Sea of Thieves' fifth anniversary update a 'reinvigorating' quality of life bonanza

eurogamer.net:

Sea of Thieves is — can you believe it? — five years old this month, and to celebrate its half-decade anniversary, developer Rare is ushering in a new quality-of-life-focused season all about reinvigorating the piratical multiplayer adventure's core sandbox.

Sea of Thieves' Season 9 — which launches next Thursday, 16th March, just ahead of the game's 20th March anniversary — is somewhat unusual in that it isn't really built around one single flagship new feature. Instead, it's tweaking, finessing, and refreshing the game as a whole in a bid to create a more coherent, enjoyable experience after five years of disparate updates.

For starters, come the new update, all World Events — from ship battles to Ashen Lords — will dynamically scale to match different crew sizes. Additionally, emergent event — the kraken, megaladon, fog, and ship wrecks — have been adjusted to make them a more common occurrence after having all become increasingly seldom seen as updates have continued.

Elsewhere, Forts of Fortune have been rebalanced to make them less of a tedious time sink, and new Chests of Fortune have been added as rewards for completing them. These can be turned in to earn Commendations and parts of the new Fates of Fortune ship set, with future seasons promising to unlock more cosmetics as the Chests of Fortune rotate to new locations. Similarly, Reaper's Chests, which now have a permanent beacon to alert crews to their presence when in the hands of other players, can be turned in to unlock the new Fates of Fortune weapon set.

Season 9 also introduces new uses for Sea of Thieves' increasingly redundant doubloons currency, earned through a variety of in-game activities. It'll be possible to spend them on three new