Sea of Thieves gets daily bounties, Tall Tales checkpoints and more in latest update
Including new recurring challenge events.
Another month means another batch of piratical activities on the Sea of Thieves, and today's Lost Treasures update - a somewhat lower-key offering than usual - brings a number of quality-of-life improvements such as Tall Tales checkpoints, plus a quivering heap of new limited-time events and recurring challenges, designed to encourage regular returns.
Tall Tales checkpoints (revealed to Eurogamer last month) are probably the biggest game-changer this month, enabling players to quit a session and resume an in-progress story episode at a later time. Crucially, it means pirates won't be forced to restart, losing hours of effort as a result, if an enemy crew decides to pillage mission-critical items mid-way through an adventure.
Newcomers should also find it a little easier to navigate their way through Tall Tales thanks to a few new additions to the ship's onboard map; Rare has now implemented tooltips for certain icons, guiding players in the right direction to begin their next quest.
Elsewhere, today's update introduces a range of new regular and limited-time events building on the core experience, starting with daily challenges. A new daily challenge will appear at 12:59am each morning, doling out rewards - either piles of gold or doubloons - based on the difficulty of the endeavour. Some tasks might simply demand players drink in a tavern with another crew, for instance, while others might ask them to down multiple skeleton ships.
Additionally, at least for the duration of the Lost Treasures update, Rare is introducing two daily Gold Rush hours. From 6pm-7pm and 2am-3am in the UK (that's 10am-11am and 6pm-7pm PDT), all loot handed into trading companies will grant rewards with a 1.5x multiplier.
Then, every Friday from 7pm to 7am, starting tomorrow, players can turn in stronghold loot from skeleton forts (or stolen from players doing skeleton forts, presumably) to receive increased rewards at the point of cash-in. Rare is calling this event - what else? - Fort Nights.
Rare's also hosting the first Reaper's Rewards challenge as part of its new Regular Events initiative, with proceedings set to run from Friday, 28th May, to 8th June. It consists of three tasks involving the new Reaper's Bones Trading Company, each offering boosted cash-in rewards and a variety of faction-specific emotes upon completion.
As for limited-time events, there's a second appearance for the Hunter's Haul challenge, which runs from today, 27th May, to 17th June. Players that manage to catch 300 Ruby Splashtails and hand them into any Hunter's Call representative at a seapost will earn 150 Ancient Coins to spend in the premium store - which this month features the new Splashtail Monarch costume and fishing rod, plus the strikingly daft Ruby Splashtail Ship Set.
Finally, there's an event incoming that will give pirates the chance to earn the new State-of-Decay-inspired Blighted Ship Set. Rare says full details on how to acquire the pleasingly spooksome set of undead-themed ship cosmetics - consisting of the Blighted Flag, Sails, Hull, and Figurehead - will be revealed at a later date.
All of this month's events can be found on Sea of Thieves' new event hub page over on the official website. Hopefully Rare will shift everything in-game for greater visibility soon.
It's a busy month on the Sea of Thieves, then, and those that pick up the game for the first time when it comes to Steam next Wednesday, 3rd June, will have ample to get stuck into.