Mast-less / Driftwood-Oar-only Sail Is Viable, Even Preferred

[goatt]

Investigation

(Skip the investigation part to see reasons in the second part)

I recorded the speed of sailing by different method (data has human error)

- regular mast x1: 181 seconds

- driftwood oar rowing twice per second: 136 seconds

- driftwood oar rowing once per second: 136 seconds

- driftwood oar rowing every other second: 174 seconds

-regular mast x1 + driftwood oar: 136 seconds.

 

According to wiki, a single mast has max speed of 2.5 whatever unit. Using this as reference, we can estimate speed of each method with errors:

- driftwood oar: 3.3

- driftwood oar slow rowing: 2.5

- compared to 2 regular masts on which have max speed of 4.25

In reality, it usually constant requires the sailors to drop anchors as safety measure. Their animation takes longer, and the operation is generally more complicated. Masted boats cannot consistently stay at max speed.

 

Why are driftwood oars viable?

1. It's very sustainable. I always end my sail with more driftwoods than the beginning. Driftwoods also is spawned around you often and abundant.

2. Good speed.

3. Good travel distance. 1 oar can power 1/3 to 1/2 continent contour.

4. Great turning rate. The turning of oar-powered ship is very comfortable. Unlike masted boats, whose angle is adjusted very slowly and gradual, the oar powered boats can turn with sudden and acute angle change. This is because once you stop rowing in one direction and start towards a new direction, the vector representing the old direction shrinks very fast while the vector of new direction increase very fast. This results in a much smoother turning experience and overall sailing experience.

5. Agile and intuitive, the mod to increase the viewing angle is completely unnecessary to avoid sea obstacles.

6.Flexibility. As nothing is installed on a ship, you can abandon your old ship and start with new ports all the time. No need to be stuck with a legacy ship. Start with new boats are very inexpensive, all you need is 1 driftwood oar to start with. You can also start the sail from the continent coast that is nearest to the destination, rather than start from where your legacy boats were parked.

7. Solo friendly. No need to watch multiple parts, it's really simple like a breeze.

8 Safer sail. You can jump onto a backup boat if your old boat is dying, cuz you lose nothing. After old boat dies, you can collect its corpse, i.e. 4 boards, and make a new backup boat. This is like renewing boats. Patches are less needed, cuz you can let it die.

9. Not intimidating, and low stake.

Very important tip:

- Don't row too fast. Each mistake in the rowing mini game will cost large amount of oar's durability. 1 click per second is a good pace that can already get you to full speed.

- Regular oars are not recommended.

[ethannnnnnn]

Even better now that Wolf has a bonus to rowing!

[Majestix]

A sail-less boat is also less prone to Wavey shenanigans, so you don't need to stay at close to full sanity.

[Sweaper]

Poor hand, may it last long

[SinancoTheBest]

Ever since Waterlogged, Driftwood Oar is the ultimate sailing tool, considering its cheapness, availability, ease of use and effectiveness. Malbatross bill is amazing as it gives you the speed of 2 masts and the gracefulness of a driftwood oar but is obviously limited to malbatross kills. You still need a mast though, if just to build an lightning conductor- I suppose you can go for a lightnilightning rod instead but I never built a lightning rod in my boats since Troubled Waters, seems like a monumental vaste of space in a finite space boat. 

[ShadowDuelist]

When you already mapped the water, in the long run I find effortless to just use a sail.
But yeah rowing when you don’t know where you are going, or for short trips is far safer and more reliable.

[DarkPulse91]

its nice to see that rowing is actually viable.
they might be a bit harder on the fingers than sails for longer trips, but having multiple options is what helps make the game more fun

it would also be interesting to see how much "better" the malbatross beak is compared to the driftwood oar.
they definitely arent as sustainable. But maybe they are better enough to consider

[Bellium]

I never knew drift wood oars and oak oars had different stats, very interesting! 

[Gi-Go]

It's so nice to just row into rocks without care smashing your boat to pieces. Safety is overrated.

[viberr]

1 hour ago, Gi-Go said:

It's so nice to just row into rocks without care smashing your boat to pieces. Safety is overrated.

fax, my preferred playstyle is just spawning and dying day one cus everything else is too much of a hassle

(also you ever heard of anchor? it stops your boat so you can be safe, shocker right?)

[goatt]

3 hours ago, DarkPulse91 said:

they might be a bit harder on the fingers than sails for longer trips, but having multiple options is what helps make the game more fun

about fingers

I think rowing is not more work than walking on land which also requires continuous finger actions.

If compared to masted boats, finger action is not constantly required, but you'll need extra stuff such as mod for zooming out, and frequent brake via anchor, and as my personal experience, I found myself pressing the keyboard super hard during masted sailing.

So to me, oar is not more finger intensive compared to masts.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

13 hours ago, viberr said:

fax, my preferred playstyle is just spawning and dying day one cus everything else is too much of a hassle

(also you ever heard of anchor? it stops your boat so you can be safe, shocker right?)

if you have a lot patches or tree jam isnt a bad thing to just go top speed breaking everything. Anyways it won't respawn so the next time it will be a free road

also, with the release of the waterlogged biome, boats are more resistant so you can break obstacles without producing holes. Just repair with sticks. Is how i harvest salt instead of wasting time mining

[GelatinousCube]

4 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Is how i harvest salt instead of wasting time mining

Wait.. explain further please =)

So you just smash into the salt stacks repeatedly and repair the boat with sticks or whatever afterwards/during??

5 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

Also, with the release of the waterlogged biome, boats are more resistant

I must have missed this somehow.. damn that's sweet 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 minute ago, GelatinousCube said:

Wait.. explain further please =)

So you just smash into the salt stacks repeatedly and repair the boat with sticks or whatever afterwards/during??

I must have missed this somehow.. damn that's sweet 

yes. With few speed the salt formation/rock turd breaks at cost of few damage. You can break many without noticing a huge damage

what i do is place the boat at 1 or 1.5 tiles and row without getting so much speed, just few rows. I recommend it because saves tons of time and, if 2 salt formations are close to each other, you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone

3 minutes ago, GelatinousCube said:

i must have missed this somehow.. damn that's sweet

im not at home so will be annoying to look after the patch notes  but they made boats stronger since you need to hit the giant trees with them to get the nuts