Sea of Thieves has been a strange beast, a live service game with basically no way to become more powerful. You can start a new character and drop into the world with all the same kit as any other player, even the fabled pirate legends. It all comes down to your ability as a sailor to survive on the unforgiving seas full of Krakens, Megalodons and the most dangerous creatures of all, Griefers… Everything you unlock is cosmetic and your goal is to simply show off to other players, or in my case, to have a chill time on one of the better looking games of the last couple of gens! I’ve been playing SOT on and off for the last couple of years, slowly grinding away at levels and rewards until I managed to achieve the rank of Pirate Legend and all the fancy purple gear that comes with it. Now I feel I’ve earned my retirement, to sail the sea at my own pace wrapping up unfinished tall tales and fishing, god do I love video game fishing.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, these waves are plagued by griefers, players who have made it their mission to dick you over at every available opportunity for zero reason other than, because they can. I can understand being hunted once, it is a piracy game after all, so when you get spotted on the horizon your rival crews might decide that your plunder is easier to take than finding any of their own. I’m long since used to holding off enemy crews so it’s not much trouble for me to fend of another sloop or even a brig when I’m playing alone though I can’t always win the day and sometimes my precious vessel finds a new dock at the bottom of the ocean. Fair enough, I tried my best right? Well when I respawn in and try to find my way again, sometimes I’ll be accosted by the same ship… so what is the game plan here? There is nothing to be gained by sending me to the locker again, no exp to be earned, no value in my ship. People just sometimes want to ruin the experience for you simply because they can, because they can gain some small please in getting you to quit of their server.
This all leads me onto what happened to be over the weekend. With the new update and season 2 of the SOT season pass dropping, I decided to spit shine my peg leg and get back on board (I really hope some of these nautical puns are landing). I decided to flex my legend muscles too and take on an arduous legend voyage consisting of 8 separate goals, all on my lonesome. Things started of reasonably well when I arrived at my first island and met a Galleon full of friendly pirates who left me to my mission and even came aboard and did some small repairs to my sloop. Great guys! We left the island at the same time and parted ways, however immediately after leaving my new friends I noticed a brig coming towards me. These guys were we much less friendly and within a few seconds my ship was just a bunch of floating timber and crates. Oh well, fair enough, so I booted up in a fresh ship and got right back to what I was doing.
Not so long after that, the same brig started coming for me, I know they recognized my ship and it they knew it was empty of all but me and my dog (Horatio) but they still began the chase, the panic kicked in and I quickly pulled about and fled, I’m not ashamed to admit that, I didn’t want to lose another ship! They kept up the chase even through a storm I tried to lose them in, I thought I was doomed… then the galleon appeared. My friends from the start of the session appeared out of no where and opened up on my aggressors. I performed a quick anchor brake turn and aided with my piddly single cannon and soon the brig crew were hanging out with Davy Jones. I was dumbfounded by the success and got on chat to offer up all the loot left over from the now dead bad guy crew to my saviors and left them to it.
This was probably my most positive interaction with another crew in SOT and just goes to show that while the waves are rife with bastarding pirates and rapscallions, there are still a few crews out there who just want to share their time on the sea with others and bring a little positivity! Thanks guys!