"Sea Of Thieves" is throwing one final beta weekend party on the Xbox One and Windows 10 PC's ahead of its March 20 launch. Rare has spent the last few weekends performing scale tests with a limited number of players, but has opened the high seas pirate co-op game to everyone and thrown in plenty of new content as well. The final "Sea of Thieves" beta will run from Friday, March 9 until 6 AM ET / 3 AM PT Sunday, March 11. Those that observe daylight savings time will, unfortunately, lose an hour.

What to expect

Xbox One and PC gamers who have already taken part in past "Sea of Thieves" scale tests and betas will start fresh once again.

All Pirate progress and gold has been wiped to give everyone even footing during the final beta. Players should not expect their progress to carry over to the official launch either.

Meanwhile, those who have an Xbox One X will be happy to know that 4K resolution and textures have finally arrived. Expect a heftier download as the higher resolution more than doubles the game’s size to 18.98 GB.

New adventures await virtual buccaneers as Skeleton Forts are now active in "Sea of Thieves." A huge skeleton cloud will appear over the fort and beckon players to come and battle skeletons to find a highly valuable vault key. Players shouldn’t be surprised if they end up fighting with other groups over the prized key to gain access to the loot.

Additionally, the Merchant Alliance contract feature is now live in the beta. Taking on one of these contracts will task a crew to either seek out or deliver cargo for a merchant. This includes venturing to islands and collecting pigs or chickens and delivering resources to different outposts across the game world.

Still a test

It’s important for those participating in the "Sea of Thieves" final beta to remember that this is still a test.

Rare is expecting this to be the most players they’ve seen jump into the game yet so players should expect possible service interruptions and possibly even being blocked from entering the game during peak times.

"Sea of Thieves" will officially launch on March 20 for the Xbox One and Windows 10 PC with what Rare describes as "No asterisks" crossplay. This means everyone who plays on both platforms will have access to the same content and features.

Additionally, those who subscribe to Xbox Game Pass will have access to "Sea of Thieves" immediately at launch. Microsoft recently announced the decision to make all of its first party games available on the subscription service when they are released. This will include "State of Decay" in May and "Crackdown 3" later this year.
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