Sea Of Thieves adds ghost ship fleets with spooky wraith cannons

Ah is it that time of the month already? Rare have updated their seafaring pirate 'em up and as usual there are new things that can kill you. The Haunted Shores update for Sea Of Thieves adds fleets of spooky ghost ships directed by big bad Captain Flameheart. They've made updates to the non-verbal callouts system and, important for yours truly, a radial picker for playing tunes on your instruments.

The marquee change is of course the spooky ghost ships. They can pop up around the sea to bother you just like skeleton ships and megalodons but can be called up on cue for a fight as well. Rare say that ghost ships are more agile than other enemies on the seas. You'll have to dodge their creepy phantom cannonballs and mines that float in the water. If you send the whole fleet back to the bottom of the sea, you'll do battle with Flameheart's flagship the Burning Blade.

On the quality of life side, Rare are making some changes to how the non-verbal system works. Previously, you could pull up a radial menu that lets you call out important things like approaching ships, directions, or the fact that you're holding a chest your crew needs. That text gets displayed on screen if you don't care to are unable to chat via microphone.

Rare are making some changes so that most important callouts like "Enemy here!" take priority over context-sensitive ones. They're also swapping the default controller button used to open the menu so that players can run and call out at the same time. You can read some more detailed notes about changes to the non-verbal system as well.

Big on my list is the new shanty selection radial menu. Formerly, pulling out your instrument and starting to play would give you a random pick from all the Sea Of Thieves tunes. I can't count the number of times I've stood on the deck effectively pressing "skip song" by starting and stopping my instrument until I land on the tune I wanted. As an added bonus, now I'll know more song names besides just Ride Of The Valkyries.

You can read about the rest of Rare's changes to Sea Of Thieves in the 2.0.16 patch notes.