Do you remember what happened on that abandoned ship? Did you get any loot or it just froze? I'm guessing it silently threw some error and just stopped executing. Did the screen transition to black and back though right after the initial jump?
Yeah it's very luck dependant and some early events can really carry you far. Like in your case, a level 5 mate is sure to give you so much extra events that you're bound to be above the difficulty curve of enemies getting harder. But I don't really mind that there are some pretty busted things (right now at least) when there is no scoring/leaderboard or any other competitiveness (yet maybe).
There are actually two different tridents. You have both cases in those above pictures. One is just an extension of frogifying yourself and one just a consolation prize when you don't have crew members to upgrade.
