Adventure either – ‘Shrouded Islands’ begins on February 17th and we can’t wait for you to dive in!
Next up are Mysteries, which will see sailors with a knack for sleuthing out there solving riddles and uncovering secrets both in and out of Sea of Thieves, piecing together parts of a larger narrative. Mysteries will remain in the game for longer than Adventures, with the pace at which they unfold determined by how fast our diligent community detectives solve its many conundrums. We hope you’re ready to get to work, as the first Mystery will have you uncovering the plot behind a murder most foul.
Now, what about Seasons? These will continue at their usual pace and continue to add regular content updates and features, along with 100 levels of Seasonal progression to climb and rewards to earn. Season Six will commence in March and see the arrival of Sea Forts, new raiding experiences full of Phantoms to vanquish and treasure to pilfer.
Fittingly for Season Six, there will be six Sea Forts appearing around the Sea of Thieves, each with a Sea Fort Captain and their ghostly crew defending the loot inside. As for what brings these phantasmal fortifications from the Sea of the Damned into the land of the living – well, you’ll just have to play through our first batch of Adventures to find out.
Also during Season Six, we’re planning to add a long-requested feature to Sea of Thieves with new Pirate Legend content. Battle-hardened buccaneers will be able to take on a new Voyage at the behest of the Pirate Lord, readying themselves for new challenges and encounters. This Voyage also fleshes out the story that begins within our first set of Adventures – what new truths will be revealed by the Pirate Legends of the Sea of Thieves?
Sadly, among this flurry of new features, we do have to say goodbye to an old stalwart. As we go full steam ahead with Adventure mode, the pirate sandbox that’s always been at the heart of Sea of Thieves, we’re making the extremely difficult decision to close down The Arena.
We launched The Arena with high hopes back in 2019 as part of the Anniversary Update, but as just 2% of our player base have regularly engaged with this dedicated competitive mode, it’s finally become untenable to keep providing technical updates and QA for both The Arena and Adventure modes. To build a future for Sea of Thieves, we have to dedicate our resources to the areas of the game in which most of our players are invested.
We offer our heartfelt thanks to all you hardcore Arena players for supporting Arena during its life – and its doors will be open for a little while longer, until March 10th, if you want to gather a crew of the fiercest fighters around for a last hurrah. For full details of how we’re handling The Arena’s closure and handing out its classic ship cosmetics as a token of our gratitude to past players, see our dedicated article, Saying Goodbye to The Arena.
And that’s our show – everything announced in the Sea of Thieves 2022 Preview Event. We hope you enjoyed this look into our crystal ball (or should we say Orb?) and are as excited as we are about what’s ahead. As always, you’ll want to keep your eyes firmly glued to all our social channels for every morsel of information as soon as it arrives: that’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and the official Forums and Discord server. We can’t wait to see you all on the seas throughout 2022, and don’t forget to cast off on February 17th for the first of our brand new Adventures, ‘Shrouded Islands’. Happy sailing!