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Feedback on Malbatross


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I think the Malbatross fight is fine as is in terms of how it plays out, but I really feel like the Malbatross can be given a better loot. (This is how the fight pans out if you haven't seen it already and you're interested: Gellot's and mine). 

Without going super detailed (in terms of lua):

1. Not enough feathers from the fight. 

RESOLVED

Malbatross will now always drop at least 24 feathers per kill, enough for 1 Winged Sail. (It keeps track of how many feathers it dropped during the fight, and if it dropped less than 24 feathers by the time it dies, it will drop enough feathers so that the total feather count will always be 24.)

What I previously said before the change:

Spoiler

 

24 feathers are needed to make the Winged Sail, but we don't get enough feathers from the fight to make one if you use a decent weapon (Hambat is standard, right?

Malbatross can drop 4 feathers when attacked, with each feather having a 5% chance of dropping (you getting 4 feathers to drop is actually very low). When I was solo with Wilson, I sometimes did not get the full 24 feathers needed. When I was with a friend, we were barely hitting 20 feathers. Because Malbatross only has so much health, if you do too much damage, you won't get the 24 feathers needed to make a single Winged Sail.

There is also a mechanic where during phase 3, Malbatross will do a swoop that will destroy sails, making it drop 3 feathers and 2 additional ones with a 50% chance for each. Except that Iused paddles over sails cause I thought it was making the fight more difficult than it needed to be, and may not always give you all the feathers needed (nor am I keen on fighting the boss multiple times and having my sails destroyed each time as well).

So unless the intention was that players would be doing the fight with sails that would get destroyed or to use less than stellar weapons (or to not have damage modifiers) to farm feathers, I don't think it would make sense where a player that did too well at the fight means they couldn't get enough feathers for the sail. (Yes, you could just wack it a bunch with a weak weapon or farm it feathers with 0 damage weapons like Sleep Darts or staves, but that's either expensive and/or too tedious imo).

Other than that, one Winged Sail is an upgrade to a having several Regular Sails in terms of maneuverability (more sails means less maneuverable) and once you get a second winged sail, most certainly terms of speed. It's click-to-close sail mechanic also makes it better than regular sails when you need to stop your boat. (There's no major difference in speed by adding a third Winged Sail).

But since there is a way to farm the feathers, I'm not 100% sure on whether you should get enough feathers via fighting it normally or more feathers should drop in general. There is a 5-15 day respawn timer to the Malbatross, dependent upon you getting that 25% chance of spawning it when you've approached a shoal, which you still have to scout the world and find (where the reloading bug with it also get fixed too).

 

2. The Beak is Just An Oar :v

The beak is just a stronger oar that's able to move a boat that has 1 Winged Sail to it. Once you've gotten a second Winged Sail, it really doesn't have that much moving power to it as the Winged Sail is already good with just a steering wheel and an anchor anyways. Kinda of a glorified oar/trophy imo.

That's why I think the Beak has the opportunity to be something significantly better. The problem with this type of stuff is figuring out what. The mast represents the speed of the Malbatross, maybe the beak can some aspect of the bird or something entirely different. 

Since the bird likes to eat the fish over the shoals, maybe it can be used for a magic weapon where feeding it fish X makes it do some crazy stuff? (Problem with weapons is that'd it be outclassed by Dark Swords or become niche in usage, like the Glass Cutters).

Maybe it can be something that can get rid of Sea Stacks for you, since my attempts at doing that with a Weather Pains just ends up destroying the stuff on my boat since I'm too fast? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

3. Why Keep Killing Malbatross?

While I don't have a good answer on what the beak should be used for, like with previous bosses, they should drop something that makes it not only highly sought after the first time, but something that you want to kill several times. Bee Queen is a perfect example of a boss fight where people just mindlessly grind her cause her loot is just that good. Heck, even killing all the Moose/Goose in Spring is a good use of my time cause Luxury Fans and Weather Pains are good items too. 

But right now, there's really not much reason to kill the Malbatross more than one-to-two times after you've got your sails, especially if you know how to farm tons of feathers. The only reason would be for the beak, which I've already talked about.

There's also the whole aspect of the fish in the shoals that we can't catch atm, so if the fish is anything special, I'd probably start to view the bird as an annoyance that I would either wait for it to go to another shoal via it's relocation mechanic (100 seconds of sleep and it will go to another shoal) or go to another shoal all together.

I'd love to see what sort of creative thing can be done with the beak! Maybe the feathers itself could also see another use so that we'd still want to farm feathers after making the needed sails, but I'm not entirely sure what either.

What are other people's opinions?

Summation: 

  • (RESOLVED) Let enough feathers drop during the fight so that we can at least make 1 Winged Sail just from killing it (unless the intention is multiple fights/farming feathers before killing it). Reducing cost of Feather Weave from 6 down to 4 may work too, but the damage issue is still of concern.
  • Give a reason to why the player should keep seeking and killing Malbatross. After you get 2 Winged Sails, only reason to kill the bird is for it's beak, which imo is useless. Possibly let the beak be part of a recipe for some cool tool or weapon that makes it highly sought out (like Moose/Goose Feathers is for Weather Pains, which are awesome). Some cool use outside of it being an oar.
  • Maybe give the Malbatross Feathers more uses as well?

Edit: The relocation mechanic brought up in this thread is probably more important than what I brought up, though points 2 &3 still stand, imo.

Edit2: The relocation issue brought up in the mentioned thread was resolved in patch 369546, and with that, point 1 is also solved by a Weather Pain. Only points 2 and 3 still stand at the moment imo.

Edit3: Malbatross will always drop 24 feathers. Only points 2 & 3 remains (resolved if beak hopefully gets an additional use imo).

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I feel like a lot of people are rushing the loot worth immediately. Keep in mind A New Reign was really bad at immediately giving bosses drops. It took 3 additional updates (counting the ruins regeneration of statues and broken clockworks as an “update”)  to fully complete fuelweaver’s loot table, and that was with a bonus update in the mix as well. 

 

As for the beak, I find it will probably be used as a material. A friend pointed out to me that in the event the new boss destroys all of your sails, you can grab the beak and row to shore, which is probably why it’s an oar. For the feathers, I don’t see anything too wrong with them. You can always duplicate them with green gem methods, and I like the idea of not being able to destroy bosses with high damage weapons to obtain all the loot. 

 

Overall if they make the beak have some sort of unique use, it should be alright in the end.

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22 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

I feel like a lot of people are rushing the loot worth immediately. Keep in mind A New Reign was really bad at immediately giving bosses drops. It took 3 additional updates (counting the ruins regeneration of statues and broken clockworks as an “update”)  to fully complete fuelweaver’s loot table, and that was with a bonus update in the mix as well. 

Hmm, I came well after ANR was fully released, so I was not actively aware of this type of delay to the loot table for bosses. RoT is really only my first beta that I've been actively been a part of and since the beta was supposed to end next week if things were on schedule, I thought time was more limited in giving feedback. I'll keep this delay to the loot table in mind for the future.

As for the feathers, I thought it was weird where having more people doing the fight meant overall less feathers since the boats were designed with multiplayer in mind. But it's not a major deal breaker since you can still farm feathers itself once you know of the mechanic, so I'll just kill the bird with a Walking Cane or a Spear if I need to.

As for the beak, I see now why it being an oar makes sense. All your sails are destroyed and if you don't have any wood or driftwood on you to make an oar, you're stuck. What I was going to do was park the main boat via an anchor and have an extra boat with an anchor to do the fight with a paddle. That way the main boat stays safe: p

55 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

Overall if they make the beak have some sort of unique use, it should be alright in the end.

I agree. At the end of the day, if the beak gets a some sort of unique use, I'll have no issues with the loot table as it right now.

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Frankly I'm the opposite.

Even with the boomerang strat Malbatross can still occasionally move out of range during the fight while still pushing with the waves making getting back into range tedious. I also find the fact that the fight is best done without sails—unless you want more feathers—a bit silly. Is this boat combat or floating piece of wood combat? I hope not all "boss" fights on the water will require being anchored—at the very least have the boss do the anchoring Sea of Thieves style.

I don't really see a problem with the oar. People seem to ditch oars once they get sails but I don't agree with that. Using an oar in tandem with sails allows for quick maneuvering not allowed solely with the wheel + sails. It let's you inch away while not always having to divert your direction entirely.

In that sense the loot is good, but a bit weird that it's coming from a boss—and yeah I do hope they add a true ocean threat (both enemies and boss). It's fine if the Malbatross doesn't serve that purpose, but hopefully something will take that role.

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Didn't fully read, impale me if you wish.

It shouldn't avoid or, or have a chance of losing interest in you, once you start the fight it should do it's own dirty work and keep up with you.

It should drop enough scales/feathers to supply 1 mast. That's all.

Another use for the peak would be neat, but I'm okay with what we've got.

Make it hostile d@mnit. Why is the birdie optional?

 

With that said, I do think it can stay optional as long as we get something that isn't. There's speech lines for a boss approaching the boat so there's still hope.

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They've addressed point 1 where not enough feathers would drop from Malbatross if killed too quickly/ too high damage a weapon.

From what I can see, it keeps track of how many feathers it dropped throughout the fight. If it dropped less than 24 feathers before dying, upon death, it will drop enough feathers so that you'll always get 24 feathers from the fight (enough for 1 Winged Sail).

My quick test was Mr. Godgang and Malbatross dropped 24 feathers total. 

Thanks!

Now just hoping for the beak to get a cool use and I'll be happy :-D

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I don't understand why they keep making completely optional bosses that don't threaten you at all.

 

Weren't there some files for an overhead Malbatross shadow, and speech lines that go something like "The Malbatross has found us!"

What happened to those? Why doesn't the Malbatross just have a chance of spawning and hunting you while sailing?

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14 hours ago, Ogrecakes said:

Weren't there some files for an overhead Malbatross shadow, and speech lines that go something like "The Malbatross has found us!"

No one names what's coming:

Quote

Warly - Oh? What could that be?
Wigfrid - "A gargantuan foe approaches!"
Maxwell - "We're in for some trouble."
Webber - "Don't eat us!"
Wendy - "Death casts its black shadow upon us."
Wickerbottom - "The megafauna have set their eyes on us."
Willow - "Something big's coming!"
Wilson - "Uh-oh. Sea monsters!"
Winona - "Woah, that's a bigg'un!"
Wolfgang - "Wolfgang does not like scary shadow!"
Woodie - "Watch out, something's coming!"
Wormwood - Water friend?
Wortox - "Hyuyu, something's come to play!"
WX-78 - "A GIANT ORGANIC APPROACHES"

Warly & Wormwood didn't even have a quote when these were initially found, now they do, and they're still there. They might be referring to something else, or just be residue from scrapped content.

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There's still no reason to go through the hassle of fighting it if you've already found the moon island. You need to sail to kill it and all it ends up is helping you sail more.

I just made a quick mod myself to give the beak 102 damage a hit (34*3). At least I covered that problem.

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2 hours ago, Well-met said:

There's still no reason to go through the hassle of fighting it if you've already found the moon island. You need to sail to kill it and all it ends up is helping you sail more.

I just made a quick mod myself to give the beak 102 damage a hit (34*3). At least I covered that problem.

Currently more or less yes. Since due to lack of hostiles in the ocean boat bridges are still a thing.

Ideally it'll make trips to the Brinewaters & Moon Island quicker, along with other new biomes added later in RoT.

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2 hours ago, Well-met said:

There's still no reason to go through the hassle of fighting it if you've already found the moon island. You need to sail to kill it and all it ends up is helping you sail more.

I just made a quick mod myself to give the beak 102 damage a hit (34*3). At least I covered that problem.

They may use the beak as a crafting ingredient per this clip from the dev stream (and will hopefully be the main reason for me to keep killing Malbatross) and the fish in the shoal will probably see future use (per this clip here).

For now it's a waiting game.

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