Sea of Thieves will have private servers to support creative community events

Sea of Thieves already has skeletal pirates, curses and lots of dressing up, so it' pretty prepared for Halloween, but that doesn't mean Rare is resting on its laurels. The Fort of the Damned Halloween update is coming next week, on October 16, and while it's largely still a mystery, executive producer Joe Neate has shared some quality of life additions, along with the studio's plans for private servers.

You'll be able to change the colour of your underwear, finally—clearly the biggest improvement of the update. If you want more clothes to throw over your underwear, a wider range of feminine clothing options will also be available to all pirates. My ultimate quest is to be the most dapper of all corsairs, so I'm pretty excited.

Combat's seen some tweaks, too, with improvements to the transition between fighting and sprinting. Your pets will also be less freaked out by combat, thankfully causing less of a racket when you're trying to concentrate on a duel. Apparently gunpowder barrels weren't exploding correctly, blowing up all at once instead of in a chain, so that's also been fixed.

Finally there's a handy new accessibility option, letting you use a toggle instead of holding down a button when you need to use an item or aim.

Neate also teased private servers, but they won't be arriving with this update. It's not the first time Rare's tackled the topic, but now we've got confirmation that it's part of the mid-term road map. Rare has seen players organising their own events, races and challenges, and it wants to do more to encourage that. In the short term, it wants players to approach them with their ideas, but the plan is to eventually support creative pirates with their own servers.

The ocean is big enough that Sea of Thieves' regular servers sometimes feel like my own personal sandbox, but I'm keen to see what extra options server owners will have. I'd love to see some proper roleplaying servers, with some more features to facilitate that.

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.