Ancient trees are kinda... bad?

[Hi.]

IMO I feel like the amount of effort it takes to grow either of the 2 trees is not worth it. There are WAY easier ways to get gems (varg farms, ruins, earthquakes, hounds, bishops, graves, dfly, etc.) so the gem tree does not at all feel worth it. My main problem is not how long it takes to grow the tree, its how long it takes to grow the fruit. I did some testing and I think it's around 7-15 days? though I could be waaay off. I would improve it by either giving more gem fruits or maybe making the tree grow more fruits more often.

 

The Gloomthorn trees are even worse IMO. It's much easier to just use moggles or a lantern.

 

My main issue with the trees is that they (at max) are a 60% chance to drop from a sunken chest that you have to find from a bottle  in the middle of the ocean that has a 34% chance to spawn one.

 

Though that was just my opinion and maybe they would be too op if they were buffed so idk. I am aware that this is just a beta and klei might change both of the trees in some way later on.

 

[chaosmonkey]

4 minutes ago, Hi. said:

My main issue with the trees is that they (at max) are a 60% chance to drop from a sunken chest that you have to find from a bottle  in the middle of the ocean that has a 34% chance to spawn one.

Bottles spawn up to once every 2 days within ~5 minutes of being on ocean. Or get 2 from crab king every 20 days. In 20 days of playtime you can get max like 12 bottles if you work for it. 14 if you're lucky from CK.

Those bottles have a 60% chance to reveal a treasure, so we're down to 7 sunken treasures. Sunken treasures have a 60% chance to have a seed which is ~4 seeds in 20 days. seeds have 50% chance to not be the tree you want. If you're after a specific seed, that's max 1 every 10 in game days. You could get 7 gem trees per year if you engage with the ocean _nonstop_. Plus the gem trees don't really give the useful gems. It's a low chance for the ruins gems.

I suggested elsewhere that they add a treasure map mechanic to pirate raids to increase the acquisition rate a bit and make a fun gameplay loop.

For me, I'm more interested in the trees for decoration than farming gems as the ruins will remain far more efficient for stuff like green gems. Would like to be able to acquire more than 14 trees per year and for it to not be utterly reliant on bottle RNG.

[gamehun20]

8 minutes ago, Hi. said:

I would improve it by either giving more gem fruits or maybe making the tree grow more fruits more often.

You are supposed to plant more than one of a type the rewards build up quite quickly 

[Hi.]

Just now, gamehun20 said:

You are supposed to plant more than one of a type the rewards build up quite quickly 

It's really hard to do that because you have to 1. find a bottle.    2. hope it spawns a sunken chest   3. sail to the x   4.  hope the chest gives the seed       5. plant the seed and wait 10 days    6. wait for summer/winter and wait around 15 - 30 days      7. wait for the tree to grow the fruit

[ChintzyGnat]

I just think bottle rate needs to increase currently.

[Hi.]

6 minutes ago, chaosmonkey said:

Those bottles have a 60% chance to reveal a treasure

According to the wiki it's 34% but it might be wrong

 

7 minutes ago, chaosmonkey said:

utterly reliant on bottle RNG.

Yeah that's probably what I hate about it the most. I have spent days sailing around the ocean looking for bottles, just to find one and for it to give me nothing.

[gamehun20]

Just now, Hi. said:

According to the wiki it's 34% but it might be wrong

Finding sunken treasure was increased in this beta

[Primalflower]

12 minutes ago, chaosmonkey said:

Bottles spawn up to once every 2 days within ~5 minutes of being on ocean.

Not that i think you're lying, but is this true? What i've heard and reliably observed to be true is that bottles spawn once every day - and that's pre-beta

[chaosmonkey]

4 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

Not that i think you're lying, but is this true? What i've heard and reliably observed to be true is that bottles spawn once every day - and that's pre-beta

It's technically 1-2 days I guess so probably should have done the math with 1.5.

Edit: However, if you want to minimize the effort you make, you'll only check the ocean every 2 days because sitting around and waiting is just a waste of time.

[Gotheran]

Dunno what this is exactly but its giving me minecraft sniffer vibes, lotta effort for nothing of significant value

[Primalflower]

9 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

Dunno what this is exactly but its giving me minecraft sniffer vibes, lotta effort for nothing of significant value

i feel like the reward is fairly significant and enables niche strategy in long term worlds, the problem being displayed is just the rate at which people find them which i think is a different situation to sniffers

[Maxil20]

22 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

Not that i think you're lying, but is this true? What i've heard and reliably observed to be true is that bottles spawn once every day - and that's pre-beta

I’ll try writing down the specific spawn mechanics to make it a bit clear. @chaosmonkeyis right, but the way it works is a bit complicated.

In short, the bottle timer has a timer of 1 day, with an additional variation of an extra day (so ~1.5 is the average). If this timer has expired and you are on a boat, another timer will occur where every 60 seconds the game will try to spawn a bottle around the player assuming the chosen place is in the ocean and not obstructed by any ocean object/other ocean debris in the water. If it cannot, the 60 second timer will reset and will try again once it counts down. Only if the bottle spawns will it go back to the 1-2 day timer again.

From my experience on sailing, this has been fairly consistent. I think the main thing that is problematic is said bottle spawn can be pretty easy to miss, and you effectively lose the bottle and have to wait another 1-2 days for another bottle to spawn.

Personally from a solo perspective, I don’t think the mechanics are too problematic early-mid game as I never really have a problem with stockpiling a small-medium amount of bottles for various needs and sailing is an effective means of navigation with a portable base if you are good at working with the space provided. I think later on this is where it can be an issue as players usually don’t have to sail as much and especially when bootlegs are a very effective method at cutting down the travel time of long trips. I believe it’s why they made CK drop bottles to be a helpful burst of them later on. I just feel it could be a few more to compensate since getting 2-4 is a noticeable variance and hitting the low end of it feels quite bad at the moment.

[chaosmonkey]

5 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

i feel like the reward is fairly significant and enables niche strategy in long term worlds, the problem being displayed is just the rate at which people find them which i think is a different situation to sniffers

Personally, the change I'm hoping for is in how sunken treasures are revealed. Bottles currently offer a mostly passive way of locating sunken treasure. Only CK's bottles take any real effort to acquire. What we need is an active way with some additional challenge for players that wish to acquire them faster. That's where I think pirate raids could be leveraged.

Moon Quay pirates are currently a bit under utilized and low value. With a few small changes, they would suddenly become a challenge players would be excited to confront.

• pirate maps from prime mates can reveal treasure
  • other monkees having a small chance to drop a map
• treasures having a small chance to contain a map
• treasures having a small chance to be booby trapped and launch a hostile flare which would attract pirates

I think this active approach to treasure hunting could be a lot of fun and provide an appropriate bar for accelerated acquisition of ancient seeds.

[Primalflower]

3 minutes ago, Maxil20 said:

I think the main thing that is problematic is said bottle spawn can be pretty easy to miss,

Am i crazy or was there ever a mechanic that makes a bottle you missed keep showing up close to you as you sail away?

[lowercase skye]

The stats of "1 bottle a day" are weird to me just because I, as a mainly solo player, have experienced finding 2-3 bottles right in a row several times over the years. Just a few days ago I found 3 of them over the course of like 20 seconds while just rowing around the lunar island.

[chaosmonkey]

Just now, finn from human said:

The stats of "1 bottle a day" are weird to me just because I, as a mainly solo player, have experienced finding 2-3 bottles right in a row several times over the years. Just a few days ago I found 3 of them over the course of like 20 seconds while just rowing around the lunar island.

Bottles don't despawn when unloaded, so what probably happened here is you actually missed some/all of those bottles in the past.

[Primalflower]

1 minute ago, chaosmonkey said:

Bottles don't despawn when unloaded, so what probably happened here is you actually missed some/all of those bottles in the past.

so they're sort of always building up?

[ChintzyGnat]

9 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

Am i crazy or was there ever a mechanic that makes a bottle you missed keep showing up close to you as you sail away?

This was for sus dirt piles

[Primalflower]

2 minutes ago, ChintzyGnat said:

This was for sus dirt piles

so the mechanic exists... lends credence to the thought that it might apply to bottles too...

[chaosmonkey]

8 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

so they're sort of always building up?

Sort of? You have to be on a boat when the bottle spawn timer elapses. If you're just doing stuff around base and don't sit on a boat for a few minutes every 2 days, they wouldn't be spawning.

[arubaro]

Is an exponential reward that doesnt need any resource to keep producing... is for long term not to just accumulate gems or free hands/head night vision to overshadow other methods. An extra thing not a meta tactic

Not everything should be top tier

[Topazaz]

I hope Klei make seeds guaranteed in sunken chests after some time to make farming them a bit more enjoyable in long term worlds. Especially if they add more trees.

[chaosmonkey]

6 minutes ago, arubaro said:

Is an exponential reward that doesnt need any resource to keep producing... is for long term not to just accumulate gems or free hands/head night vision to overshadow other methods. An extra thing not a meta tactic

Not everything should be top tier

Maybe not meta for actually acquiring resource, but the trees themselves are crazy good looking for decorations.

[Maxil20]

17 minutes ago, finn from human said:

The stats of "1 bottle a day" are weird to me just because I, as a mainly solo player, have experienced finding 2-3 bottles right in a row several times over the years. Just a few days ago I found 3 of them over the course of like 20 seconds while just rowing around the lunar island.

Was this new territory, by chance? I Mainly ask since apart from the timer, bottles do spawn in the ocean on Worldgen (it’s not an immense amount, but it is noticeable).

[arubaro]

2 minutes ago, chaosmonkey said:

Maybe not meta for actually acquiring resource, but the trees themselves are crazy good looking for decorations.

That is what hyped me the most