Sea of Thieves' rarest item meets its most unlucky player as server maintenance spells unfathomable tragedy: "If you didn't capture it, nobody would believe you"

One incredibly unfortunate Sea of Thieves player has shared their tragic encounter with the open-world adventure game's rarest item.

In a post aptly titled 'I'm so sad', Reddit user SnooPoems9646 revealed a screenshot that really paints the entire devastating picture. In it, you can see the player sporting a fancy shovel, having freshly dug up a treasure chest inscribed with glowing symbols. 

Even many seasoned pirates, myself included, have never been lucky enough to come across the Box of Wondrous Secrets. But in this case, there's something in the screenshot that means poor ol' SnooPoems9646 isn't lucky at all. Up in the top left corner of the screen is a message reading, "Server will shut down in approximately 1 minutes," the erroneously plural 'minutes' lending an incidentally mocking tone to an already horrifying situation.

"I'm so sad :( Server shut down right when I found it," the user explains. No further text is included in the body of the post, because nothing further is needed... and presumably because there's a puddle somewhere in which to cry.

So there you have the story of Sea of Thieves' unluckiest player and how a once-in-a-lifetime shot to snag its rarest loot was doomed by something as banal and extraordinarily coincidental as server maintenance.

The comment section is filled with expressions of shock, horror, and empathy. One player shared a similarly harrowing account of their first day playing Sea of Thieves back in 2020, in which they haphazardly sunk a brigantine and stole its loot, not knowing they'd secured a Box of Wondrous Secrets. But before they could figure out what to do with it, or had any grasp of how rare it was, the brig returned and reclaimed their rightful loot with a vengeance. "Haven't seen the Box of Wondrous Secrets ever since."

"This is one of those "if you didn't capture it, nobody would believe you" kinda moments," reads one reply.

"Omg... At times like these I feel there's some special f you part of the code in the game designed to troll you," says a sympathetic pirate. "So sorry man."

"This takes 'getting Rared' to a whole new level," says another. "Sorry."

I've reached out for comment to see if Rare has anything at all, if even mere condolences, to say to this poor soul.

You can run to the best open world games, but you can't hide from server maintenance.