Wtf is that
Fax it takes way too long
Can anybody answer me how clear water poisoning, cause i don’t know how and my friend has died twice from it (not me though)
you take a shower
I like the update a lot, it would be better if this was considered
Dark Sea “Downed” QOL Change - Suggestions - Arcane Odyssey
as well as players in parties allowed to use the bathing system 100% of the time without the bug that prevents players from doing that
I haven’t really delved too far into it myself (died to an atlantean twice when I had another big haul), but from what I’ve seen it certainly does.
Probably, although it is the end game so min-maxing is probably all we really have left to do while we wait for Nimbus Sea. Dark Sea is pretty difficult if you come across a weapon using atlantean since their ranged attacks can rip you apart (for some reason bow and gun m1 attacks just phase through powerful magic, weapon attacks, or fighting style ranged attacks).
Honestly if you don’t get involved in jewelcrafting you’ll probably be screwed in most pvp encounters. These new exotic jewels are quite powerful, and have added to the overall gem loot pool so getting gems is actually easier than before (ignoring the fact the brig shreds every NPC ship and lets you absolutely just farm tons of sealed chests).
Honestly it’s not even that bad, while a bit obstructive, it honestly could be a lot worse.
Died because of it in the insanity 1 region as I was fighting an atlantean on my boat. Honestly I get if the insanity 1 layer of the Dark Sea has poisonous waters, hell, you can make it constantly toxic if you want (you get the damaging status every time you take a dip). I’d argue rain poisoning should be for insanity 2 and beyond though, or at least give us an umbrella item so we can chill while we do something else like fish or something.
They’re cool, good theme song, but I absolutely hate the weapon ones. To be fair, most weapon npcs with a ranged weapon tend to suck since they have aimbot levels of aim with their projectiles (at least the arrows are somewhat avoidable).
Haven’t seen any yet, but I haven’t really explored too deeply into the 1st layer of the Dark Sea (takes a bit to get there).
Unless you got a powerful enchanting scroll to supercharge a bronze hull armor to 29% stability, yeah it for sure is. Even if you do, the Brig just has so much firepower, and that bit of extra speed just makes it practically a necessity for even the insanity 1 layer.
Either they get lowered, or we get visible wind superhighways to help boost our ships down and further into the Dark Sea. Wind superhighways would be a good way to somewhat organically reduce the time required to get into the Dark Sea, but it might cause lag. All I know is that the Far Reaches shouldn’t take an hour to reach by the time we start exploring that.
I noticed a bunch of ghosts floating around, not sure if they’re from despawned islands or just something that happens in the Dark Sea. Although, I didn’t notice them when the update first dropped, it’s only on older servers so I assume that’s unintended.
Still need to get some more of the loot, but in all honesty it’s not too ridiculous compared to stuff you can get from the Bronze Sea. If it’s at all more powerful than the bronze sea stuff, there is usually a downside which is usually either insanity or drawback.
Rain is rain, it’s not going to be a significant contributor to obstructing my view.
I can’t see more than 1.5 brigs in front of me sometimes on my monitor. 
That’s not even a joke, sometimes I smack into an island before I notice it’s there (the grey stone texture blends into the fog sometimes).
Pros:
-
The enemies in the dark sea are challenging but fair (as long as you don’t venture too far in), atlanteans are some of the most fun I’ve had with enemies because you can actually use grab attacks on them, making it super fun to combo (although their damage in the later layers can get incredibly high). I’ve not encounted sirens that often, but they offer a good amount of dark sealed chests and are much more chaotic than atlanteans. All of the designs are also well put together and make great enemies.
-
The new weapons, items, and enchants, all feel very satisfying when you obtain them. They’re all unique and feel rewarding. The “atlantean” versions of armor and weapons is a nice bonus as well.
-
The dark sea itself is unique and made all of the NPC characters actually feel like they have personality. From having some of them panic and want to leave to others wanting to sail on. The ghosts found on islands are also interesting from a lore perspective. Ghost ships however are kind of lackluster? (would have been interesting to be able to talk to them or something similar).
Cons:
-
Group expeditions are far too unrewarding to even consider. By the end of a 2 hour expedition you’re looking at maybe 3-4 dark sealed chests each which just isn’t worth the time. Furthermore I’ve done expeditions where people have crashed, resulting in their boat despawning and because you can’t spawn your boat in the dark sea, everyone dies.
-
Far too many things obstruct your view. The rain and fog are already a hassle to deal with but having insanity on top of that constantly changing your screen from dark red to black is even worse. It makes it very hard to see events in front of you.
-
It can be very unrewarding in general. Events don’t spawn nearly as frequently enough and islands can be a major hassle to deal with, especially ones that are incredibly tall. It took me around 20 minutes just to climb up and down a mountain because you can only carry one sealed chest at a time, and even then, sealed chests themselves rely on luck to get useful items, which can mean a long expedition turns out worthless. Coming back from long expeditions also runs the risk of you being killed by other players.
One of the main things I think would suggest to improve the dark sea is that it would be an entirely seperate server on it’s own, this means that it would be connected to your region resulting in less lag spikes overall.
By doing this, you can also scale up the rewards for group expeditions. Such as if a party of 4 entered the dark sea, they would get a lot more rewards/chests than a person with 2 party members. Enemy levels could also scale with the number of players to prevent people just bringing in alt accounts. When you wanted to leave the dark sea, you would just do what you do now with a compass and sail back, once you have sailed far enough it would say something along the lines of “would you like to end this expedition?” And all players would be teleported out with chests split equally among them (if there was an odd number, the group leader would get the chest).
5 Likes
I feel like the npcs should be significantly harder for the Dark Seas. Like they didn’t even get me to half HP. The PvE aspect is far too easy for what I expected.
I feel like a huge element of jewels was lost with the fact that they’re so much more difficult to obtain and thus create optimized jewel kits. I was interested in making a max knockback set at one point, now not so much because I know it would take literal weeks just to acquire all of the necessary gems I might want with a desirable stat roll; takes an absolutely unreasonable amount of time for a 10% swimspeed jewel
No
Out of several hour long expeditions I only got an item that was useful to my immediate character once, the rest of it being ship materials I could use to do more expeditions. It’s kind of self perpetuating and it suffers from the exact same issue as the gem problem I previously mentioned.
The techniques also leave a bit to be desired since uppercut is extremely buggy does far too little damage for it to be used in a PvE setting (i was unable to get it to deal over 100 damage without reducing the height), and selino is unable to assist me at all with destroying ships because of the fact it is a multihit.
I wish their drops were more common, very cool head visuals not obtainable anywhere else in the game, but it’s a complete roll of the dice. I saw an anglerfish head I particularly wanted, but ended up getting an eyepatch instead. Maybe bar those drops from the loot pool so that you can only get atlantean-exclusive items from them instead?
Yes, I traveled to the Insanity 1 range and explored there for a bit before heading back, but it took around 20-30 minutes on the return trip (My Brig being low health and one stop at an island outside of the insanity 1 range did factor into the time spent).
Speed Magics Dodge Reflexes
I use Lightning/Wind, and my brother uses Light/Plasma. We enjoy the PvE side of the game a lot more than the PvP, and play together frequently. We were extremely excited for the dodge reflexes considering the versions our magics would have were described as being a teleport. However, once we actually obtained the dodge reflexes and tried them out, they felt like a mid-air, normal (but fast) dash. We did have enough agility to be able to teleport with the T jump, but the dodge reflexes didn’t feel similar at all. Since the both of us are not too fond of PvP, we don’t have any idea whether this is the case due to PvP balancing or not. If this was an overlook, or wasn’t tuned right, it would be nice if the dodge reflexes for speed magics felt more like a teleport, similar to the T jump with high agility.
The water poisoning is a tad too frequent in my opinion. It’s not that fun to have to return to your ship 2-4 times while exploring an island, especially when the island is large. Getting water poisoning while sailing is also very annoying, since it’s safest to stop the ship and bathe, but that makes Dark Sea expeditions very time consuming in the long run.
My view in the Dark Sea is so obstructed to the point where I can’t tell if islands aren’t spawning often or if I just can’t see them. On top of having to use the brace feature so often (which zooms the camera in aggressively and seems to blur the camera) due to the sheer amount of waves coming from all directions it makes it even harder to see anything. It ends up feeling like traveling for ages while not even knowing if you passed an island half the time.
I found the Sirens at one point inside the insanity 1 range. The singing voices heard from afar was absolutely awesome, probably one of if not my favorite experience from this game so far. The fight against them was tough but seemed fair to me, although I’ve only fought them once.
In my opinion, the amount of waves is a little overwhelming. However, I do want the Dark Seas to be a REALLY difficult challenge so I’m rather conflicted on this.
Thank you for working so hard on a game we all love.
my team just lost 67 sealeds to a revive bug, trash update
I have to say, water poisoning had to be the single largest barrier to enjoying the Dark Sea, because when a mountain island spawns I almost feel like there’s no point in trying to explore because if it’s tall enough then you might never actually reach the top before needing to jump back down…
And the reward is usually more sealed chests than you can actually carry, because only 1/3 of your squad actually managed to make it all the way up.
Please let us throw Dark Sealed Chests off of cliffs‼️
1 Like
I think the new jewels are really nice in the variations of build they allow but i do think substat farming on the jewels needs to be easier, it’s not fun farming for rare gems and rare reagents just to get a 6% boost. Maybe have some way to reroll substats using 1 of the same reagent.
I think there should be a bigger indicator that you have gotten rain poisoned, it is sometimes hard to notice your health is going down while in the middle of controlling your ship and fighting enemy ships. Maybe have the pop-up that appears when the status appears be scaled to a set size on your screen so it is visible even when fully scrolled out on your ship’s wheel. (PS. all status pop-ups should probably be expanded to be larger so you know when you yourself has a status and also when a opponent you are fighting has gotten a status.)
It does obstruct your view fairly well but using a clearsight 5 potion makes it a lot easier to see, so as long as people know about the potion it should be fine if left as is.
I hope it’s fine I didn’t reply to every question, most of them would just be me saying “yeah this is a good thing as is” without adding anything to the topic.
TL;DR
Somewhat? I’m not really sure if it impacted build diversity massively, but the addition of new moves + the change in stat scaling is good. I’m not well versed in the metagame so I can’t really speak on this. Powercreep is starting to set in tho, will say that.
Refer to above.
Feels about the same to me, but I do feel like I have a reason to up my jewelcrafting skill now.
If one has the brig, then the danger from rough seas are a non-issue, however the rough seas have a tendency to flood the brig nearly the entire time while in the dark sea, making it slightly annoying to use the facilities within imo.
ANNOYING. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why it’s there- to make micromanaging harder and to keep you on your toes. The dark sea isn’t safe after all. But rain-poisoning absolutely needs to not happen mid-fight, as it can screw you over against atlanteans. It also needs a better indicator of when it’s happening before half of my healthbar is gone. Speaking of atlanteans-
Got destroyed. Haven’t killed a single one yet at the time of posting this. But that’s just my experience, they’re meant to be hard and strong and i’m cool with that. Nothings cooler than testing your mettle against a strong npc…but the weapon-user Atlanteans can rot for all I care, nerf those atlanteans specifically if possible 
Have yet to find any.
Full-stop, the brig is the best boat in the game both in stats and design. I love all of the mini-features added to it and it feels like a mobile home. That being said, it is Absolutely Necessary for the dark sea, mainly because of the wash-bin cleaning mechanic from rain. You could run in with a ketch if you’re skilled, but say goodbye to your ships hp in long expeditions. My only gripe with the brig is that it is difficult to see in front of it.
YES. The dark sea is very long and I think the whole community would appreciate it if layers 0-2 were tightened up, with an increased Atlantean ship and island spawn rate. Make them closer together too. “Short range” journey’s into the dark sea can easily become an hour+ long endeavour sailing to and back into whats considered “Not even deep.” Some of us do not have that much time to sink into the dark sea, what if something irl pops up that we have no control over and we have to log off? Anyways, Layers 3+ can stay spread out and long, as that’s meant for more endgame ships that we do not have yet.
Refer to above, they do not. I went a whole range without encountering a single island. First island I encountered was a small snow island with few chests and a ghost. Some forumers here have encountered islands that become mountainous towers for no reason that would take years to climb. Not fun for a solo player.
Slightly. 40min-1hr expiditions for 4 dark sealed chests isn’t all that worth it unless you get one of the new items that were added in this update. At the end of it all, your brig will be low and it will cost around 1.7k to repair it. Net loss of galleons. However, if ranges 0-2 were tightened up a bit, then my opinion on this would change.
Yes.
All that aside, this update is amazing and the dark sea is only going to get better with time 
1 Like
Slightly. There is a breadth of newer options, but the majority I’ve seen in the first couple Dark Sea ranges so far are still overshadowed by Bronze Sea boss drops.
Insanity gear is interesting, but having one or even two stat bonuses barely makes it worth the annoying effects, and most boss gear still seems to be a notch above in raw stats from what I’ve seen.
Drawback gear is arguably suicidal in both PVE & PVP, taking quarter or half health after only slinging your main attack pattern once is extraordinarily punishing. The pressure on every attack becomes magnified when you take damage whether it hits or not, it forces you to naturally play slower or shred yourself before your enemy has even touched you. And in a game where speed wins fights, it’s a massive detriment.
The other issue with Drawback gear I thought of is the audial cue of damage when you make an attack, I don’t know if it’s server or client side but if it’s serversided then it’s a massive detriment in PVP because players will have a reactional edge over you from the self-damage sound.
It becomes worse yet in the Dark Sea when Acid Rain is introduced, the possibility of tick damage at any moment compounded with the damage you’re taking from a fight makes it completely unviable, I found myself cowering in the brig quarters at 900 health constantly, having to rely on grapple moves that gave me I-frames just to stand a chance. Perhaps it’s supposed to only be used by Vitality players, but if that’s the case then it goes against the idea of diversity.
Clutches also become impossible with Drawback gear, somebody on 50 health will simply die if they attack, so at a certain health percentage you become locked into purely evasive play; which is usually a death sentence in a game with massive AoE attacks like this one.
Painite seems completely useless to me as well, the Drawback/Defense ratio doesn’t seem worth it at all, especially since Defense only equates to extra health. If it equated to damage resistance, there could be an argument for it, but raw health at the cost of losing health per attack wouldn’t be worth it unless it gave you 250-300 extra health, and even then it’s a gamble. The only nice thing about Painite would be the extra health regeneration from the defense, but the damage you take still beats out any advantage.
Warding gear feels pretty ugly, you get 3 gem slots but gems don’t currently carry enough stats to actually make viable gear out of solely them, and it also basically means trading your actual build for convenience in the Dark Sea. I rolled a Warding torso with Painite to try and eek out some kind of defense, but quickly regretted it as the Drawback made my offensive capabilities plummet. Warding Potions basically make up for this, but it’s painful to see the gear be practically useless in most scenarios just because it tries to replace your actual gear.
It feels like the system would be better if you could ‘bless’ your current gear to have natural 0.5 Warding by itself, instead of specific Warding gear. Reminds me of the annoying system in Terraria where you have to constantly swap armor sets to get specific niche bonuses because of how many different things there are to do in the game, it feels tacked on instead of properly enmeshed with everything.
I haven’t seen or played with any of the new weapons, but new weapons will almost always help diversify the game so I’m all for them. Well, either that or some kind of system that lets you modify your weapons beyond enchanting.
I find myself constantly having to chug potions & buff up with high quality food just to survive out as a solo in the Dark Sea, the amount of preparation it requires is extreme and I can’t see how somebody could get away with not min-maxing in an average 2 hour Dark Sea voyage, or at any point in the Insanity 2 & beyond ranges.
If you want to see islands, ships & avoid ALL obstacles, you have to chug Clearsight potions or you’ll be basically blind, if you want to actually get every bit of loot without wasting excessive time looking you’ll have to chug Revealing potions to show the tiny little ingredients scattered around, if you want to survive particularly nasty fights & climb obscenely tall islands without taking a long time you’ll have to eat high quality food, maybe chug an Ironskin if you’re fighting hyper-mobile Sirens.
I haven’t tried it, but I’d imagine Agility is helpful for chest-moving, Sharkrepel can possibly save a voyage if timed right, and Luck potions are a godsend when finally giving your extremely well-earned chests to the Shipwright.
Now, when it comes to Gear itself, I’m personally a Warrior running arguably non-meta PVE or even PVP weapons (Kai Sabre, Bronze Musket, Ravenna Shield) and 
, along with a cheeky 23 Vitality, and see relative success (my second voyage ended with 19 chests), so I feel like you don’t have to be hardcore meta just to get by, but it obviously helps & in Insanity 2 & beyond stages it probably is mandatory, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE SOLO! The brigs you encounter later on have ruthless enemies.
I will say I don’t like the fact that my build got hit with Jewel nerfs right before an update where I need every little bit of power I can get, but the triple-slot items somewhat make up for it. The mechanic itself was clearly improved by Exotic gems having double stats, and interest will obviously rise now that Jewels have deeper specialization pathways in return for lesser overall stats.
This is something I’ll argue comes with the territory, yes they’re annoying and can cause visual oddities but any other way of doing the seas would likely be too resource intensive or too time-consuming to implement, and their current form definitely sells the Dark Seas as an intense place.
Now, I would say it would be extremely cool if there were significant height changes like radical drops & bends from the seas themselves with more natural wave progressions instead of the current double-layer & slightly wavier one we have right now - but that likely wouldn’t mesh well with gameplay and would be even more annoying to deal with (unless it’s only to mark changes between Dark Sea stages, then it could sell that a whole lot better).
I don’t understand why rain poisoning exists, it grinds gameplay to a halt, barely makes any sense, and feels like a tacked on insult to the player’s time in a place where it already takes a genuinely mind-boggling amount of time to do everything there is to do (notably in the context of a Roblox game that could crash at any moment).
There are a multitude of better ways to add challenge to the player without resorting to cheap gimmicks like Rain Poisoning, and I think Rain Poisoning itself should only be delegated to specific magic-rain patches that you can clearly see & avoid. Magic Hail storms already exist, so I don’t understand how Rain Poisoning got through but Magic Rain didn’t.
I’d be perfectly fine with it if a Magic Rain storm was rolling in and I could clearly react to it, but as it stands Rain Poisoning is a constant in a sea of non-constants, which ironically causes it to make even less sense in the context of the Dark Sea.
I love the designs, and most of them feel like fair fights!
Most. Because of the constant Soaking status effect the Dark Sea gives, the RNG magic system can either bless or curse you based on the enemies you get. Most aren’t a problem, but god forbid you run into a Snow or Ice Magic user. You will be frozen in place constantly as you try to rush to your bathtub mid-fight to get Rain Poisoning off, you will be frozen mid-grapple attempts, and you will be frozen just for looking at them funny. Snow & Ice magic users cause an extremely unfair difficulty spike that seems clearly unplanned for, while Sand & Fire users would likely be looked upon as not challenging enough.
I believe that if you’re going to keep the 24/7 storm effects around in the Dark Sea, you should split hotter & colder magic users based on Dark Sea Stage, it’d make sense from a logical perspective that the Atlanteans deeper into the Dark Sea would know to take advantage of the environmental effects and you’d avoid rampant difficulty spikes.
The other thing I’d like to mention that seems to just be a general problem in the game but gets horribly amplified in the Dark Sea, is the fact that NPCs aren’t near as disadvantaged as players are when it comes to visual noise via magic or FX spam. The AI doesn’t have to worry about Screen Shake, Smoke Clouds, any kind of lag, giant material orbs, or anything that obscures their ‘vision’, because they don’t have vision; they just lock on.
This makes or breaks fights, and is particularly prominent when fighting on a comparatively small Brig, the FX spam can grind your game to a halt and massively restrict your vision, while the AI doesn’t have vision to restrict or FPS to worry about.
Why can’t AI get natural accuracy debuffs when slinging around massive smoke clouds or non-transparent material clumps? It should be detrimental to both sides like in PVP, but simply isn’t. It feels like a massively missed opportunity in a game where somebody creating visual noise can be genuinely helpful in player fights, and a game where literal smoke bombs exist.
Yes, Revealing potions exist, but the 2-buff limit and the fact that you’ll usually have at least Clearsight or Warding on due to all the other crap happening in the Dark Sea means that you wont be able to pop the buffs that actually matter.
The content simply doesn’t mesh well together, and combat potions get horribly blindsided by ‘explorative’ utility potions when you’d think both would naturally be separate from each-other, much like the way Warding hijacks your actual stat gear.
I do hope that Alchemy specializers will be able to later on combine potion effects much like the way Cooks can combine food effects, to allow at-least quad buff setups that offset these annoying issues. How about potions that can only work properly within the magic-rich environment of the Dark Sea? It means quad-potions can’t be abused in general sea PVP.
Being able to make potions with special vial colors that allow them to be even more specific seems a natural next step in Alchemy.
Sirens are a piece of content that I love interacting with, it’s clever in that you’ll never miss them when they spawn and you don’t have to rely on potions to find them, a great mechanic that perfectly plays into rewarding the player with better & easier to find loot for venturing further into the Dark Sea. More of this would be great for other loot types, as most of the time you again have to rely on the Clearsight potions & dumb luck just to see half the things that spawn around you.
The NPCs themselves also feel very balanced, I don’t know if they do it on purpose but most of the ones I have met use blinding magic, which plays very well into their archetype of wanting to capture sailors & their loot without excessive collateral damage. It could’ve been easy to make them use any magic, but the decision to make them use these kinds of magic along with being hyper-fast but with just enough health to reliably take out makes them much better than the tanky, random-magic Atlanteans IMO.
Their lairs are admittedly annoying to loot, but still aren’t as bad as some of the random-gen skyscraper islands I’ll get to later. I think an openable gate or something, or a way to blow up the loot room and expose it to the outside quickly for any class after dispatching the sirens would be very much appreciated by all.
The brig is genuinely my favorite thing added to the update, and I’m a sucker for the epic magic weather that the Dark Sea has in droves, which should really say something. Being able to command a ship that is as much of a power house as the brig while also having the ability to customize it so extensively, AND finally having everything inside of your boat without having to go anywhere after using the comparatively dinky Ketch for so long is an unmatched catharsis that I’d imagine most Arcane Odyssey players would agree with.
My favorite part of this game is the ship-to-ship combat, and my least favorite part is the PVP for predominantly personal & semi-balance reasons. With the Ketch, I felt like any single player still reigned supreme when it came to power, and I could do little to combat somebody who just wanted to gank me & ignore ship combat by min-maxing an extremely speedy Caravel or Ketch.
But with the Brig? If you even want to get close to a brig, you’re in for hell. Siege weapons will constantly bombard you, 13 cannons on each side will change every moment into a chess move that can easily spell ‘Checkmate’ if you screw up even once, front-facing cannons will constantly keep you on your toes, and the Ram will make those stupid Caravels finally think twice before nosediving into short-ranged combat. I didn’t even mention the near 20-thousand health an average Brig might have, or the fact that it can also be decked out like mad with even more powerful armaments & upgrades from the Dark Sea. I can confidently say that almost any player would not want to solo a semi-reliable brig captain with their magic alone. And for that, I love it! Finally, a way that forces decent ship-to-ship combat before moving onto a regular fight, and the first ship that truly makes me feel like a captain with its size.
Now, in the context of a clan with 4 or 5 brigs coming to gank you, yeah… that’s terrifying. Time to start throwing Tide & Blood Supernova potions!
The one thing I will say is that it’s still extremely dumb that you (2000 health player) dying once in the Dark Sea means your 16000-21000 health Brig is now rendered null & void. I get it in one way, but in another way it feels really stupid to 100% punish a player who can keep their brig in tip top shape but then suffer unfortunate circumstances to lightning or a particularly bad fight and lose it all.
Some kind of pity system that lets you mark at least some of the crap on your ship to keep/lock on player death based on how high health it is would be nice and make sense, in the form of the crew being able to protect it with a perfectly usable ship.
As for if it’s mandatory, possibly. A solid 2-4 man party with a high-Turn & Stability Ketch or even Caravel and cargo stacks will see great success in the Insanity 0-1 ranges, but beyond that you’re seriously pushing your luck without a Brig. One advantage is that you’re a smaller target, and can avoid waves easier - but the lack of stability & speed will screw you if you let it.
The Dark Sea is incredibly time-consuming, and this is bad and slightly good for a variety of reasons, but I’ll state the less obvious and probably worst reason: Roblox’s Servers.
Any long-time Roblox player would know, the longer you spend doing something that can’t be saved without travel time, the longer your worry grows. ID=17 Errors and random disconnects are notorious for ruining hour-long god/grinding sessions in games that wipe your progress when you leave or force you to travel to save like Survival 303, Lumber Tycoon 2, or pretty much any Tycoon without saving. So when it comes to The Dark Sea, you can bet that my very first worry will be that the Roblox servers will have a 5-second oopsie that shatters dozens of hours of progress. It hasn’t happened YET, but the worry will always be in the back of my head.
Some kind, ANY kind of pitstop that would let you save your brig with the chests on it but keep a relatively samey position in the dark sea would be great. It could be a specific structure, a potion, anything. When sessions get this long, it’s natural for modern games to have checkpoints. Also in-case you need a real life break, or something.
However, I don’t want to just lower Layer Length itself, because even if time alone is a semi-lazy way to naturally gate content & introduce artificial scarcity/rarity, it’s the only thing we have right now. Some way to keep your progress or a portion of it safe is paramount though, otherwise players will commonly end up with situations that feel downright insulting to their time & effort with 0 payback.
Now, onto what actually makes it time-consuming! Time itself is annoying to deal with in any game, and what tends to cause the most time-loss can vary, but in this game it seems to be mostly logistics. Logistics of moving chests, how fast you can loot islands, how efficiently you can kill enemies, and how quickly your ship can move from point-to-point (which is also impacted by how high you can keep the health).
Every single one of these seem tied to how many players you have rolling with you, as they all slow down or become faster based on this factor. I forgot if players share lootable chests or not in parties, but if they do then going with party members is easily the best way to play the Dark Sea, to the point where Solo players become severely disadvantaged for no particular reason.
Even having one extra friend means your ship doesn’t have to take damage while you’re busy looting, since it’ll be mobile and defended instead of stationary & vulnerable, it means having someone to repair the ship while another drives, it means being able to have one person constantly on lookout & driving while the other bathes away their Rain Poisoning, and it means the difference between 1V2’ing an Atlantean ship’s co & main captain, or having 2 1V1 sessions between both players & NPC’s.
All this extra time & amplified risk, but no extra payout just because you don’t have anyone to bring along or don’t want to? That’s ridiculous!
One answer here may be to make your crew, deckhands & quartermasters actually smart, being able to tell your crew to raid an island and shift all of its Dark Chests onto the ship, pick any alchemical ingredients, and rally up for any possible fights would be incredibly fun to do, and a godsend that would make solo & party play more enjoyable. Being able to tell the quartermaster to keep the ship mobile while you busy yourself with a fight would be invaluable, and being able to tell your deckhands to join your party and fight alongside you would be great.
You’re all in this together, and the crew seems to currently act like it in chat, but as it stands they do basically nothing. I know it’s a planned feature for them to at least be able to fight, but I think they should be able to do so much more and make you truly feel like a captain of a ship instead of some dude surrounded by people that give you morale buffs and occasionally help in a scrap.
I don’t know how hard it’d be to code crew members to seek, quartermasters to drive, and for deckhands to destroy, but it’d totally be worth the effort, and would make these logistical problems fade away for all players, save tons of time, and make the game way more fun & immersive to play.
Finally, the other thing that causes the most time loss, simply going from Point A to Point B. Going to Layers and back is dependent on Ship Speed and if the wind hates you or not that particular day, and while it’s relatively ok to do it once, having to double back is a massive pain that really shouldn’t be a thing. There should be a way to quickly get back to the Bronze Sea after you feel like you’ve done about everything you can in the Dark Sea, and there are a few ways I can think of this.
The first idea, a semi-rare weather phenomenon that lets your ship get shot far up into the sky, normally it’d be incredibly damaging - but with some special parts you (hopefully) got after raiding the Dark Sea the first few times, you can either convert your ship with Skyship tech, or turn it into a make-shift blimp that would allow you to drop yourself either close or back into the Bronze Sea, and sail above the storm so you can actually plot where you’re trying to go.
The second idea, a randomized current that can spawn in Insanity 1 or above ranges which allows your ship to go extremely fast in a direction that always flows into the Bronze Sea, but locks turning capabilities till you’re out of the current. This would make sense from a logical perspective, as the brutal Dark Sea currents always end up flowing into the calmer Bronze Sea and cause storms. Travel Currents could also be an extremely useful system to travel to other seas later down the line, like the Nimbus Sea or onwards.
Either of these would cut down on travel time and always be a convenient “oh crap I need to get out for X, Y or Z reason” thing that should only take around 5 or 10 minutes to locate. Yes, it’d make the Dark Sea slightly easier, but you could also make them guarded by hard NPCs or weather phenomena for a final challenge/alternative to players that would rather not sail for half an hour and want to end their Dark Sea voyage with a bang.
Islands feel finnicky in the early stages, in that they can spawn a lot or very little, and some of them feel alright to loot while others expect you to shift four Dark Chests down a cliffside taller than Mount Othrys. Overall, they’re relatively fun to loot and offer a nice break from the constant sea-travel, but there isn’t much to say about them beyond that - they don’t really have any unique bearing on the sea itself beyond just being a pitstop that happens to sit there.
The phantom NPCs that can give lore from kingdoms probably 10s of thousands of years old, act extremely confused, or call you a fool for venturing outwards are quite spine chilling though, and really sells & immerses the player within the hopelessness & oddity of the Dark Sea itself.
It makes me almost glad Magic isn’t a thing in our world, as if it could imbue itself into the weather, twist time, stomp over all natural laws, and act as a window to the past, present & future like it can in this game then it’d be horrifying.
It’s the antithesis of the general glorification of magic you see in the majority of fiction, and feels like what would probably actually happen if a random, uncaring, and wildly volatile but sometimes stable force like it existed in our universe.
Now, what I will say is that it’s a bit dumb that your ship can be assaulted while you’re trying to loot an island. It’s another example of the systems not meshing well together, and I remember having a particularly painful experience when trying to take out a Siren Island, had just fended off an Atlantean Brig and was in the middle of killing its captain, only for another Atlantean Brig to roll up and smash my Brig down from 16K health to 0 against the island with its rammer in a matter of actual seconds. This was after an hour plus of travel time, and many chests looted, truly agonizing. I logged off bitter as ever.
I will say that islands having protective fields around them seems a bit much, but some kind of system that keeps your ship relatively safe while you’re interacting with one type of content is ideal. Ship Combat/Ship Exploration/Player Combat/Player Exploration systems don’t feel designed to interact with each other, because when they do it becomes unmanageable & unplayable; particularly if you’re solo.
How do you expect a player to realistically stave off acid rain, grab their loot before it despawns, defend their ship from an attacking NPC, maneuver their ship away from weather, fight back an enemy ship and watch for possible PVP’ers all at once? This is why I need to constantly chug potions & down food items…
The rewards are pretty much randomized, so for some people it may, but others could also just get sail pattern spam. So far, I’ve been on the luckier side and gotten a respectable amount of (relatively unusable) gear, some special gems, and a few decent ship upgrades. I think something bigger to work towards that stayed consistent (like Enizor’s quest) would be nice, since the chests themselves wont always give everything you’d want from a voyage.
What I will say though, it’s absolutely not sufficient when it comes to Galleon, Food & Potion cost. Losing a Brig to the Dark Sea sets you back at least 1000 Galleons, which is insanity when even the Dark Sealed Chests you get tend to only net you around 70 per, and while the gold/silver crafting spots can help make more powerful items, it doesn’t alleviate their cost and there aren’t item alternatives to every important potion you need in the Dark Sea. The way Golden Petals and Warding potions work is how every other ‘Dark Sea Essential’ potion should work, notably Clearsight and possibly Revealing potions.
You’re basically trading 1000s of galleons, high quality potions, and high quality food items to have a chance at getting better ship parts and unique gear that may or may not even be better than what you have (and it usually isn’t for the min-maxxer who can actually come out of the higher echelons of Dark Sea).
As it stands, if a player ONLY wants to run the Dark Sea then they’d quickly be forced back into farming in the Bronze Sea for a multitude of things that would make the experience bearable, which is kind of ridiculous when it’s supposed to be the premier endgame content that everybody will be regularly running.
I haven’t even had 10 expeditions into the dark sea, and am already dangerously low on quality food I acquired after 40+ hours of fishing, and have to go smash up rocks for half an hour to get Clearstone almost every time I feel like going into it now.
If I don’t prepare or don’t get these items, then I risk losing upwards of 3 hours of work because I didn’t have them in a particularly crap situation, and even with them it’s still a challenge, which makes it feel really annoying when you just want to explore Dark Sea content.
In short, I’m gated to upwards of 10 hours of farming to run a handful of Dark Sea expeditions, and the Dark Sea itself isn’t nice when it comes to giving back at least a portion of what you spend if you see success.
I think the regular chests dotted around the Dark Sea should really be able to give a lot more of the stuff you use to explore it and an extremely higher amount of Galleons if you want to make trips be able to fund trips.
You can see through the rain, but having it go on 24/7 feels a tad much. Feels like it hurts my eyes for no good reason other than to try and sell that “yes, a storm is in fact happening” when the ludicrous magic weather all around me has already not just validated, but absolutely hammered that fact into me.
The fog is the sole reason I have to spend a ridiculous amount of time farming Clearsight potions every time I want to venture into the Dark Sea. If I don’t, then I risk missing islands, dead ships, cargo, and will definitely miss a lot of weather hazards and amplify the damage my ship takes. I get it, but I think it should be more localized and random, much like the Rain Poisoning and maybe even the storm in general.
A sea that is always intense becomes mundane, a sea that can go from 0 to 100 in the span of seconds is utterly terrifying, and would probably fit the bill better when trying to drive home the volatility of the Dark Sea. Just my two cents.
Apologies for the 300 line text vomit, I felt like I just had to get my opinions off my chest after getting struck by lightning with perfect comedic timing for the first time in my 120 hours and dying directly after just winning a fight from 200 health against a dual Snow/Poison Atlantean ship in Insanity 1. For the love of god, let us install a Lightning Rod on our ship.
The update is damn good, and with some tweaks & a more robust ship design system to let you tackle the many challenges the Dark Sea introduces, better ratios of getting back what you put in, and a long look at the systems & how they interact with eachother, I think it could truly shine later on.
19 Likes
I’ll give my honest opinions and how I would change them, if applicable on the question.
The dark sea itself is alright.
I’ll elaborate more on this later when it’s more appropriate.
Dodge reflexes are also really cool and fun to use. I mostly forget they’re there.
Climbing is very tedious now though. I run a lot more agility with nimble Elius chest and an ability amulet to make climbing easier.
A little bit, but not much.
Ship combat is way too easy now thanks to the brig’s sheer firepower between having a mortar and cannons to wipe out half of a regular boat’s hp in one fell swoop. Then the crew is a little annoying to take down now since stats got nerfed.
Other than that, haven’t really seen much so I need to play more.
They are a little annoying when trying to find a cargo crate from a ghost ship, but other than that not much to be said here.
Make them lower and closer to the regular sea.
It’s too strong for what it does imo.
It also isn’t noticeable enough, I nearly lost a run to it just for dipping into the second range for a few seconds.
Said run:
Honestly just make water poisoning deal less damage, and have it be more noticeable when it does show up.
Pretty fair and frankly very fun enemies to fight! I’ve only seen two types myself (lesser mutated Atlanteans and mutated Atlanteans) and they just sell this amazing and intimidating vibe. I got a close look at one on an island and those red eyes paired with the fact that they have tentacles for arms sometimes really works!
Nothing to be said on how to change them yet.
Sadly they fight just like big rival npcs though.
STOP. POSTING. ABOUT. SIRENS!!!
IM TIRED OF SEEING IT!
ON TIK TOK IT’S (siren singing) ON DISCORD ITS FREAKING
(More singing)
I WAS IN A SERVER, RIGHT? AND ALLLLLLL OF THE CHANNELS ARE JUST PEOPLE IN SIREN CLOTHES!!!
I SHOWED MY CHARACTER’S COSTUME TO MY GIRLFRIEND! IT WAS ALL WHITE, SO I SAID ‘HEY BABE, WHEN THE SIRENS ARE SUS!!!’ HAHA, OOOOAAAAOOOOAAAAAHHHAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!
But in all honesty, have not seen siren rocks yet.
Very mandatory honestly.
It’s really the only boat that can survive repeated hits from the massive waves and dangerous weather of the dark seas imo. Even if you can make it into the insanity ranges without a brig, get water poisoning once and you die.
Yes, pretty time consuming for what it does.
Normally on islands you find one dark sealed chest, but I have seen islands back to back with 0 chests on them.
There should be a spot that always has a dark sealed on it, honestly.
Nope. Pretty sure I went ten minutes without finding a single dark sea island or structure.
A little. In the far reaches, it’s not worth risking going there when you have super strong Atlanteans on islands easily able to kill you, and the weather is much more harsh and as such damages your boat much quicker. Haven’t even mentioned the Atlantean ships (which I haven’t seen yet)
Also you can get softlocked on abandoned ships with the brig too. Lost a run in that way.
I would suggest removing collision on the brig’s front pole and reducing damage from the red lightning. Atlanteans are fun though, don’t change them.
From my experience yesterday, not very much at all.
Still got to see fine.
A little too much. I feel like it’s so easy to miss these things in the water that would otherwise be easy to spot.
Maybe make the regular fog screen lighter so it becomes easier to see through.
