Season Ten Is Alright

Season 10 of Sea of Thieves has finally come out, way after Season 9 wore out its welcome. It brings some new features and a bunch of quality of life changes, with the biggest new thing being guilds. But is Season 10 any good? Well…

First things first, we haven’t gotten all of Season 10 yet. For reasons unknown, the three biggest features have been split into three parts. Part 1, guilds, are already out. The new PvP-ish mission will come out in November, while Safer Seas isn’t coming until December. What we’ve been given are some of the QoL updates, as well as the new season pass.

So, guilds. Guilds are the newest feature and the newest massive grind. The idea is that you can sail out and be joined by your fellow guild mates, and you can all work together for mutual rewards. Progress can be made over multiple players and multiple ships, and you can unlock various clothes and ship sets. You can have up to 24 people in a guild, and you can join up to three different guilds. At guild rank 15, you can unlock a guild emissary flag that works the same way normal emissaries do, which is pretty neat. The ranks seem to go up to 80, and at rank 80, you get a really cool black and gold clothing set. However, leveling up your guild seems to take ages. Despite three hours of gameplay the other day, Bacxaber and I only managed to earn about 1/4 of a level in our guild. The grind is real. Or, perhaps, we just haven’t found the fast way to level up yet. Either way, guilds are pretty cool, but there’s not that much to them.

The quality of life stuff though is vast. Apparently there were some hit registration changes, but I haven’t noticed much difference. That being said, swordplay does actually feel better, and I feel myself hitting more things. ‘Double gunning”, using animation cancelling to skip reloading, has been nerfed, but at the same time, people playing on controller have gotten a bit of aim assist, which didn’t really seem needed. You also no longer lose all your stuff if you get disconnected from the game, meaning you can actually hold on to those cursed cannonballs rather than having to keep them in barrels, just in case.

One big change is in rowboats. There are now different types of rowboats you can collect, and if you have a rowboat docked on your ship, it will stay docked when you log out and come back. So far though, I haven’t actually seen any of these new rowboats, and the rowboats I have seen, they’ve all been empty. What’s also nice is that you can repair rowboats now, meaning that they can take a little bit of damage before disintegrating.

What I do really like though are the new shop and seasonal items. I haven’t unlocked all the clothes from the season pass yet, but they look great. Like stuff actual pirates would actually wear, rather than the bright, gaudy stuff Rare have been adding lately. The thing I like most though is the new Gold Leaf ship set. The hull is a bit dull, but the rest of the ship set is just glorious. I immediately bought it all and stuck it on my brig, the Little Stormcloud, which I pledged to my guild. The Gold Leaf weapons are also very nice.

Overall though, there’s not really that much new in this update. Much like Abyss of Dagath in Warframe, Season 10 has mostly been quality of life stuff. That’s fine, Sea of Thieves needs these changes. But Season Nine was so long that the game is kinda aching for some meatier content. Season Ten has had an alright start, however it has been slow, and I think people expected more, considering how long we’ve waited for this update.