Agree, this just sucks. I am carrying 440+ bars of soap in a pouch at all times, gotta keep my drip clean and health preserved, after all.
I loved the rainless Dark Sea, because water poisoning didn’t exist, and it had the best views of any place
2 Likes
id argue that the dark sea will ALWAYS be a tedious and danger task because it will always house some of the best things in the game. granted, fleets have tremendously reduced the worth for some expeditions, but there are a lot of things that make the trip worth it (in terms of exclusive content), such as:
- Hestia Pots & Hermes Cauldrons
- Atlantean Essence
- Moly
- Hecate Essence
- Book of Athena
- The Omen
- Far Reaches Animals
- The Epicenter
- Dragons (Future ofc)
- Lost Magic & Fighting Styles (Far far future)
though i think we all can agree there are a lot of bullshit scenarios that just happen due to how events are designed and the laggy-ness and unresponsiveness of sailing, with the latter just being due to optimization. tornados and islands that load in at the last second, atlanteans and white eyes that genuinely follow you to the epicenter, krakens that catch you because you couldnt turn, the list could go on. i believe all this (and how fleets work) give the dark sea its bad rep, as well as bad luck making it all a waste of damn time
3 Likes
From this list, I see…
- Hestia Pots & Hermes Cauldrons: A gimmick to get better potions & food, could be changed to be non-Dark Sea upgraded pots and cauldrons.
- Atlantean Essence: A farmable material in its most primal nature, you fight an enemy, you get an item, that’s it. Granted, it does make the most sense to be in the Dark Sea, so I won’t whine about this one.
- Moly: Something that really sounded like it was added because they needed a solution to get rid of blood diseases, likely since someone complained.
- Hecate Essence: A compromise from Vetex to allow for free first magic change, as he really did not enjoy the idea to begin with.
- Book of Athena: Collectible, sure, that’s fine I see why that’s a thing… but WHY make it give an Oracle god soul when they already have so few features?!
- The Omen: Kraken, but bigger, that’s fair enough on my standpoint… but the spawn rate is inconsistent from what I’ve read from others, sometimes it spawns commonly, sometimes never.
- Far Reaches Animals: I fought an “Armored” bear, it was just black fur, no actual armor, it seems like they were added just to fill the islands minimally more.
- The Epicenter: A piece of lore, that’s nice, REALLY difficult to get to, but nice, no issues except the lack of some exclusive items?
- Dragons: As far as I know, only the corrupted/atlantean dragons will appear in the Dark Sea, normal ones appear in the War Seas and/or Dragon Sea.
- Lost Magic & Fighting Styles: Ugggghhhh… honestly an annoying feature at best, the fact you have to travel far in the Dark Sea - which, I remind you, takes a LONG time - to get a new magic/fighting style is downright silly, the Dark Sea should be content that comes AFTER end-game, not something that grants a magic/fighting style that’s still mid-game in the grand sense of the max level.
- Reasoning: Mutations, a mutation should be able to occur without the use of some shard found from the Dark Sea, I mean come on, in lore we’re a savant who’s very likely a descendant of Zeus, it doesn’t make sense if we can’t mutate on our own.
4 Likes
i do agree with like how begrudging it is for each of these points, cause each of these is a own damn thread on how fundamentally flawed a lot of these things are, but taking it at face value, they are still top tier things in their own right. if the mechanics they were tied to are much more developed and better designed, along with the bullshit scenarios that could be removed/revamped from the dark sea, they would be great, cause at the end of the day, the dark sea is always meant for endgame content and will always be difficult to traverse as a foundational gameplay mechanic.
2 Likes
First, this isn’t a Far Reaches animal, just normal Dark Sea’s. Second, it does have armour on its body, just have to get it under proper lighting
True gamers don’t know soap clears poisoning because they don’t use it irl
this feels a little rude sorry
They should give more dark sea sealed chests instead
i wanted to switch my first magic to glass but i already had glass as a second so the option to change to glass didn’t show up. since you can not cancel an interaction with hecate (and even if you could i bet vetex would make it so it vanishes after giving up on the change) i was forced to pick a magic i did not want
vetex hates people trying to have fun on his game by changing their builds so he forces you to waste your time doing something tedious
1 Like
that just makes water poisoning an annoyance rather than a true threat when all it requires to be stopped is… soap.
I have never ran an actual dark seas run exception for omen runs since there’s a point where dark seas becomes useless at least in my eyes. Even then I only run omen because others wants to which is probably why omen is a great enemy for the dark seas
I feel like if you have a fully fleshed out build with what you want, there would be no reason to run dark seas unless you wanted to hunt for moly/loot but things like athena’s note/epicenter/etc is pretty much a one time thing and it really makes dark seas lack any sort of attractor once you’ve did complete those objectives. Omen and epicenter is probably the best example of being an attractor since its what most people strave for and people are willing to create parties for it, which is where I find entertainment and fun
Dark seas in my eyes lacks any sort of difficulty. Most of the difficulty feels artificial and are easily avoidable and the only dangerous thing is depending on how bull the RNG could be since I’ve had runs where I had parties die because of something unavoidable which really makes it demotivating to run it again.
- Got jumped by a far reaches boar and immediately swept up by a tsunami and got inflicted with water poisoning which ended my run.
- Did an omen run and a whirlpool, atlantean brig, and an omen decided to spawn directly on top of us without any counter
- Omen not spawning for hours on end and the extreme amounts of islands that spawn (forests)
- Killed by two poison tornadoes + water poisoning (however this was pre-nerf)
- White eyes spawning under the ship and instantly killing me while I was driving
- Got chained by multiple tsunamis with water poisoning (Which I didn’t die but it’s extremely annoying having to deal with an event like this)
You may say “Just use harming vials to get out of tsunamis”, but this isn’t a listed mechanic anywhere without using outside sources and is only something you gotta discover on your own.
I cant say much when it comes to using dark seas to progress for a file since I never ran dark seas on other files and I use my main heavily and the auction house usually covers for everything which nearly makes dark seas obsolete
5 Likes
lore wise, amazing concept, a place where everything is changing, nothing is certain, just awesome and a nice part of AO.. otherwise…. 
i think it’s the poor optimization. however, i don’t really go anymore due to fleets + the auction house.
I’ve been fighting dark sea enemies for fun and let me tell you, the PvE when it comes to far reaches animals and level 400 Atlanteans is fun. Everything else however…
Water poisoning
Genuinely just a redundant feature that exists to end runs. With soap its completely negated and it serves zero purpose, without soap however there is no avoiding death if you are exploring islands. You are supposed to be able to clear rain poisoning by standing under objects or terrain, which, always works, but the terrain destruction is so inconsistent, some terrain IS destructible and some terrain does not faulter at the strongest and most destructive of attacks. I would be fine with water poisoning if it didnt do 50 damage per tick, 20 would be fine, it wouldn’t be oppressive enough to end a run in 20s or less but it would still require you to find shelter.
Waves.
Boy oh boy. These things are so fucking buggy it is insane. If you dare to get water poisoning while sailing prepare to get flung off the boat. These shits dont obey the basic laws of physics, and if they dont initially sweep you off the boat they will teleport you 5 miles about 10s later. Theyre just fucking annoying. They dont make anything more difficult just fucking annoying.
Island generation
why do they have to be that tall, it does not add any difficulty to the game, just more tediousness
Lightning
yeah I hate lightning, especially the fact that it targets players in the ds, not much else to say
Tornadoes…
make them not spawn on islands omfg, that’s it, they spawn in the most annoying of places
sailing distance
I hate sailing for 30 minutes to get to the far reaches to do pve
4 Likes
I would like to apologize for saying this. It was a knee-jerk reaction, and I did not carefully think and consider the nuances of difficulty in video game design and the necessity for challenge. Therein, I shall think and consider for a long moment before delivering my revised opinion.
…
Alright, that’s enough thinking. It still sucks more than a mosquito which just ate Mexican without any milk.
No you’re right, I dont enjoy being in the ds, the things I enjoy fighting just happen to be there
I know, I was just making a joke, lol.
Even if the spawnrate for these was quadrupled, people would still ignore them. The issue here is that you have to waste time scouting the whole island for them, then waste even more time carrying all that back into the War Seas. The fleets just made all that obsolete.
The solution would be to have some way of opening them on the spot - a shipwright quartermaster, for example.
A great effort at outyapping me, but oh well…
Dark Sea 2: Magic Boogaloo
1 Like
Now with even MORE water hazards that prohibit your exploration for no foreseeable reason!
But wait, there’s MORE!
Water poisoning can only be removed by drinking a specific potion! as it’s in your blood stream after all!
You’d be surprised… but there’s even MORRREE!
Since the world is such an ocean we all love, we’ve adjusted the spawn rates of islands to be reduced tenfold, and upped the chance for volcanos and sunken forests to spawn, happy hunting!
reminds me of a certain shipwright that wants to become a pirate