Now I know this seems like a very small detail and that I’m being super critical of the game but let me tell you a story of how this tiny little detail cost me and my pal millions.
We set out on a sloop and put up our Athena emissary flag right at the start of the day, and put down and Athena voyage for mileage. Initially we did a few thieves haven runs, got to level 5 emissary then collected our deserved voyage, having sold our Athena loot.
This is when we first noticed the ‘minor inconvenience’ as our new voyage was muddled up with the lesser message in a bottle quests. We sailed on regardless, oblivious to the chain reaction we had just set of.
Having completed the three maps awarded to us by the stranger we sold the extra Athena loot we had acquired whilst still stocking up on non-legend booty.
We had around 300,000 sitting on deck currently from megs, ships and other activities we’d embarked on along the way.
At this point we checked our quest wheel for new maps and concluded we had finished the emissary mission so sold our flag and replaced it with a Reaper’s emissary flag in order to boost our coin gain as much as possible recognising 300,000 would be 750,000 if we reached level 5 with our new company.
Knowing the greatest way to boost our status with this order is through completing skeleton forts we scoured the sky for a skull, and noticed a ship cloud on the horizon.
Being in a sloop we were reluctant to tackle this fleet, aware of the risk if one of us dies whilst the other is overboard. Despite these facts we gather our courage and face the armada head on.
Before engaging with the skeletons we fought a meg gathered some chests from our Legends quest islands along the way bringing us halfway through the third level when reaching the fleet, noticing it would be enough to get grade 5 after completion.
To our misfortune the first wave consisted of two galleons. We fought well and severely damaged both ships but our worst fears came to pass. As my mate boarded a galleon to fend off holes a cannon ball struck me straight from the ship and due to unlucky mermaid spawns it was a wreck when I returned.
After this chaos we noticed another map from the emissary voyage we collected about an hour ago and had we known we would have done, however we were too committed to our current path to drop everything and complete it.
Luckily our ship had a rowboat docked so we still had hope of salvaging our loot. After around 30 minutes of constant back and forth with our ships sinking repeatedly on return, due to the scrambling to recover all that we could, I had managed to retrieve everything but a single blue gem.
It would take another 30 mins until the loot was reunited with a functioning sloop and new reapers flag but finally all was back in place.
It was now we realised the impact a white icon would have had. We would have finished the emissary mission and done a few more bits and bobs before acquiring the reapers flag thus resulting in a fort being active once we equipped it as the ship cloud would have despawned.
But of course we’re just making a big fuss because all’s well that ends well and we were back on track to sell.
During this time the skelly fleet was still active due to our close proximity so it was unable to despawn. Knowing we had been sinking and damaging ships whilst recollecting plunder we sailed for revenge, sinking the rest of the pack.
Unfortunately the loot from this ship only carried us to level 4 emissaries instead of the level 5 we could have achieved had we done all this without sinking by doing a low risk fort. But hey, we were still breathing and had plenty of other ways to achieve this goal... right?
It was now that we set off with our treasure amounting to over 1 million, with boosts, to finally finish the Athena emissary voyage, from which we reached 4.5 emissary level and earned a chest of legends. Currently we were clam as we knew 5 was easily achievable by finishing our legend voyage
However, now we noticed a fresh spawn level 1 reaper emissary rapidly approaching our position. Acknowledging the value of our ship at this point we began to feel nervous about the impending encounter even though we had dealt with much worse in the past just without this insane amount of cargo.
All we needed was for this sloop to be lacking in experience or skill to get away from this in one piece as we knew we lacked the resources to fight back. It was at this point my ship mate attempted to board the opposing ship to dishearten the pirates pursuing. The other crew had the same idea and whilst our attack failed the enemies succeeded anchoring and killing me unaware.
We then realised these were experienced players, a match for us even when we are fresh and rearing to go. Regrettably we were sank in the encounter and once again our emissary level reset.
My mate and I knew we weren’t finished due to the sheer volume of the prize they had just attained so we set off in an attempt to reclaim what was ours. With our spawn distant and the wind against us we knew we had one shot at sinking the adversaries.
When we arrived their ship was prepped for combat and they instantly blasted us with full force. Knowing the odds were not in our favour my friend boarded and tucked on their ship to buy us an extra life if things went south.
To our expense a skelly ship and meg spawned on our already battered ship giving the opponents yet advantage.
After dealing with the fire, holes and skelly ship I felt able to launch a second wave upon the enemies however due to the amount of time we had been on the server our games began to lag to the extreme and I was sent to the bottom of the ocean, allowing our unmanned ship to be destroyed once again.
At this point we had all but accepted defeat. With my pal still on their ship however, I decided to make a last ditch attempt to rescue what we had lost and it became a race to the reapers hideout.
Sadly just a few seconds into the chase my console gave in to the lag and I lost connection to the server.
After the tragedy that had just occurred we had time to reflect on our game session and vowed never again to take on a skeleton fleet in just a sloop.
Then we remembered the ‘minor inconvenience’ we had suffered and ignored toward the start of our adventure. We relived the day and noticed the butterfly effect one ‘slight hindrance’ has caused.
Had we known there was more to the voyage through and obvious white icon instead of the grey associated with side missions we would have missed the fleet fight altogether and been off the server hours before our ultimate demise logged on.
How naive we were to overlook this little detail, and continue as if it was nothing.
I hope this tall tale will lead to action, and save other sailors the pain that we had to endure.
