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Overview/Explanation of Pirate Raids (And why people want their frequency changed)


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Hello! I normally crawl out of my hole every millenia to hyperfixate on DST's lore. This is an exception, cus it seems alot of people don't really get the mechanics of the pirate raids and why people aren't too keen on them at the moment. The concept is absolutely fine, the issue comes with how plentiful both the frequency of raids and quantity of monkeys can be. So with that out of the way, I'll get right into it.

IMPORTANT: I'm putting a TLDR for the mechanics at the very end, if you don't wanna bother reading the explanation.

How do they spawn?

The Timer 

So the first thing you need to know is when the game uses this formula to get the next time for a raid to possibly spawn.

(TUNING.PIRATESPAWNER_BASEPIRATECHANCE*mult) + (math.random() *  (1-mult) * TUNING.PIRATESPAWNER_BASEPIRATECHANCE )

The tuning value is 5xday_time, which is 1500 seconds. The multiplier depends on the day count. At below 10, it's 0.6, at below 20 it's 0.4, and so on until after day 80 where it'll be 0.2. What this means is at day 81 and past that, the timer will be (300 + (0-1200)).

That is to say, the timer will be anywhere from 5 minutes to 3.125 days for the chance in the outermost zone. We'll go more into why I specified that soon. 

The effect of range
Now, you need to know that these raids have a range of how far they'll cover, with the center of that range being the Monkey Queen. This range spans up to 200 tiles (a regular world is about 425x425 tiles).
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This here is a rough example of how large the range is (the black circle). While the island has a tendency to spawn near a corner, it doesn't seem to be directly in one and ends up taking up about a third of the map in more cases than some. 
Now you're probably wondering what the 3 circles are about. Well, the closer you are, the more likely the chance for a raid and the more 'weight' the raid timer gets. 

Weight
What weight does essentially, is make the timer go down faster. At the outermost circle it goes down normally (300-1500 seconds), in the middle circle it goes down 2 times as fast (150-750 seconds) and at the inner circle it does down 4 times as fast (75-375 seconds). 

Chance
Now you might be thinking "well I've been near the island before for longer than 3 minutes and never got raided" and that's because once this timer hits 0, it's a chance! Once it hits zero, it's a 10% chance to get raided on the outermost and middle circles, then a 20% chance in the inner circle. 

The Pirates themselves
Okay so, they can spawn alot, but surely they're not that bad right? Well, yes and no.

The amount of Powder Monkeys
So, the amount of Powder Monkeys scales with the time.
Below day 15 it's 2 monkeys with a 70% chance of an additional one
Below day 30 it's 2 monkeys with a 70% chance of an additional one and a 30% chance for another
Below day 60 it's 3 monkeys with a 70% chance of an additional one and a 30% chance for another
At day 61 and above it's 4 monkeys with a 70% chance of an additional one.

That is to say, after day 61 you'll more than likely get 5 Powder Monkeys.

So what do they do?
Upon reaching your boat, they have a very specific set of actions they do. They'll drop your anchor, break your masts if they're moving the boat, raise your malbatross masts, and then loot your chests and then you. Once they steal 4 x the amount of powder monkeys present, they'll leave. If they steal from you, they won't damage you unless you hit them first, in which case all of them deal 27.2 damage (axe damage). The Prime Mate will stay on their boat and defend it, or leave if all the Powder Monkeys are dead and you're not on the boat. The Prime Mate is a stronger Krampus essentially. 350 HP, 51 damage, and an attack period of 1 with its animation being much faster than Krampus, making it very hard to kite on a boat of all things. They'll likely get a free hit on you if you're going onto their boat as well.

How can you avoid them?
Well, there's quite a few ways actually if you end up getting the raid. They won't bother you if you're asleep, if you hit their boat with a cannon they'll leave, if you give them enough items they'll leave,, if you give them a banana or cooked banana (just one) they'll leave, if you're Wonkey they'll leave. So, quite alot of non-violent ways to deal with this. All of which however, net you nothing but stolen loot. Now that loot IS in an X marks the spot somewhere on the map, but you're talking about 1 small X on the entire map. While you can find it and it always spawns on the shore, it's gonna be incredibly tedious. 

How can you fight them?
Not well! Is the answer.  Now for the sake of this argument, we'll assume there's no character specific solutions. No Wendy, no Wolfgang, no Wigfrid, no Wormwood, no Wonkey. If I had to be a specific character just to go fight Crab King because my world generation decided to hate me, that'd just suck. There should be a route for all characters so we'll be doing that. Furthermore, we're assuming you're killing 5 powder monkeys followed by the Prime Mate for the Tricorn Hat/Black Flag/Battle Paddle/Map alongside the Cutlesses and Bandanas from the regular monkeys.

So, kiting can't really work. You're on a boat, very little place to actually kite 5 enemies who are on the boat. With Malbatross it's just one and they aren't on the boat so there's more wiggle room there. 

Well what about tanking? Well you're dealing with 5 monkeys dealing 27.2 damage each with a fairly short attack period. With a log suit and spear you'd almost surely be dead unless you have alot of healing foods and multiple log suits or football helmets. With a dark sword it's more manageable but you'll more than likely be almost dead. Which is fine, you have food, though you'll certainly take alot of resources to do that. With a marble suit and a dark sword you lose a negligible amount of health and about 50% of the marble suit, meaning one suit is good for 2 raids basically. Which sounds fine until you remember they can come quite frequently if you're unlucky (which you will be, eventually). 

Well, tanking seems to have okay results. What about a pan flute? Well, the monkeys have herd mentality. That is to say, they'll wake up early once you hit one of them. You can kill about 2 before they fully wake up but then that means you'd likely need at least 2 uses of a pan flute for 1 raid. That'sssss okay until you remember the frequency of these as well. Pan flute might not be super used but the frequency of use in this scenario would actually be quite a bit high.

Ice staff? Well, maybe! Issue is the ice staff counts as a hit to the monkeys so they'll be angry, and you can freeze one or mayyyybe two before they reach your boat. At which point they'll attack properly. The issue with ice staffs is you need to constantly try to retarget otherwise you'll just keep freezing the same one, and on console/controller that's just....not gonna work out even more because of how targetting works there. 

Fire staff? You'll burn your own boat. There's no stopping them coming to yours outside of a cannon, and then you get no loot. You could have a flingo to freeze them as well but.....we're getting into cheese territory there and that's just something that's up to a matter of taste. If you wanna, go for it. If not, then don't.

Cannons? You CAN drown the monkeys with 2 shots. The only issue is the Prime Mate goes overboard sooooo no loot from them. All you get are Powder Monkey loot (atm it seems bugged so no trinkets)

Followers? Followers would work! The issue is that if you turn into Wonkey then Pigmen and Bunnymen get hostile to you even if previously loyal. That means you can pretty much just do 1 raid before you need to go to the Moon Quay to get the trinkets off of you. Granted you probably would want to do that anywayyyyy but not everyone would want to and maybe you're Wonkey already so, no followers. Wortox and Webber also get this issue. Wurt doesssss if the King isn't active and the Merms are homeless. 

So as we can see! Not much options to confront these guys head on. Klei seems to want to incentivise just killing them when you're prepared and otherwise giving them some loot, given that yesterday they made the max cap on the Powder Monkeys 1 higher (from 4 to 5) and provided us some leeway with them simply stealing from you rather than also dealing damage. With that being said.....having one solution which actually nets you loot be made even harder definitely isn't the way to go about it. It'd be one thing to just keep it at 4 max and even then it'd still be a tad too much. 5 is just excessive. 

What would make it more reasonable?
Dealing with 5 powder monkeys and an (essentially) Krampus is too much ESPECIALLY when the Accursed Trinket briefly stuns you up to well....5 times, granted if you're on your own boat then it's only a problem 4 times but 80% of the time isn't really an improvement from 100%. It makes it so you deal even less damage to em. Alot of people have suggested this but scaling it with people rather than time would be much better. 3 powder monkeys is much more reasonable to deal with at once. It'll hurt for sure, but you won't neeeeeed some of the best armor or loot to fight them. To compensate as well with trinkets, the Prime Mate could potentially hold 2 so you still go Wonkey within 2 raids if anything.

The raids are a great concept. I love them and I know alot of people like them as well. The raids are still by all means something to look out for and like all things in this game, they only seem less scary or annoying because you have the knowledge of how they can be handled, but just because you do doesn't mean it isn't still annoying to try to get something out of them.

Thanks for everyone who magically read my thesis statement. Sorry this probably isn't what you were expecting from me but given that the update is coming out tomorrow, I felt like people need a proper idea on how this mechanic works to see that it's still not quiiiiite there in terms of being player friendly (before you say this game shouldn't be player friendly, I'm talking about game design wise. You can't argue that the game design shouldn't be player friendly because it's supposed to be hard. Even difficulty can be done tastefully rather than artificially.) That's all for now though, see you around and I hope you enjoyed my silly little post.


TLDR:
After day 81 (you get 4-5 Powder Monkeys by now alongside the fastest time):
Within 75 tiles of the Monkey Queen: 20% chance every 1.25-6.25 minutes to get a raid.
Within 150 tiles: 10% chance every 2.5-12.5 minutes to get a raid.
Within 200 tiles: 10% chance every 5-25 minutes to get a raid.
Game map's normally about 425x425 tiles and given the position of the island most of the time, the raids will encompass about a third of the map normally. 

Powder Monkeys deal 27.2 damage and will only attack if you attack first (herd mentality so they'll all attack and will wake up early).

Prime Mate deals 51 damage and is essentially Krampus on a boat, which is something that has given me trauma with accordion noises as of now.

5 angry monkeys followed by boat Krampus alongside Accursed Trinket stunning is pretty much only doable with tanking if you want the drops, which is still a resource drain and shouldn't be the only way to get their loot (Prime Mate hops overboard before a boat breaks so you can't get the loot from destroying the pirate boat with a cannon or something).

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I actually don't mind how unforgiving the raids can be, I'm tired of nothing being an actual threat if you're just prepared enough.

People want "Uncompromising Survival Game" as well as "Creative & Forgiving Sandbox", but we can't have everything, I'm just grateful Klei is adding late-game content that can't be easily tanked or Weather-pain(ed) away for the people that like the challenge.

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2 hours ago, Owlrust said:

I actually don't mind how unforgiving the raids can be, I'm tired of nothing being an actual threat if you're just prepared enough.

People want "Uncompromising Survival Game" as well as "Creative & Forgiving Sandbox", but we can't have everything, I'm just grateful Klei is adding late-game content that can't be easily tanked or Weather-pain(ed) away for the people that like the challenge.

My biggest issue with these raids is how there was no consideration given to how combat at sea differs from land. If they want a sea version of hound waves that's fine, but you have to at least change it so it works with boating. As is it's like they tried to fit a square peg into a circular hole.

Hound waves reward you for being skilled in some way: either by fighting (knowing how to kite multiple out of sync enemies, taking advantage of when they stop to bark, killing the ice/fire ones first to disorient the others, maybe knowing when it will be good to face tank a few hits here and there if you're short on time) or by having game knowledge (knowing they get distracted by wildlife easily or bringing them near water so they have to stop to slowly doggy paddle) or preparation. As is, pirate raids leave no room for any of this. You can't kite them, you can't make them interact with the environment like hounds, you can pretty much do nothing but tank them. You can offer them or a banana or be wonkey, but neither of those things are on nearly the same level of what you can do with hounds - they're just gimmicks at best. Where's the opportunity for growth or skill expression?

The reason this is such a big issue is that a big part of the fun in this game is learning how to deal with enemies so that you don't have to face tank them. The worst part is that they already learned this when they put hound waves at sea. Why repeat the same mistake?

You could argue that they aren't intended to be the sea version of hound attacks because it looks like they're intended to defend a certain area, but I don't think that changes my point. Look at the ruins for example; they are intended to be hard to get to, but skilled players can easily get there without taking any damage, which is good design if you ask me. Here's an idea for a start: if the island is intended to be guarded, how about the monkeys use the machine scrap on their island to set up security lights in the water surrounding the island in the same radius as the raids currently are? They would rotate and project lights on the water that you have to sail around otherwise you get caught and raided. There could also be other obstacles around like barrels that explode if you run into them.

Not only is this solution more fitting for pirates but it solves the other major problem I have with raids which is that there's no way of knowing where you're liable to get raided until it happens. This is yet another thing that punishes new players for no reason. How are they even supposed to know that it only happens in a designated section of the ocean unless they somehow managed to find the island? I'm tired of playing with people who are new to the game only for them to quit out of frustration for good reason. This mantra that the game should be uncompromising needs to either die or be reinterpreted -- there's a big difference between being hard and being fair. There's nothing fair about being raided by pirates when there is absolutely no indication whatsoever that it might happen. There is nothing different about the section of the sea where it can happen - no marks, no barrels, no warning, nothing. Imagine being a new player and dying to a raid for the first time - there is nothing present in the game that leaves room for you to be able to say "oh that's on me, I should have known or been able to piece that together." This is how you do hard but fair. At least hound raids and deerclops/bearger give you something, some room where you could conceivably have thought that.

As a side note, this is the reason why I applaud klei for making changes like having a tab just for winter/summer/spring weather items. It at least gives them some inkling of how to survive those seasons in an intuitive way and is a big step in the right direction if you ask me.

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Great post, however I noticed an extremely tiny inconsistency:

5 hours ago, Scypham said:

At day 61 and above it's 4 monkeys

 

5 hours ago, Scypham said:

After day 81 (you get 4-5 Powder Monkeys by now)

The TLDR says it takes 81 days to get maximum monkey, which contradicts what was previously said in the post.

Again, it’s a really good post and certainly took time to make, I just want to point this out so it can hopefully get fixed and ppl won’t be confused or misled.

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5 hours ago, Scypham said:

I think playability is an important thing even in our, ahem, uncompromising survival game. The raids are still by all means something to look out for and like all things in this game, they only seem less scary or annoying because you have the knowledge of how they can be handled

5 hours ago, Scypham said:

(before you say this game shouldn't be player friendly, I'm talking about game design wise. You can't argue that the game design shouldn't be player friendly because it's supposed to be hard. Even difficulty can be done tastefully rather than artificially.)

I don't understand this idea. If an unprepared player that doesn't know how raids work tries to fight the pirates, they are going to get killed. That's fine; next time they encounter pirates, they'll know not to fight them, or they'll know that fighting them takes serious preparation. Maybe they'll eventually try to find a different way to approach it, which will lead to the discovery of cannons or the banana thing. This trial and error is a core part of Don't Starve's DNA. The game doesn't tell you what to do about pirate raids the same way it doesn't tell you how to deal with hounds or winter or Krampus. 

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Wow, Now that I've seen the numbers, I am terrified of these things. Like gods damned.

 

6 hours ago, Owlrust said:

I actually don't mind how unforgiving the raids can be, I'm tired of nothing being an actual threat if you're just prepared enough.

People want "Uncompromising Survival Game" as well as "Creative & Forgiving Sandbox", but we can't have everything, I'm just grateful Klei is adding late-game content that can't be easily tanked or Weather-pain(ed) away for the people that like the challenge.

Well, the issue is that there's a difference between "uncompromising" and "Ok what in the god damn **** was that ********** piece of bull****"

"Uncompromising" would be if you couldn't live off of nothing but spiders and berries, or if the cold of winter was an actual threat. Not dying because Jod decided that you would face 3 monkey raids within 5 minutes of eachother without even having a chance to get back to shore.

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All of my waterlogged biomes are in range of these monkeys and I've come to hate my world because of it as I've been constantly attacked by them.

Heck, even my Crab King is in range and I wanted to turn him into my Sea Weed farm, but those plans are dashed b/c when these Pirates row into Sea Weeds, the Sea Weeds will attack me, not the damn pirate that bumped into them in the first place!!!

It is to the point where I will always carry bananas on me to just to not deal with them at all since the loot just isn't worth this massive annoyance. If the bananas weren't an option, I would have just disabled the mechanic, which is a saying a lot as I never disable mechanics unless it's events.

Why does it have to be another monkey and why must the Prime Mate attack so fast?

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14 hours ago, Frogzard said:

machine scrap on their island to set up security lights in the water surrounding the island in the same radius as the raids currently are? They would rotate and project lights on the water that you have to sail around otherwise you get caught and raided. There could also be other obstacles around like barrels that explode if you run into them.

Brilliant absolutely brilliant add some metal gear solid stealth mechanics to make avoiding the pirates an actual possibility.

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IMPORTANT UPDATE: They ended up changing the cooldown on the PIrate Raids when moving to the main branch, alongside changing the weight in the inner circle and the chance in the middle circle. I've updated the post as best as I could to accomodate for that now, I do believe the cooldown is reasonable as of now so I've retracted all my complaints regarding that. 

The TLDR is updated so you don't need to read the whole post, you can just check there for an updated version now for anyone who's previously read it. @lakhnish I feel like you in particular would appreciate these changes lol. The monkey quantity hasn't changed, nor has the Prime Mate, but it's definitely much less likely to happen unless you're near the island, which is reasonable. 

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9 hours ago, Cloakingsumo198 said:

Brilliant absolutely brilliant add some metal gear solid stealth mechanics to make avoiding the pirates an actual possibility.

I was also thinking of ways they could use the unique sailing mechanics to make the combat more enjoyable. Maybe something like if you ram into their boat it'll stun each them for several seconds until attacked, giving you time to pick off one or two of them in a one on one until the rest recover.

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On 6/30/2022 at 7:12 AM, Scypham said:

Well, tanking seems to have okay results. What about a pan flute? Well, the monkeys have herd mentality. That is to say, they'll wake up early once you hit one of them. You can kill about 2 before they fully wake up but then that means you'd likely need at least 2 uses of a pan flute for 1 raid. That'sssss okay until you remember the frequency of these as well. Pan flute might not be super used but the frequency of use in this scenario would actually be quite a bit high.

Amazing guide!!!

Just want to add to this section that you can use a panflute and kill the Prime Ape first and this won't wake up the Powder Monkeys which can be pretty handy. Means you can take on the strongest enemy in the raid and kill him quickly before facing the powder monkeys and he's also the only one who can help them escape on their ship too so killing him strands them where they are.

On 6/30/2022 at 7:12 AM, Scypham said:

Followers? Followers would work! The issue is that if you turn into Wonkey then Pigmen and Bunnymen get hostile to you even if previously loyal. That means you can pretty much just do 1 raid before you need to go to the Moon Quay to get the trinkets off of you. Granted you probably would want to do that anywayyyyy but not everyone would want to and maybe you're Wonkey already so, no followers. Wortox and Webber also get this issue. Wurt doesssss if the King isn't active and the Merms are homeless. 

Oh man I hired Pigs thinking I was a genius only for them to turn on me after I took out two raids in a row, it was pretty brutal...

Thankfully I only had like 3 or 4 and was playing Wig so I just killed them afterwards. There was certainly a moment of panic though and "Et Tu Pigus??"

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Easy solution, the more cursed trinkets you have in your inventory the more chances to find pirate raids, more people with cursed trinkets in the boat makes even more chances to find them. Wonkey nullifies the chances to get raids if it's in the boat, so you have a way to don't get bothered by pirates, and pirate raids don't drop cursed trinkets when they died, so you won't become Wonkie all the time.

So we have a way to farm the raids and a use for the curse.

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