Sea of Thieves' 5-year anniversary celebrations and Season 9 kick off this month

Rare has been delivering constant updates to its pirate adventure game Sea of Thieves for almost five years now, and the Xbox developer has some special events planned for the upcoming birthday. At the same time, Season 9 is gearing up for a release too, and it touts quite a few community requested features.

Starting today, pirates can set sail on the new Marauder’s Medley event until March 16. The event is celebrating each previous year of Sea of Thieves with 48-hour spanning nostalgic challenges, and completing them will earn players anniversary-themed rewards and other loot.

Anyone who logs into the game from March 17 through 22 will also receive an exclusive Lustrous Legend Figurehead as a reward. During the same period, the Pirate Emporium will be hosting deep discounts for its stash of Ancient Coin (premium currency) items and sets, plus a everyone can claim a free emote. Twitch Drops are also returning, with even more cosmetic items up for grabs by watching streams from March 16 through 20.

Rare is also kicking off another Community Weekend on March 25, which will multiply rewards from voyages and grant exclusive login bonuses. Most importantly, 50 million Ancient Coins will be given away during the period via Ancient Skeletons, that usually spawn very rarely, as an even bigger incentive for pirates to jump in.

As for the upcoming ninth season of Sea of Thieves, Rare highlighted a new Chest of Fortune loot item that unlocks cosmetics as rewards, much more common (and balanced) World Events, a fresh slate of voyages for Captains and Pirate Legends, and more. On top of that, some of the quality-of-life changes include Harpooned loot appearing beside pirates automatically, retrieval of loot that ends up out of bounds in the sea (red sea running), and sea gulls appearing above loot of sunken player ships.

Sea of Thieves Season Nine has a March 16 release date attached to it, with it coming to PC, Xbox consoles, and Game Pass subscribers. Lastly, for those curious about how the game came to be, Rare will be releasing a documentary that follows the development of Sea of Thieves, titled Voyage of a Lifetime, on March 20.