It’s been quite a while since we last invited you to follow along as a new cosmetic makes the leap from an idea to a fully realised in-game item. The last time we were here, we had some lantern secrets to share, following on from our prior deep dives into crow-themed cosmetics, animal companions and more.
Recently, however, we completed an overhaul of Sea of Thieves’ free Seasonal Renown track – now simply known as the Season Pass – and with it, we introduced a new type of cosmetic: the Star Prize. This is the final reward for players who max out their Renown during a Season, and as a result, we wanted it to be unlike anything else in the game. How then to go about crafting such an item? We’ve chased down some of our developers for answers, and we present their responses to you below. Enjoy!
As the inaugural Star Prize and flagship reward of Season 20, there was a lot of pressure on the prize that would become the Greed’s Reach Cutlass to strike players as unique. Before we dive into the cutlass specifically, however, we must first understand why we needed a Star Prize in the first place. For that, we’ve asked Monetisation Lead Louise Roberts to explain:
“We were working on improving the Season Pass all up. One of the changes was revamping the regular Season Pass to offer a choice of Pirate Emporium cosmetics and Voyages. The previous Seasonal Renown track was more passive and just awarded things automatically, whereas players now get more opportunities to choose rewards for themselves.
“But as the new Season Pass features cosmetics and Voyages that a player could maybe have seen before, we wanted to make sure the Star Prize was completely unique. So each of these involves work and problem solving far beyond a normal cosmetic. This is our first animated cutlass, and is a lot of fun, so it really rewards players with something unique for completing the Season Pass.”
Associate Design Director Shelley Preston had more to add:
“We felt that our Season Pass was missing a single, valuable reward for 'completing' the Season that could really feel like a prize synonymous with that Season. We knew we needed to do something different that hadn't been done before – we needed a new type of cosmetic. Our wonderful Art and Animation teams explored the concept of 'animated items' and as soon as we saw the first early tests, we knew we had found our Star Prizes.”
The very first Star Prize, then, had to be something special. It took a bit of work to figure out what precisely that meant, but the team were keen to impress, as Studio Art Director Ryan Stevenson tells us:
“The journey to the Greed’s Reach Cutlass was a fun creative adventure. We’re always exploring ideas to make the items that players use feel more characterful and playful, although some game constraints can sometimes limit what’s possible. When the opportunity arose to create a category with the Star Prizes, we knew it was a chance to explore and achieve some really new fun ideas.
“We experimented with adding layers of animation to items and developed several fun concepts, some of which you will 100% be seeing in future. But with so many ideas we needed to choose one for the first release, so I thought right back to the start of the project. Sea of Thieves has a long, rich history, and in the game’s earliest prototypes all sorts of objects could become weapons. We wanted to recapture that spirit by creating something that worked as a sword while still feeling unexpected.
“The idea of a skelly sword arm felt very ‘us’; hitting another pirate with someone’s arm, especially one taken from a cursed Skeleton Lord, felt perfect for Sea of Thieves and that unmistakable Rare playfulness.”
As for why the team wanted to revisit the story of the Gold Hoarder following his second defeat at the hands of players, Ryan had the answer to that too:
“With the ‘skeleton arm sword’ picked as our first distinctive first Star Prize, we wanted to give it an extra layer, extra character, something that would make it even more memorable and meaningful for players.
“In the past, we’ve created unique lore items that represent the world and its stories, and that was perfect to add in for the Star Prize. We looked at our most iconic skeletons in the game and which would be the most fitting, and as soon as we thought of using the Gold Hoarder’s arm, it felt perfect. He’s such a great character, and since players can already run around with his head after defeating him, the arm felt like a playful nod to that. Our rendering team leaned into the idea too, creating a fun image of the arm clawing its way after a group of pirates in his lair.
“There was also something poetic about our first Star Prize calling back to our first-year anniversary that made it just feel right.”
With a fixed idea of what the cutlass should look like, there was just one final consideration to build into the design: above all else, this cutlass still had to function as an in-game weapon like any other. As Senior Animator Abi Wilcockson tells us, that primarily came down to its animations:
“I had to make sure all the Greed’s Reach Cutlass animations could be used on the current player animations for the cutlass, e.g. attacks and idles, which meant the Greed’s Reach Cutlass animations had to share the exact same time length as the existing cutlass attacks and blocking animation.
“I also wanted to retain a slight rigidity and avoid making it too floppy, as we still wanted to make sure it felt like wielding a cutlass. This meant not bending it too much at the elbow and wrists.”
With all the basics of the design ironed out and decisions made about what the final product should look like, it was time to make the jump into 3D and prepare the weapon for its debut.
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Making the leap from an original design to an in-game item always gives the impression of bringing an idea to life, but that’s rarely as literal as it was with the Greed’s Reach Cutlass. The plan was always for the arm to remain as animated as it had been when it was still attached to the Gold Hoarder, and for that, we needed to rely on animators like Abi to decide on how best to go about it:
“Idles are often a great place to have a wide variety of interesting animations as that’s when players will be able to see the animations for the longest time. I started with several idles: a coin trick, a hand stretch and a twitchy hand. I needed to make sure we had animations for all the current cutlass abilities which include the attacks, heavy attack, block, equip and unequipping. I tried to find interesting ways to show that the weapon is still a cutlass under the hood while also having the characteristics of a skeleton arm. Once we did all that, I decided it would be nice to add in animation additives to give it some reactive movement while you’re running, jumping and swimming.
“All the animations created for the Greed’s Reach Cutlass made it into the game, though we would have liked to create bespoke player animations to make it feel even more unique when you’re attacking enemies or even just idling. However, due to memory constraints we eventually used the current cutlass player animations, which still worked nicely.”
Beyond just looking the part, a cutlass with so many animations needed a corresponding collection of sound effects to back it up. Every motion and attack required its own sound design to ensure that the cutlass felt like a tangible part of the game world. How, then, to make a skeleton arm sword sound just right?
Sound Designer George Gervasio explains:
“One of the core sound design philosophies in Sea of Thieves is that it is a world of weight. In this sense I mean that each action, reaction and general sound should have a feeling of weight to it. The question we are constantly asking ourselves as Sound Designers is: is this how a pirate would sound? When pirates vote for Voyages, they slam a dagger into the table. Even dropping chests is accompanied by a large, weighty sound. There is also an emphasis on sounds being believable, not realistic. Sound is often an overlooked element of video games but an out-of-place sound sticks out like a sore thumb. So creating sounds that continue to immerse players in Sea of Thieves and help them to fully get lost in it is at the centre of what the Audio team do.
“For this cutlass, I first wanted to look at all the work we previously did with skeletons to make sure that the sounds fit with those we’ve made in the past. You’d be surprised at all the bits and bobs that go into creating these sounds. For the actual skeleton arm, a huge variety of things give it that bony feel: there are vegetable crunches, wooden stick piles, taco shell crushes, egg squishes and all sorts more. Of course, the arm isn’t all that’s involved. There are foley sounds for the player moving, some coin sounds for the idle animation, bamboo and rope swings for the sword swoosh sound. All in all, a lot goes into making these sounds as believable and entertaining as possible.”
Weight isn’t the only consideration when it comes to sound design for a video game, however. As well as ensuring it sounds realistic and aligned with the rest of the world, it’s important to consider the player experience, as George tells us:
“Many of the sounds were difficult to temper as players will be hearing them a lot throughout their playtime. Ensuring that they do not get tiresome or overindulgent is a key concern. Variations (sounds that differ slightly from the original) help with this immensely; for example, there are 14 unique sounds for the cutlass, but this equates to 64 sounds when you include variations.
“Ironically the most difficult sound was one I was least concerned about repetition with, this being the sword lunge. The sense of anticipation as the cutlass winds up is a key part to the satisfaction of the original sound, so I wanted to capture this while adding a new skeleton flair. The crunchy wind-up with the added skeleton vocalisation on the lunge make this, in my opinion, feel very satisfying to use and I’m really happy with how it turned out.”
After all that hard work to get the cutlass looking and sounding perfect, it was time to put the finishing touches on Custom Seas and unveil the new Star Prize with the debut of Season 20…
As the centrepiece of a revamped Season Pass, all eyes were on the Star Prize to see how it landed with players. In that regard, we needn’t have worried – the uptake was everything we could have hoped for, as Louise tells us:
“It seems to have gone down really well with the community. We have data that shows players are striving to complete the Season to get the Star Prize, and around 85% of players who earn the Star Prize are equipping it!”
This would, of course, be simple back-patting if we didn’t have any specific signs of players enjoying themselves, but fortunately we didn’t have to look too far to find folks on our social channels immediately taking a shine to their new ‘blade’, with plenty of comments showing affection for the unique animations and sounds in particular – the hard work of Abi and George’s teams getting the praise it deserves. We’re sure the Gold Hoarder would be thrilled to know what his digits are being used for now.
All in all, the Greed’s Reach Cutlass has certainly set the bar for other Star Prizes to come. As for what the next of these upcoming pieces might be, the most Louise was able to say was: “It's something mystical that will help you make decisions...”
Shelley’s answer when pressed was even more mysterious: “By the light of the fates, a decision awaits...”
It seems we’ll just have to wait for Season 21 later in September to find out what that all means.
With that glimpse into the future, we’ve come to the end of this article. The Greed’s Reach Cutlass is available for all players to unlock throughout Season 20; all you need to do is reach level 50 in the free Season Pass by earning Renown before the Season comes to a close on September 17th. Be sure to get your hands on it now while there’s still time!
Head on over to our social channels to tell us what you think of our very first Star Prize – whether that’s on Bluesky, Instagram, Twitter/X, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube or Twitch, or via our official Forums or Discord server. These are also the places to share any suggestions for what you might like to see in future articles – we can’t make any promises, but let us know if there are any other cosmetics you’d like to go behind the scenes on, and we’ll see what we can do.
As always, you can find previous entries in this series, along with a host of other informative content in our News archive. We hope to see you there – once you have this Season’s Star Prize in your clutches, of course!
