Sea of Thieves Patch Brings Open and Closed Crews

A new Sea of Thieves update is now available that introduces both Closed and Open Crews to Microsoft's seafaring game.

Through the Open and Closed Crews, players can fill or restrict their pirate groups as they see fit with friends and solo players able to take advantage of the new features. The official patch notes explained how each of the Crew variants work as well as some plans for the future.

• Open Crews: This option works in the same way you're used to. For the Galleon, an open crew will match four players together while also replacing players who leave during a game. For the Sloop, two players will be matched together, with a leaving player being replaced when possible.
• Closed Crews: This option allows a single player to begin a game on either a Galleon or a Sloop, allowing friends to join in when they're available. You can now play with any configuration of players up to the limit on each ship, which is 4 players on the Galleon and 2 players on the Sloop, as well as preventing non-friends from being able to join you. This option replaces the 3 player Galleon and Solo Sloop options in the Main Menu.
• Coming Soon: Additional functionality coming soon for Open and Closed Crews includes the ability to dynamically switch between Open and Closed while in the game, in addition to being able to make a session fully private by preventing friends joining.

Another new feature was also added that allowed players to pass their teammates items like bananas, wooden planks, and cannon balls, but this feature appeared to be causing some problems, according to Rare, and has now been removed for the time being. As for the features that actually did get added in the new patch, you can see those below with all of the fixed bugs seen through the official patch notes.

UPDATES

• Who Goes There? - When swimming underwater, gamertag and Player Titles are no longer visible. Now you can #BeMoresneakyPirate!
• Now in Stock! - Imperial Sovereign Blunderbuss, Pistol, Sails, Hull and Liveries are now available to purchase in the Ancient Isles. They were incorrectly listed as available in Patch 1.0.6.
• Flintlock Pistol - New sound effects for close fire and reloading the Flintlock Pistol.
• Icons - Within the clothing chest, the icons to unequip all or select a random outfit have been updated.
• Health Bar UI - Deciding whether to eat that banana or keep swiping your sword? You'll notice some changes to the health bar UI, fancy!

PROGRESSION & ECONOMY UPDATES

• Price Changes - Greedy pirates had overpriced the Castaway Bilge Rat weapons and ship liveries. These have now been reduced. Anyone who purchased items within this set pre-price adjustment will have the difference reimbursed very soon.
• Strike Gold - As Pirates rank up with all the trading companies, the chances of finding more valuable rewards has been increased. Say good-bye to those Castaway Chests at higher ranks!