‘Sea Of Thieves’ launches first battle pass season next week

According to a post on the official Sea of Thieves Twitter account, Season One kicks off on Thursday, January 28. This marks the game’s pivot to a new battle pass system as well as seasonal content drops.

Season One is ushering in a new progression system that allows players to rank up through 100 levels of Pirate Renown. There’s also a variety of new rewards, live events, Emporium updates, and Twitch drops to look forward to. With Season One specifically, there’s a new type of Merchant Alliance voyage, which will find players working to recover a lost shipment.

News of the battle pass system first broke in December. Following the game’s inaugural battle pass debut, developer Rare is moving Sea Of Thieves to a three-month content release model. Before, it released new Sea Of Thieves content on a monthly basis.

Though the battle pass is free, there’s also a paid version called the Plunder Pass. It offers a variety of items and rewards sold via the Sea Of Thieves cash store. This is an opt-in tier, and will come packing a wide selection of items that will need to be purchased instead of earned.

In November, Sea Of Thieves executive producer Joe Neate claimed that 2021 would be the game’s ‘biggest year yet.’ Though that month’s update was uncharacteristically lean, it paved the way for the Rare team to work on implementing the battle pass system.

Over the past few weeks, Sea Of Thieves has remained one of five games rounding out the Steam top-sellers list. Since making its Steam debut in June 2020, it’s been steadily picking up speed.