Season 12 Will Be The Best Time To Get Into Sea of Thieves

Season 11 has been great at drawing players back, but the players it has brought back have been all over the place in skill levels, and we’ve had a lot of veteran players come back to kick the shit out of everyone else. The allure of shiny gold rings and new faction stuff does a lot, and since voyages are much more accessible now, on top of the ability to raid world events for unique loot, the chances of getting ganked are super high. Sure, Season 10 brought us Safer Seas, but that’s honestly just a glorified tutorial, only really good for doing non-gold-rewarding things like fishing and Tall Tales. There’s a ton of gold and reputation to be made, and it ain’t happening on Safer Seas.

However, currently, despite the changes to voyages and the increase in levels, season 11 is still just standard Sea of Thieves. The meta remains mostly unchanged. Sure, ways of farming reputation efficiently have changed, but the combat is the same. Which means that veteran players remain just that, veteran players.

But with season 12, we’re getting new toys. Not only are we getting new types of cannonball (the scattershot, which is less accurate and does less damage but makes more holes) but we’re also getting new WEAPONS. This is huge. Sea of Thieves players up until now will always expect you to carry the same gear. You either have two guns, or you have a gun and a sword. And the guns all work predictably – the rifle is for long distance shots, the blunderbuss is a one-shot tool if you shove it in someone’s face, and the flintlock pistol is somewhere in the middle. Veteran players know this and newbie players learn this. It’s been like this for five years now.

The new weapon in season 12 though? The double-barreled pistol and the throwing knives? They’re going to throw EVERYONE off their game. New player and old player alike are suddenly going to have to learn not just how to use these weapons, but all the new combinations of weapons overall. After all, if someone has throwing knives, you now can’t rely on just juking and kiting them, they could still clip you, even if they’ve wasted all their gun ammo. And you need to be weary and see if that pistol is a flintlock or a double-barreled one. At the same time, these new weapons are more unpredictable, since they do more than one thing: the double-barreled pistol in particular has a charge shot, so you need to know how much damage you’re potentially about to take. The throwing knives in particular are even more interesting, because they are both melee AND ranged, AND, unlike guns, you’ll be able to pick up missed knives and throw them again, meaning you can’t count how many shots they have left.

On top of that, we’re going to have the Bonecaller throwable item, which will swiftly screw around with the number of enemies you’re facing. While I don’t think summon-able skeletons will affect the meta THAT much, they will definitely be a new annoyance, as well as a way of solo players to be less solo.

Worst, or best of all though, the Windcaller promises to change things up completely. I’m pretty certain that the Windcaller will be changed (after all, what they showed in the 2024 preview made it seem insanely powerful), but the ability to temporarily boost the speed of your ship is going to completely turn around naval combat and pursuing/fleeing enemies, as well as offer a TON of ways to catch up with other players. Things like sloops sailing into headwind to outpace galleons and galleons being the slowest ships are going to no longer be permanently true facts, and getting a Windcaller may end up being a requirement for PvP.

With all these massive changes, veteran players will no longer have reliable game knowledge to keep them afloat. Everyone will have to start adapting to the new tools Sea of Thieves will provide. And this gives a chance for new players to learn alongside old players, and actually thrive for once.

So yeah, when season 12 comes out, I recommend jumping in. It’ll be confusing and messy, but everyone will be confused. It’ll be great.