Woooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!
I logged on for just (somewhat of) a brief session, but wow, we had such a great time.
I've been in love with this game since the beta and stress tests, but this is a really excellent update that, I think, polishes up a lot of the existing aspects of the game, and added some very nice stuff.
My wife and I hopped on and were just going to visit each outpost to browse and buy the new ship customization options. We ended up running into a number of emergent adventures along the way!
It was so wild seeing a galleon on the horizon and realizing it was a skeleton ship. We wanted to check it out, and decided to fight, and sink, it. Not bad loot from it either, considering it was only one ship (ship captain's skull, and precious gemstones!).
After visiting two biomes, we noticed that the giant skull cloud was over a fort that's never been active before - so, we wanted to check it out.
Along the way to the fort, a giant purple megalodon got in our way... and we decided to slow down and fight it. Another sloop came along at the very end of that battle and asked to ally with us to head over for the fort. We agreed (although, we kept our well-earned megalodon loot) and headed over to Skull Keep - when we noticed the skull cloud vanish.
A sloop of two pirates was at the fort... and they refused our offer of an alliance. They sailed off in a chase with our allies, meanwhile my wife spied that the vault was opened, but filled with treasure!
We pilfered the vault and defeated the enemy sloop (poor guys... but when I offered them to join our alliance, instead of losing 100% of the treasure, they just fired at me, haha! Good on you, ya pirates!).
We turned everything in, including the new skeleton bone dust crate (which sold for 4.6k gold, if I recall correctly). And then noticed that another fort was already active!! And this one was Sailor's Knot Stronghold, so I was eager to see that one in action as well!
I ate supper while we sailed south west across the map, and the fort was shrouded in fog!
We fought the skellies on the land (it was really fun seeing them scramble across the high wooden bridges on that fort) and procured another great haul - this time including both the bone dust crate AND the stronghold gunpowder keg (I was outvoted 3-1 and we turned it in instead of blowing it up - haha, I was the only PL and they, understandably, wanted the merchant rep!).
We then RAISED OUR TANKARDS with each other (YEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!), made friends, and went our own ways.
The seas are wildly active now. I've loved the game this whole time, and it is wonderful to see this update boost up the fun of this game even more.
Well done!!