Chaosmonkey's Ocean QoL Wish List

[chaosmonkey]

With the Ocean QoL patch coming up, I wanted to offer some feedback about what I'm hoping to see addressed in the patch.

Ocean Pain Points

• Summoning Malbatross is unreliable and RNG heavy. It's like 10% chance per fish caught at a shoal _if malbatross happens to be at that shoal_. It's not uncommon to waste a ton of time going from shoal to shoal praying to RNGesus for Malbatross to spawn.
  • QoL Suggestion: craftable bait to summon Malbatross at a shoal whenever we want.
  • QoL Suggestion: 100% chance to spawn at a shoal when close enough on a boat when Malbatross cooldown has elapsed
• Deck Illuminator is incompatible with Enlightened Crown Shards. Myself and others have taken to building glowcaps on boats instead. That's not ideal for a number of reasons, but mostly because they are not a sail and space on boats is already very limited.
  • QoL Suggestion: Deck Illuminator upgrade requiring toadstool craft to make it work like a glowcap instead of a firepit
  • Note, it would be great if we could use the existing deck illuminator skins with crown shards
• Harvesting Salt is extremely tedious due to the base of salt stacks blocking your boat. We end up spending a bunch of time maneuvering around these obstacles with a paddle just to pick up salt. Not fun.
  • QoL Suggestion: Change the salt stack base to be submerged so we can sail over it after mining it. Maybe it's just a silhouette on the water in this state.
• Storage space on boats is pretty limited due to their size (not a problem) and a couple of important items don't stack
  • QoL Suggestion: Make these items stack: Bootleg Getaway, Message in a Bottle
  • Note: bootleg getaway loot from one sharkboi encounter gives 10 non stacking items if trading big fish
  • Note: It's desirable to save unopened Message in a Bottle for farming sunken treasure due to the limit of 4 sunken treasure "X" marks on the map.
• Bottles are often in short supply due to their many uses, and the only way to get them is.. RNG while aimlessly sailing the ocean.
  • QoL Suggestion: More sources for bottles. Could be dropped by Malbatross / Crab King, dropped from sunken treasures, etc. I love the idea of them dropping from sunken treasure because this could create a neat farming loop.
• There's basically no reason to kill crab king more than once. It would be nice if he dropped something that kept us coming back year after year.
  • QoL Suggestion: Give CK resources for a Rain Calling item (only rain calling, leave the rain stopping to wickerbottom). 
• After completing pearl question, Message in a Bottle sometimes still "reveals" pearl's island. This makes it harder to farm sunken treasure due to RNG of getting a useless bottle (on top of the initial RNG of even finding a bottle).
  • QoL Suggestion: Message in a Bottle always reveals sunken treasure after pearl quest is complete.
• Seasonal fish can be extremely uncommon. Finding seasonal fish is mainly an RNG exercise of aimlessly sailing until you luck upon a school of them.
  • QoL Suggestion: fixing bottle acquisition would make fish food a nice way to try and summon these.
  • QoL Suggestion: improve odds of finding seasonal fish schools
• Manning the anchor and steering the wheel is extremely slow. I don't think we should have a shipwrecked-like sailing system in DST, but the current rate of rotation for the steering wheel and the raising speed of the anchor (esp in deep water) is extremely slow. The current meta is basically no sails and paddling with malbatross bill.
  • QoL Suggestion: Make these actions faster or offer a "power steering" package upgrade.
• Barnacle farming is limited to places with existing sea stacks. It would be fun if we could grow sea weeds where we please to have our own designer barnacle farm.
  • QoL Suggestion: Growable sea stacks
  • QoL Suggestion: Sea Sprout Starters could be used anywhere rather than requiring a sea stack
• Driftwood is only renewable through aimless sailing RNG.
  • QoL Suggestion: driftwood "trees" on lunar island occasionally dropping a dirftwood (similar to how twiggy trees work)
  • QoL Suggestion: driftwood occasionally washing up on beach of moon island
  • QoL Suggestion: Above average tree trunk and the lesser forms dropping driftwood instead of/in addition to normal wood

Misc Ocean Improvements

This is getting away from purely QoL, but there's a number of things that are either missing or could be improved with ocean content.

• Frostjaw has no sketch/statue
• Collecting broken shells for decorating with potted plants is really slow. Maybe cookie cutters could also drop broken shell bits.
• More uses for Salt. The "salt lick" not using ocean salt has been a glaring omission for a long time.
  • QoL Suggestion: Introduce an improved, refuelable salt lick using ocean salt. Make it last longer than existing salt licks.
• Collecting fireflies for decoration is extremely tedious in the ocean due to sailing mechanics and the limited number that spawn and their spawn rate.
  • QoL Suggestion: Allow fireflies to spawn naturally under player-made above-average tree trunks on water. This would increase the areas that can be farmed for fireflies in addition to just being cool and pretty.
• Make anenemies renewable
• Banana Bushes don't grow off screen which encourages the player to start a banana farm near base to manage cursed trinkets. My first inclination with the Moon Quay release was to have a banana farm on the island so there would always be bananas waiting when I needed them. Imagine my surprise when they are only ever 1 stage beyond the last visit to the island.
  • QoL Suggestion: Make banana bushes grow off screen
• Materials for boat patches are generally land based resources. Maybe we could use another boat patch recipe that uses only ocean content.

Thanks for reading!

I almost forgot, but it would be great if we had a way to build stationary deep ocean platforms.

[Pet Rock]

6 hours ago, chaosmonkey said:

Growable sea stacks

By dropping boulders in water!

6 hours ago, chaosmonkey said:

Introduce an improved, refuelable salt lick using ocean salt. Make it last longer than existing salt licks.

If this replaced the current one it would provide more incentive for exploring the ocean.

6 hours ago, chaosmonkey said:

The current meta is basically no sails and paddling with malbatross bill.

It doesn't help that basically everything in the ocean is harder to combat with a full boat. Crab king's claws just break structures (could be fixed by making claws swing at players instead of attaching to boats if they are nearby) and malbatross destroys masts with it's swooping attack (maybe just make masts tear instead of being destroyed). 

This might be a terrible solution to the issue, but maybe boats could gain health the more structures are placed on them (think of them absorbing damage or smth).

6 hours ago, chaosmonkey said:

driftwood "trees" on lunar island occasionally dropping a dirftwood (similar to how twiggy trees work)

I don't know about this change since the "trees" are more like dead branches incapable of producing more driftwood. Wouldn't mind driftwood washing up on islands though.

Edited April 17 by Pet Rock

[goatt]

14 hours ago, chaosmonkey said:

Harvesting Salt is extremely tedious due to the base of salt stacks blocking your boat. We end up spending a bunch of time maneuvering around these obstacles with a paddle just to pick up salt. Not fun.

• QoL Suggestion: Change the salt stack base to be submerged so we can sail over it after mining it. Maybe it's just a silhouette on the water in this state.

 

This is indeed tedious, plus annoying, rather than fun or rewarding. It's a major frustration towards a trivia item with low values. Yes, salt is very low value and many players skip it completely.

In my opinion, the salts should be dropped like how Pig King throws gold nuggets, i.e. in your direction. This part of code can be reused and significantly improve the salt mining experience.

 

14 hours ago, chaosmonkey said:

• Barnacle farming is limited to places with existing sea stacks. It would be fun if we could grow sea weeds where we please to have our own designer barnacle farm.
  • QoL Suggestion: Growable sea stacks
  • QoL Suggestion: Sea Sprout Starters could be used anywhere rather than requiring a sea stack

Homegrown Barnacle should be allowed.

Barnacles are a lot like fish from fishing pond, in terms of its value. I think it should be as difficult as getting fish from ponds, maybe slightly more.

With this argument, we should allow homegrown barnacles which can be enabled by manmade sea stacks. Homegrown barnacles still have some major challenges in harvesting, such as:

1. Special setup: including setup seastacks, killing seaweeds, and create space.

2. Harvesting techniques

Some may argue that it grows too quickly, this can be solved by decrease its harvest based on depth of water: shallow water, grows max of 2, medium water, max of 4, deep water, max of 6, etc, that's the basic idea.

Another argument I want to make is that if something as op as Kelp can be easily accessible, why can't barnacle?