Here's what's happened so far.
I've been consistently having problems equipping cosmetic items. Sometimes, my game crashes when I try to equip something (or even just when I open the cosmetics chest or shop) and tells me to make sure my display drivers are up to date. When that doesn't happen, the game just simply doesn't let me equip anything new 90% of the time, some items (like the admiral's coat and many others) failing to equip 100% of the time.
A few weeks ago, a friend and I looked around on my laptop with google's help and found a way to update my display driver. We did that - and it fixed nothing.
Earlier today, I looked around for more solutions, and ended up here: https://support.seaofthieves.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360014775699-Windows-Steam-Sea-of-Thieves-crashing-during-gameplay. I did the steps of the "Update Graphics Drivers" list. I have an Intel though, not an NVidia, so I downloaded that, not either of the two options the website gives. Now, my game looks like this and is basically unplayable. I can basically not see anything more than an island's distance away from me, and it sucks.

I would so, so, so appreciate any help! I'm super bad with computers and gaming stuff in general. I can give out my discord handle if a direct chat would make it easier to troubleshoot this. Thank you!!