Sea of Thieves patch addresses spawn griefing

Sea of Thieves‘ new 1.0.2 patch, going live today, will address the issue of spawn griefing.

The patch will address the problem of a defeated crew repeatedly attacking its nearby conqueror with a fresh ship every time they lose.

“When a ship sinks, we have significantly increased the distance at which the crews new ship will respawn,” developer Rare said of the patch. “Ships will now respawn outside of visible view of the ship that sank them. This is in response to lots of player feedback which highlighted that the previous spawn distance was resulting in “griefing” behaviour and stalemates at the forts!”

The issue of griefing is one that continually appears in critiques of the game — including our own review — so this is being applauded by the game’s community.

Full patch notes are below:

Sea of Thieves 1.0.2 update

• Ship respawn distance – When a ship sinks, we have significantly increased the distance at which the crews new ship will respawn. Ships will now respawn outside of visible view of the ship that sank them. This is in response to lots of player feedback which highlighted that the previous spawn distance was resulting in “griefing” behaviour and stalemates at the forts!
• Mermaid Teleport – Pirates will now have to drop any treasure item they are carrying before being able to see the ‘Teleport back to ship’ option from the mermaid. We saw feedback that players were accidentally leaving treasure behind in the sea, so wanted to make it more clear that when you teleport you leave your treasure behind!

Fixed Issues

• [PC Only] Players should no longer experience the 0x80070005 error or get stuck at 99% during installation.
• Players are no longer able to fall through the ship geometry and into the sea if they are to repeatedly jump on the chests/barrel located mid deck
• The voyage image on the captain’s table now displays the rank (promotion) banner in the top right corner, to keep in line with other areas of the game UI.
• When accepting a game invitation whilst matchmaking, the game no longer enters a temporary unresponsive state.
• Bounty Captains will no longer spawn multiple times.

Performance Improvements

• Multiple server and client crash fixes.

Further improvements and optimisations for all platforms are ongoing.

Known Issues

• Players may experience details of their pirate (such as hair colour / scars) looking different from their initial selection.
• Achievements earned prior to March 29th are delayed, but will be awarded once our fix is applied.
• Some players are unable to equip a second weapon. For a potential workaround see our Support Article.
  For an update on these three issues, please read our Launch Update written by Executive Producer, Joe Neate.
• Some players have not received their Black Dog Pack code.
  If you pre-ordered from the official Microsoft Store, please submit a Support ticket through Support. If you pre-ordered from another retailer, please contact them to receive your code.
• Some players cannot see their downloadable content in game.
  Please read our Support Article for a potential workaround for this issue.
• Bounty quest skeletons sometimes do not spawn or cannot be found.
  If you encounter this bug, a potential work around is to sail away from the island until it’s out of range, and then sail back in to trigger the Island Name banners.

Sea of Thieves is available now on Windows PC and Xbox One.