I have been playing this game on and off for the last few months. After burning myself out getting the ghost curse grinding 3-4 hours a day, many months ago, it feels like I've been butting my head against the game ever since, just trying to bring back that old motivation.
Season 16 dropped, and I waited a few weeks and decided to log on for Gold and Glory weekend!
It all started with me raising my Guild flag high to allow myself maximum freedom (and profit) in whatever I do on the seas!
Well, little did I know that my little solo sloop would spend the next 2 hours fighting multiple Brigantines for a skelly fort.
And let me tell you, Rare pulled out all the stops for this one. I got skelly shiped, a megladon (the blue one) and kegged by flotsam, all while trying to fight a crew 3x bigger than myself!
But, all that ghost curse grinding taught me a thing or two about pvp and I eventually sank both to discover that the skelly fort was, in fact, a gold hoarder dive fort. The loot was awful, and no cannon of rage.
It was on my way back to the outpost (Dagger tooth I think) that things started to feel off. I'm sure we all know the paranoid feeling of selling hard earned loot, knowing that there is still a chance you get pulled up on by a Reaper 5 galleon. But this was different.
The usual happy sailing music was not playing.
At first I thought it was the Burning Blade, I had rarely heard the song that was currently intensifying before today.
A little aside: I started playing SoT in 2019 on a friend's Xbox. As much as I loved the game, I was a PS4 player so me getting it for myself was out of the question. So when it came out for PS5, I pre-ordered right away, which turned out to be the best descision ever made.
The pre order came with some files including the audiobook for Athena's Fortune, and the game's full soundtrack. I didn't think much of these file, but I do remember trying them out with a song titled "the_shrouded_ghost.wav." Which is a more orchestral, Hans Zimmer-style version of the Summon the Megalodon shanty!
This is the song I heard playing. Had it not been for that moment of recognition, I surely would have sailed to the island, despawning the Ghost and sealing my fate. But instead I swept the water with my spyglass, and saw a pale fin approaching under the waves!
Some myths that have now been busted:
No there was no fog, it was clear as day.
The Shrouded Ghost is not any stronger, in fact, it took me like 4 cannonballs to kill it.
Yes the Shrouded Ghost exists.
Its scales (added S15) do not sell for any extra.
It only took my 375 hours in-game to find this guy, but that might have just been luck.
I hope you all enjoyed my tale, and may you also have the fortune to face this beast someday!
