Meet the first Sea of Thieves Pirate Legend (who hardcore players are super mad about)

It looks like Sea of Thieves has its first Pirate Legend - or at least the first one who is willing to share their secret with the world.  Twitch streamer Prod1gyX hit level 50 with all three of the game's factions while broadcasting and gained access to its secret Pirate Legend hideout. Spoiler warning: This story will discuss some of the stuff that Prod1gyX found after becoming a Pirate Legend, so if you'd rather wait to find it all by yourself, you should probably stop reading.

After hitting level 50 with the Merchant Alliance, the streamer embarked on another riddle that revealed how to access the hideaway. It looks like you unlock a special new riddle, including a shanty that must be performed near the backside of a tavern. Play for a bit and a glowing icon will appear on the cobblestones, they'll then recede to reveal a hidden space under the tavern. Some taverns have a glowing waterfall, others a submerged cavern, but they all seem to grant access to the same legendary hideaway.

Once you're in there, you can hang out with a bunch of ghosts, buy exclusive Pirate Legend customization items, and even pick up legendary voyages. It looks like these voyages feed into a new fourth faction called "Athena's Fortune", though the objectives themselves seem to be pretty familiar. You can take non-legend crewmates into the hideaway but they won't be able to buy anything or pick up voyages themselves.

The emergence of the first Pirate Legend should've been a cause for celebration amongst hardcore Sea of Thieves players, but reactions were… less pleased than you might think.

And those were a couple of the more polite ones. Why all the anger? Prod1gyX was able to get to Pirate Legend so quickly (just a bit over a week after the game came out) because fans lent their progress to them, doing the grunt work of Voyages themselves then sharing the rewards with him. In other words, they boosted him. Prod1gyX responded on-stream by saying that members of his community volunteered to help him out and make the achievement possible. And to his credit, he spent a good while after becoming a Pirate Legend showing random players to the hideaway, then setting them up with lucrative Legendary Voyages on the ship before departing.

Personally, I understand the resentment from the hardcore end of the Sea of Thieves community (especially because ranking up all those factions yourself is a huge grind). But it'd still be inappropriate for Rare to refuse to recognize his accomplishment - it's not like he was using out-of-game hacks or massive exploits. Was the race toward Pirate Legend a fair one? Maybe not. But if there's one thing pirates ain't, it's fair.  And if Prod1gyX ends up getting some kind of recognition in the game world itself, you could always follow these Reddit users' examples to express your disapproval of his methods. 

For some tips on how to get ahead yourself, check out how to earn gold fast in Sea of Thieves.