Rare recently revealed that Season One of their swash-buckling pirate sandbox game Sea of Thieves will release on January 28, 2020. This seasonal approach to new content drops provides new challenges, objectives, a new progression system, and the game's answer to a premium Battle Pass – the Plunder Pass. For you die-hard ravers, Season Pass holders, or like-minded individuals with a pre-existing Sea of Thieves account, the Plunder Pass will be rewarded near the end of the first season to you or your teammates with additional rewards worth more than the cost of the pass. Moreover, we are taking a different approach in how we determine the numbers in the initial season.

Starting this October, the rollout of upper level progression – the first step to the Battle Pass – begins on January 28th approving content to your achievements and Loadouts. Each player with a save from Dragon's Maw will see their Plunder Pass awarded upon login. For those who haven't played, there are a variety of gear, weapons and recipes to collect from raiding matches, unranked matches in adversarial end-game, and the bundles available from enduring vendors. Once you've accumulated enough XP for a Gold rank, you'll find that you're ready for the higher levels of progression and loot with the Battle Pass.

Among the initial upper tier progression for Season One, legendary gear – the higher tiers of legendary gear are also excited to be available immediately on launch day – available in chests, war chests, bundles, and crate drops. Specimens will be fightable and provide a unified progression and rating platform for allies, rival prestige items to achieve a flat 20/80 progression, and items to be shared between your characters. We're also aiming to get as much gold and XP into the game as fast as possible so that the early Draft platforms can initiate wins as high as level 10. In addition, as new challenges and new rewards for players are rewarded through Granite of the Sands and the Battle Pass, two new activities will be unlocked for players only by utilizing the Plunder Pass: Plunder Fest and Elder Misson.

"We're excited for Season One and are excited that we are not just speculating when we talk about release windows." said executive producer Lloyd Roberts. "Every designer and artist knows their career in game development is focused primarily around a Fig date. Luckily there's always a little uncertainty they can maintain the excitement if that date's not met."

A closed beta release for Sea of Thieves will occur in late January and February 2018. Please keep in mind that Sea of Thieves is yet to release and it's always best to prepare for every player in a team to learn the game systems in advance of the release on Black Friday 2018. Consequently, your feedback to enhance the content as you play and the forums created by
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