Sea of Thieves has just started season 11 ever since the game moved to a seasonal update model. This latest season has completely changed how players will begin their voyage on the high seas and how they interact with existing gameplay mechanics.

After nearly 6 years, Sea of Thieves has changed a lot from its inception. There’s Hourglass PvP introduced in season 8, there’s Guilds added in Season 10, and that’s only the recent additions! Like any other game with such a long life, it’s understandable that content available at launch can become neglected or irrelevant; but season 11 appears to fix all that!

Reputation Overhaul

Previously, players could only achieve reputation grade 75 with the Merchant Alliance, Gold Hoarders, Order of Souls, and Reaper’s Bones. Athena’s Fortune could go up to 30 and Hunter’s Call to 50. Now reputations can achieve “distinctions”!

Distinctions are similar to prestiging in other games (the words are virtually interchangeable here). Upon reaching the new cap of grade 100, players will earn a distinction and unlock a new cosmetic for the faction.

Longterm players will now be able to visit the old reputation system since many likely achieved the max reputation for most (if not all of these factions) quite some time ago.

Voyage Overhaul

Voyages have been given a new shine. Instead of clunkily buying voyages and placing them on the table, you can now accept voyages directly from your captain’s table! Not only that, but you can choose to “dive” beneath the waves and emerge directly at the nearest quest island.

Some fans were skeptical that this diving would diminish the open feeling to Sea of Thieves, but there’s a few things to bear in mind:

• Ships will leave loot behind when diving, meaning you still need to sail manually to an Outpost to sell.
• You can’t dive when another player ship is nearby.

Rather than making the seas dead, this change ought to make them more exciting. All this does is cut out the boring sail to the start of your adventure, now players can kick things off right away and begin traveling the waves with a cargo full of plunder. Which means for all the PvP fans out there, most ships you encounter should have loot instead of only just beginning their session and being entirely empty.

Loot Overhaul

Last but not least, there’s new loot! Along with old reputations being given new life, old loot has too. Newer world events and voyages like the Legend of the Veil were vastly more profitable than your classic X Marks the Spot maps or Cargo Runs.

The Sea of Thieves has been updated with new loot and balanced rewards to bring back the spontaneous adventure of the high seas instead of players sailing optimally between high-tier voyages and world events with little variation.

Speaking of World Events, players can also dive to them! These dives are done from the captain’s table and are done on behalf of the trading companies. Which means that World Event voyages you undertake, whether that’s a lowly Sea Fort or a grand Ashen Winds encounter will drop loot relevant to the trading company you chose! No more ending up with a bunch of mystical bounty skulls while you’re sailing under the Gold Hoarder’s flag.