Adventure Log: A Pirate’s Life for Me

Adventure Log is Uppercut’s communal column to share the emergent stories we get from playing games. Long time fans might remember YGGP’s podcast of the same name. This is a reinvention of that idea to better fit our reinvented site.

The first time I set sail in Sea of Thieves, we were destined to fail. My friend Chris and I were the only ones playing; our much more experienced friend Riley hadn’t logged on yet, but we figured we could do the tutorial stuff while we were waiting. We were very, very wrong. 

If you’re not familiar, or if it’s been a while, the tutorial mission in Sea of Thieves is fairly simple: you pick up a quest and set out to find buried treasure on a remote island. It should be relatively straightforward. Apparently, Chris and I were not fated to be pirates, because even in this basic tutorial we ended up having the most harrowing encounters I’ve experienced in the game to date.

To start, we got lost. I’m a gay who can drive, but unfortunately not one who can navigate. We made our best guess of where we were going and proceeded to fuck it up pretty spectacularly. Once we finally made it to our destination, we parked our ship too far away and had to swim. We were greeted by an eerie green light that turned out to be a mermaid. 

Considering the ancient tales about the nature of mermaids, and the fact that I knew this game comes loaded with enemies, I was terrified because I assumed we were about to be eaten. Chris assured me that we weren’t, but he couldn’t remember the mermaid’s actual purpose either. Eventually, we managed to figure out that it just sends you back to your ship, but it took longer than I’d care to admit, knowing full well that info was only a Google search away. 

Arriving on the island felt like a blessing. We were finally on solid ground and could get to treasure hunting. And then the skeleton showed up. This wasn’t just some scrub skeleton either. This was a certified Mean Boy™ who was out for blood. It was a rough battle, one filled with plenty of screaming and running away, but we managed to defeat our newfound foe and secure the treasure we had come for.

Riley was about to come online, so we decided to pack it in and go turn in our treasure. The game had other plans for us. As we made our way back to turn in our booty, a storm began to roll in. It made things a bit harder—the winds were much fiercer and the sea was choppy, but overall it seemed fine. I was belowdecks, checking the map to make sure we didn’t have a repeat of our maiden voyage when something hit our ship. I thought maybe we had hit a rock or something on accident, but Chris assured me that wasn’t the case. So what was it? 

A Megalodon. And not just any Megalodon, a ghostly Megalodon that apparently only appears when there are storms. While the beast was ravaging our ship, lightning was striking pretty consistently, leaving our sails perpetually on fire, despite the rain. Needless to say, despite our best efforts, our ship sank and our treasure hunting dreams were met with a watery grave. 

We washed up on shore, battered, but not broken, and when Riley came online we were ready to set out again, hopefully with more success as we were guided by a more practiced hand.