Sea Of Thieves Adds a Flamethrower Skull & More In Ashen Winds Update

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Sea of Thieves is heating up with its Ashen Winds update, which adds fire-themed bosses, a fire-belching skull weapon and plenty of new cosmetic options. After a somewhat disappointing launch, Rare’s multiplayer pirate adventure has bounced back thanks to its regular content drops, recently hitting a new high of 15 million players.

Now two years old, Sea of Thieves has grown a lot from the shape it was in when it first launched. At least according to Xbox chief Phil Spencer, Sea of Thieves’ inclusion on Xbox Game Pass helped the game find an audience that it otherwise might not have. As a multiplayer game that lives or dies on having enough players to keep things interesting, Sea of Thieves being added to thousands of players’ libraries for free certainly helped. In June, its player count got another bump when Sea of Thieves finally came to Steam, though without the crossplay capabilities currently enjoyed by its Xbox One and Windows 10 Store customers.

Whatever platform they’re playing on, Sea of Thieves players may find themselves in hot water after the release of July’s Ashen Winds update, recently detailed by Rare. Most notably, Ashen Winds adds new bosses that look like fiery variants of the game’s Skeleton Lords, called Ashen Lords, which add an arsenal of fire-infused powers to their encounters. Ashen Lords look like they’ll put up a tough fight, with the ability to call meteors from the sky and breath fire. Players who challenge them and come out victorious will be rewarded with a flame-spewing skull that they can either sell to the Order of Souls or use as a flamethrower capable of setting other players and ships ablaze.

On the cuter side, Ashen Winds adds a new selection of cursed but still adorable pets, plus new Ashen tattoos and sails. The update also comes with new emotes, a suite of improved accessibility options, and new items in the game’s Black Market. The new accessibility options in particular are worth a look, as they add support for one-stick control, automatic camera adjustments, and automatic surfacing when players go overboard. As with any patch, Ashen Winds contains a number of bug fixes and other smaller improvements to round things out.

Sea of Thieves has grown into a much better game than it was at launch, and the Ashen Winds update shows once again just how much Rare is willing to experiment with its nautical plundering simulator. That’s a good sign for the game’s future, and hopefully a sign of what to expect from the developer’s upcoming game, Everwild.

Sea of Thieves is available now on Xbox One and PC.