The second suggestion in the line of my largest, eh? The third one will be even greater.
So, the Dark Sea. RNG-built, treacherous location at the edge of the map. A cool feature of the game, I personally love it. Great replayability potential, multiple goals to chase, and even great loot drops to collect. But, there are rarely volunteers to venture out there. The Dark Sea has a lot of unfair, RNG-dependant and just unfun to deal with mechanics, that discourage players from interacting with the location.
This topic, as well as many more specialised threads were where the discussion took place. Any and all opinions were heard and considered. So, here it goes - the massive Dark Sea suggestion. There will be multiple parts to it, brace yourselves. The aspects of the Dark Sea that weren’t deemed problematic by the community won’t receive any changes here.
Weather
The Dark Sea resides in a constant state of storm, and it sure does give it the eerie, hostile appearance it is said to give off. But, some weather events take it way too far with their disruption of the player’s run, to the point where it is just annoying.
Magic Tornadoes
The tornadoes are undeniably a threat. If there is one nearby, you have to be aware of it. They are a way for the Dark Sea to say “you’re not welcome here!”. However, they are a nigh-constant annoyance, always in the way, unexpected and have the area of their effect far larger than the players expect it to be.
Tornadoes share the spawn area with the Large Waves - a cone of a player’s vision. This means, the tornado will always spawn blocking your path. Moreover, returning from an island will most probably summon a tornado right on top of your ship - the tornado seeks the closest patch of the sea to generate on, and that place will often be where the ship is parked, since the player will obviously be looking in that direction. Not to mention, the magic-imbued tornadoes of the Dark Sea are able to inflict their effect on players in a far larger area than their pull, they are able to trap a player under any kind of roof and kill them if they spawn close enough, and they can create Large Waves out of themselves, for some reason.
Tornadoes will not be able to generate close to the player or their ship.
Both players and their ships will receive a large no-spawn zone around them. Players might already have that, but ships do not. Nobody wants to wait on an island for the freshly-generated tornado to disappear from their ship.
On spawn, a unique animation of wind swirling will play before the tornado actually appears and gains its abilities.
This will be a heads-up for the player, so they could adjust their ship’s course to avoid the incoming tornado.
Shadow-imbued Tornadoes should be made more visible.
A stationary threat that the player is supposed to avoid shouldn’t be taking the stealth route. Just the unique noise isn’t enough.
A tornado’s grab will be limited in duration, and afterwards, the player is given immunity to the lift.
This is merely a failsafe, but can also assist the player in some cases.
The spawn cone for tornadoes should be made wider, so they won’t always get in the way.
For some players, the previous ranges of the Dark Sea are just distance to cross on the way to the Far Reaches, let’s not make the journey a dodging simulator. Besides, constantly having a tornado in the face irritates quickly.
Tornadoes will spawn less often.
Their uptime is near constant. Why so?
Tornadoes will release waves less often.
This feature didn’t make sense from the very beginning, but after some adjustments to Large Waves down the list, it won’t be annoying anymore, so just a reduction in their numbers will suffice. It’ll still break laws of physics, though…
Imbued Large Waves
The most ever-present of the annoyances. These will deal chip damage to your ship and snatch whoever isn’t sitting at a cannon or the steering wheel.
Waves can’t grab anymore.
People had enough of that. Letting go of your seat can prove to be a death sentence for no fault of your own, especially when a certain other mechanic prompts you to do so. This layer of diffuculty is unnecessary. Besides, Dark Sea fishers are tired of repositioning themselves every minute.
Back in the Team Immersion’s suggestion, this issue of waves was already covered.
DoT magic-imbued waves (mostly Acid) must have their damage reduced.
An Acid-imbued wave is a durability nuke of ±3k off your ship. Considering that large waves often spawn very close to the ship, that hit is unavoidable. Players should never have to be punished for something they had no chances of preventing.
Large Waves’s hitboxes, as well as other bugs, should be fixed.
This isn’t an intentional feature of theirs, but is still worth mentioning. And, while we’re at it, a fishing rod’s bobber shouldn’t get removed by a passing wave either.
Water Poisoning
I hope this is the last time I am bringing up this mechanic. It has shown up far too often in my suggestions.
Most of the discussion was held in this topic and the topics linked to it. Water Poisoning as a topic of complaints must be finally put to rest.
Spawns of the Dark Sea
The various objects and creatures that aren’t islands, but still spawn within the location. They can be a surprising encounter or grant rewards for finding them, but can also end your run due to their flaws.
Abandoned Ships
A structure that mostly appears in Insanity 0 area, these ships hold zero value as a structure. Just a few chests and, occasionally, a Dark Sealed or two. Why bother visiting them?
This suggestion could be a potential solution. A feature being useless isn’t as high on the priority list as a feature being harmful, so this shouldn’t be handled before all other problems get fixed.
Stray Cargo.
Prior to the Full Release, finding a stray cargo crate would instantly restore a decent chunk of your ship’s Durability, and it was a pleasant find. Nowadays, it is just around 50-70 Supplies. Underwhelming.
Dark Sea’s lost cargo should yield a lot more supplies, to match the pre-FR version of itself in effectiveness.
Just like the abandoned ships, stopping to pick a cargo crate isn’t worth doing. That shouldn’t be the case. No mechanic should be useless.
Both Abandoned Ships and Lost Cargo should have their spawn rates increased across Insanity 1-4 areas, with them gradually decreasing towards the Far Reaches.
This shouldn’t be a Insanity 0-exclusive discovery. But, the further you sail, the rarer you should find them, seems logical enough. Plus, this would boost the spawn rate of Ghost Ships in those Insanity areas, which can give a sizeable speed boost when rammed.
The bug that slows the ship down as it rams through a ghost ship should be fixed.
This bug has appeared after the Full Release. Safe to say, we don’t need it in the game.
Krakens and Giant Krakens.
This is a life or death encounter. If you summon one of these, you will either get demolished in seconds, or get far enough to cheese the fight without risk. However, I am not here to suggest a new version of the boss fight against these creatures - let’s leave that to those who know this better than me. I will just provide a temporary, band-aid fix.
Krakens won’t spawn right next to players anymore.
Sensing should be able to warn us about danger, if we use it. But, it can’t do much against danger that appears right below us out of nowhere.
Also, fix the bugs with Sensing, it shouldn’t go black screen in the Dark Sea. I know it can be toggled on and off quickly again to remove these side effects, but most players don’t know that.
A Kraken’s spawn should have special sound effects and visuals, indicating its arrival before even the tentacles emerge.
A threat as massive as a Kraken shouldn’t be stealthy. White Eyes has its signature wail, and it doesn’t start attacking you immediately, unlike the Kraken. Also, the Quartermaster’s warning should go off during the warning, not when the tentacles are already there. Its current timing makes the message worthless.
During the first minute of the encounter, a Kraken won’t be able to grab the ship. The counter resets after leaving the area.
Players must have at least a chance of escaping a threat they don’t want to deal with. You can outspeed other sea monsters with your ship - why should Krakens be an exception for no particular reason?
The weekly quest of killing 13 Krakens should be removed entirely.
Nobody wants to do that, especially that many of them. This is much more difficult and time-consuming than any other weekly quest by a large margin.
The Omen
It didn’t take long for the players to find out how to cheese this Abyssal-tier sea monster. This was supposed to be a raid boss, mind you. And yet, the same flaws Krakens have, it inherits. Either cheese it or die.
Or it can just be bugged and don’t do anything. Or just never spawn at all, especially when you want it to. So much for a powerful raid boss, eh?
Many people proposed different solutions to the Omen problem. Here’s one of them. They all agree on one thing - the current bossfight is flawed and must be reworked from the ground up, the Omen shouldn’t be a Kraken but bigger.
Sunken Forests
The most useless feature of the Dark Sea. At least volcanoes are used to cheese the Omen, the forests have no use whatsoever and occupy an enormous area. Using deckhands with their crappy AI to harvest Supplies from these massive trees isn’t enough.
Size of Sunken Forests is drastically reduced.
While the forest is there, nothing else can generate. They take away major parts of the Dark Sea from players, and prevent something actually useful from appearing.
Breaking the colossal trees should grant Supplies.
Restocking on Supplies could be one of the potential uses of the structure.
But don’t stop there - add more uses! The forests’ spawn rate was cut in half recently, but it still isn’t enough. So, instead of reducing it further, we must aim to give them enough use to warrant such spawn rate.
Maybe make Giant Krakens spawn withing those forests’ central areas, instead of wherever?
Just a possible idea of how to make Giant Krakens’ spawn locations less random and occasional. Requiring somebody more qualified than myself to continue this thought.
Atlantean Ships
The mobile threat of the Dark Sea. You either never see them, or have to constantly ward them off. Ketches are free repairs, while Brigs are run enders. Who balanced these?
Atlantean Ships’ spawn locations should be made more consistent.
Right now, an area can appear sometimes, and while a player-driven ship is inside, Atlantean Ships will continuously spawn. Such areas should be made more common, but the spawn rate within them will be reduced, as well as their size. Go for “more often, less abundant” route.
Atlantean Ships should be made weaker than their War Seas’ counterparts.
In the Dark Sea, you risk your Durability way more than outside of it. An encounter with a Brig is a lot more threatening, when you don’t have a shipwright around the corner. Less Durability and Damage will suffice.
After leaving the decreased in size spawn area of Atlantean Ships, all the current ones will drop their aggro.
If a player doesn’t want to fight the fleet, they must not be forced to. Atlanteans are too relentless in their pursuit.
Islands
The main stationary locations of the Dark Sea, the islands contain the most loot, but also the most threats.
Volcanoes
But, at the start, there is the one that doesn’t contain anything. Volcanoes are completely useless, aside from cheesing the Omen or Krakens.
While the Dark Sky isn’t implemented yet and the volcanoes haven’t received their function as gateways to it, they must be given a use.
Some suggested Tartarus Tears to spawn there, which is very valid - they only appear on one biome type, which is pretty rare to find. As a jewel reagent, that isn’t fair.
Siren Rocks
This isn’t a problematic feature, and is only mentioned for one reason.
The change that reduced the amount of Dark Sealed chests should be reverted.
There wasn’t a reason to nerf it, nobody bothers to collect the chests anyway since the Fleets were added. I don’t like the irreversible damage Fleets inflicted onto the game…
Dark Sealed chests should have a way to be opened within the Dark Sea.
As long as Fleets’ Conquest task and the daily quests that award them exist, Dark Sealed chests that spawn naturally have became worthless, since nobody wants to waste hours bringing them back. Maybe Esmeralda’s second tier as a quartermaster will get an ability of opening sealed chests?
Animals
They did bring more life to this hostile location, but was giving them percentage-based damage that necessary?
I’ll just copy and paste the part from the Team Immersion’s suggestion.
“Rocky Mesa” or “Overhang” island biome type
This was once a byproduct of failed generation, left as a feature, if rumors are to be believed. However, people don’t like this, as navigating the island is way too tedious, compared to other biomes. Plus, there isn’t anything unique to the biome in terms of collectibles.
The biome is removed from the game entirely.
Yeah, cool easter egg and all, but it is too hard to explore and loot. The actual easter egg of biomes, the Pirate Treasure biome, at least has tons of chests to its name.
Poisonous Water Ponds and the Liquid Starlight
One of the most recent additions to the Dark Sea was making every inland water source toxic. Why?
The poison effect is now way shorter, and applies over and over while the player is inside the pond (both toxic water and Liquid Starlight), instead of being a fixed, long-lasting effect.
Just a small touch shouldn’t erase a third of your health bar. Why was this overlooked when adding the feature in the first place?
Imbued and Golden (Gods’) Cooking Pots and Cauldrons
A great opportunity to stock up on the highest quality meals or potions, these stations are a pleasant discovery. But, they aren’t that easy to spot, even with their glow.
The stations will receive unique Sensing highlights, which will disappear once the station is converted back to the standart one.
They are imbued with magic energy, normal or conjured by Hestia or Hermes. It makes perfect sense for us to be able to see their auras.
Hecate Essence
The other contagious topic of the Dark Sea. The community has been rampant about it ever since it was added. Such inequality between stat routes is unacceptable. The Essence was already talked to death by many people,and there are so many suggestions regarding it.
Make magic change more accessible to match the other three routes, by any means deemed fitting, even if it goes against the game’s design choices.
We all know changing your magic is supposed to be very difficult, so players would stick with one. But, this is a videogame, and videogames are played to have fun.
Also, fix the various spawn bugs of Hecate Essence appearing inside walls. And, give it a unique Sensing highlight too, it is literally remains of the Goddess of Magic, after all.
Dragons
Oh hey, a recent addition to the Dark Sea that is actually fun! Aside from all the accompanying mechanics of a dragon’s fight that shouldn’t be there…
Reduce the amount of particle effects during a dragon fight to decrease lag, and make the Blast Barrage attack of Full-Grown+ Dragons deal less damage.
The barrage’s hitbox is already way larger than it seems, it doesn’t have to be this punishing.
Other issues of Dragons have already been covered in this suggestion.
As for the Damaged and Ruined Armour - this has been touched upon in the Team Immersion’s suggestion.
Well, that should be it. A very long suggestion indeed, all the quotes surely did bloat it. But, this one won’t be the best of me, since, after all, it is just the second one. The largest do come in groups of 3.
maybe later today I’ll actually look at some of this, sounds like most of it is about tornadoes though.