Got back into Sea of Thieves earlier, as the first new content update, The Hungering Deep, released today. It revolves around a scavenger hunt of sorts followed by a boss fight. There wasn't a particularly large amount of content here, but it was pretty fun.
One thing that makes The Hungering Deep unique is that it actually requires cooperation from multiple crews. To summon the Megalodon, you need at least five players playing the right song in unison. As crews can only have a max of four players, that means you're going to need teamwork.
We got kind of lucky in that regard, in that it was day one and everyone was looking to finish the new quest and get their rewards. We ran into a straggler at an outpost whose ship had sailed without him, leaving him to get drunk in the tavern. After inviting him onto our crew, we used him to contact his crew and got them following us on the hunt. We picked up a sloop along the way as well and had a nice little three ship armada, which was cool.
Eventually, we finished the quest and got to fight the giant shark. It was a pretty fun fight. The shark mostly attacked the other crew's galleon, so my crew just took pot shots at it as we sailed around it. When that thing hits your ship, it doesn't fuck around. The ship spins significantly and can buck wildly from left to right.
After beating the shark, you have to return to the guy who started you out on the whole quest to begin with, and during that trip, we began to plot our eventual betrayal of our unlikely allies. We're assholes, and we have to be true to ourselves. We decided to let them finish the quest first, and strike while they were busy talking to the guy and wrapping it up. We quickly hit their ship with three bombs and then tricked them into believing the sloop had betrayed us. We sank the sloop too shortly after.
For some reason, they believed us and we decided to tackle the skull fort that had popped up a short time earlier together. We agreed with them to split the loot, with us getting the skull and them the chest. Naturally, we planned another betrayal. If they didn't learn the first time, we'd do it all over again.
Both ships ended up at the fort and we largely let them do all the work. One of our guys helped them out while me and the third (our fourth had disconnected after beating the Megalodon) started collecting bombs. I hid a couple of them near where their ship was parked, but out of sight. We plotted to hit them right as the fort boss popped up, as they'd be very occupied with ending him quickly and wouldn't be focused on the fact that two of us were missing.
Once the boss popped up, everything went about as perfectly as I could have planned it. While we were swimming to their ship, they killed the boss and popped open the fort vault. Our guy on the island took out two of them while me and the third bombed their ship and killed the guy stationed on it. We killed their fourth in the water as he tried to swim the fort chest back to their rapidly sinking ship.
After we looted the vault, their ship had just about made it back to the fort. Instead of running, I just burnt right into them, as we had the wind. It forced them to turn around and let us gain some real distance. It also put them right behind us so we could conduct a little mischief.
We were going to hit a certain outpost, but there was already another galleon there, so we decided to just use them to get what we wanted. As we neared the outpost, I jumped off the ship with a bomb and waited for the ship chasing us to pass. Meanwhile, one of our guys hailed to the third galleon asking for help, saying the guys chasing us had been trolling and chasing us for hours even though we had nothing. Somehow, they agreed to help.
Shortly after, I bombed the galleon chasing us right as the third galleon entered the fight and rammed them, giving us all the time in the world to get away. By the time our former allies finally caught up to us, we'd already turned in all of our loot. Their whole crew disconnected after we evaded them one last time and we got to watch their ship sink behind us.
One of their guys exchanged a bunch of messages with one of the guys on my crew. It was pretty funny. They were undoubtedly salty as hell, but they learned a valuable lesson. Never trust a pirate.
This game may lack content, but experiences like that are what keep me coming back to it. It can just be a hell of a lot of fun when you get the right mix of people and a good situation.
My favorite part of the night was when my buddy was reassuring them that we'd split the loot with them, telling them we didn't need the money. He wasn't in our party at that time, because he's on Xbox and can't be in a party and chat with non-party players in-game at the same time, so he couldn't hear me and the other guy plotting. A few minutes later I asked him to join our party for a minute and the first thing he said after he did was, "Just to be clear, we're screwing these guys, right?"