Sea Of Thieves has gone all Lock Stock in Season 12 with double-barreled guns and, er, skeleton summons
Plus tightrope walking and owls! Classic London gangster stuff!
Remember that bit in that Guy Ritchie film where Dexter Fletcher shoot a guy and then throws a glowing jar over his soldier that summons a bunch of skeletons to help him out? Me too! Must have been the direct influence for Sea Of Thieves' new Season 12, which launched earlier this week with a bang - from two smoking barrels! Among the additions in this season of the ever popular salty sea-dog open-world adventure are double barrel pistols. They deal less damage per shot but have higher rate of fire, and you can charge them up to fire both barrels at once.
On the other end of the weapon scale are new throwing knives, capable of sneak attacks, light slashes, or, you know, throwing. You can nab any throwing knives you see lying around, too, which is fun. But honestly, the Bone Caller tool (the aforementioned jar of skeletons, which has a great Jason and The Argonauts vibe) and the Horn Of Fair Winds are are probably more useful. The winds from said horn can make your ship go faster, but can also put out fires or crowd control enemies, or for some reason make you swim faster? I don't think that makes sense, to be honest, but the horn has limited uses so as not to make you an unstoppable wind machine.
The seasons all bring new cosmetics. Worth highlighting is that you can get owl pets now, if for some reason you want a pirate pet that isn't a parrot or a ship's cat? Like, come on! However, I approve of the extremely piratey move of now allowing people to tightrope over harpoon ropes onto other ships. Full deets on the Steam update.
You can watch the trailer above for a taster, or just dive into the game now cos season 12 launched on the 30th. Reports are that the Bone Caller and Horn Of Fair Winds, the former spawning in barrels and the later in emergent shipwrecks and siren shrines and treasuries, are pretty rare. Might take some adventuring to find them. But the seas are also more crowded now! Season 12 is also the first season where PlayStation 5 players are joining in, but you can just ignore those guys, we pay no nevermind to them on PC sites.
I still play Sea Of Thieves, but the only thing I do is sail around on a sloop by myself with a cat pet, avoiding other people and most of the business of the game entirely. Sometimes some rude boys come and sink me but the jokes on them, cos I never have any treasure.