When I first heard that Sea of Thieves was going to get a season pass, I was a bit concerned. It’s become very common for games of all types and sizes to introduce paid-for Season Passes and Battle Passes that force the player to play every day in fear that they might miss out on exclusives items and cosmetics.
While this is sort of the case in Sea of Thieves, all 100 exclusive items and rewards on the Season Pass are totally free. If you do want 11 extra exclusive items you can purchase the Plunder Pass, but this is optional.
What this means is that casual players who don’t spend money won’t feel forced to purchase the pass or play every day to get the rewards. This is a great move from Rare – it encourages people to log-in and try out different parts of the game to complete challenges without making it feel like a chore.
Everything from the Plunder Pass (which includes 11 extra cosmetics) will also be purchasable in the shop once the season ends. That means you can pick and choose which cosmetics you want without paying for everything in one go, if you do want to spend any money that is.
While this isn’t a huge content update for Sea of Thieves – like the addition of the Reapers – it is a way for players to get onto the game and enjoy completing tasks. You are rewarding for simple things – like setting a skeleton on fire or catching a certain type of fish.
If you have played a lot of SoT and already completed most of the commendations, this is a way to get back that small feeling of achievement when finding rare treasure or pulling off an impressive Pirate move.
Of course, the proof is in the execution of the pass, and while the video above does highlight the free items and challenges, it’s not clear how difficult it is to level up each tier in the pass.
It might be that the pass is very difficult to level up and will require 3 months (how long the season lasts) of intense grinding, which wouldn’t great. Or, the tier could level up based on the challenges you complete, and be a bit easier to get your hands on all 100 items and rewards.
Either way, this is a small step to bringing a bit of life to Sea of Thieves, when many in the community are upset about the lack of content updates recently.
