Pearl needs more quests.

[YottaCat]

There's not much leniency within pearl's quests. While I appreciate the fact that the house is no longer restricted to summer and I'm not refrained to a timeframe to be able to get the pearl, it's still annoying to do some of the tasks.

Take the cookie cutter shells required for pearl's house, it can take forever to find a brine shoal and on some personal playthroughs it usually takes a couple days of constant rowing to find it. Sure I could use sails but the sea stacks make it equally as frustrating to navigate and find a brine shoal.
Plus the brine shoals are annoying to deal with as well, as the salt rocks cannot be removed so it makes for killing the cookie cutters more awkward.

This is one gripe I have with completing the pearl's house, but come to think of it, why is pearl's house required in the first place?

Also, I don't really prefer fishing the fishing quests, neither do a lot of people I bet.
And also some quests are still season restricted (Insulation dress quest can only be done during winter, and flower salad you need cactus flower for, lureplant appears first spring, but this is fine since usually I'll be completing pearl after this time comes)

These season restricted quests are fine, but not when there's not many quests you can do in the first place.
Taking away hermit home, fishing, and season restricted quests (including lureplant) there are 5 total quests you can do. That's not a lot.

I suggest adding more quests just so there's a larger variety of options the player can choose, and maybe remove the requirement of pearl's house.
 

[Dextops]

Like this a lot, pearl/crabking have always been a sore on CC's quest and any fixing to them is accepted.

[EighteenXVIII]

I personally find Pearl's quest the least offensive part of the broader Celestial Champion questline. I wrote a three-page PDF on it so I'm reasonably well-informed on what it entails.

The most pressing matter is the Crab King fight which desperately needs a rework. The customization with the gems is great in theory, but in practice it doesn't work out. 

My next issue after that is the repeated Wagstaff experiments and the RNG involved when it comes to him picking a location. It just wastes a lot of time when he decides to start between a dozen spider nests, the swamp or right next to a quad Moosegoose setpiece, and there's nothing you can do about it.

A third issue is the RNG involved with the suspicious boulder and the celestial orb.

A fourth issue is the mooncaller event. Either you have a full squad ready (which Klei loves to assume for some reason) to fight off all the werepigs and hounds, or you have to abuse buggy pathfinding mechanics or burn through a pan flute. It just seems very unrefined.

In comparison I'm not too bothered having to row around for cookie cutters. You get a salt box out of it as well. Though sailing is another can of worms. It would be vastly improved if you just got rid of the hundreds of sea stacks to make sailing viable like it's supposed to be, but what do I know.

[YottaCat]

31 minutes ago, EighteenXVIII said:

The most pressing matter is the Crab King fight which desperately needs a rework. The customization with the gems is great in theory, but in practice it doesn't work out. 

I think people don't realize the actual problem with crab king.
You can argue the healing's annoying, or the freezing, etc.
But the main issue is the mobility.

On land when walking, if you are walking forwards, and suddenly decide to walk backwards, all you have to do is press a button and then your velocity is set to a value instantly headed towards that direction, no acceleration needed.

On the boat, this luxury of agility does not exist; you have to walk to the opposite side of the boat, and then row, you'll slowly accelerate before reaching the velocity you need.
How to solve this problem? How to rework this boss? Simple.
Don't make it a boss fought on water.

[Well-met]

1 hour ago, YottaCat said:

I think people don't realize the actual problem with crab king.
You can argue the healing's annoying, or the freezing, etc.
But the main issue is the mobility.

On land when walking, if you are walking forwards, and suddenly decide to walk backwards, all you have to do is press a button and then your velocity is set to a value instantly headed towards that direction, no acceleration needed.

On the boat, this luxury of agility does not exist; you have to walk to the opposite side of the boat, and then row, you'll slowly accelerate before reaching the velocity you need.
How to solve this problem? How to rework this boss? Simple.
Don't make it a boss fought on water.

a boss boat fight is like the entire gimmick of it

[Cassielu]

3 hours ago, YottaCat said:

Don't make it a boss fought on water.

This is not true, the Malbatross is an example of a good fight, only the Crab King screw up

[ArubaroBeefalo]

8 hours ago, YottaCat said:

On land when walking, if you are walking forwards, and suddenly decide to walk backwards, all you have to do is press a button and then your velocity is set to a value instantly headed towards that direction, no acceleration needed.

On the boat, this luxury of agility does not exist; you have to walk to the opposite side of the boat, and then row, you'll slowly accelerate before reaching the velocity you need.
How to solve this problem? How to rework this boss? Simple.
Don't make it a boss fought on water

the problem isnt that but the claws grabbing your boat while breaking it while CK is making holes... with a good row is easy to evade the geysers

 

i dont get why some people hate the cookie cutter requirement when salt formations are everywhere and are filled with that mob. In the past was a pain because of the ridiculous drop chance but know doesnt takes that long 

[Notecja]

10 hours ago, YottaCat said:

why is pearl's house required in the first place?

because she lives in a thing that barely can be called a shanty shack... I bet she is not happy! 

[Dextops]

10 hours ago, Cassielu said:

This is not true, the Malbatross is an example of a good fight, only the Crab King screw up

the difference is that malbatross hits you and is basically a land fight but on a small circle, crabking only hits your boat directly meaning you have to dodge with your boat not with yourself.

[Maxposting]

I like the crab king fight when I have a freeze setup.

[Well-met]

3 hours ago, Dextops said:

the difference is that malbatross hits you and is basically a land fight but on a small circle, crabking only hits your boat directly meaning you have to dodge with your boat not with yourself.

 

50,000th reminder that the strongest bosses are balanced around multiple players.

moving the boat around is no trouble when there's one or two dedicated players only doing that

[YottaCat]

3 hours ago, Dextops said:

the difference is that malbatross hits you and is basically a land fight but on a small circle, crabking only hits your boat directly meaning you have to dodge with your boat not with yourself.

also malbatross sucks aswell lol

15 hours ago, Well-met said:

a boss boat fight is like the entire gimmick of it

My point is that a boss fight on a boat is a bad gimmick.

9 hours ago, Notecja said:

because she lives in a thing that barely can be called a shanty shack... I bet she is not happy! 

You can block her from entering her house completely and she'll still be completely happy.

[Maxposting]

12 minutes ago, YottaCat said:

also malbatross sucks aswell lol

Sure he does.

[lowercase skye]

30 minutes ago, Well-met said:

50,000th reminder that the strongest bosses are balanced around multiple players.

moving the boat around is no trouble when there's one or two dedicated players only doing that

With a few players you barely even NEED to move the boat in some cases. I've fought Crab King before where we ended up tanking the geysers by the end of it because we were clearly doing enough damage to take him down so opted to repair the boat a bit, then eventually let it sink and wash us up on the shore.

The same sort of thing should be considered for the gems, also. I always see people say the gem mechanic is pointless you should just go full purple gems, and that works fine when you're cheesing him when alone and freezing him constantly, but doing a real fight with friends... if you try to just pump him full of purple gems, the geysers are going to make such short work of your boat if you make even a singular mistake. I believe in the above fight I described, we like... buffed the health slightly, the number of claws, the freezing attack, and only a little bit to the geysers?

With friends, the Crab King is an awesome and exhilarating fight and so so cinematic and fun. I really wish he didn't have such a bad reputation because he's difficult to fight alone without cheese.

[Hornete]

Redesigning Crab King to be fought on land would be a really lame way to "fix" him. He is one of the only bosses in the game that's got an interesting difference going for him compared to other bosses and I would not like that taken away. He is actually my favourite boss when fought in multiplayer, and least favourite when solo, opposite extremes but that's what I truly feel! 

I think a good way to improve the fight is to add more ways to combat him. For the longest time I've been really wanting followers that can row with you. Pigs, Merms, Shadow Servants, etc, would be really neat ways to replace other players in the fight. Plus a friend gave na idea for cannonballs to stun him from doing his heal ability for a short while which I think would be awesome.

The gem mechanic I feel really iffy about, in solo, in multiplayer and any other situation I always go full purple gems. Never have I felt that other gems would be a better option, full purple is almost always just the way to go. What to do about this problem? I've no idea. I have though Crab King dropping a sunken chest with loot that depends on the gem combo you put could be neat, akin to Ancient Guardian but something you can manipulate depending on the gems you socket.

[Dextops]

1 hour ago, Well-met said:

50,000th reminder that the strongest bosses are balanced around multiple players.

50,000th reminder of who cares. Everything in this game can be done solo relatively easily when compared to together and most things are designed around both so why oh why are raid bosses the only extreme outlier? and they're not balanced in a good way either, your strategy shouldn't be bringing more people that's just a sign of a garbage boss/damage sponge (which crab king is).

[Capybara007]

i wouldve liked that ck would always drop the tribute and have an special drop when fough with a pearl

thats the most logical way to do it with common game design logic

[00petar00]

I'd prefer if we were able to fight Pearl, I don't get it why players are forced into a quest line like that, Why do we have to satisfy the whims of an NPC? There's also nothing else like that in DST.

I don't like doing quests in most games i play (especially linear ones), that's why i enjoy sandbox so much.

The games i enjoy the most are the ones that give me multiple options when it comes to progressing though the storyline, I can kill the NPC, do the quest or help another NPC that is an enemy of the first one.

 

Crab King is an issue too, the fight is just really bad and the gem mechanic isn't ever considered, everyone just uses purple gems unless they are going to cheese the boss with bees, that's the only time where you actually have an option to use other gems, as the effects of using other gems won't matter that much.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

2 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

There's also nothing else like that in DST.

that is the cool part