Sea Of Thieves' Hungering Deep bares its teeth today
Going to need a bigger boat
Ah, Sea of Thieves. A few slightly barnacled spots on its hull aside, it's a lovely little thing so long as you can get a crew together. It's just a little light on things to do, outside of crossing swords with other rival crews of players. Today's big update, The Hungering Deep, promises to bring a little bit more action to the table in a new time-limited quest chain, as well as a bunch of new items to use, and customisation options for both pirates and their vessels alike.
Making yourself heard seems to be an important part of The Hungering Deep, with a Speaking Trumpet (reach out and shout at someone) and Drum being earned through following the Hungering Deep storyline. These items will eventually be sold normally, but are campaign-exclusive for the time being. There's also a new range of tattoos for pirates, flags that you can fly from your crow's nest and stylish looking scars that your pirate can earn through completion of especially tough missions. While the former two can be bought, scars will be earned solely through play.
The most baffling part of The Hungering Deep update is that for a game that was already desperately in need of some additional meat to hang from its bones, it really doesn't make much sense for new story-driven content like this to be time-limited, but it is. In fact, they've even gone as far as introducing a new NPC - the Bilge Rat - to taverns in order to keep players abreast of what (if any) events are running. Being that there's only one at the moment, you're best off just tracking down Merrick, the character in the trailer above.
A quick peek at some gameplay footage from players already diving into The Hungering Deep reveals an interesting but all-too-brief quest chain, capped off with a genuinely challenging boss fight against (wait for it - it's a surprise) a very large, very pointy shark, capable of biting nasty holes in your ship's hull. A team will need to coordinate repairs, keeping the cannons stocked and trying to keep the circling fish within firing range, and presumably victory brings more than just bragging rights.
The Hungering Deep update for Sea of Thieves is live now, and you can see the full patch-notes here.