Sea of Thieves is adding fast-travel in radical on-demand voyage overhaul

eurogamer.net:

Sea of Thieves' 11th season is right around the corner, and it looks like its arrival next Tuesday, 23rd January, could very well bring the most radical overhaul for the multiplayer pirate adventure since its launch back in 2018. Behold the advent of fast-travel.

As per Rare's latest video update, Sea of Thieves' Season 11 makes sweeping changes to the way voyages are accessed and activated. Previously, voyages — essentially self-contained quests directing players to specific themed activities, if you're familiar — could only be purchased from trading company representatives at one of the game's starting outposts. That meant a whole lot of time spent engaged in often wholly uneventful sailing as you traversed back and forth across the map to pick up new voyages, drop off loot, and on.

From Season 11 onward, however, all voyages will be immediately accessible at any time from the updated Quest Table on your ship. Here, you'll get on-demand access to trading company voyages (ranked by length), Tall Tales, and more, meaning you can dive straight into any voyage type you fancy without first needing to take a lengthy trip back to an outpost to buy it.

And when I say «dive», I mean it literally; in a hugely surprising move, Rare is introducing the equivalent of fast-travel to Sea of Thieves, potentially cutting out sailing time almost completely. Once you've selected a voyage via the Quest Table, you can either opt to hoist anchor and travel the old fashion way or to immediately sink beneath the waves, popping up right next to your destination.

Rare isn't jettisoning the «sea» bit of Sea of Thieves completely though (which is probably just as well given you'd only have an «of» left after last month's private servers already made it possible to entirely ignore the «thieves» bit); any loot onboard your ship when a dive is initiated will immediately be lost as it floats to the ocean's surface, meaning