Sea of Thieves Devs Talk Customization and Roadmap Plans

Rare recently held an extensive Q&A session on Reddit through an Ask Me Anything thread where they tackled Sea of Thieves questions about customization, ships, tattoos, and plans for the future.

The AMA consisted of tons of questions from those looking to pick up the latest Xbox One/Windows 10 exclusive. To help answer all of these inquiries, Rare brought a bunch of Sea of Thieves developers and designers to address the questions, all of the answerers and their titles listed below.

• Craig Duncan (Studio Head)
• Joe Neate (Executive Producer)
• Mike Chapman (Design Director)
• Ted Timmins (PC Design Lead)
• Shelley Preston (Senior Designer)

Rare’s AMA took place just days ago, so while there won’t be any possibility of asking more questions in the thread and getting answers from Rare, the thread can still be viewed to see all of Rare’s answers. But for those who don’t want to sift through all of the responses, we’ve collected some of the best questions and answers here about everything from player and ship customization to roadmap plans.

Multiple Voyages at Once

One of the first questions that players wanted answered pertained to the voyage feature that allows players to select certain quests to embark on. However, only one voyage can be active at a time, though when asked about the possibility of having more than one active voyage at once, the Sea of Thieves devs said it’s something that’s being considered.

“We’re keen to do it!” Neate said. “We just need to figure out how and when we put it in.”

Chapman added that the devs were aware of a particular situation involving the Merchant Alliance that required players to first drop off cargo before activating another voyage, an area that the devs hoped to improve. However, it looks like there will be some forms of quests available within the main voyages, according to Preston.

“Keep an eye out for a glint on a beach as a message in a bottle will allow you to do quests alongside your voyage,” the designer said.

Tattoos

Tattoos are cool, right? Whatever your opinions on the body modifications are, tattoos are just as much a part of the pirate look as the peg legs, eyepatches, and swords, so it’s hard to imagine the game’s pirates without tattoos.

Thankfully, Rare seems to agree. While customizable tattoos haven’t been made available just yet, the devs say that they’re looking into implementing tattoos along with other customization options.

“Like hair colour we’re working on the design of how we get tattoos to players. We love the idea of unlocking a tattoo after an in game event,” said Timmins. “Our IPG tech means we can do this, we think it’s super cool and we’ll look at it post launch.”

Both Neate and Preston seemed to share a similar agreement on tattoos in Sea of Thieves by agreeing with tattoos in general, especially those inspired by Sea of Thieves.

The Ferry of the Damned

One area in Sea of Thieves that some players will probably be visiting quite often is the Ferry of the Damned, a post-death ship where players go after dying. Some players wanted to see more done with the idea of pirate ghosts than just a temporary location, however, something that Rare seems to agree with.

“To answer this question a little more specifically, we’d love to expand on both the theme of ghosts and the Ferry specifically,” Chapman said. “You may have seen that the Pirate Hideout features ghosts of former pirates… in terms of the lore, they are former Pirate Legends that have had every kind of adventure imaginable and through their adventures have amassed many cursed treasures, some of which have allowed them to attain eternal life. The thinking being that if you were a pirate and you’d had every adventure, what better way to spend eternity than in a Tavern built onto a legendary ship.”

The design director continued to say that ghosts “fit perfectly” into Sea of Thieves and both that element and the Ferry of the Damned feature will “no doubt expand over time.”

Testing Future Content

Looking ahead past Sea of Thieves’ launch and into plans for future content, players hoped to know whether they’d be allowed to test content in preview builds. Neate answered to say that there were plans for testing such content, though the devs weren’t sure how the process would be implemented.

“In the future we definitely want players to help us test upcoming content,” Neate said. “We’re still figuring out this programme. We’re so appreciative of the way Pioneers have helped us so far. It’s been really valuable.”

It’s unclear whether that option would be available for both Xbox One and PC players or just those on the Windows 10 version, but more info on that should come when Rare is ready to release more content.

Sea of Thieves is scheduled to launch for the Xbox One and PC on March 20.

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