My thoughts and experiences on sailing.

[Theukon-dos]

Alright, I know that Sailing has been talked to death. However, I've been doing a lot of it in my current long-run Wanda world. And I thought I'd share and talk about my experiences with it.

 

Just a disclaimer though, due to the biases I had before getting into ocean exploration, I installed several mods to improve the ocean experience. About half of them I haven't touched/don't care about. But they were still there. I'll disclose whenever a mod got involved, but I'll generally try to keep them out of the discussion unless it the mod directly affected something.

Enabled mods that effected sailing:

Spoiler

Sailing Rebalance

Unlockable sunken chests

Crow's nest

New Boat Shapes (Have not used any of the new ship shapes for sailing; but I do believe it makes the whole boat rotate when turning instead of just the sails.)

Ocean Currents (Honestly this might have just made things worse lmao)

Skully's Sea Pack

Skully's Sea Pack 2

Unlockable sunken chests

Seafaring and else (Added later, kind of sucks ngl)

Now then. Let's get started.

 

1. Sailing

Now, this world has been the first time I've done much sailing in a survival setting. And probably the first time I've been sailing at all sense pre-Waterlogged. And I've got to say, despite this, I can definitely feel the difference in sailing now compared to a couple years ago. And it is rather enjoyable, oddly peaceful, and while there's not a lot out in the ocean, keeping an eye out for anything important takes enough of my attention that sailing because a mild catharsis as opposed to something of ire.

However, I did encounter a problem that surprised me. This being that sailing is actually too fast.

See, what I quickly learned about boating is 2 things.

1. Boats are momentum-based.

2. Boats are really slow to turn.

These two facts combined meant that not only was maneuvering the boat rather difficult, but when obstacles did show up I could almost never manuver out of the way in time. It was certainly possible to avoid them; either with good angle or by dropping anchor. But that first option is still really tight, and the second one just tends to break my flow. It also doesn't help that maintaining boats is honestly really expensive. Each leak you spring requires a board to repair. Which wouldn't be too bad, except you spring a leak 75% of the time if you hit something while going slightly faster than walking speed. And you absolutely have to patch these leaks too. sense they constantly drain your boats health before inevitably destroying them. In the end I stopped using the sails entirely, instead opting to use a driftwood oar which was only slightly slower than the 2 sails (A benefit, as established) while also being several times more wieldy. 

 

If it were up to me, I'd make 2 changes. 

1. Being on a boat lets you zoom out farther. That way users have more time to react to incoming obsticals

2. Leaks only form on boats that are below half health, or when attacked by creatures that cause them; such as Gnarwalls or Cookie Cutters. That way you're not punished so harshly for wanting to actually get places.

In general, Sailing is rather satisfying in and of itself, it just needs a couple minor tweaks.

 

2. Lunar Island

It feels appropriate to talk about this early; given how the lunar island will often be the first thing that players sail too. But to be honest, there isn't much to really say about it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe the only new content that the Lunar Island's gotten sense Return of Them started has been The Celestial Champion. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it would have been nice to see the lunar island get another mob or item as the updates went on.

But I digress, while not the most packed area in the game. The Lunar Island manages to do what it wants to and is a nice place to visit. Stone fruit bushes are still a great source of food. Moonglass axes are great if you want to do some building before Bearger shows up. And I assume that Glass cutters are good. But, well. Alarming Clock go brrrrr.

All and all, a nice little area that gives some good boosts early game but drops off a tad as you roll into the second year.

3. Bull Kelp

Now, it may be odd to give a single item it's entirely own section. But I think I have enough to say about it to justify doing so.

When I first went to the lunar island, I managed to get nearly 4 stacks of Bull Kelp Stalks. And with a small farm put by my base, Bull Kelp actually ended up as a large portion of my diet for a few seasons of my world. its surprisingly long spoil timer and short growth time meant that I could easily live off the stuff without much hassle.

Here's the problem though. I see no reason to use it as any other character.

As I said, I'm playing Wanda, meaning that the -1 health was negligible, and the -10 sanity benefited me more than anything as it helped me fill my crippling Nightmare Fuel addiction. 

But for any other character, it's really just going to be crock pot filler. You can definitely use them to meet veggie requirements on dishes before getting a farm set up and running. But if you're going to the Lunar Island, then you can just collect Stone Fruit bushes which do the job better. And you do want to set up a farm. I didn't as Wanda sense I could only heal with the clocks. But it's extremely easy to set up a basic farm to get nigh-indefinite hunger, healing, and sanity restoration. Potatoes alone can do all three without much problem. In fact, setting up a farm means you don't have to touch kelp at all, yet you won't really be missing out on much. In fact, that's going to be a reoccurring pattern in this ocean review. The stuff in the ocean is good. This can't be denied. But it gives the players any benefits that they can't get by staying on the mainland.

Also, I know that Wurt can eat kelp without any penalty, but... eeeeeeeehhhhhh who cares? it's Wurt.

 

EDIT: It was pointed out to me that I completely forgot about dried kelp. While I do still stand by what I said here,Dried kelp is definitely something that should be kept in mind.

 

4. Salt and Cookie cutters.

Before we start this part. I want to apologize to vanilla purists and console players. Sailing rebalance makes cookie cutters drop shell fragments 100% of the time with a 75% chance to drop a second. So I legitimately feel bad for anyone who spent days slaughtering Cookie Cutters in order to upgrade pearl's house.

Anyways. Brine pools. A mini biome that spawns all over the ocean. It's pretty cool. Cookie cutters are a bit annoying. But they have a nice design and are a good source of monster meat.

However, one thing I can't wrap my head around is the Cookie cutter cap. It's clearly meant to be a parallel/alternative to Football helmets. But it really doesn't work out that way. At all.

For starters, the Cookie Cutter Cap protects 10% less damage than the Football helmet. Which may not sound like a lot, but damage resistance is tricky in that you have to look at what damage you're taking, not what damage you're losing. Let's say a player gets hit for 100 damage. If they're wearing a football helmet, they're going to block 80 damage to lose 20 HP. But if they wear the Cookie Cutter Cap, then they're going to block 70% damage and loose 30 HP. Meaning that they're going to take Half as much more damage wearing the Cap compared to the Helmet.

The exchange for this extra damage is more durability and 15% more wetness protection. This... doesn't matter. Wetness protection in Don't Starve tends to be an all or nothing deal. The Chances that you're in a situation where that 15% extra wetness protection is noticeable just... doesn't exist. And if it does then they're few and far between. And on top of that, there aren't any 65-70% wetness protection items that the Cookie Cutter cap can combo with. A player with a football helmet and an umbrella is going to be just as dry as a player with a cookie cutter cap and an umbrella.

The durability thing also doesn't matter, because pig skin is really easy to farm. And sense inventory space isn't much of an issue on boats, there's not much trouble in bringing a few pieces of pigskin with you out to sea. In addition, both the Helmet and the Cap take rope. But the cap also needs a whole 4 cookie cutter shells. Which; at a drop rate of 25%; means that you need to kill an average of 16 cookie cutters for a single helmet. That's just... not worth it. At all.

 

The Brine pools also add salt which is a thing that... exists.

Ok that's not quite fair. I like how the salt nodes look like people who were petrified. (Petrified? Saltified? Petsalinified? I Dunno). But Salt itself is kind of underwhelming. Being able to restore freshness on food items is cool, but you need so much of it that I'd rather just farm the items again and then use the rot for something else.

You can also make a salt box with salt which, while good. Can be a bit annoying. Having the limitation for only raw foods is cool, until you need to jump between 2 different boxes while cooking because your meat was about to spoil and you needed to cook it, but then you have a fresh batch of berries that you want to last as long as possible. Again, the salt box is good. Just a bit of a hassle at times. I also admit that this might be mostly because of my absolutely horrendous excuse for a kitchen making it more annoying than it needs to be. But I digress.

 

5. Fishing

Ocean fishing is a nice novelty. I like how you can gradually get better at it as you unlock more floats and lures, and the minigame itself is quite fun.

I would also never use this as an actual food source.

I know I've historically had the "well if it's not better than pig farms don't use it" sort of mentality (and have that mentality a bit more in the future of this post). But not here, Ocean fishing is just bad. Plain and simple.

For starters, it's extremely slow for very little gain. It can take a good while for a fish to bite. And when it does, it can take upwards of 30 seconds to reel the fish in; all for a single piece of meat.

It's also inconsistent, Fish schools spawn entirely randomly, so there's no guarantee that you can find one in short order. And even if you do find one, I've found that they have a tendency to wander off, meaning you have to waste time catching up to them. There is fish food, except a single bundle of the stuff costs an entire three bottles with Pearl. Also Shoals I suppose. But then you're inevitably going to have to deal with Malbatross. Not to mention those are always a good distance away from base.

And to top it all off, there aren't any good fish recipes. None that require you to go sailing at least. Making this thread, I was surprised to learn that there are actually only 9 fish-based meals in Don't Starve Together (Excluding meals that require crustations, including the Barnacle and Wobster dishes.) And of those meals, 7 of them either only required having fish in general, or had a required fish value low enough that you can make it using fish morsels; IE freshwater fish which are much easier to catch.

And you'd hope; nigh; expect the two dishes that require big fish to be the best dishes. But nope. The two dishes that require using large fish are Cevice; an objectively bad dish that gives half the hunger of its ingredients in exchange for 4 more HP and 5 extra sanity. And Seafood Gumbo. Which, fun fact, you can't actually make with Seafood. When ocean fishing and large fish were added to DST, they actually increased the meat value on Fish from 0.5 to 1. This means that attempting to meet the >2 fish value needed for Seafood Gumbo will always end up with enough meat value too make Surf 'n'Turf unless you use atleast 1 eel in the recipe. Ofcourse, this isn't a problem in most situations, because Surf 'n' Turf is an objectively better version of Seafood Gumbo. Restoring the same amount of Hunger, more Sanity and HP, and just being easier to make in general.

 

Honestly, if you actually want to use fish as a major part of your diet; just use Wobsters. They're easier to catch, spawn close to shore, always spawn in the same spot, have the same crock pot values as ocean fish, and the two recipes that Wobsters are needed for are legitimately very good.

In the end, I hesitate to call ocean fishing pre-rework farm levels bad (though at least those didn't require the player to actively grow the food outside of harvesting and planting) . But I'm confident in saying that sea fishing is the worst food source in the game right now.

 

6. Rockjaws and Gnarwalls

So, I know I said I want to talk about things in the ocean I've experienced. But I'm going to ignore that right now because in all my time in the ocean, I have not found a single Gnarwal. I have also only found a single Rockjaw, but this came after I ended up setting both creatures to more. I just wanted to bring this up because it's honestly a bit silly how rare the creatures are.

7. Sea Weeds/Barnacles

Truth be told, I was pleasantly surprised by these. Unlike ocean fish, the dishes made with Barnacles are rather good. Barnacle Pita is easy to mass produce, Barnacle nigiri is a good Pierogi alternative, Barnacle Linguini has really good all-round stats, and Stuffed fish heads make good emergency rations while at sea. The only real downside is that Barnacle dishes tend to have a really low spoilage time. Pita spoils in 15 days, Nigiri spoils in 10, Linguini spoils in 6, and stuffed fish heads last a mere 3 days. It's not bad enough to make the dishes bad, but it does really hinder them on long trips compared to most meat dishes.

In addition, Barnacles serve an interesting niche in that they're extremely easy to mass-produce, but only have 0.25 meat and fish value. This means you can't really use them for larger dishes, but they're really good at satisfying the needs of dishes that only need to have meat/fish, rather than dishes that need a specific amount of it.

 

Ultimately, I would consider Barnacles the best food source on the ocean, due to easy of farming, good unique dishes, and a unique utility that other foods lack. That being said, I can't quite say how they compare to mainland food sources, due to the fact that I got extremely lucky with Sea Weed generation and got a colony a boat's leap away from Pearl's Island. And because I'm Wanda who was teleporting to and from Pearl's island anyways, all I had to do to set a farm up was build a bunch of boats. Meaning I can't really say how easy or hard it is to relocate Sea Weeds to a preferable location.

 

8. Waterlogged Biome

The most recent addition to the ocean and possibly the most significant. And to be perfectly honest, this might be my favorite biome in the game. Not content wise, I'll get to that later. But I just really love the aesthetic. The salt-stained tree trunks, the towering; incredibly well-drawn supertrees, the shadows on the water. This biome is just really pretty.

But what about the stuff in the biome? Well I have some things to say. Grass gators being a source of leafy meat is cool. Sweetish fish not being a source of sweetener is a massive missed opportunity. And I like the idea of being able to grow the above-average trees as summer protection is cool, though only being able to grow them on the edges of land is a bit too limiting IMO (Also I play with Wildfires turned off anyways).

That being said, there is one thing I have issue with, and that's the figs.

Something you may have noticed while reading through this is that food and sources of it comes up a lot. Stonefruit on lunar island, Bull Kelp, Ocean fishing, Sea weeds. One of the main draws for the ocean is food.  But despite this, most of the ocean's food sources aren't anything special. Sea weeds are the exception, as I said, and stone fruit are handy if only for the sheer amount they produce. But for the most part, any food source you can get at sea is only going to be as effective, if not less effective than farms you can make without going out to sea, such as pig farms, spider nests, crop farms, Berry farms, ect. ect. And I think that figs are probably the best example of this.

 

For reference. Figs are a unique food source and the main draw of the Waterlogged biome. They restore just over 18 hunger when cooked and eaten and last for 6 days before spoiling (3 days cooked). However, they also have a variety of unique dishes that can be made with them.

First is Figatoni, made with 1 fig and 2 vegetables. It restores 30 HP, 56.25 hunger, and 20 sanity. It's certainly a good dish. However, it's also rather out of the way to get for stats that are ultimately pretty non-special. It's also important to remember that Leafy Meat is readily available in the Waterlogged biome as well, meaning for 1 extra vegetable you can get significantly more healing and hunger gain.

Second is the Fig-stuffed trunk. It offers a significant amount of healing (60) but loses out on a ton of hunger compared to just eating the ingredients on their own (56.25 compared to 93.75). In addition, you're not really going to have these ingredients at the same time. Trunks are a rare item you get from completing hunts (and that gets rarer and rarer as a world gets older). And you can farm Figs, but growing them at your base takes a while, and you get what? 3 vines per above average tree? Good for rarer foods like this, sure. But hardly sustainable without several of them.

Third is the Figgy Frogwich. I physically cannot understand the design or intention behind this meal. 1 fig and 1 frog legs restore 8 health, 18 hunger, and 10 sanity. This recipe is terrible. The hunger alone can be matched just by eating the fig, and for it, you're getting 2 extra HP and 10 extra sanity. And not only are you getting terrible returns on the Figgy Frogwich, but once again, you're not going to have Frog Legs and Figs at the same time. They don't spawn in the same biome, meaning you have to bring the figs to the mainland to make it. But you know what else is on the mainland? Veggies. And you know what you get if you combine Frog legs and Veggies? Why it's a Froggle Bunwich. A food dish which doesn't lose out on hunger no matter how you craft it, and restores over double the HP of the Figgy Frogwich. Sure it has less Sanity, but 10 sanity's already low, and 5 extra sanity is not going to matter long-term, nor does it make up for the rest of the stats being utterly terrible. In fact, not only is there no reason bring figs to the mainland for a Figgy Frogwich. But the reverse is also true. If you bring Frogs out to sea with you, then you can find bull kelp, which is a vegetable and thus can be used to make the froggle bunwich. All and all. This dish is terrible by all cuts of the word. For shame figgy Frogwich. For shame.

 

And with that out of the way, we have the final dish you can make with figs. The Figkabab. Made with 1 meat, 1 fig, and 1 twig. Figkababs offer a well-balanced array of stats, with 20 HP, 25 Hunger, and 15 Sanity. And quite frankly, I consider this to be the best fig dish. It's doesn't have the most stats, but unlike the other fig dishes, all the ingredients are readily available in the Waterlogged biome. Figs are obvious, Twigs drop from Great Tree Trunks and Grass Gators, and Monster meat can be easily acquired from Sea Striders. If you have a crock pot on your boat, you can easily refill all of your stats with this dish without having to jump through any hoops. (you can technically get vegetables for Figatoni. But doing so requires you to fish up Corn Cods, which is RNG dependent and much more time consuming).

 

As demonstrated, the fig recipes are certainly useful, and can be good. But compared to other foods, they're pretty average, despite taking much more effort to get. It's also important to remember that; with how food's balanced in Don't Starve, it's better to get lower-quality foods that are faster to get than higher-quality foods that take longer. In the time it takes me to collect figs, I could very easily get a spider den, a bird cage, a small farm to have a nigh-indefinite supply of hunger, health, and sanity. Most food just isn't worth it when the food you can get on the mainland is just as good.

 

9. The Crabby Hermit

How far in are we? 3.6k words? Jeez, alright then.

Ehem. Next up, I want to talk about Pearl. Surprisingly, I found doing her quests surprisingly enjoyable. None of them where particularly expensive or time consuming (Reminder that I have reasonable drop rates for Cookie Cutter shells, so that wasn't a problem). And seeing Pearl open up over time was rather nice. That being said, the trades themselves leave something to be desired.

If you take a look at the bottle exchange tab, you'll see that almost everything Pearl offers is to aid in fishing. And ignoring how fishing is just bad, it also demonstrates another problem I have with the ocean at the moment. Almost everything you can find in the ocean is self-contained and only helps to further your abilities in the ocean. Salt and Knobly Nuts are helpful on the mainland. But content like Driftwood, Pearl, Malbatross, Crab King's drops, ect. Really only helps you for sailing. If someone, say, doesn't like sailing, or is well established on the mainland, then they don't really have a reason to go sailing in the first place because their reward for it is... better sailing.

Again, I do like pearl. I just wish she had better trades (In vanilla at least. Mods help a lot in this regard).

 

10. Malbatross

Yeah... I forgot about this guy. Not that he's bad, I like their wings, and they're a decently dynamic fight compared to some other bosses of their caliber. That being said though, why do they need to drop 3 whole blueprints? Why does the Waterfowl can need to be a Blueprint even though the scaled chest isn't? Why does the feathery canvas exist at all when the winged mast could just be made with feathers and nothing would change?

Again, did like the boss, don't see why it need to drop 3 blueprints.

(Fun fact, Malbatross did manage to kill me about 5 minutes after the fact because I forgot to look at my time left after the fight)

 

11. Treasure chests.

I actually really liked sailing for treasure. Unfortunately, that was likely because it was the single most modded aspect in my world.

In the standard game, you have a 33% chance of finding a treasure map in a sunken bottle. reasonable, but still rather rare due to how hard these bottles can be to find. And then once you hoist up the chest, the loot is... not good.

As I said in the Pearl Section, a lot of the loot in the ocean aids mostly in spending more time in the ocean. And the sunken treasure is no different. The vast majority of loot consists of boat objects such as sails and anchors, or fishing gear. You can find some materials in there, but they're always stuff that's easier to get on the mainland. Things like cut stone or gold. You can get a walking cane if you're lucky; but good luck getting that before Winter. Or you if you're really lucky, you can get some ruins items. But most of said ruins items are materials, such as Thulecite and gems. The only actual ruins gear you can get is a thulicite suit or a pick/axe. And sure, walking into the ruins with an extra craft or two worth of materials is nice. it's a 10% drop chance out of a chest that spawns 33% of the time when using an uncommon item. At that point, you're better off raiding the Archives or learning how to kill Dragonfly for much more reliable ruins materials.

 

12. Closer

And I do believe that summarizes all of my thoughts and experiences with the ocean in my Wanda world. I haven't done Crab King or Celestial Champion yet. But overall, my opinion on the ocean has improved. I do think that sailing in and of itself is fun. However, I can't see myself doing it in future worlds outside of a late-game novelty. I'll probably rush lunar more often, but most of the ocean doesn't help me enough on the mainland where I'm spending most of my time.

I do think that this can be fixed in the future though. Waterlogged was a good first step in the right direction, and there are plenty of ways that Klei could implement ocean-based items which help on the mainland.

If you managed to make it this far through my inane rambling, then I am both impressed and slightly concerned. 

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

[Hornete]

30 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Ocean Currents (Honestly this might have just made things worse lmao)

(I will read the rest of the post, I just wanted to laugh at this)
 

[Theukon-dos]

8 hours ago, Hornete said:

(I will read the rest of the post, I just wanted to laugh at this)
 

It's all fun and games until you're sent hurtling into a salt formation at mach 3

[O_Atoba_Azul]

44 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Have not used any of the new ship shapes for sailing; but I do believe it makes the whole boat rotate when turning instead of just the sails.

Pretty sure that's Sailing Rebalance

[Theukon-dos]

7 minutes ago, O_Atoba_Azul said:

Pretty sure that's Sailing Rebalance

Wait really? Hmmm, maybe both mods do it then. Would explain why it feels a bit buggy at times.

[WoodieMain45684]

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

3. Bull Kelp

On bull kelp... There's actually a decent amount of appeal to farm this as the majority of characters for its ability to be dried very quickly, and its +10 sanity per kelp when dried. With a few drying racks, kelp is basically cactus without any location ties, and it lasts a long time dried. The fact that it grows in winter is another boon, or it was at least, before RWYS made most veggies more readily available in winter.

[Cheggf]

The based parts of sailing are based and the cringe parts of sailing are cringe. Those are my thoughts.

[Hornete]

28 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

It's all fun and games until your sent hurtling into a salt formation at mach 3

I'll be taking this as feedback.
 

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

It also doesn't help that maintaining boats is honestly really expensive. Each leak you spring requires a board to repair. Which wouldn't be too bad, except you spring a leak 75% of the time if you hit something while going slightly faster than walking speed

Yea this is honestly one of the large problems I have with sailing right now still, and it surprises me that no one talks about it. Is it kind of crazy how your boats well-being depends on one single mob(bees) from a few biomes on the mainland? Could you imagine if player healing was as limited as boat leak repairing is and you were just limited to say, healing salves? That's boat maintenace correctly, and yea I know tree jam exists but tree jam takes a bit to set up, though I do like it a lot still.

I really do hope we get more and more leak repairing options soon as that's something that's really needed, also good god do the boards get expensive. I've always wanted to see a "natural" type patch, say a new plant that drops an item that could be used as a boat patch, figure it'd be neat. I had made something a while ago which was something you could freeze leaks with to repair them, and ya could mine the frozen leaks for a few ice or so (without breaking it open again), but anywho.

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

3. Bull Kelp

All I'll say about bull kelp is, I do use dried bull kelp if I'm with others, why if I'm with others? Because usually they're the ones who bother building drying racks lol. I don't know about anyone else but I will honestly just never build drying racks in a solo playthrough, never. I find them a bit expensive and out of the way, though I am trying to equip boats with a single drying rack because of the shorter dry times for fish and the .25 day dry time for bull kelp, still not a big fan though.
 

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

4. Salt and Cookie cutters.

I always thought cookie cutter caps could really do well with some small niche. One idea I had was maybe they could protect from ranged attacks more effectively(bishop, mactusk, completely block Sea Weed shots maybe?). Though that's just sorta random for the sake of being random, nothing really suggests they'd be better at protecting from ranged attacks. I've thought they could fill the niche of being a good armor for followers. I personally never use armor for followers because it's a bit expensive, but if cookie cutter shell droprates were to be increased immensely I could totally see myself playing Wurt/Webber and equipping spiders/merms with cookie cutter caps if they were super plentiful. Low protection armor but super plentiful so it works well for followers, and I think that's the idea I like most. Oh, Klei, please increase the cookie cutter shell droprate...(I remember they used to be 100% but they were nerfed because some people genuinely thought that was overpowered....)

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

5. Fishing

Ooh! I have completely the opposite experience of you here. I'm always using ocean fish as a food source, even from land sometimes, because I genuinely think it's a really good food source. But from how you're sounding your experience I think it might be because you don't understand the ocean fishing mechanics too well to use it effectively, and I do not blame you. Ocean fishing while imo is a really good food source, I think is a horrible mechanic to try and learn.

Ocean Fishing's state currently to me is like if you had Post-RWYS farming, but Willow came over to you, flipped you off, knocked the Gardeneer hat off your head, burnt it, and then Charlie prevented you from ever crafting a Gardeneer. (Okay okay, this example is pretentious, but point is, there's not really any effective ways to learn ocean fishing as a mechanic)

A lot of mechanics with ocean fishing are hidden and just not communicated at all to the player through anything like the Cookbook and Gardeneer hat might help at times with Cooking and Farming. All the lures you likely don't know which fish like which. Did you know reel charm is a mechanic? Reeling either decreases(consumable lures, berries, etc) or increases(reusable lures, spoons, spinners) your charm. Did you know fishing while it's raining/snowing without their special respective lures causes a 50% decrease in your charm? Yes! A game with fishing where it is disadvantageous to fish in rainy/snowy weather.

I remember just as a fun little thing/experiment I did a while ago I had went pubbing and grabbed people along with me and tried to teach them ocean fishing, and man they got so confused haha. While farming was generally more teachable to them.

Despite ocean fishing being terrible to learn, I think out of every great game I've seen(and as they say, every good game has a fishing minigame :>) I honestly think DST still does it the best, I'd love to go super in-depth as to why but I'll say I really like that you can actually tell what fish you can/are going to catch. In a lot of games with fishing you can't actually tell what you're gonna catch, you just dip your rod into the water and hope it's the fish you want(I know Terraria has that potion that lets you see what you're about to catch but it's still eeeh for me)(Animal Crossing you can actually see the fish, but the only thing that changes is the size of the sprite, the sprite it self still doesn't change so you're still not exactly sure what you're gonna catch, but this was New Leaf so maybe something changed for AC there). Just being able to see the fish I'm going to catch makes it honestly the best fishing experience I have ever had in any video game, Oh the fish I want isn't here? Great! I don't have to waste time catching everything in this area only to realize the fish I want isn't here, I can just sail off and wait for more schools to spawn.

But yeah, when you have mastered fishing I think it's really great, fishes will generally find my lure charming in a few seconds and then catch them again in a few seconds. Surf n Turf is probably my favorite food in the game, but as you said those other fish recipes could really use some love, Ceviche... Seafood Gumbo... Fish Tacoes

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

6. Rockjaws and Gnarwalls

So, I know I said I want to talk about things in the ocean I've experienced. But I'm going to ignore that right now because in all my time in the ocean, I have not found a single Gnarwal. I have also only found a single Rockjaw, but this came after I ended up setting both creatures to more. I just wanted to bring this up because it's honestly a bit silly how rare the creatures are.

That's funny to hear, and I've had the same experience. With Rockjaw/Gnarwail spawning it's either the game takes literal years to spawn one, or it spawns like 5 within a day (I still have PTSD from the day I was attemping to recreate Noah's Ark with a pub player and the game spawned 4 rockjaws in a minute... Yes that was a bug that existed that rockjaws had no max for their spawning)

I genuinely like using the Strident Trident in that sandbox-y part of the late game where I can just do whatever I want so i'll clear sea stacks, but holy heck the 3 gnarwail horns cost makes it more valuable than ruins loot to me, I have to get deconstruction staves and amulets just so I can juice out every use I can out of these damn horns for tridents. Gnarwails themselves could be really cool, they're actually super cool thematically as a follower, they match the speed of your boat as you sail along after being befriended which is really darn cute, and they try to toss items to you! and they scare cookie cutters at salt shoals! I would LOVE to take advantage of these two mechanics... but... they kinda stink. 1. The spawning obviously, 2. The tossing of items is really infrequent, I think it would be great if you attempted to pick up an item on the ocean and the gnarwail would detect that and throw you it, just like how when you're attempting to give something to a mob they stop in place and say a line(pigs/merms) this way it's not only random but it's actually darn useful. 3. They jump all around at the salt shoals which creates a lot of waves, and after Waterlogged waves are actually even more powerful. For what they could do to fix this i'm not sure, I guess just make befriended gnarwails not do cool dives in the air and just swim gently over?
 

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

Truth be told, I was pleasantly surprised by these. Unlike ocean fish, the dishes made with Barnacles are rather good. Barnacle Pita is easy to mass produce, Barnacle nigiri is a good Pierogi alternative, Barnacle Linguini has really good all-round stats, and Stuffed fish heads make good emergency rations while at sea. The only real downside is that Barnacle dishes tend to have a really low spoilage time. Pita spoils in 15 days, Nigiri spoils in 10, Linguini spoils in 6, and stuffed fish heads last a mere 3 days. It's not bad enough to make the dishes bad, but it does really hinder them on long trips compared to most meat dishes.

Yeah that's the downside/upside to food on the ocean that I noticed. Raw ingredients will last very long(because you're generally going to have salt boxes, and access to salt(though as you said salt by itself is... not great), tin fishing bins for quite literal infinite storage of fish, the cooking of raw ingredients is more of a possibility because you're always moving, so you're not hurting your time by fueling a fire pit quickly and cooking raw ingredients), while crockpot foods made from ocean ingredients will last shorter than their land counterparts. Makes for a somewhat interesting upside/downside I suppose.

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

9. The Crabby Hermit

Wish her bottles were more reliable, I do not enjoy that they scale with more players, makes for a grueling solo experience(Gotta love that kind of design in DST where solo players are shoved aside... lookin' at some of the raid bosses here)
 

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

11. Treasure chests.

I actually really liked sailing for treasure. Unfortunately, that was likely because it was the single most modded aspect in my world.

I love the unlockable sunken chests mod, having a 12 slot portable container is super cool, I've transported some chests around the world with stuff like armor and weapons, and I dunno it just feels really cool? It's like you're carrying a supply box haha.

[Theukon-dos]

34 minutes ago, Hornete said:

I'll be taking this as feedback.
 

Danke

34 minutes ago, Hornete said:

Yea this is honestly one of the large problems I have with sailing right now still, and it surprises me that no one talks about it. Is it kind of crazy how your boats well-being depends on one single mob(bees) from a few biomes on the mainland? Could you imagine if player healing was as limited as boat leak repairing is and you were just limited to say, healing salves? That's boat maintenace correctly, and yea I know tree jam exists but tree jam takes a bit to set up, though I do like it a lot still.

I really do hope we get more and more leak repairing options soon as that's something that's really needed, also good god do the boards get expensive. I've always wanted to see a "natural" type patch, say a new plant that drops an item that could be used as a boat patch, figure it'd be neat. I had made something a while ago which was something you could freeze leaks with to repair them, and ya could mine the frozen leaks for a few ice or so (without breaking it open again), but anywho.

It's even funnier when you look at how small a boat patch is, and then realize that four of them could make an entire boat. Also, is there a place I could get that ice mod? that sounds really cool and better than most sailing mods I have right now.

34 minutes ago, Hornete said:

All I'll say about bull kelp is, I do use dried bull kelp if I'm with others, why if I'm with others? Because usually they're the ones who bother building drying racks lol. I don't know about anyone else but I will honestly just never build drying racks in a solo playthrough, never. I find them a bit expensive and out of the way, though I am trying to equip boats with a single drying rack because of the shorter dry times for fish and the .25 day dry time for bull kelp, still not a big fan though.
 

I can get that. It definitely seems useful for it's high sanity gain and long spoilage time. But drying racks are just really expisnive.

34 minutes ago, Hornete said:

I always thought cookie cutter caps could really do well with some small niche. One idea I had was maybe they could protect from ranged attacks more effectively(bishop, mactusk, completely block Sea Weed shots maybe?). Though that's just sorta random for the sake of being random, nothing really suggests they'd be better at protecting from ranged attacks. I've thought they could fill the niche of being a good armor for followers. I personally never use armor for followers because it's a bit expensive, but if cookie cutter shell droprates were to be increased immensely I could totally see myself playing Wurt/Webber and equipping spiders/merms with cookie cutter caps if they were super plentiful. Low protection armor but super plentiful so it works well for followers, and I think that's the idea I like most. Oh, Klei, please increase the cookie cutter shell droprate...(I remember they used to be 100% but they were nerfed because some people genuinely thought that was overpowered....)

Usually when I see the cap buffed, it's by giving it some sort of damage capability Ala Wormwood's bramble armor. And this does make sense, given how it's clearly a very sharp helmet, and the crafting description also calls it sharp. Not sure if it's the most useful or original feature, but it is something.

34 minutes ago, Hornete said:

Ooh! I have completely the opposite experience of you here. I'm always using ocean fish as a food source, even from land sometimes, because I genuinely think it's a really good food source. But from how you're sounding your experience I think it might be because you don't understand the ocean fishing mechanics too well to use it effectively, and I do not blame you. Ocean fishing while imo is a really good food source, I think is a horrible mechanic to try and learn.

Ocean Fishing's state currently to me is like if you had Post-RWYS farming, but Willow came over to you, flipped you off, knocked the Gardeneer hat off your head, burnt it, and then Charlie prevented you from ever crafting a Gardeneer. (Okay okay, this example is pretentious, but point is, there's not really any effective ways to learn ocean fishing as a mechanic)

A lot of mechanics with ocean fishing are hidden and just not communicated at all to the player through anything like the Cookbook and Gardeneer hat might help at times with Cooking and Farming. All the lures you likely don't know which fish like which. Did you know reel charm is a mechanic? Reeling either decreases(consumable lures, berries, etc) or increases(reusable lures, spoons, spinners) your charm. Did you know fishing while it's raining/snowing without their special respective lures causes a 50% decrease in your charm? Yes! A game with fishing where it is disadvantageous to fish in rainy/snowy weather.

I remember just as a fun little thing/experiment I did a while ago I had went pubbing and grabbed people along with me and tried to teach them ocean fishing, and man they got so confused haha. While farming was generally more teachable to them.

Despite ocean fishing being terrible to learn, I think out of every great game I've seen(and as they say, every good game has a fishing minigame :>) I honestly think DST still does it the best, I'd love to go super in-depth as to why but I'll say I really like that you can actually tell what fish you can/are going to catch. In a lot of games with fishing you can't actually tell what you're gonna catch, you just dip your rod into the water and hope it's the fish you want(I know Terraria has that potion that lets you see what you're about to catch but it's still eeeh for me)(Animal Crossing you can actually see the fish, but the only thing that changes is the size of the sprite, the sprite it self still doesn't change so you're still not exactly sure what you're gonna catch, but this was New Leaf so maybe something changed for AC there). Just being able to see the fish I'm going to catch makes it honestly the best fishing experience I have ever had in any video game, Oh the fish I want isn't here? Great! I don't have to waste time catching everything in this area only to realize the fish I want isn't here, I can just sail off and wait for more schools to spawn.

But yeah, when you have mastered fishing I think it's really great, fishes will generally find my lure charming in a few seconds and then catch them again in a few seconds. Surf n Turf is probably my favorite food in the game, but as you said those other fish recipes could really use some love, Ceviche... Seafood Gumbo... Fish Tacoes

 

That is... A lot to take in. Huh? I have been informed that you're supposed to hold the reel button, not spam it. Guess I need to do more research and practice before making a final call. 

And yeah, Surf 'n' Turf is great. To bad you can make it with 3 Freshwater fish and a Monster Meat.

 

34 minutes ago, Hornete said:

 

That's funny to hear, and I've had the same experience. With Rockjaw/Gnarwail spawning it's either the game takes literal years to spawn one, or it spawns like 5 within a day (I still have PTSD from the day I was attemping to recreate Noah's Ark with a pub player and the game spawned 4 rockjaws in a minute... Yes that was a bug that existed that rockjaws had no max for their spawning)

 

Sounds like Pain.

34 minutes ago, Hornete said:

I genuinely like using the Strident Trident in that sandbox-y part of the late game where I can just do whatever I want so i'll clear sea stacks, but holy heck the 3 gnarwail horns cost makes it more valuable than ruins loot to me, I have to get deconstruction staves and amulets just so I can juice out every use I can out of these damn horns for tridents. Gnarwails themselves could be really cool, they're actually super cool thematically as a follower, they match the speed of your boat as you sail along after being befriended which is really darn cute, and they try to toss items to you! and they scare cookie cutters at salt shoals! I would LOVE to take advantage of these two mechanics... but... they kinda stink. 1. The spawning obviously, 2. The tossing of items is really infrequent, I think it would be great if you attempted to pick up an item on the ocean and the gnarwail would detect that and throw you it, just like how when you're attempting to give something to a mob they stop in place and say a line(pigs/merms) this way it's not only random but it's actually darn useful. 3. They jump all around at the salt shoals which creates a lot of waves, and after Waterlogged waves are actually even more powerful. For what they could do to fix this i'm not sure, I guess just make befriended gnarwails not do cool dives in the air and just swim gently over?
 

Yeah, Never gave much thought too Gnarwals as a follower. Though if they where a reliable way to get items from the water, that would be hella cool.

34 minutes ago, Hornete said:

Yeah that's the downside/upside to food on the ocean that I noticed. Raw ingredients will last very long(because you're generally going to have salt boxes, and access to salt(though as you said salt by itself is... not great), tin fishing bins for quite literal infinite storage of fish, the cooking of raw ingredients is more of a possibility because you're always moving, so you're not hurting your time by fueling a fire pit quickly and cooking raw ingredients), while crockpot foods made from ocean ingredients will last shorter than their land counterparts. Makes for a somewhat interesting upside/downside I suppose.

Mmmhmmm

34 minutes ago, Hornete said:

Wish her bottles were more reliable, I do not enjoy that they scale with more players, makes for a grueling solo experience(Gotta love that kind of design in DST where solo players are shoved aside... lookin' at some of the raid bosses here)
 

It's not been too bad in my experience, save for my first big trip where I had absolutely horrendous luck.

34 minutes ago, Hornete said:

I love the unlockable sunken chests mod, having a 12 slot portable container is super cool, I've transported some chests around the world with stuff like armor and weapons, and I dunno it just feels really cool? It's like you're carrying a supply box haha.

Unlocked sunken chests have 15 slots, actually. And I fully agree with you there. When I talked about how the ocean doesn't really aid any players on the mainland, unlockable sunken chests are a perfect example of how that can not be the case.

They're large and rare enough that they don't replace normal chests (For those who haven't seen the mod, USC makes it so that you can still hammer the chest open, but you can also remove the lock by finding sunken keys. Either by killing certain species of ocean fish, or by killing Crab King for several of them). But the large inventory space makes them great for bulk storage for things like turf, Unstackable items, or basic resources. And then because you can move them, they become a fantastic method of bulk item transport of you have a way to move heavy objects quickly, such as a tamed Beefalo, Wanda's rift watch, or (to a lesser extent) a Mighty Wolfgang.

 

It's fun, it's useful on the ocean and the mainland, and it gives a good reason to go sailing. Honestly my single favorite ocean mod despite how simple it is.

[Hornete]

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

Also, is there a place I could get that ice mod? that sounds really cool and better than most sailing mods I have right now.

Ah, it's not public, sorry for not making that clear : p
 

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

I have been informed that you're supposed to hold the reel button, not spam it.

You can do both makes no difference I believe, you used to have to spam it(Hellloooo Carpal Tunnel Syndrome!) but the March QoL allowed you to hold actions down which is great.

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

Unlocked sunken chests have 15 slots,

Oh right! Even better.

[Yuuko]

Gonna reply before I read anyone else's posts since yours was already a lot - but that's not a bad thing, I like long form content.

1) It took a while to hit the mark, but I think that the advantages of rowing vs sailing aren't too bad where they are.

Its not very expensive to drop a boat on the ocean, paddle out until you find a drift wood, come back and make that first drift wood oar, and continue out on the boat for about as long as you want.  If you want to spend a decent amount of time out there put a fire pit and crock pot on your boat.  With the random driftwood / boards you pick up, kelp and monster meat from salts, you should be able to keep fed and well lit as you travel.

Once you've explored the areas you can upgrade your boat with some sails and steering.  This is a pretty good upgrade once you've already revealed where you're going as you won't run into things very much and can take better advantage of the idle time en route.  The actual process of navigating with a boat is enjoyable!  If my time spent on the ocean involved more navigating from place to place doing things I'd be a lot happier with it.

The downsides of the boats start with turning speed.  It takes WAY too long to turn about.  Early this is a hazard as you're likely to smash your boat on the rocks if you aren't quick on the anchor.  But it is a problem late game, even after you've explored the map because things like fish, narwhals, and rock jaws require you to react to them quickly and dang, you just can't :\  By the time you circle around whatever you wanted to do just vanished.  Scooping up things like kelp, seeds, drift wood, bottles etc takes so much to do when actually sailing that you just pass things by...

- I'd definitely increase the turning speed of a boat.  Its just soo sloow now.  I don't think I'd change much else about them.  From what they were originally, I feel they're in a good spot.  I like that there is some sense of progression with drift wood oars being an alright starter on a blank boat, but later you can put up double sales and other structures to make it a home.

3) I really like kelp.  The pros are that it doesn't wither or smolder in summer, once grown will stay grown until you harvest it without spoiling, can be stacked into a single tile, and covers basic veg options in dishes.  The cons are that they only count for .5 veg which limits its use in recipes, can't be planted in caves, require a trip to the lunar / grandma island, or some tedious boat navigation.

Generally if I'm going to lunar / grandma early I'll grab some and bring them back.  Never need very many.  Practically zero maintenance.  Good as Wurt as well if you wanna boat around a bit early instead of getting a garden growing.  For her they are basically ghetto honey.  Decent spoilage time, stacks high, replenishes quickly.

4) Cookie Cutters - and their cap.  Okay this one kinda irks me because - as you pointed out about several things in the ocean - there is a sort of anti-synergy that means you MUST go out of your way to bring these pieces together for what ends up being a bit of a lack luster performance.

Cookie cutter caps can extend the durability of other armor, so if you're using night armor a cookie cutter cap is a great addition.  BUT when you're on the ocean you don't have reeds.  You find boards, but you don't have logs to make a log suit.  Like basically we can get a use for them, but its difficult to put the pieces together, and  even when you do - the results are of questionable use.

What the ocean really needs - and what I think cookie cutter shells should make - is a decent weapon.  Should be like "Cookie Cutlass" or something.  Once you set sail your ability to renew weapons drops significantly...  but the demand of being able to fight doesn't go away.

5) Fishing is way too random right now.  Its very hard to track fish since their spawn is actually totally random, and in order to break the spawn and get different fish you gotta travel a LOT.  It would be great if fish spawners chose what they'd spawn on world gen so you could predictably harvest specific fish easier.  Its not a major issue, but it definitely holds me back from bothering with them besides the deep bass which I can see on the map, and know will always be there (even if Malba is prolly there too lol)

11) Malbatross and the sails - I heard that the reason for some compound items is that the crafting tab can only take 3 items, so that is why you don't just craft feathers => sails, but idk they could just simplify the recipes...  A lot of ocean stuff is VERY expensive for what its worth.

12) Treasure chests - imo hunting these is one of the more fun things to do in the game.  It sucks that their loot table is awful.  They're better as decorations than cracked open most times lol.  It is a nice way to get lanterns on a world without caves though.

idk - I feel they did a good QOL with water logged, things are mostly good now imo.  The biggest gripe I have is probably the lack of weapons available.  What we needed was a replacement for cutlass supreme, and instead we got the strident trident - which is a cool weapon - but we need something for more normal use.  Like really imo Klei needs to consider "what if someone wants to plop down a boat day 2 and live exclusively on the ocean, what is their game plan?"

[Yuuko]

3 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Unlocked sunken chests have 15 slots, actually. And I fully agree with you there. When I talked about how the ocean doesn't really aid any players on the mainland, unlockable sunken chests are a perfect example of how that can not be the case.

They're large and rare enough that they don't replace normal chests (For those who haven't seen the mod, USC makes it so that you can still hammer the chest open, but you can also remove the lock by finding sunken keys. Either by killing certain species of ocean fish, or by killing Crab King for several of them). But the large inventory space makes them great for bulk storage for things like turf, Unstackable items, or basic resources. And then because you can move them, they become a fantastic method of bulk item transport of you have a way to move heavy objects quickly, such as a tamed Beefalo, Wanda's rift watch, or (to a lesser extent) a Mighty Wolfgang.

Wow, that sounds really cool!  I'll have to check out that mod.

 

2 hours ago, Hornete said:

You can do both makes no difference I believe, you used to have to spam it(Hellloooo Carpal Tunnel Syndrome!) but the March QoL allowed you to hold actions down which is great.

 

I must have missed that in the patch notes.  They should do this for paddling around with an oar.  I know part of it is the mini game of perfect timing, but it gets stupid really quick constantly spam clicking to paddle around.

[DarkPulse91]

6 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

6. Rockjaws and Gnarwalls

So, I know I said I want to talk about things in the ocean I've experienced. But I'm going to ignore that right now because in all my time in the ocean, I have not found a single Gnarwal. I have also only found a single Rockjaw, but this came after I ended up setting both creatures to more. I just wanted to bring this up because it's honestly a bit silly how rare the creatures are.

you are incredibly lucky with this, Maybe one of your mods removed them or something, but in my experience, they are the most annoying things in the ocean

With Gnarwals, they are just so annoying, if you try to hit them, they start jumping around randomly while making waves that knock you around, and they can sometimes continue splashing for almost and entire minute sometimes, making them impossible to kill when that happens. Its also annoying when they spawn while you are fishing, because they seemingly ALWAYS go for the fish you are trying to catch, they will eat it right up, and you will lose your tackle. 
And with my experience of boat basing in the ocean, and having a spider boat for food. Gnarwals would spawn, get scared of the spiders, start jumping, and start making big waves that hit my boat base, making the boats collide and break and lose my boat base.

While Rockjaws are equally as annoying for different reasons. They can spawn randomly with schools of fish, and are instantly hostile on the player if they are close enough. They jump onto your boat and attack multiple times. and if they land in a spot where you cant avoid their attacks, you are as good as dead. They are an overly difficult enemy given that they have no special drops at all. Gnarwal at least had the horns that could make a trident, rockjaws have nothing but a few pieces of fish, which you might as well put to surf-n-turf to heal the damage they did.

All in all, consider yourself lucky for not encountering either of them, they are both annoying and not worth dealing with.
 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

they should increase the crafting cost of patches but giving more units. Lets say 2 boards x 3 patches instead of 1 per 1

we already waste a lot of boards on many recipes

[Hornete]

10 hours ago, Shosuko said:

I must have missed that in the patch notes.  They should do this for paddling around with an oar.  I know part of it is the mini game of perfect timing, but it gets stupid really quick constantly spam clicking to paddle around.

They removed the auto actions for rowing specifically for the mini-game, otherwise there's no point y'know.

Edit: Maybe a specific type of oar could allow you to do the auto action as a compromise, but shrug.

[Yuuko]

1 hour ago, Hornete said:

They removed the auto actions for rowing specifically for the mini-game, otherwise there's no point y'know.

Edit: Maybe a specific type of oar could allow you to do the auto action as a compromise, but shrug.

idk, I think its tedium for the sake of tedium.  I don't feel like I get any major boost from rowing optimally vs suboptimally, just seems like a f u when there is a lag spike and you splash yourself.  Better to just get rid of it imo

[DarkPulse91]

12 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

they should increase the crafting cost of patches but giving more units. Lets say 2 boards x 3 patches instead of 1 per 1

we already waste a lot of boards on many recipes

Most sunken chest loot-pools have boat patches in them. So in my experience, if you get a few chests, you should have enough patches that you dont need to craft them.
You'll only need a few to start off with

[Theukon-dos]

On 2/1/2022 at 10:32 PM, DarkPulse91 said:

you are incredibly lucky with this, Maybe one of your mods removed them or something, but in my experience, they are the most annoying things in the ocean

With Gnarwals, they are just so annoying, if you try to hit them, they start jumping around randomly while making waves that knock you around, and they can sometimes continue splashing for almost and entire minute sometimes, making them impossible to kill when that happens. Its also annoying when they spawn while you are fishing, because they seemingly ALWAYS go for the fish you are trying to catch, they will eat it right up, and you will lose your tackle. 
And with my experience of boat basing in the ocean, and having a spider boat for food. Gnarwals would spawn, get scared of the spiders, start jumping, and start making big waves that hit my boat base, making the boats collide and break and lose my boat base.

While Rockjaws are equally as annoying for different reasons. They can spawn randomly with schools of fish, and are instantly hostile on the player if they are close enough. They jump onto your boat and attack multiple times. and if they land in a spot where you cant avoid their attacks, you are as good as dead. They are an overly difficult enemy given that they have no special drops at all. Gnarwal at least had the horns that could make a trident, rockjaws have nothing but a few pieces of fish, which you might as well put to surf-n-turf to heal the damage they did.

All in all, consider yourself lucky for not encountering either of them, they are both annoying and not worth dealing with.
 

I suppose it's possible, but I didn't see anything about on any of the mod pages.

13 hours ago, Shosuko said:

idk, I think its tedium for the sake of tedium.  I don't feel like I get any major boost from rowing optimally vs suboptimally, just seems like a f u when there is a lag spike and you splash yourself.  Better to just get rid of it imo

Eh, I personally have come to really enjoy the minigame. It gives you something to do while sailing while being simple enough that it can fade into the background while you keep an eye out for goodies.

[Theukon-dos]

@Hornete After doing a bit of research and practice. I see why you consider ocean fishing so highly. I still maintain that ocean fish need better crockpot recipes, but it's definitly faster than I gave it credit for.

Also, while I did do research, I honestly don't think it's that complicated. What the different lures to is pretty clear, either from the name or from what the hermit has to say about them. And the main thing I ended up learning about was numbers. Which honestly don't matter too much in play. I think all that ocean fishing really needs is a way to tell the player about the bonus you get from reeling or not reeling depending on your bait. 

 

That being said, I do still have one main gripe. Turns out, the reason I thought that fishing was so slow is becuase I happened to be going for the hardest fish in the game. Black Catfish, Ice Breams, Dandy Lion fish. Ect. There's a massive discrepancy between some fish, yet there isn't really a reward for getting the harder to catch fish.

 

It would also be nice if Lures went back into the tackle box if I changed them while I had it open. But eh, that's just a nitpick

[Hornete]

22 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

That being said, I do still have one main gripe. Turns out, the reason I thought that fishing was so slow is becuase I happened to be going for the hardest fish in the game. Black Catfish, Ice Breams, Dandy Lion fish. Ect. There's a massive discrepancy between some fish, yet there isn't really a reward for getting the harder to catch fish.

That was something else I thought might have been going on with ya. I wish the weight mechanic had some actual effect on the loot of a fish, heavy fish giving extra drops.

[Yuuko]

19 minutes ago, Hornete said:

That was something else I thought might have been going on with ya. I wish the weight mechanic had some actual effect on the loot of a fish, heavy fish giving extra drops.

It would be a big boost if some of the ocean fish gave 2 large fish meats, or 1 large 1 small when cut up.  More variance, and higher profits for time if you tow in the bigger fish.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

4 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

There's a massive discrepancy between some fish, yet there isn't really a reward for getting the harder to catch fish.

that is my biggest problem with fishing, i love it but i feel lazy to do it cuz there is no reward than your own goals 

3 hours ago, Shosuko said:

It would be a big boost if some of the ocean fish gave 2 large fish meats, or 1 large 1 small when cut up.  More variance, and higher profits for time if you tow in the bigger fish.

wow totally. bigger fish, atleast, should give more fish

[Well-met]

great post.

in my opinion I'd like to add :

we need new boats already, different shapes and different stats

sunken chests contents need a redesign

fig and fig recipes should be the ruins-tier of food

sweet fish should be considered goodies for cooking

crabking needs to drop the rain flute already

bearger/deerclops should get mutated variants for the moon island

there's still room for more lunar crafts, like a moonglass armor or shield (now that we have shields)

maybe some moon power that allows characters to temporarily gain the ability to swim directly in the sea

please new setpieces, especially for the sea and moon island. Sunken ships and failed expeditions and rockjaw nests and whatnot.

and of course, RoT needs closure.

[Vixen Doe]

A lot of sailing mechanics are just completely backwards and hard to figure out. I STILL don't know how to fish in the ocean, and I've tried multiple times.

[BezKa]

53 minutes ago, CodexCorporis said:

A lot of sailing mechanics are just completely backwards and hard to figure out. I STILL don't know how to fish in the ocean, and I've tried multiple times.

I really don't get what's so hard about it- I'm not trying to be rude, i just honestly don't understand how can people not understand the reel in, stay still mechanics. It took me some time to understand the stuff you attach to the rod, but once you got fish hooked it's pretty straight forward i think? 

Can you explain to me what you don't get, so i can have a better perspective on it?