A few years ago, Sea of Thieves introduced a PvP-only mode called The Arena, where players who didn’t care for exploring the high seas could immediately jump into battles with enemy ships. The Arena was a popular addition to the game at first, but interest has waned significantly over time, to the point where Rare claimed that a mere 2% of Sea of Thieves playtime took place in the Arena. Rare has announced plans to shut down the Arena to focus its efforts on other aspects of the game, and it’s now been confirmed exactly when the Sea of Thieves Arena is shutting down.
The Sea of Thieves Arena is shutting down on Thursday, March 10 to coincide with the start of Season 6. At that point, the game’s PvP mode will be inaccessible forever, and that means most of the rewards tied to it will no longer be available as well. This includes some of the game’s achievements, so anyone that wants to fully complete Sea of Thieves and unlock all of its achievements will need to put in some serious playtime between now and the shut-down date.
Rare previously suggested that there would be some kind of solution to players losing the ability to unlock some of the Sea of Thieves achievements after the Arena is shut down, but fans may not be happy with the results. Rare says that “after thorough investigation,” it was unable to come up with a way to repurpose the Arena-specific achievements to the Sea of Thieves Adventure mode. The achievements will be marked as “Legacy Achievements” in the Xbox version of the game and will simply disappear from the Steam version.
This applies to most of the Sea of Thieves achievements tied to the Arena, except for two. The Master of the Arena and Glorious Sea Dog achievements will still technically be available to Xbox gamers, assuming they completed the prerequisites in the Arena before the shutdown date. Those playing the Steam version of Sea of Thieves will be unable to unlock these achievements after March 10 regardless if they do what needs to be done in the Arena first.
On the bright side, Rare is rewarding some Sea of Thieves players with cosmetics after the Arena is shut down. The Azure Scout, Flaming Jackal, Golden Chaser, Lucky Rover, and Regal Hound ship cosmetics will be available to all Sea of Thieves Arena players who hit Sea Dogs rank 5 before January 27, while those who hit rank 50 will get The Good Boy cosmetics for their ship. Like with other Sea of Thieves ship cosmetic bundles, these will include a hull, figurehead, sails, and a flag.
While some fans may be disappointed to see the Sea of Thieves Arena close down come Season 6 (especially since it will make it impossible for new players to 100% the game on Xbox), the good news is that there is some new content coming with Season 6 as well. Season 6 will introduce Sea of Thieves Sea Forts, which will essentially function as raids in the game.
Sea of Thieves is out now for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
