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Introduction
The wait is over and The Sea of Thieves Season 7 is here! It launched on 4th of August and while it brought many new additions to the game that had been asked for a while, some things we wanted are still not here. Overall RARE has done a very good job with the update except for a few annoying parts. I have spent my last week playing the Season 7 update, tried to explore all the nooks and crannies of the long-awaited Captaincy content. A fore warning, this review is going to be quite in-depth and will cover almost everything about the Captaincy update. So, if you are expecting a short read, this won’t be it. Without further ado, let us get into it!
BE THE CAPTAIN OF YOUR OWN SHIP!
The biggest thing in this update is being able to captain your own ship. How do you become a captain? And what does that bring?
Ship Ownership
Probably the most important part of this update is owning your own ship. Well RARE has made sure everyone gets to buy a ship. You don’t have to be a pirate legend to purchase a ship and the prices are quite low.
While I understand RARE’s determination to adhere to the new player audience, I think these ship prices are too low. Most of them can be purchased within a day of grinding. When everyone so easily gets to become a captain, being a captain doesn’t feel as special.
My biggest advice for any soon-to-be captains is that make sure you are completely happy with the name you choose. You can only change your ships’ name with Ancient Coins. And it’s not even a small amount. It costs 499 Ancient Coins to change the name. That is an absurdly high price. I hope RARE realizes what a bad decision this is and reverts it in the near future.
Before you set sail, you can set your ship settings, so that your crew-mates can’t change any customizations. This option can be reverted from the in-game crew menu as well.
Once you become a captain and set foot on your ship for the first time, you will be greeted by the Pirate Lord. He will give you a quick introduction to the captaincy content. I really liked this sequence. It doesn’t feel too much like a tutorial and has a pretty cool moment right at the beginning.
Ship Customization
Now let us talk about the ways you can customize your new awesome ship. Unfortunately, there is still no customization for the rowboat or the harpoons. But, If, you have a Sloop or a Brigantine; you will get to customize the table, drapes, bed, and rugs. And, if you have a Galleon, you will also get to customize the captain’s chair, chandeliers, and curtains. You can also place trinkets on various places along all the ships. These customizations are aesthetically pleasing but I can’t stop myself from stating the obvious. The captain’s cabin in neither the sloop nor the brig, look nearly as good as the galleon.
While I can see that there is limited space on the sloop and the brig, there could’ve been more places to put trinkets or some other way to make sure those ships felt unique too. Either way it still feels nice to decorate your own ship, your own way.
Now on to the monetary side of things, what will it cost you to customize your ship according to your desires? Well except for some of the trinkets, almost all these customizations need to be unlocked with milestones first. Since I will be talking about the milestones in-depth in the next part, for now I will only focus on the prices of the customizations.
How Expensive are These New Customizations?
The trinkets are quite affordable. However there are some trinkets, called “trophies” that need to be unlocked first. Other than that, almost every other customization piece is expensive. You will be paying 100k+ for many of these single pieces even after you’ve unlocked them with milestones. I suppose this is RARE’s way of giving players a place to spend money after the update.
There is one more part of the ship you can customize, and it applies to all ship types. The crest (where the ship’s name will go), banner, title, and flag of your ship. The banner and the title are free to equip after unlocking with milestones. The banner, title, and the ship and captain name will be displayed when another player approaches your ship, looks at it with a spyglass or sinks it.
Now onto the crest of the ship. This is quite an important piece. Once again you need to unlock them through milestones before being able to change it. However, I was quite disappointed with the “free” available options regarding the crests. To me they didn’t look nearly as appealing as the ones you can purchase from Pirate Emporium. And some of them are also obviously parts of existing ship sets. This could be considered a personal preference but I will be putting a screenshot for anyone who would like to compare.
Saving Your Customizations
All these customizations along with the previously available regular ship customizations can be saved on your captained ship. It will cost a bit of money to save each piece as default. The prices range from 2500 gold to 7500 gold. This is a very neat feature. I was a big fan of it until I had a glitch happen multiple times where my saved customizations reset. I had to pay again to save them onto my ship. This wasn’t a huge problem for me because it was not that expensive. But for a new player who grinded money to be able to save their customizations, this glitch would be upsetting.
Battle Scars
In addition to the customization options, being a captain will also make it so that, the battle scars on your ship with persist between sessions. You can repair your ship before sailing it, through the “my ships” menu, or through the shipwright after sailing. Of course, this will also cost money. Honestly, I understand the reasoning behind this feature, and it sounds cool as an idea. However, I can see how it would be annoying for some players and be seen as a waste of money.
Milestones
“Milestone system brings a lot of new things to do for the completionist pirate”. Is what I would’ve liked to say. But no, it doesn’t. Yes, it brings more statistics you can grind and new titles to equip, but there is nothing new in the game for it. You need to do everything you’ve already done AGAIN. Your commendations will not carry over. While it will be a great way to track progress for a new player, if you had played this game for a long time and had a lot of commendations already done, this will feel like just more grinding of the same things. There are milestones for SLEEPING. Literally hours of staring into a black screen. That sounds fun, doesn’t it?
There are 8 categories of milestones. You must grind all 8 of them separately for your pirate, sloop, brigantine, and galleon. Once again, I’m appalled by RARE’s choice to not carry over your commendations. They could’ve at least carried over your pirate milestones and you would still need to grind for the ships’.
There is nothing special or new the milestone system brings to the game. It’s basically the commendation system in one single place. So, I would say this is the worst part of the update for me even though I enjoy working for commendations.
Captain’s Logbook
Another new addition to your captain’s cabin is the Captain’s Logbook. This book is located on your quest table and keeps a record of your ship’s activities. It mostly has statistics like; days since last sunk, gold earned, captained ships seen, etc. Some of these statistics will be consisting between sessions and some of them will only be current session based. Now the ships you sink will also drop the ships’ logbook. You can sell this to the reapers. The base value is 300 gold. But according to the game this value increases the longer the sunken ship was on the seas for. However I have sold about six or seven of these and they all were valued at 300 gold.
There is another issue I keep experiencing with the captain’s logbook. It doesn’t keep my statistics. I can see my gold earned for the ship through the milestones page, but it appears 0 on the captain’s logbook. Maybe this is caused by a glitch that will be fixed soon, but it is still annoying. So, I recommend players to be aware of this glitch and not pay too much attention to your logbook statistics.
SOVEREIGNS AND NEW ADDITIONS TO THE OUTPOSTS!
There are 2 more new additions to the outposts! If you ask me both changes are amazing quality of life additions. I’ve been using them casually ever since the update came out. They are simply very convenient.
New Shipwright Services
You can now buy Captain’s Voyages and extra supplies from the shipwright. You need to be captain for both these new services. The extra supplies include cannonballs, wood, throwables, fruit, meat, and worms. When bought they will automatically be sent to you ship. This addition doesn’t affect the ability to buy resource creates from the merchant either. So, you can buy both and start sailing with a nice number of supplies. I am honestly a big fan of this change. While I feel the amounts of these supplies could be made higher, it is still something to be happy about.
Captain’s Voyages
Now to talk about Captain’s Voyages There are 2 different difficult/length voyages for almost all the activities you can do as an emissary. For example, you can buy a treasure hunt for 400 gold, or you can buy one for 1500 gold, depending on how long you want to be on this voyage. This is a great idea! And it has a lot of potential to really create customized gameplay for a lot of players. However, It doesn’t work perfectly. I’ve tested the different “length” voyages a couple of times and the rewards were inconsistent. Sometimes the supposedly “longer” voyage took less time than the other one. And sometimes I was rewarded better from the “easier” voyage compared to the “harder” one. Assuming these problems can be addressed by RARE, this is still a very useful feature.
You can also buy combined voyages. These will have a bit of all the activities you can do as that specific company’s emissary. There are also mercenary voyages. These ones have a couple of activities from each company, combined in one bundle. All the available voyages here can be bought either in singles or as a 5-stack bundle. They will be stored on your ship in your captain’s voyages cabinet. You can start them just as you start regular voyages. One big difference is if you cancel a captain’s voyage, it will be destroyed.
Sovereigns
The last addition to the outposts is the colorful Sovereigns. They are a new trading group. They will take all the treasure you have and deliver it to the appropriate trading companies. Delivering your loot to sovereigns will count for the commendations, such as “deliver 10 Athena kegs to the mysterious stranger”.
You cannot give them reapers loot, like a ship’s flag or a humble gift. This is because they fear reapers and will not work with them. However, you can still give them loot if you are carrying a reaper’s flag. Keep in mind you won’t be getting extra gold if you deliver to the sovereigns as a reaper emissary.
The Sovereign’s shack have a rowboat docking spot and harpoons stations above to make unloading loot easier. Honestly this works like a charm. Selling loot has never been easier. I am a huge fan of this addition. One problem is that they will not accept any treasure if you aren’t a captain. If you are a crew member of a captained ship, your captain needs to be close by so that you can sell to the sovereigns.
WHAT ELSE IS NEW ON SEASON 7?
There is a new plunder pass as always and a couple of very crucial gameplay changes. Let’s get into it.
Plunder Pass
This season you will be able to unlock the Beachcomber’s ship and costume set if you have a Plunder Pass. This is once again a seasonal themed ship. I’m not a big fan of these ship sets so, personally I will be skipping it this season. But it is up to you to decide if you would like to have it or not.
Gameplay Changes
There are a couple of new gameplay changes. Some of them are long expected, while some of them are redundant. Here’s the full list and my thoughts about them.
There are now carriable stools washed up around the islands of Sea of Thieves. You can pick these up, put them anywhere you like and sit on them. That’s it really. I don’t really know who was asking for this, but it’s a cool little novelty addition I suppose.
Next is a long-awaited addition to the quest books and pages. You can now zoom in to any quest book page or quest page. You can use “F” on keyboard or, clicking right stick on the controller to access this feature. This has been especially useful on “X marks the spot” treasure hunts for me. I am glad RARE finally launched such an add-on. It really helps with the annoyance of trying to find treasure on huge islands.
You can no longer revive crew members on enemy ships. This feature was definitely added to stop spawn killing. And it really works. The fights last longer since you can’t just corner the enemy crew on their ship anymore.
Sloop Changes
There are big changes to the Sloop and the “solo sloop player”. Here is the list.
- Respawn timers have been decreased for solo players.
- The sloop’s mast now takes 2 chain shots or 3 regular cannonballs to fall. This is a massive buff to the sloop. The effects of this change are already there as the I’ve noticed an increase in number of sloops I see.
- In addition to that there are also new respawn locations around the sloop and reduced knock back from cannonballs while on a sloop.
With these new changes, it is fair to say fighting on a sloop became a lot more advantageous. I hope the PVP fights will be lasting longer, and we will see less of “boarding” being an easy way to win.
CONCLUSION
The Captaincy Update brought a lot of new cool stuff to the Sea of Thieves. Captaining your own ship and customizing it is really engaging. And the perks you get for being a captain are also quite impactful. While there aren’t any new gameplay events added with this update yet, we might see some in the upcoming future. Overall, only part I’m disappointed with in this update is the milestones. Other than that, definitely a solid new season, with a lot of quality-of-life improvements.
