“I swim face-first into a dolphin (famously a mammal)”

ATLAS: a tale of woman versus shark.

Sometimes life gives you lemons. And by ‘life’ I mean ‘Early Access pirate MMO Atlas’, and by ‘lemons’ I mean ‘a spawn point at the bottom of a vast and unforgiving ocean populated by sharks’. I guess I must now try to make some lemonade. And by ‘lemonade’ I mean ‘bloodymindedly commit to this stupid spawn point and spend over two hours swimming west to find land instead of starting over’.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be in one of Atlas’s freeports – safe island zones where players can feel out the game’s systems and start levelling up before heading out on their first craft. The tutorial backs me up on this. “Walk out of the town you start in, and find some bushes,” it says.