Sea of Thieves’ highly anticipated and slightly delayed season 7 update is almost here, and Rare details its big new Captaincy addition in a new trailer.
In case you hadn’t heard, Sea of Thieves allows you to buy and own ships when season 7 goes live on Thursday, August 4. We’ve known since Rare unveiled the new feature during non-E3, but now we know exactly how it all works, including the price of the ships and how to customize them.
First of all, if you buy a sloop you get 250,000 gold, while brigantines cost 375,000 gold and galleons cost 500,000 gold. Once you have become a proud ship owner, you can choose a name for your ship and display it prominently. However, it is best to think carefully about the name of your ship as renaming it will cost you real money.
Ship ownership gives you more than just a persistent craft to take across servers – it also unlocks a wealth of new customization options. Where with the old loaner ships you can only adjust the outside of the ship, you can now also decorate the interior spaces. For example, you can customize interior furniture such as the captain’s bed, table, carpet, and curtains, and add trinkets such as pictures and trophies to the walls. Just be sure to push them back into place when they shift due to intense combat.
All these decorations will stay on your ship from one session to the next, but so will any damage you take during your adventures. Fortunately, you can have it restored by Scarlett in exchange for gold instead of plugging all the holes yourself.
There’s a new progression system consisting of several milestones that you can unlock by playing all aspects of the game – from the number of days you’ve spent at sea to the number of times you’ve repaired your ship – giving you even more ways to customize your boat.
Season 7 also adds new special voyages, exclusive to Captains, designed to give you more control over how you play. For example, some Captain’s Voyages will be short and sweet, tasking you with finding treasure on a single map, while others will involve different activities and take a lot more time to complete.
The new Sovereign Company will make life easier for Captains by giving them one location where they can drop off all different types of loot so you can finally stop asking your crew members where to sell the damn Crate of Fine Teas. Can you tell I’m particularly excited about this position?
Finally, the Captain’s Logbook records everything you and your crew have done during your session, but if you are sunk by another crew, they can steal your log and sell it at the Reaper’s Hideout for gold and reputation.
That pretty much covers it for the Captaincy features. I’m excited about how it can make progress even more rewarding by letting you hold your own customizable ships during sessions rather than sinking them at the end of the night.
Find out where we ranked Sea of Thieves on our list of the best Xbox Series X games released so far.