Sea of Thieves Season 9 to Focus on Quality of Life and Sandbox Features, Out on March 16

Developer Rare is celebrating the fifth birthday of Sea of Thieves with a season that will focus primarily on quality of life features. Season 9 of Sea of Thieves, slated to be released on March 16, will be bringing with it a series of tweaks and updates.

With the new update, all World Events will now scale to the size of a crew dynamically, rather than having a fixed level of challenge for pirate crews of all sizes. Random encounters, like the kraken or the megaladon, will also be much more common.

The update focuses quite a bit on bringing the game’s open seas sandbox gameplay to life, with various activities getting new rewards, like the Forts of Fortune. Doubloons will also get new uses, like being used to purchase new Pirate Legend voyages. Doubloons will also be useful for players hoping to grab cosmetics from earlier seasons.

Other features of the new season include a new Plunder Pass, and smaller tweaks to the game’s UI, such as a new radial menu for food.

Sea of Thieves is available on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.