Gnarwail & Trident QoL Suggestions

[QuartzBeam]

After countless hours sailing the high seas and with the August QoL update on the horizon, I figured it was about time I compiled a list of my "grievances" and some suggestions to fix them. It just so happens that all of them concern Gnarwails and the items related to them.

 

GNARWAILS

Gnarwails are one of my favorite things about Return of Them. They are adorable in an ugly sort of way, have a variety of great animations and are the only friendly faces you'll encounter out at sea, willing to protect your from aquatic predators and help you gather items from hard-to-reach places for a small, edible fee. That last bit is, I believe, the most important. Gathering items from the sea can get very tedious, especially in Brine Shoals, where indestructible Salt Stacks will often stop your boat from reaching a good chunk of the Salt Crystals you mine.

However, as great as they sound on paper, the mechanical implementation does Gnarwails absolutely no favors: Their only way to "protect" you from aquatic predators spawns waves that often end up pushing your boat into obstacles and causing some gnarly leaks. They also use their item tossing skills very sparingly, preferring to attack monsters or hunt fish for themselves most of the time.

There are a few tweaks to the AI of a recruited Gnarwail that could massively improve them and give players and excuse to keep them around instead of just hunting them for their horns:

• They should try to stick close to the boat, deaggro-ing from any hostile mob that gets far enough. If I'm mining the Salt Stack right next to my boat, the Gnarwail should not just up and leave to go hunt each and every single Cookie Cutter sitting harmlessly a screen away. Nor should they be chasing Rockjaw Sharks that have lost interest in biting me and are swimming away.
• Their item tossing should work like tree chopping does for pigs. If a player swings their axe once, any recruited pigs will start looking for trees to chop and will focus on that task for some time, unless they aggro on something. Similarly, when the player the Gnarwail is loyal to picks up an item, the Gnarwail should scan the area for more of the same item and focus on tossing that type of item onto the boat. (e.g. if I pick up a salt crystal, the Gnarwail should look for salt crystals floating in the water and toss them to me without stopping for some time)
• They should have a melee attack that does not generate waves. That thing Gnarwails do where they submerge themselves, then pop out of the water horn-first to kill and eat fish? This could also be used as a single-target melee attack that Gnarwails use when recruited to avoid damaging your boat. "Wild" and hostile Gnarwails would still use their jump-and-dive attack, of course.

 

GNARWAIL HORNS & THE STRIDENT TRIDENT

 

The Strident Trident is another case of "amazing concept, poor execution". Looks awesome, is a powerful weapon, can be played like a guitar to make water explosions that destroy rocks and launch fish out of the water. What's not to like?

Well... for one, the sheer crafting cost. Gnarwails only have a 5% chance to spawn whenever a school of fish appears, which means getting just a single Gnarwail Horn can take a lot of aimlessly sailing around and praying to the RNG God. And the Trident requires a whopping 3 horns to make, while only having 150 uses as a weapon and 50 as a... magic explosive thingy, which means the player will be spending waaay more time acquiring the materials for it than they will actually using it.

The other issue is that explosive fishing is just too finnicky and unreliable to be more than a novelty. It requires some very careful timing and placement to actually launch the fish onto your boat and even then, most of the time that'll still only yield a single fish, since fish are typically scattered too far apart for more of them to be hit by the explosion and launched in the same direction.

Some suggestions to improve the Trident:

• Allow Gnarwails to drop multiple horns. The Trident has 3 horns visible on it, so reducing the number of horns required would make no sense. Gnarwails, on the other hand, have like 5 horns visible on them, so there's no reason why they can't drop more than one. As of now, you can get a horn by breaking it off without killing the Gnarwail. So why not reward players who manage to kill the Gnarwail with 1-2 more horns? (1 guaranteed + 50% chance for another 1)
• Increase the Trident's durability when used as a weapon. Adding about 50 more uses would never hurt anyone. Except the things you would be killing with the Trident, of course.
• Add some course-correction to explosive fishing/collecting. I'm not talking about automating it, just a little something to help fish launched towards the boat land on it. Nothing sucks like watching a Black Catfish soar through the air only to land slightly next to your boat. Same goes for other items that can be collected this way.
• Allow explosions to uproot Bull Kelp Stalks. Would add some very welcome utility. Beached Bull Kelp Stalks are practically finite in the game's current state. What you see on the Lunar Islands is what you get and once you plant those, there is no reliable way to move them.

 

[Muzarello]

I could not agree more, we need adjustments to the gnarwails and the trident,  I've spent hours sailing to find 2 of them with luck and 2 isn't even enough for the trident, unless using the construction amulet wich is just a waste.

Somethig like a migration cycle would be nice to locate them, like the gnarwails coming to some biome's coast in some season,because of the temperature or who knows, hope we have some tweaks on them, would make life on the sea way better and less time consuming.

[Well-met]

also make the trident better looking. it shouldn't look like a caveman pitchfork.