Dark Sea Compass ship attachment

[duskintent]

While attached to you ship, you can interact with it which brings up a menu listing many things you can find in the dark sea

List example:

1. General Islands

2. Dragon Islands

3. Abandoned Ships

4. Siren Islands

5. Atlantean Ships

6. Sea Monsters

And in the future

7. Sky Islands

8. Shipwrecks

9. Diving Spots

By selecting one of this options, the selected instance will turn white and have a boosted spawn rate.
“The Compass glows and starts pointing in multiple directions. Perhaps it would be useful to start venturing in one of them”

Obtainment:
In third range of the dark sea (insanity 2), there’s a 50% chance whenever you find an abandoned ship it will have this structure on it. You can then go and interact with it and it’ll go into your shipyard inventory which can then be added in the siege weapon slot

Why:
The Dark sea has had a lot of content added to it, and while that helps a lot with replayability, it has also introduced the side effect where if a player is searching for some activity or item in specific, they will have a drastically harder time finding it. Having this item allows players to have an easier time finding the content they wish to engage in instead of sailing aimlessly around the dark sea waiting for what they want to do to finally appear, making it a more enjoyable experiencing by allowing players to slightly tailor it for themselves.

Bonus: upgrades
While you can find the compass in the third Range(insanity 2), finding it in higher ranges can provide upgrades if the player already has the previous version

1. Range 4(Insanity 3)

“The compass now has an additional red pointing towards the middle of the compass instead of away.”
Players can now select a second option, which will be highlighted in red, that lowers the spawn rate of the selected instance

2. Range 5(Insanity 4)

“A glowing purple gem has been added to the compass, and the arrows appear to become more erratic”
This adds a new option that allows a boost to the effect of either the white arrow(boost) and red arrow(debuff). In other words, you can further increase the spawn rate increase or further decrease the spawn rate decrease. However it can only affect one of the effects at a time.

Alternative to siege weapon slot:
A new type of attachment to ships can be added with its own unique slot: “Utility Attachment”. These would be like ship attachments except they do not involve any kind of combat. The dark sea compass could go in this slot, along with:

1. The bath which is used to get rid of water poisoning

2. An attachment which gives warding 4 exclusively on the ship?

3. Other ideas

[Amuka]

@duskintent

The bath which is used to get rid of water poisoning

already on the brig and will likely be on larger ships too, we do not need a 2nd bath just to take the place of the mortar, still voted though since i like the overall suggestion elsewhere

I do like the 2nd idea a bit, perhaps there could be a version of it found in each dark sea range which gives more warding + effect distance depending on how powerful it is
range 1 version could give warding 1 exclusively on the ship while range 5 gives warding 5 and in a large surrounding area which may also cover a part of an islamds shore (still need gear + enchants or potions if going deeper on land)

(Though since the suggestion is just for the compass, everything else from there down should be in it’s own suggestion once you have more details and ideas)

[SZ778]

Yes, we need something like this to “customize” dark sea runs and give the player agency, instead of just RNG sailing. I also really like the idea of the upgrades being tied to content within the dark sea as it adds progression to the dark sea.

[Randomness21]

I think it’s be better if this were and attachment you could put or an entirely different type of thing rather than being in the siege weapon slot

[duskintent]

To be more clear:

As an alternative to the compass taking up the siege weapon slot, there would be a new attachment slot for ships, starting at brig, which would be called the “utility attachment” slot. The bath we currently have in our brig would instead be one of those utility attachments. But instead of that, we could choose the compass.

[wardcord1]

How many of these utility slots would we have? It would be unfortunate if in order to have a compass, we would have to get rid of the bath that removes water poisoning (The bane of my existence)

[duskintent]

It’s up to vetex unless you guys wanna vote on that.

I was thinking 1 slot for brigs to make the decision a tradeoff: either have free and easy water poisoning clears or get to customize your dark sea journey(getting to stop atlantean brigs from spawning so much I’d assume). Then it you actually have to think about the decision rather then it basically being free.

Or we would have 2.

I don’t mind either way. I should probably develop the idea of utility slots to be its own suggestion tho

[hanmbi]

yes please

[AlarGuardian]

maybe you just access upgrades from ruined ships in further reaches that may be used in any layer (also a potential fleet research investment)

[duskintent]

Im confused what you mean by that. I meant for it to be used in every layer. The idea of going to the farther layers was just to unlock the upgrades, the would then be permanently available for the compass and can be used anywhere in the dark sea

[UltraRedOrange]

This is a well thought suggestion in my opinion. It definitely can incentivize more Dark Sea exploration by letting players customize the content they prefer to explore and offer some kind of trade off for balance.

[KyleOriginals]

Any form of RNG manipulation to make the grind more bearable. Having multiple tiers is also a nice addition while giving the downside of using the mortar slot on ships for balancing purposes

[BiologLOL]

@duskintent

Abandoned Ships

Lessening the RNG of the Dark Sea is always great. However, why would we ever want to seek out abandoned ships? They give nothing of value but just a dark sealed chest once in a while. They aren’t even harmful, so keeping this option for the red needle is pointless too.

@duskintent

In third range of the dark sea (insanity 2), there’s a 50% chance whenever you find an abandoned ship it will have this structure on it.

Abandoned ships barely spawn past i0. If you intend to fix their spawnrate there for your suggestion to work, then sure.

@duskintent

Alternative to siege weapon slot:
A new type of attachment to ships can be added with its own unique slot: “Utility Attachment”. These would be like ship attachments except they do not involve any kind of combat.

Hm, this would be great. Could even move the rowboats to that slot. Problem will be, most players nowadays disregard their combat ship attachments, for whatever reason, so making the utility slot(s) highly contested for, and the combat slots practically worthless isn’t gonna go well.

Personally, I don’t think getting rid of all combat attachments to run 4 rowboats for stats is dumb, so I keep the two near the wheel, and the front is rowboats, since nobody uses the front two.

You know what? I’ll expand into this Utility Attachments idea in a future suggestion.

[BiologLOL]

@KyleOriginals

while giving the downside of using the mortar slot on ships for balancing purposes

I don’t see any balancing issues with this, wasting a mortar slot is dumb. The original suggestion should surely mean “replacing a combat attachment’s slot”.

[wardcord1]

@BiologLOL

Personally, I don’t think getting rid of all combat attachments to run 4 rowboats for stats is dumb, so I keep the two near the wheel, and the front is rowboats, since nobody uses the front two.

It was at this moment that I realized… I was not alone

[duskintent]

When it comes to less sought after things like abandoned ships, I chose to include them cause the purpose of this is to add complete customization. Its more about “why not” rather than “why”. However for ships in specific, you are right. They barely ever spawn past I0. That in itself makes the Compass a much rarer luxury to be sought after. Then once its obtained, players can choose to use it normally, or they can explore higher ranges looking for the compass upgrades utilizing the abandoned ship spawn rate boost. It feeds into itself.

Also just want to clarify, in my vision, this is something obtained by endgame players who need to do specific things in the dark sea. So requiring some search time in I2 to obtain the compass in the first place encourages random exploration for newbies who are like “first time in the far reaches, what does it have”.

I’d imagine it would also be sad if a first time player gets excited by the dark sea, then stumbles upon the compass in their first venture(if it were to spawn in I0) and then get a list of everything. I feel it would be more fun to discover for themselves.

[BiologLOL]

@duskintent

this is something obtained by endgame players who need to do specific things in the dark sea. So requiring some search time in I2 to obtain the compass in the first place encourages random exploration for newbies who are like “first time in the far reaches, what does it have”.

Correct. This is the right approach

[KVETrain]

I definitely think this is a great idea, though having the compass use a siege weapon slot is just blatantly stupid. I definitely agree with the 2nd idea more, with utility slots. It makes it so people don’t have to choose between significantly hindering themselves for something small, while also just generally making sense, as noone would actually replace their siege weapon (or siege weapons on later ships) just for one compass, when it could easily just be moved somewhere else on the ship?

That aside, I like the concept of utility attachments in general, warding is definitely a major plus, because it would allow for us to use less warding in the long run, and not need to put on warding 6 gear unless we want to go high-tier dragon hunting or go through a stupidly large island for a hecate essence… Meh that’s all I have to say but otherwise goated suggestion