Sea Of Thieves Seems To Be Teasing The Return Of Its Greatest Ever Event

Did Sea of Thieves just declare open season on the Shrouded Ghost, the rarest Megalodon in the entire game? And can such a hunt measure up to the greatest Sea of Thieves update of all time?

The Hungering One

Ask any long-time Sea of Thieves player for their favourite ever update, and they’ll probably tell you it was The Hungering Deep.

The Hungering Deep was the first major post-launch update for Sea of Thieves and added several items that are now considered staples. The speaking trumpet and the banjo did not exist in the game before this update, for instance. But what really made this update special, and why it is still talked about to this day, was that it marked the first appearance of the Megalodon. These days the appearance of a Megalodon doesn’t even move the needle for grizzled pirates, but back then it presented a genuine threat.

The update tasked players with tracking down the mysterious Merrick, a sailor driven half-mad by his endless hunt for the Meg. A disastrous encounter with the beast cost Merrick his crew, three of his limbs, and his ship, the Killer Whale. Tasked with summoning the creature and destroying it, the mission required several crews to work together. They had to carry Merrick’s song east to west across the middle of the map, ensuring that the song never ceased. When the Megalodon appeared, it began one of the most ferocious battles the game has ever seen. Multiple crews, a beast with a seemingly bottomless health pool, and a bite that could sink ships in instant. It would take hundreds of cannonballs and many more planks to bring the monster down, and players all reported a deep satisfaction when it was over.

Only one player, to Rare’s knowledge, ever managed to complete the encounter solo, well-known SoT streamer Beardageddon. His mammoth feat was memorialised in-game as one of Umbra’s Legends of the Sea, called ‘A Hairy Legacy’.

Eventually, the event ended. With the Hungering One put firmly in its place, life in the Sea of Thieves returned to normal. Megalodons still appeared, but they were a far cry from the legendary monster of The Hungering Deep.

‘It moves between the worlds’

But it seems Merrick’s got his eye on a new Megalodon. Something’s got him riled up, and now he’s on the hunt for Sea of Thieves‘ prize catch, The Shrouded Ghost. As players will know, The Shrouded Ghost is the rarest Megalodon in the entire game. Of the five Megalodon types, the chance of seeing the Shrouded Ghost appear is so incredibly low that many players with thousands of in-game hours have never seen it. Theories abound on how to summon the creature. None have ever panned out. The tales of pirates that have encountered the beast resemble actual, genuine pirate tall tales. Which is, of course, entirely the point.

Indeed, this mythical shark appears so infrequently that a common joke among Sea of Thieves players is to insist that it doesn’t exist and never did.

Rare plays into this with the trailer for the game’s next adventure, The Shrouded Deep.

“Tellin’ me what does and doesn’t exist,” Merrick mutters, irritably, “I’ll show ’em.”

Very funny, Rare.

It seems the next time-limited adventure will have Sea of Thieves players on the hunt for a legendary Shrouded Ghost. Even the name, The Shrouded Deep, is a clear reference to the game’s most-loved event. Will this new adventure make quite such a heavy demand on players to kick it off? We doubt it. Are we actually going to fight The Shrouded Ghost and, if we do, will defeating it unlock the game’s rarest and most coveted commendation and title?

And what the hell does he mean by ‘it moves between the worlds?’ Is it leaving the Sea of Thieves? Are there other pirate worlds than these? Wherever the hell Jack Sparrow went at the end of A Pirate’s Life, can the Shrouded Ghost follow? I have so many questions.

If Rare were to pull something like The Hungering Deep together again, it would be one of the most significant events in the game’s history. The default position in Sea of Thieves is ‘Every crew for themselves.’ Alliances are uneasy and often betrayed for profit. To date, only The Hungering Deep has actively challenged this status quo by openly asking players to form alliances and work together. All of the game’s other events have left it up to players to sort things out amongst themselves. Some may prefer brutal ocean diplomacy, and fair enough, but what The Hungering Deep showed was that when the game openly asked players to work together, they were happy to do it. When the reward for teaming up was a spectacular do-or-die team battle, it was worth it to put the usual skullduggery aside.

Also, was that a nameplate on the ship? Is the long-awaited Captaincy update, allowing players to name their ships, finally going live? We live in a golden age, SoT fans.

Time’s going to tell. What we know now: Belle has given Merrick his beloved Killer Whale back, and the hunt for SoT‘s rarest beast is on. I hope it lives up to the lofty expectations set by The Hungering Deep. The new adventure kicks off on April 21st and will run until May 12th.