I do have a question, can you increase the text size? I can't read it from the couch :/ I've been looking through the settings but only see a setting to increase chat text size. It works anyway, 2 tvs side by side, one series X, one gaming laptop, same account. We managed to get in the game together!

oh nice, wasn't sure if you'd prefer to use ur own account, afaik only text increase is for game chat (other players in the server) i'm not sure if there's one for general things/NPC, which is kinda weird considering they have so many accessibility features. I haven't checked since the recent updates so I could be wrong lol

I couldn't find it, but no matter, can just read along on the bigger tv. (4K 65" next to 2K 52")

My 1060 laptop handles it pretty well, just a bit choppy around the fortress. Yep, much more fun playing together, too bad there is no split-screen mode, but dual tv mode works fine :) We did a couple of quests then got distracted by the fortress. I shot my kid at the fortress and kept launching cannon balls at it while he was fighting on the island. Unfortunately we had the chest of sorrow on board which started crying and sunk the ship. We only had the volume on on the big tv so I didn't hear it, saw water on the deck and that was too late lol. Siren showed up to teleport me back to the start island, my son died at the fortress, back together we launched a successful salvage expedition :) Fished our 4 chests out of the water and brought them back, this time my kid was playing songs for the chest to make it stop crying lol.

Benefit of using a laptop, alt-tab to find where those pesky islands are
https://www.eurogamer.net/sea-of-thieves-map-world-island-locations-5001
Kinda hard to find the smaller ones out of 74 islands on a huge map!

The only time we saw another player was on the death barge. We did see some red icons on the map, other players? The skeletons are deadly enough so far!

As for accounts, somehow it had me playing on my youngest kid's account, while my oldest played on his account on the Series X. It says "Your Microsoft store account is different from your Xbox account" in the XBox app (also somehow on my youngest kid's MS account) but it let us play after my oldest invited my youngest and I accepted it on the XBox app. I don't get MS accounts or why it says Ultimate under his name while my older kid is the one with Ultimate. Anyway  technically I have not played Sea of Thieves yet :p

Red icons are likely players flying reapers, people been server hopping to find FOFs and flying reaps and going there, FOF (fort of fortune) is currently the best loot u can get (broken skull that is glowing red in the sky). Reaper ships that reach grade 5 can see any emissary on the server (will show them on the map), so just be careful if you ever get into those.

As for the sorrows, I think it was a coincidence, people have been saying music works but never has for me. Only trusted method is to hold the chest while on ur ladder