The issue
As mentioned in the Mythical treasure chest post, mythical charts, as well as lost ones, are meant to be a long adventure by the player, travelling to various locations and digging at many treasure spots to find buried treasure, and then fighting pirate crews that attack them, before eventually reaching the final spot, uncovering a vast treasure, defeating the boss pirate captain and waves of enemies and being awarded with immense riches.
In practice, this is hardly the case. Most locations can be figured out on the first or second try, most players donāt bother fighting the pirates since there is no reward or threat from leaving the pirate crews be, including the boss pirate captain, and the āvast treasureā consists half of sealed chests that usually arenāt worth the hassle to pick up, and a handful of modified chests, a reward usually so mediocre, most players donāt find the charts to be worth either the time or the effort. The only good reward comes in form of Lost knowledge books from lost treasure charts.
The issue of the final treasure spot of mythical treasure charts has been resolved on another post, but this one aims to tackle the issue of lesser spots of both mythical and lost treasure charts.
Difficulty scale rework
First problem posed by mythic and lost charts is the fact that, when it comes to the process of finding the treasure spot, thereās not much of a difference between the first and the final treasure spot. Both spots can have the same amount of ambiguous information, or even worse, you may end up having a worse time finding the first treasure spot than the final.
To fix this, I propose reworking the charts so that the amount of uncertain clues increases with the amount of completed steps.
- First spot has absolutely no uncertain clues and acts like a normal treasure chart.
- Second spot has 1 uncertain clue[1]
- Third spot has 2 uncertain clues[2]
- Fourth spot has all 3 uncertain clues[3]
- Fifth spot has 2 uncertain clues[4] and 1 redacted clue[5]
New terrains for treasure
To make this rework somewhat easier to write, the first proposal is to introduce two new types of terrain that can be dug up and where treasure can spawn: mud and gravel.
Mud would have the appearance of brown sand or simply dirt and would appear on swampy, humid or otherwise moist islands, as well as on some seashores, edges of lakes and rivers.
Gravel would look like it currently does, and would appear as it already does, as a substitute for sand on certain islands.
Clue synchronization
Another problem with uncertain clues is the fact that, oftentimes, the player can simply use logic to decipher the correct spot, or at least the correct clue. This is because clues donāt work with one another, they are (most likely) made by the game randomly choosing one item from a list for each clue.
To fix this issue, clues should be made so that, if the game chooses one clue, ones that clash with it arenāt chosen. For example:
- If sand is set as a clue for Nimbus sea chart, then unclear clue canāt have Westerpath isle, Ice mines, Vents of Aeolus, Shale reef and all other islands without sand.
I believe this wouldnāt be too difficult to make. By simply writing 3 lists, one for each clue, then choosing which terms are incompatible, I think itās possible to execute this. (@Scandin can you confirm?)
To balance out making lost and mythic treasure charts far more difficult to find, an optional method will be added that allows the player to mark off one incorrect clue.
Pirate ambushes
Pirate ambushes are the main feature meant to make lost and mythic charts into a thrilling treasure chase, but they fail dramatically due to a simple reason: the player has absolutely no reason to defeat the attacking enemies to proceed with the chart. The enemies themselves are also ignorably weak, so in the end, itās much more time efficient to just leave them be.
In order to change these into features that see player interaction, I propose two new features to be added.
Correct clues
Upon defeating the attacking crew of pirates, the player has a fair chance to obtain a correct clue. What this essentially does is cross out one of the incorrect options on the treasure chart, allowing the player to find the treasure more easily.
A correct clue is guaranteed to be dropped if the player defeats all the enemies ambushing them at a treasure spot. Aditionally, each pirate ship the player sinks and defeats the crew onboard has another 33% chance to yield a correct clue, with each 3rd ship being guaranteed to drop one.
This would hopefully incentivize the player to engage further with the risk carried by the treasure chart, and make the pirates that spawn to chase them more meaningful.
Missing step
A second addition, final step of the chart will no longer be given when the treasure is dug up. Instead, the player has to defeat the captain of the pirates attacking them at the treasure spot to get it. This replaces the correct clue chance, incentivizing the player to fight enemies on other ships to narrow down their options.
If the player hasnāt killed the miniboss yet, they can get it at a 50% chance by sinking attacking pirate ships and defeating their crews, with the 2nd one being guaranteed to drop one.
This mainly serves as a prevention of a softlock, in case the miniboss is flung, disappears underground, or anything else.
Upon getting the final step, the player can once again gather the correct clues.
Buried treasure chest
Buried treasure chest would serve as a replacement of the existing sealed chests. What they would do is very simple: upon interacting with it, the player would get sealed chest items, the same amount they wouldāve usually gotten. This is just to make the playersā lives a tad easier.
