The horizon burned a sickly orange as Captain Eliza Vance squinted through her spyglass. The Sea of Thieves in 2026 was no kinder than it had been five years prior—if anything, the waters were thicker with treachery, the Reaper’s Bones emissaries bolder, and the ghosts of Flameheart’s fleet more relentless. But to rise from a deck-swabbing nobody to a name whispered in outpost taverns, a pirate had to prove mastery over combat trials that separated the driftwood from the iron hulls. These Infamous Trials, etched into legend since the first Season, still stood as the crucible for every aspiring terror of the waves.

Eliza’s crew—a mute helmsman called Salt, a trigger-happy gunner named Wen, and a repair-savant known as Stitch—had decided to tackle the trials as a single, bloody pilgrimage. Their first target was the Infamous Reaper, a set of deeds designed to mold you into the very thing most pirates feared: an emissary of the Reaper’s Bones, that shadowy trading company that operated like a pack of spectral wolves drawn to the scent of a wounded vessel. To become one, you had to buy an Emissary Flag from the Servant of the Flame at the Reaper’s Hideout—a spine of rock at I/J-12 that hummed with ominous energy. Twenty thousand gold lighter, Eliza hoisted the flag and felt the eyes of every other ship on the server slither over her hull. The first deed demanded she hand in a broken Emissary Flag, a trophy that could only be torn from the sinking wreck of another emissary’s ship.

Sinking another player was an art form as delicate as threading a needle in a hurricane. Salt circled an unsuspecting sloop anchored off Lone Cove while the crew was ashore. Stitch had planted a gunpowder barrel beneath its waterline earlier, a trick he called “the shark’s kiss.” When Eliza lit the fuse with a well-placed firebomb, the sloop erupted like a tin can stepped on by a giant. Among the floating loot bobbed the broken flag—a pale, tattered butterfly pinned to a board. They turned it in, and the deed was done. The second deed was simpler but no less expensive: buy and wear the Reaper’s Bones Costume, an outfit that cost 68,300 gold and made you look like a deranged prophet of doom. The third deed required hitting any ship with a firebomb from a cannon; a passing skeleton sloop served as their target practice. Finally, they had to reach Emissary Grade 3, which meant hunting other emissary ships until their reputation swelled. By the time the Reaper’s mark glowed bright on their mast, Eliza felt less like a pirate and more like a contagious idea.

Next came the Infamous Mercenary, a trial that turned its gaze to the Order of Souls and their endless war against skeleton captains. The first deed demanded ten captain skulls, which meant grinding Bounty Voyages until their cutlasses were slick with bone dust. Eliza remembered one battle on Krakens Fall where four captains spawned at once, their crews swarming like ants from a kicked mound. Wen’s blunderbuss barked rhythmically while Salt herded the skeletons together with a sword that flashed like a lighthouse in fog. The second deed asked for three Villainous Bounty Skulls—the rarest of the common skulls, identifiable by the ghostly fragments orbiting them like mournful fireflies. The final deed of the Mercenary trial was a hunt for an Ashen Guardian, a rare captain that glowed with the embers of the Devil’s Roar. Stitch spotted one on Shipwreck Bay while they were resupplying; it stood sentinel over an Ashen Chest, its body a flickering red beacon. Defeating it required more than steel—they had to pull it out of the shade where its shadow form was invincible, dragging it into daylight like prying a vampire from its coffin.

The Defiant Reaper trial reversed the hunt, forcing Eliza to sink another Reaper’s Bones emissary. The seas around Reaper’s Hideout became their hunting ground, a place thick with ambushes and paranoia. They intercepted a brigantine flying the same flag, and the battle that followed was a symphony of screaming cannonballs and splintering wood. Wen landed a Wraith Cannonball—one of those screaming green ghosts that shunted the enemy ship sideways as if it had been shouldered by a god—and Salt boarded to prevent repairs. The broken Reaper’s Bones flag they retrieved felt heavier than gold. The trial also asked for a Reaper’s Chest and a Reaper’s Bounty, those cursed boxes that painted your ship’s location on every map like a scarlet letter. Retrieving a Reaper’s Bounty from a shipwreck, they sailed a gauntlet of pursuers, their ship visible to all. Eliza thought of it as carrying a ringing bell through a cavern of bats—everyone knew exactly where you were.

The Infamous Ghost Hunter trial plunged them into battles against spectral fleets. Ghost Ships exploded not into wood but into waves of force, and their cannonballs could set your deck ablaze or shove your vessel like a child’s toy. Completing a Ghost Ship Voyage for the Order of Souls taught them that these ethereal enemies died in three direct hits—no need to aim for the waterline, just hammer them until they vanished. The flagship Burning Blade, however, was a leviathan that spawned only when Flameheart’s giant orange face leered from the sky. Eliza’s crew fought through waves of phantoms, their ship stocked with triple the usual cannonballs. The Burning Blade’s sails unfurled like a flaming heart, and when it finally detonated, the silence that followed felt like the sea itself exhaling. The deed also asked for ten Skulls of the Damned, which they fished from the water between waves, each one a frozen scream.

The Infamous Warsmith trial was all about cannons and chaos. To rock an enemy ship with a Wraith Cannonball, they had to loot a Cannonball Crate of the Damned from a defeated ghost vessel, then find a player ship foolish enough to be within range. The second deed required them to fly the Reaper’s Mark—a flag that broadcast their position to the entire server like a dinner bell—and hit a ship with three different purple Cursed Cannonballs. Stitch collected Anchorballs, Ballastballs, and Riggingballs, each with effects that could turn a fight upside down. The Ballastball, in particular, was a nightmare that made a ship ride lower, flooding any unrepaired holes above the waterline. The final deed in this trial had them landing on Thieves’ Haven to find Wanda’s Journal, a half-buried book next to a skeleton on the northeastern beach. The journal whispered of cannonball alchemy, tying the deeds together like a hidden knot.

Then came the booms and blood of the Infamous Detonator. Eliza learned to wrangle Gunpowder Skeletons into chain reactions, luring two or more close before sniping a barrel from a safe distance. The explosion rippled outward like a shark’s fin cutting the surface, and the deed popped only when the second barrel triggered. Killing a shark with a gunpowder barrel was trickier; they had to sail over a feeding frenzy, drop a barrel, and shoot it at the precise moment a predator lunged. Stitch mastered it on his fourth attempt, earning a curse from the rest of the crew for the delay.

The final challenge, the Infamous Firestarter, was a baptism of flame. Burning three skeletons at once with a firebomb was easy—any active fort provided a crowd. But the real ordeal was the Ashen Winds Skull, a weapon that dropped only from Ashen Lords, those towering infernos of flesh and ash that spawned beneath tornadoes of fire. Eliza’s crew fought an Ashen Lord at Kraken’s Fall, a battle that lasted an hour and consumed forty coconuts. The skull they pried from its corpse could spit a cone of fire for about forty seconds before going cold. To burn fifty skeletons with it, they sailed to an active skeleton fort and funneled the horde into a narrow corridor; the flames painted the stone walls with writhing shadows. The final deed—hitting a ship with a firebomb from a cannon—was a repeat from the Infamous Reaper trial, a reminder that all combat circled back to the simple, brutal poetry of steel and flame.

By the time the last deed flickered complete on Eliza’s log, the crew had scars, stories, and a hold crammed with treasure. The Infamous Trials were never just about ticking boxes—they were about understanding that the Sea of Thieves doesn’t reward the brave. It rewards the stubborn, the cunning, and those willing to treat disaster as a dance partner. In 2026, as fresh pirates spilled from every outpost, the trials remained unchanged: a gauntlet that turned powder monkeys into legends, one cannonball at a time.