Sea of Thieves' latest update slips The Smugglers' League in through the back door, offering high-risk, high-reward voyages for the most daring pirates

Season 17 of Sea of Thieves has sailed silently into port, using the moonless night as cover while it unloads its contraband cargo of new features. The latest iteration of Rare's multiplayer pirate sim introduces The Smugglers League, a furtive new faction that operates from six secret hideouts dotted across the game's treacherous archipelago, offering players the chance to acquire some valuable new booty in numerous ways.

Chief among these are Smugglers' Route Runs, dangerous delivery voyages that can be picked up directly from the quest map. While these allow players to get their hands on high-value goods, the runs send all players who accept them along the same route. In addition, that route is marked on the map, making any vessel sailing it easy targets for chancing pirates.

If you don't fancy travelling these hotly contested routes, you may get lucky and chance upon a message in a bottle. They can be found outside The Devil's Roar (Sea of Thieves' volcanic region) and reveal a Smuggler's Run along a hidden route of the map, thus giving you a better chance of reaping its rewards.

Elsewhere, players can dive for rare Smuggler's shipwrecks that contain higher value treasure than traditional shipwrecks, or raid skeleton ships, which have been stockpiling Smuggler's League treasures for reasons only those bony buccaneers understand. In either case, there's a chance you'll come across black powder barrels—powerful explosive casks that can be sold back to the Smuggler's League for cash bonuses. Alternatively, you could put them to other uses.

Season 17 raises the game's Renown cap by 100 extra levels while bringing improvements to controller keybinds, cross-region matchmaking, and performance. Finally, the aforementioned Devil's Roar has been rebalanced so that volcanoes provide a more predictable period between beginning to smoulder and actually erupting, helping you plan your escape from the area more reliably.

It's good to see Sea of Thieves continue to thrive, which is more than can be said for Rare's Everwild. The long-in development action-adventure was cancelled by Microsoft as part of another brutal round of layoffs that saw thousands of people lose their jobs last month. This despite Microsoft earning $27.2 billion in its most recent financial quarter.