I've been playing Sea of Thieves since it released in 2018—fairly casually and intermittently, but still, you'd think I'd have become be a Pirate Legend by now. I haven't, which makes the following news an especially bitter pill: Two veteran Sea of Thieves players started new characters and ranked them up to Pirate Legends in a single day.
It was a damn long and eventful day, though. It took the two pirates, Moonlitius and Disable_Chicken, just under 22 hours of continuous play to reach level 50 in the three trading companies (Gold Hoarders, Order of Souls, and Merchant Alliance) required to become Pirate Legends. And they did it in a sloop, the smallest ship in the game, without ever getting sunk despite some incredibly fierce combat with several bigger ships.
Below you can watch the entire 21 hour, 48 minute, and 6 second video (broken into two parts) or at least skim through it, like I did. The really amazing thing is, the duo might have actually finished a few hours earlier—except for one particularly dubious decision.
After spotting a galleon (the biggest ship in the game, which is usually operated by a crew of four players) headed toward Devil's Ridge, the pirate pals guessed the crew might be coming to the island to clear out a treasure vault. The duo decided to sink the galleon and steal the vault's treasure themselves.
That part went extremely well (you can see it begin at 07:30:00 in the video below). But the galleon crew respawned with a new ship and spent the next several hours chasing the two pirates across the map, hoping to re-steal their stolen treasure.
Even worse, the galleon was eventually joined by a brigantine, a three-player ship, and the two bigger ships joined forces to hunt the duo and their tiny sloop. Starting around eight hours into the video above, the chase and skirmishes last for over an hour, taking them all across the map and even off the edge into the red sea, where ships automatically begin taking massive damage.
Simply getting a lead on the bigger ships wasn't really an option—with so much treasure aboard the sloop it would take at least twenty or thirty minutes to unload it all on an outpost, and they're never more than a minute or two ahead of their pursuers. It's a nerve-wracking but enjoyable chase and battle to watch, and it's amazing that the two pirates eventually sink the galleon a second time and manage to evade the brigantine—which is the fastest ship in the game.
A few other highlights:
- At 04:26:51 in the first video, they take down a brig full of loot, while the brig crew repeatedly insist they have no loot, plus a Meg gets in on the fun
- At 07:26:45 they sink a galleon with nothing but firebombs
- At 10:39:38 it's revealed they keep a few inches of water sloshing in the hull so the massive pile of mermaid gems isn't so blinding
- At 10:31:22 they spend a solid 25 minutes just unloading treasure, and don't even unload it all
I haven't watched the entire video, but what I've seen makes for some tense and fun viewing, and highlights several interesting aspects of Sea of Thieves. The maneuverability of the sloop gives small crews a nice advantage, but the revive system (added not long ago) makes it much tougher to wipe bigger squads.
And, of course, when you sink another ship it can respawn pretty close by with a full compliment of supplies—which makes it hard to truly defeat someone on the server. If they're mad enough and patient enough, they'll just keep coming back for revenge.
