I redrew a couple sets of both seas for 2 proposed ideas of currents/slipstream highways
1st set - Traditional/Immersive Highways (what we’ve been doing)
To put it simply, all streams are directional and pull you in that direction
1st Set Maps
Bronze Sea Explanation
Bottom 2 highways are for going to and from the Nimbus Sea. The other 3 are a circular highway that passes by almost every major town/island. These would all connect and perpetually pull you along them in circles until you exit the highway, but they would slow down around where the arrows/highways end (which is why they’re placed by the biggest points of interest) to allow easier exiting.
Nimbus Sea Explanation
Top 2 are the same currents from bronze sea just connected, also while travelling on these currents you would automatically teleport when crossing the border without needing to click and could possibly play an animation of the camera panning out while you travel across it into a nimbus server. The other currents are fairly simple, main destination of nimbus sea is Sameria so when getting off of the inter-sea branch current you’re immediately put into a current heading straight there (slows by forest of mast because story woohoo), then since Sameria and Monos are the 2 most popular islands to spawn at in this sea the current travels right beside them and brings them across the sea (hopefully past Stormgale presuming that’ll be in the south near Tidecliff), and then towards ice mines and port mistral (more story woohoo), then you sail up through the collection of islands there and back onto the original current going to Sameria. Also, completely forgot to add my currents of death around Makrinaos, just imagine they’re there cause I don’t want to keep drawing arrows onto AO images on MS paint.
2nd set - “Convenient” highways
Basically these would work like Deepwoken’s highway system, where you simply get a major speed boost purely by being in it. Immersive? No. Convenient? Yes.
2nd Set Maps
Bronze Sea Explanation
You’ll notice this is practically identical to the last map, thats because, well, it is! As I mentioned above these would be areas where your ship speed is increased overall rather than directionally. Less immersive but convenient. Bottom current is the border current, allowing you to travel both into bronze sea and out of bronze sea quickly. Works same as the other current except just merged into 1 since its omnidirectional. The other currents are in the same circle except this time you can choose the direction you want to go. No real other reasons since its up to you to choose which way you wish to travel.
Nimbus Sea Explanation
Uhh basically same as bronze, inter-sea current and then a circle around major spots.
I was tempted to do a 3rd set which would basically be a mix of the first 2 sets, where they are directional but each current also has a “twin” current that leads backwards from the original current, giving you the freedom of the 2nd set while keeping the immersion of the 1st set, but I felt this would be wayyy too convoluted so decided against it. Still adding this in to see if there’s any feedback towards it though.