Hunting attachments rebalance
Before we can get to the main stuff, we have to rebalance attachments to fit more in line with this suggestion.
This will be a series of changes to them.
Hunting Weapon Slot - Hunting Attachments are now part of a new item type, called Hunting Weapons, every ship has a single slot for this type of attachment.
Functionally, it’s pretty much the same as attachment, but having a single slot simplifies them a lot and allows you to use the warship enchant if you wish.
The brig now has 2 additional places for hunting weapons, around the middle of the ship.
Stats and Enchants - Hunting Weapons are no longer assigned to a stat and can be used by any class. This also means that the imbue effects on the attachments no longer appear.
(Arcanium hunting weapons could become available at a higher level)
The stats and enchants are rebalanced, as Swift/Brisk are currently the best enchants for them, since the other enchants barely do anything.
Damage Affinity on hunting weapons is changed into just Damage and no longer scale with levels, instead there would be new tiers of hunting attachments (just like cannons, mortars or rams).
This change also simplifies them a bit for players, cannons have a damage affinity since they multiply the cannonball’s base damage, which is a flat number.
Below is a list of changes to the existing hunting weapons and the enchants for them.
Hunting Weapons
Throwing Harpoons - (Level 10) Can be bought from Shipwrights.
Lowest range and the lowest damage out of any Hunting Weapons, but has the fastest reload.
On hit, it inflicts a stacking medium damage bleeding debuff.
Harpoon Gun - (Level 30) Can be bought from Shipwrights.
Good reload speed and good range, deals decent damage and inflicts a medium damage stacking bleed debuff.
Swivel Gun - (Level 80) Can be found in sealed chests.
Deals very high damage with high range, but has the slowest reload.
Net Launcher - (Uncommon, Level 120) Can be found from sealed chests.
Good damage, decent range and slow reload.
On hit, it inflicts a stacking decaying slowness debuff, this effect is weaker on stronger sea creatures. (Large sharks, whales, sea monsters.)
Decaying means that the potency of the debuff will rapidly decrease as time goes on, instead of it having a set duration. Starts out at around 120% slowness to make the effect more apparent on weaker sharks. Each shark has a debuff cap, a multiplier for decay rate and a multiplier for effect potency. (Debuff cap and effect potency multi is lower whilst decay rate is higher for stronger sea creatures)
Enchants
Speed Enchants - Decreases reload time by a percentage rather than a flat amount.
Currently, speed enchants are way too strong for these as they increase your DPS by a ton.
Damage Enchants - Increases the damage by a flat amount. Each enchant tier is much stronger than the previous.
Range Enchants - Increases range. Significantly stronger than they are currently.
Warship Enchant - Increases range and damage by a lot, but increases reload speed by a high percentage.
Basically the same as it is currently, but with adjusted numbers.
Crew being able to use Hunting Weapons - Pressing X while commanding a ship will now toggle whetever your crew/deckhands are using the cannons or the hunting weapons. You can only have one active at a time and this command has a cooldown.
While the hunting weapons are active, you’ll be able to control where your crew will shoot them with your mouse, similar to ship cannons.
They’ll fire every hunting weapon at once (each crewmember won’t fire them at the EXACT same time, but with a very minor delay) and hunting weapons have a shared cooldown for each side.
You can still operate hunting weapons by yourself, like before.
Shark Attacks
Randomly spawning whirlpools are now reworked into “Shark Attacks”. Where sharks will attack your ship in waves and you must defeat all of them before getting loot.
Randomly spawning whirlpool changes
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Whirlpools drag you to the center very quickly.
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Being in a whirlpool now massively boosts your ship’s turning stat.
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They won’t deal any damage to your ship, no matter your stability.
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- This is unless you have no hunting weapons equipped, which in that case they’ll deal heavy
damage to your ship within a few seconds (decreased with stability) before letting you go.
- This is unless you have no hunting weapons equipped, which in that case they’ll deal heavy
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If a player falls into a random whirlpool, they’ll take heavy damage before getting launched out.
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The Toggle Sails key is changed into “Escape” while stuck in a whirlpool, you must hold it down to use it.
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- When used, you’ll have a chance to escape the whirlpool, instantly ending the encounter with no loot. (Does not despawn the whirlpool, the player ship simply gets immunity to them for around 2 minutes)
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- The chance for escape is based on whirlpool size, ship stability, encounter type (incase it’s a sea monster), and also whirlpool escape chance from the old compass artifact.
If it fails, it’ll show you the escape chance and set the escape key on a cooldown.
- The chance for escape is based on whirlpool size, ship stability, encounter type (incase it’s a sea monster), and also whirlpool escape chance from the old compass artifact.
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Npc ships will not aggro onto the player and they lose aggro if they currently have it.
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Npc ships cannot get trapped into randomly spawning whirlpools.
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If a second player tries to enter a whirlpool that’s already occupied, their ship takes medium damage and get thrown out
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Players deal much less damage to other player ships inside of whirlpools.
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Whirlpools cannot despawn if a player ship is inside of it.
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Whirlpools can now have one of 7 sizes: small, medium, large, very large, huge, gigantic and mighty.
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- The amount of waves, sharks each wave and the loot is based on the size.
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- The stats of the sharks is based on the current sea, with them getting stronger with each sea.
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- Dark sea sharks are also a lot stronger and have a chance to become “giant”
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The Combat
After the ship is dragged to the center, the first wave will begin, with sharks spawning decently far away and coming from all directions.
You must defeat every shark to progress to the next wave.
After the final wave, the whirlpool will disappear and you’ll get loot, alongside with some sealed chests spawning nearby.
You’ll also get some repair supplies (check the trello if you’re confused about this last part).
Sharks found during shark attacks are much stronger compared to randomly spawning sharks, they have higher health and deal more damage to the ship.
Their behavior is changed drastically. They move more unpredictably, no longer hide when damaged and will do one of two things when they get close to your ship.
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Smaller sharks will wait for a short moment before jumping out at your ship, dealing damage to it. There is a small glint visual and sound before they jump. You can also cancel the jump if you hit them while they’re preparing to jump.
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- The jump delay and range changes based on shark type.
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Larger sharks will dash and latch onto your ship, dealing damage over time.
You can knock them off by shooting at them a few times.
Bracing (hold G while steering) now decreases damage from sharks).
Attempting to damage one of these sharks will multiply the damage of the attack by 0.05x, not cause the shark to change it’s aggro (they’re always aggro’d to the ship) and send a tip that says…
“Shark Hunting Tip - Your regular attacks are ineffective against sharks. While steering your ship, press X to switch to your ship’s hunting weapons, these deal full damage to sharks.”
ALL sharks will no longer drop any loot unless found in an underwater structure. (Which now drop loot at the regular rate, rather than at a reduced rate.)
This change is made since surviving a shark attack will give you a lot of shark drops, but also to remove bleed pot farming, which could be incredibly lucrative if done in the dark sea.
Below is a list of changes to the 4 current shark types (excluding lurkers).
Shark Types
Shark - Higher health and damage than before, jumps at the ship when it gets close.
Tiger Shark - Similar or lower health compared to the normal shark, but moves faster and jumps at the ship faster and from further away.
Great White - Moves slightly faster than before but has quite a bit more health. Latches onto the ship when it gets close.
Megalodon - Moves the slowest but has a ton of health. Latches onto the ship and takes a few extra shots to knock it off. Does not appear in smaller whirlpools.
Surviving a shark attack gives you a lot of shark drops and other reagents, such as bones.
You’ll also obtain some random underwater chest loot, such as artifacts, drowned items and very rarely sunkens.
You will gain a large amount of exp depending on the size and your deckhands will also level up depending on the size.
There could even be loot that’s only obtainable through shark attacks.
Sea Monster Encounters
Sea Monsters now turn into boss fights, with each sea monster having it’s own unique fight.
Every sea monster also has a dark sea variant that are stronger but drop exclusive loot. You also obtain the regular shark attack loot on top of the Sea Monster loot, alongside a lot of reagents.
Sea Monsters can rarely drop unique ship cosmetics, such as lanterns, figureheads, sail patterns, ect.
Some sea monsters may only appear in specific seas.
Summaries of each sea monster tier.
Aberrant - Aberrant sea monsters are weaker mini-bosses, that usually have multiple sea monsters attacking your ship.
Behemoth - Behemoths are bosses that are difficult to take down. Some of them have their own fight mechanics. They are much rarer than aberrant sea monsters. Some behemoths get stronger depending on the sea and have new loot for each sea.
Abyssal - Very rarely appears in any sea with a server-wide announcement and map marker before they spawn. These are extremely strong and act more like raid bosses. Abyssal sea monsters can also be found in the Dark Sea.
There’s also 3 distinct encounter types, each sea monster uses one of these types.
Encounter types
Whirlpool - Your ship will be stuck in a whirlpool during the fight.
Open - Your ship is able to move freely within a certain radius (usually large). The borders of the arena are marked with red and have high waves, if your ship tries to cross this border, it’ll get launched towards the middle and will take some damage.
Underwater - This is used for sea monsters that are meant to be fought head-on by players rather than on a ship.
Below is a list of the 3 (+ lurker) sea monsters currently in the game and their reworks.
Kraken and Omen are excluded, since I don’t know what they do and the trello makes them already seem like what this suggestion is trying to accomplish.
This doesn’t include loot cause this suggestion is already way too long. But each of them would have their own loot (such as armor, weapons and ship parts), alongside their usual drops.
Lurker
Lurker - Bronze Sea, Aberrant-tier
While sailing, you may sometimes find a strange whirlpool with red dots whirling around.
This whirlpool causes a single wave of 3-6 lurkers to attack your ship.
Lurkers are faster, stronger and tougher compared to regular sharks, they also turn somewhat transparent before jumping at your ship or when they take damage. However their eyes will always glow bright red, making them slightly easier to spot. The small indicator before they jump is brighter and also red.
In the Dark Sea, Lurkers will turn completely invisible with only their eye being visible, even while jumping, they only turn visible when damaged but only for a short time.
Poison Jaws
Poison Jaws - Bronze Sea and Nimbus Sea, Aberrant-tier
While sailing, you may sometimes find a whirlpool with purple-poison mist above it.
This whirlpool causes two waves of 5-10 poison jaws to attack your ship.
Poison Jaws have a similar speed to tiger sharks, but are much weaker. However, they inflict a stacking poison dot onto your ship.
In the Dark Sea, Poison Jaws will rarely spawn as a giant variant. Giant Poison Jaws can sometimes shoot a poison bolt at your ship from a distance, however this takes a few seconds and they can be interrupted by hitting them.
Obolus
Obolus - Bronze Sea, Behemoth-tier
While sailing at night, you may come across a strange merchant sailboat. The sailboat is sitting still and has no crew, but an ominous blue glow can be seen coming from below.
Attempting to board the sailboat causes Obolus to jump out, swallowing you whole and killing you instantly.
However, if you were to ram the ship (cannons and hunting attachments do nothing), a whirlpool will spawn under your ship as the sailboat quickly disappears.
This causes Obolus to start attacking you!
Obolus has a resistance towards hunting attachments (damage reduced by 20-40%), but there are other ways of damaging it.
Stealth Chomp - The most common attack, Obolus will circle your ship before turning invisible and charging towards your ship, if your ship ram is turned towards Obolus, it’ll deal a good chunk of damage to it. Obolus’s lure will still be visible.
Illusions - At 60% HP or below, Obolus may start circling your ship faster and faster, before turning invisible. Semi-Transparent Obolus clones will start charging towards your ship from all directions, they can be killed by simply shooting them with your hunting attachments once or twice, or directing your ship ram towards them. If they hit your ship, it’ll take some damage.
The final clone will be the real Obolus, who will be opaque instead of transparent. If you direct your ram towards it, it’ll take a large chunk of damage.
When defeated, a sound will play and you’ll win the encounter.
In the Dark Sea, Obolus will appear as a bright blue ghost caravel, with a distinct glow.
Stealth Chomp is faster (turns invisible and charges your ship much faster) and Illusions uses blue ghost caravels, while the real Obolus will become a bright blue ghost caravel, until it gets rammed or close to the ship.
White Eyes
White Eyes - Any Sea except Vimir Sea and Marauding Sea, Behemoth-tier. “Open” encounter type.
While sailing, you can very rarely find a large dark red silhouette of a colossal shark, with a large red fin slightly poking through the water.
To start the fight, you must atleast have a ketch or a better ship. Then, if you shoot a hunting attachment near the silhouette, you’ll hear a large roar before White Eyes starts attacking you!
Idle - While White Eyes is not attacking you, it will erratically swim around your ship.
Chomp - White Eyes dives for about a second before poking out and looking at your ship, about a second later it’ll start charging at your ship rapidly. If your ram is directed towards White Eyes when it hits your ship, you’ll negate some of the damage and deal a decent chunk of damage back to it.
Dive - White Eyes dives down with full force and sends a bunch of fast-moving waves in an arc towards your ship. A couple of seconds later White Eyes jumps out and sends more waves.
Leap - At 40% HP or below, White Eyes may roar loudly before diving down and disappearing for about 8 seconds. After this, a large shadow will appear next to your ship, if you don’t sail away. It’ll leap out and bite your ship, dealing devastating damage!
After you defeat White Eyes, a sound will play and an animation will play, before you get the loot.
In the Dark Sea, White Eyes attacks faster and more frequently. Leap is now directly under your ship, White Eyes will attempt to jump from under your ship rather than leaping from a distance. A new attack is also added.
Blitz - White Eyes starts moving towards your ship and then dives, a shadow will soon appear near your ship from a random direction and about 3 seconds later it’ll leap out and dive down near your ship, damaging it. This is repeated about 3-4 times. You can attempt to dodge this by sailing or by turning your ship towards White Eyes, which negates a large chunk of the damage and deals some damage back.
Unlike with Leap, Blitz follows your ship for longer, so dodging it will be a bit more difficult. (But still possible)
Why would I suggest all of this?
I really like the idea of going out there and hunting sharks and sea monsters, but unfortunately the sea monster combat is extremely underwhelming if you play the intended way (of using ship attachments, rather than your own weapons), as they get stunlocked and hide until you kill them.
I want a more fun activity that serves as both a large threat out on the seas and a way to get some treasure through a unique combat sequence.
Ship Attachments just feel rather boring in their current state as the stats don’t matter that much as you’ll always end up putting a speed enchant.
I don’t find the class-specific aspect of that interesting either, it just doesn’t seem to serve any purpose rather than just fitting with the “theme” of each class.
I like the sound of the new Kraken and Omen sea monsters, so hopefully this suggestion should bring the other sea monsters more in line with them.
I’ve also planned to suggest something like this since forever but was just too lazy and busy to get around to it, I’ll likely start doing more PvE related suggestions soon.
Bonus QnA thing
Stuff
How much damage will the new sharks/sea monsters deal?
I’m unsure, but it’d likely scale with your ship in some way. White Eyes shouldn’t completely one-shot a ketch but it should still be a challenge to brigs or even stronger ships.
How does the ram damage work?
It basically does a flat amount + your ram strength back to the sea monster while also reducing the damage taken by a certain % (this would stack with brace and other damage reductions).
Obolus sounds a bit annoying…
The bonus turning speed should help you a lot during the fight. Since you still have quite a bit of time to react during the charge before you take damage. Also the fight shouldn’t take that long since the ram would do quite a lot of damage to it.
Also, about the instakill thing, it’s meant to be a trap and something that just trolls you. The Obolus sailboat is pretty obvious to anyone who knows what it is, but it’ll likely catch a few curious new players off-guard (like any good trap does).
Imagine it a bit like the Dungeon Guardian from Terraria or the other 5 million traps that game has.
How strong will White Eyes be?
White Eyes would have a lot of HP compared to other sea monsters and could deal a good bit of damage! So it’s important to keep moving while you can.
Also you’ll be able to do the fight with multiple ships, since you fight White Eyes on the open sea rather than being stuck in a whirlpool.
What happens to whirlpools on islands and gale potions?
Those will stay the same as they currently are. Although a rework to how you escape from them would be nice, since currently it’s nearly impossible unless you’re a strength build or happen to get very lucky.
What about whales?
They’d stay the same but should maybe get a bit of an upgrade to their AI, since they’re a bit buggy as of right now.
What happens to the sailor style quest?
It’d be cool if it was changed to “survive 1 shark attack” or something similar, but it wouldn’t matter a lot if it didn’t change at all.
Also last thing, reagents from sea monsters would become guaranteed drops and you just get way more overall since it takes more effort and time to kill them.
And no, you still can’t use your regular attacks against them, that defeats the point of the hunting attachments!!
