Sea of Thieves alpha update trailer offers first proper look treasure hunting in practice

After teasing many individual aspects of its ocean-exploring sandbox adventure Sea of Thieves before now, Rare has given its most comprehensive overview of how players will actually track treasure down at sea to date.

A handheld map, a compass, a shovel, a ship, a map table—which "gives a wider view of the many islands you can travel to"—and you're pretty much good to go, so suggests the following technical alpha update 0.1.0 trailer. Of course you'll want to steer clear of adversarial adventurers who'll just as gladly bump your booty as their own along the way, lest you wind up on the Ferry of the Damned—the game's designated death hub. 

And if your ship goes down, fret not, as mermaids will be at hand to get you back on your feet. Have a gander at some of that in action here: 

As the narrator explains above, you can get to grips with all of that sooner rather later by signing up for the Sea of Thieves' 'Insider Programme'—an initiative that grants select members access to early testing phases ahead of launch next year. More information on that can be found this-a-way

As it stands/floats, Sea of Thieves is without a concrete release date however is expected to launch early next year as a Microsoft cross-buy Play Anywhere game.