Ocean exploration is tiring sometimes.

[Swiyss]

In the early game you're meant to have a hard time, but after some time we should be able to thrive so we feel joy playing it in my opinion.

Terraria makes you walk for a while, until it gives you wings. That's a good mechanic.

Dst have hard to manage boats. However they just get a tiny better if you kill a powder monkey AND a boss (potentially 2 times to get enough masts to be worth it).

The work and reward aspect ratio of the game fails miserably. However we've been getting some new good changes lately (cc crown, fixable gear, antlion hat etc..). These changes have their own issue in my opinion, since they make early game fundamentals feel left out instead on implemented (besides antlion hat costing pig skin and gold, which is a good use for an old stackable resource), but that's another topic.

I say we could make ocean better (there is a whole thread here for this, and people seem to like the idea) and the way we explore it in the Late Game a little bit more interesting, like they did with the turf hat.

My suggestion stems from @chirsg idea that we should add an evolution of the strident trident with a spark arc. One that would make exploration and other tiny things in the game easier to accomplish later, after you conquered the game. This item would make ice on water so you can walk on it like docks. Alternatively it would create small ice floes to help you row in small places. Give you some sort of transportation equally as good as weregoose from Woodie.

I feel like making boats kinda strong and lock it behind these multiple late game bosse drops would be a great way to make ocean exploration better.

Some say to not lock things behind rifts anymore. I say learn how to optimize killing the celestial champion and enjoy every state of the game, regardless of where you are. If you don't have infinite light yet, be grateful when you do. That way you'll feel a lot better when the rifts actually hit. Just like hardmore Terraria. We shouldn't be ashamed to recognize great designs and praise them, and I think Klei is already taking a look at this idea.

[Cheggf]

The only parts of the ocean that suck are the rocks everywhere (one time problem, gets solved as you play like you said is good), pirate raids (only in some parts of the ocean), and wavey jones. What part of the ocean are you referring to when you say it sucks?

[Swiyss]

2 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

The only parts of the ocean that suck are the rocks everywhere (one time problem, gets solved as you play like you said is good), pirate raids (only in some parts of the ocean), and wavey jones. What part of the ocean are you referring to when you say it sucks?

When I say ocean stuff I mean the crab king rewards, pearl taking too many things to get the Pearl's pearl and cookie cutters being unpredictable and sometimes very hard to find.

Overall anything related to the cc quest.

Barnacles being not worth getting, strident trident being too hard to farm, rock sharks having boring drops, figs not being worth the hastle, honestly most things in the ocean are not rewarding enough, they all feel like random alternatives based on how hard the trip was. Collecting resources for boat, finding things along the way, rowing and rowing for days sometimes, it's kinda boring.

[Kubicska]

I’m definitely in for more spark ark uses

[Yuuko]

5 hours ago, Swiyss said:

I feel like making boats kinda strong and lock it behind these multiple late game bosse drops would be a great way to make ocean exploration better.

Some say to not lock things behind rifts anymore. I say learn how to optimize killing the celestial champion and enjoy every state of the game, regardless of where you are. If you don't have infinite light yet, be grateful when you do. That way you'll feel a lot better when the rifts actually hit. Just like hardmore Terraria. We shouldn't be ashamed to recognize great designs and praise them, and I think Klei is already taking a look at this idea.

But if you lock it behind rifts, then you've already gone to pearl, salt, lunar, and CK.  What is left to explore?

I think exploration needs to be smoothed out in the early to mid game, but there is definitely room for late game luxury as you say.

Improvements I feel would transform boating to be a much better experience:

1) Spyglass / Crows Next - Spyglass basically straight out of SW, and / or crows next mast upgrade that lets you climb the mast to expand your map reveal range similar to SW's pirate's cap.  Basically one of the major issues with boating early game is actually seeing what's around you.  When you're walking on land this isn't a problem because there are many markers for what biomes you are in, what monsters you are around, etc and you can freely weave side to side as needed to expose bits of info.  Walking a few steps the wrong way doesn't spell certain destruction very often.  On the ocean we cannot weave back and forth easily, and are already moving quite slow even with drift wood oar, and a few wrong movements can total the boat easily..  Being able to peak around us would do wonders for opening up actually exploring via boat.

2) Remove structure collision on boats - Wavey and shadows can hide behind them, you can trip on them when boarding and get drown, and it makes combat on a boat a mess.  When monkeys or sharks near, structure collision can ruin everything.  As a consequence people just use empty or sparsely equipped boats, and again focus on quick and purposeful trips.  We still have structure placement rules limiting what can fit, if we just remove structure collision this makes investing in a solid boat more reasonable, and more reliably allows players to engage ocean combat.

3) Add more artifacts of what set pieces are nearby.  For sharkboi they added glaciers in the water to let you know you're near him.  DO THIS FOR LITERALLY EVERY OCEAN SET PIECE AND BIOME.  This would make the ocean feel a lot more alive - even if it were just different shaped / colored rocks and debris that let you know you were around xyz thing.  Changing more fish spawns to align with nearby set pieces or ocean biomes would be a great way to flavorfully let a player know xyz thing is near.  The whole shallow / swell / depths fish spawning is too generic anyway.

4) Have the rudder rotate sails with the boat so it works as a sharp-steering option - this is something boats are missing.  Its like everything we have is tier 1 boat stuff, except for tier 2 sails.  We need a faster steering option to cut tighter corners.  The momentum is still there so there is still risk of drifting into rocks, but the current wheel is just too slow.  It can take forever to reorient.  Also imo the steering wheel only turning sails vs the rudder rotating the boat without turning sails always feels off for me.  imo they should both rotate the whole boat and sails, it just feels more natural that way.  Then the rudder could even become the late game luxury option to replace the wheel instead.

5) Increase the speed of sails.  Really having 2 sails is already a lot for a boat, and we're still not really that fast.  Doubling up on blue sails isn't a great plan.  This could also be a late-game upgrade with the spark arc too.  Maybe a sail topper that doubles the speed of the equipped sail, or just a special techno-sail Wag teaches us.  If we're going to boat late game, we need some speeed.

[ShadowDuelist]

Sharkboi already gave a us a good way to traverse the seas: Warp speed for the boats. 

The problem about the ocean is that it is not very interesting to live at, or to explore beyond the CC questline.

1 hour ago, Yuuko said:

Improvements I feel would transform boating to be a much better experience:

<snip>

I agree with all of this plus:
 

• We need encouragement and feel more rewarded when staying at the ocean. Improving the loot of sunken chests and the frequency or way to obtain them would go a long way. Maybe when reaching the place there are pirate monkeys guarding it, or rockjaws, or other mobs we need to fight. Make the whole sunken chest experience feel worth the time. Sunken chests could also get rifts loot after the rifts are open.
• The moon quay queen could maybe trade more stuff, accept higher tier items the monkeys may like (like dark sword or gunpowder) making her worth visiting more often. She could give hints on new mini treasure hunting quests if we give her high tier weapons with more than 50% hp left, the higher the weapon given the better the loot we may get?
• The pirate monkeys interactions need to be more interesting. They should not only come as a random attack but also do their own things being neutral to our boat, so WE can be the pirates trying to steal from them instead. Maybe they treasure hunt sunken chests too?
• The whole mechanic of the cursed trinkets needs some tweaks: perhaps disappear after being at the ocean or on the floor for a while, or attach to landing birds, and a limit to not be able to get more than a stack of them (and an easier late game way to remove them, specially if you sided with the monkey queen somehow. Like she sells you portable cures for them at a price of 2 gunpowders)
• If they improve the speed of boats and make them less clunky to drive they can add Waves, currents, tides and other weather shenanigans at the ocean
• Wildfires should not happen in your boat, ever. If you still want to make summer hard, make it foggy season at the ocean, requiring goggles just like at oasis. the Umbralla in dome mode, could block the sea fog entirely around your boat. Causing rain could remove the sea fog too.
• More ocean biomes, and sea stacks being just ONE of those biomes, not being spread across the whole ocean.
• Make more shoals of fish default, so the ocean feels more alive. Other types of water plants and neutral water mobs wouldn't hurt either (EG: ballphins, jellyfish, sea turtles, etc)
• More islands, even if they don't have many resources or new stuff. Like random grass gecko island, or random killer bee island, or pig/merm island, tallbird fortress island, etc. They can be like setpieces that randomly spawn and you never get the same 2-3 islands. These new islands may sometimes have clues of old survivors going through them but eventually being killed by the fauna, leaving some structures in them that you can use (EG shadow manipulator, or alchemy station, making early game sea exploration potentially useful)
• The darkness claws at the edge of the ocean (non implemented Klei feature). Crashing against a waterfall is awkward.

With the above, the ocean would be a lot more fun for sure.

[Mike23Ua]

As far as I know of.. there actually ISNT any Lunar Rift content that interacts with DSTs ocean.

the only things that “Might” count is encountering Brightshades on Islands out at Sea, or maybe Lunar Hail..

But outside of that, it’s not like new mutated versions of bosses or rift mobs spawn at Sea.

[arubaro]

I just want boats with higher hp. Im happy with malbatross bill being fast and having like 1k durability and malbatross sail+trident to clean rock turds when zooming

[Hi.]

One of the biggest problems with ocean content IMO, is the fact that it still feels empty. Waterlogged biomes are kinda small, and it mostly feels like side content and salt biomes don't really feel like a biome. Moon quay feels strange compared to the rest of the ocean mostly due to moon quay not following the same theme as most of the ocean content. Lunar is IMO, the best part of the ocean, cool loot, cool music, and cool lunar mechanics.

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

2 hours ago, Yuuko said:

Have the rudder rotate sails with the boat so it works as a sharp-steering option - this is something boats are missing.

Always found it weird that the rudder doesn't act as a steering wheel upgrade, especially considering how rudders actually work.

I think the current function of the rudder should be given to the fencing sword, allowing it to be used like an oar but only rotating the boat. You could also give this function to a completely new oar, but I'd prefer to not make a new item if it isn't necessary.

[Yuuko]

1 hour ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

Always found it weird that the rudder doesn't act as a steering wheel upgrade, especially considering how rudders actually work.

I think the current function of the rudder should be given to the fencing sword, allowing it to be used like an oar but only rotating the boat. You could also give this function to a completely new oar, but I'd prefer to not make a new item if it isn't necessary.

I feel it is more natural if the whole boat steers rather than just rotating sails.  Rotating the boat platform with sails should work for both the wheel and rudder.

Although yeah, maybe the fencing sword could be used as a paddle to rotate the boat without rotating the sails in case someone wanted to do that.

[Antynomity]

7 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Sharkboi already gave a us a good way to traverse the seas: Warp speed for the boats. 

It's a band aid fix on a gaping wound.

[goatt]

I hate boats, they are clumsy and slow.

I want to like boats, but they are super inflexible, and you can't put them in your pocket and carry it with you. Im not willing to move a fully upgraded boat from one end of the map to the other because of that.

Shark boi? How many excruciating hours do I have to spend before finding it?

Then the dangers on the ocean are kinda unfun. You can't kite sharks and pirates efficiently on the little boat space. Any mobs that poke a hole in your boat is pretty much just a trade with boat patch, with no skill involved. Most fights are just tanking games + boat patches.

 

And then picking up items on the water is torturously inconvenient... It's unsatisfying, to say the least. And "unsatisfying" is how I normally feel on boat.

 

And oar rowing. Why when I click "row" only once non-consecutively, and water splashes on my face? That's kinda unfair (and buggy).

 

[Swiyss]

11 hours ago, Yuuko said:

But if you lock it behind rifts, then you've already gone to pearl, salt, lunar, and CK.  What is left to explore?

I think exploration needs to be smoothed out in the early to mid game, but there is definitely room for late game luxury as you say.

Improvements I feel would transform boating to be a much better experience:

1) Spyglass / Crows Next - Spyglass basically straight out of SW, and / or crows next mast upgrade that lets you climb the mast to expand your map reveal range similar to SW's pirate's cap.  Basically one of the major issues with boating early game is actually seeing what's around you.  When you're walking on land this isn't a problem because there are many markers for what biomes you are in, what monsters you are around, etc and you can freely weave side to side as needed to expose bits of info.  Walking a few steps the wrong way doesn't spell certain destruction very often.  On the ocean we cannot weave back and forth easily, and are already moving quite slow even with drift wood oar, and a few wrong movements can total the boat easily..  Being able to peak around us would do wonders for opening up actually exploring via boat.

2) Remove structure collision on boats - Wavey and shadows can hide behind them, you can trip on them when boarding and get drown, and it makes combat on a boat a mess.  When monkeys or sharks near, structure collision can ruin everything.  As a consequence people just use empty or sparsely equipped boats, and again focus on quick and purposeful trips.  We still have structure placement rules limiting what can fit, if we just remove structure collision this makes investing in a solid boat more reasonable, and more reliably allows players to engage ocean combat.

3) Add more artifacts of what set pieces are nearby.  For sharkboi they added glaciers in the water to let you know you're near him.  DO THIS FOR LITERALLY EVERY OCEAN SET PIECE AND BIOME.  This would make the ocean feel a lot more alive - even if it were just different shaped / colored rocks and debris that let you know you were around xyz thing.  Changing more fish spawns to align with nearby set pieces or ocean biomes would be a great way to flavorfully let a player know xyz thing is near.  The whole shallow / swell / depths fish spawning is too generic anyway.

4) Have the rudder rotate sails with the boat so it works as a sharp-steering option - this is something boats are missing.  Its like everything we have is tier 1 boat stuff, except for tier 2 sails.  We need a faster steering option to cut tighter corners.  The momentum is still there so there is still risk of drifting into rocks, but the current wheel is just too slow.  It can take forever to reorient.  Also imo the steering wheel only turning sails vs the rudder rotating the boat without turning sails always feels off for me.  imo they should both rotate the whole boat and sails, it just feels more natural that way.  Then the rudder could even become the late game luxury option to replace the wheel instead.

5) Increase the speed of sails.  Really having 2 sails is already a lot for a boat, and we're still not really that fast.  Doubling up on blue sails isn't a great plan.  This could also be a late-game upgrade with the spark arc too.  Maybe a sail topper that doubles the speed of the equipped sail, or just a special techno-sail Wag teaches us.  If we're going to boat late game, we need some speeed.

How do I pin this comment. Big ups!!!

9 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Sharkboi already gave a us a good way to traverse the seas: Warp speed for the boats. 

The problem about the ocean is that it is not very interesting to live at, or to explore beyond the CC questline.

I agree with all of this plus:
 

• We need encouragement and feel more rewarded when staying at the ocean. Improving the loot of sunken chests and the frequency or way to obtain them would go a long way. Maybe when reaching the place there are pirate monkeys guarding it, or rockjaws, or other mobs we need to fight. Make the whole sunken chest experience feel worth the time. Sunken chests could also get rifts loot after the rifts are open.
• The moon quay queen could maybe trade more stuff, accept higher tier items the monkeys may like (like dark sword or gunpowder) making her worth visiting more often. She could give hints on new mini treasure hunting quests if we give her high tier weapons with more than 50% hp left, the higher the weapon given the better the loot we may get?
• The pirate monkeys interactions need to be more interesting. They should not only come as a random attack but also do their own things being neutral to our boat, so WE can be the pirates trying to steal from them instead. Maybe they treasure hunt sunken chests too?
• The whole mechanic of the cursed trinkets needs some tweaks: perhaps disappear after being at the ocean or on the floor for a while, or attach to landing birds, and a limit to not be able to get more than a stack of them (and an easier late game way to remove them, specially if you sided with the monkey queen somehow. Like she sells you portable cures for them at a price of 2 gunpowders)
• If they improve the speed of boats and make them less clunky to drive they can add Waves, currents, tides and other weather shenanigans at the ocean
• Wildfires should not happen in your boat, ever. If you still want to make summer hard, make it foggy season at the ocean, requiring goggles just like at oasis. the Umbralla in dome mode, could block the sea fog entirely around your boat. Causing rain could remove the sea fog too.
• More ocean biomes, and sea stacks being just ONE of those biomes, not being spread across the whole ocean.
• Make more shoals of fish default, so the ocean feels more alive. Other types of water plants and neutral water mobs wouldn't hurt either (EG: ballphins, jellyfish, sea turtles, etc)
• More islands, even if they don't have many resources or new stuff. Like random grass gecko island, or random killer bee island, or pig/merm island, tallbird fortress island, etc. They can be like setpieces that randomly spawn and you never get the same 2-3 islands. These new islands may sometimes have clues of old survivors going through them but eventually being killed by the fauna, leaving some structures in them that you can use (EG shadow manipulator, or alchemy station, making early game sea exploration potentially useful)
• The darkness claws at the edge of the ocean (non implemented Klei feature). Crashing against a waterfall is awkward.

With the above, the ocean would be a lot more fun for sure.

Jesus man where did all those perfect ideas came from? The game would thrive like that.

52 minutes ago, goatt said:

I hate boats, they are clumsy and slow.

I want to like boats, but they are super inflexible, and you can't put them in your pocket and carry it with you. Im not willing to move a fully upgraded boat from one end of the map to the other because of that.

Shark boi? How many excruciating hours do I have to spend before finding it?

Then the dangers on the ocean are kinda unfun. You can't kite sharks and pirates efficiently on the little boat space. Any mobs that poke a hole in your boat is pretty much just a trade with boat patch, with no skill involved. Most fights are just tanking games + boat patches.

 

And then picking up items on the water is torturously inconvenient... It's unsatisfying, to say the least. And "unsatisfying" is how I normally feel on boat.

 

And oar rowing. Why when I click "row" only once non-consecutively, and water splashes on my face? That's kinda unfair (and buggy).

 

They could make so when you mine salt formations, the salt loosen a bit and then you perform a player action on it like picking up grass or twigs.

Klei shouldn't be ashamed to go back on things or change/rework mechanics. I think considering those options would make the game soooo much better.