Death in Sea of Thieves is temporary: if you get stabbed, shot, eaten by a shark, or blown up by a teammate who decides to play a game of Swingy Swordsie while moving a gunpowder barrel, you go to the ferryman and take his ghost ship for He takes a little ride and then returns to his own ship without incident. The upcoming "Ship of Fortune" update will add the option to resurrect crew members, offering a new approach to unhappy endings.

With the resurrection system in place, a fallen player will be resurrected by a non-dead teammate in 15 seconds, or 25 seconds in the PvP arena. The revival process itself takes 4 seconds, during which time the revived player is defenseless. Both crew mates and alliance members can be revived, and the revived player returns to the action at 25 percent of his or her strength.

One thing that is not clear from the update is whether the 15-second window is mandatory or whether players can skip the wait and go straight to the death ferry. This is especially important for solo players, as they may not always be willing to wait.

As far as solo players are concerned, they will not benefit from the revival (unless they belong to an alliance), but they will be able to return to sea a little faster than before due to the reduced ferry countdown timer.

This change could have a big impact, especially in large battles, but some players on Twitter are concerned that it might give too much of an advantage to the alliance. I actually think its unlikely. A solo ship being chased by an alliance would be in trouble anyway, but I don't play at a particularly high level, so maybe I'm not seeing all the implications. We'll find out soon enough.

Other changes mentioned in the update include an option to display Tall Tale starting points and eligibility on the map, a new exit penalty for PvP arenas, a new "crew status" that will allow players to see where their friends are and what they are doing from a distance options, and more. (Personally, I think it would be fun to figure it out manually, but some may want to go straight to business.)

Sea of Thieves: Ships of Fortune is scheduled to go live on April 22. In case you didn't know, it has cats.