Change Marotter behavior to...literally anything else

[Thieverpedia]

The Marotter are quite possibly the worst thing to come to the ocean in DST. This is for the sole reason that they prioritize stealing the most valuable things they can before aggroing onto the player. First, they try to steal from your Tin Fishin' Bin. The thing that holds your valuable fish, including Ice Breams and Sunfish. Then they start whacking stuff out of your inventory, prioritizing the most valuable thing in it. This seems to prioritize pig skins above all else, but I'm fairly certain Deerclops Eyeballs are higher on the list. This would normally not be a problem...if not for the fact that the second they start eating something, the item is gone. Completely deleted from the world. This problem is compounded for Wurt players. They can't re-fish Ice Breams in Summer or Sunfish in Winter. If y'all were trying to improve ocean activity, I find that this was a rather poor direction for this.

Honestly, having them prioritize aggroing onto the player first and foremost would easily solve this issue. And by aggro, I mean not trying to whack stuff out of our inventory. That, and give them a proper chewing animation that takes a few seconds, giving you a chance to whack them to make them drop what they're eating. I cannot stress enough how annoying it is for them to instantly delete seasonal fish. We can't even seem to destroy their dens permanently. They just keep respawning.

Anything but...this. Please.

[NPCMaxwell]

I love them, but I would rather have their eating stuff to be more similar to moles in the sense of what above said there being a chance to prevent them from eating items if you are fast enough to kill or stunn them.

[chirsg]

I've isolated them all into one pocket of the world. They have a tendency to destroy boats because they whip sunfish from bins and don't even eat them.

The most disappointing thing is they exist pretty much as a resource farm and strictly that. They're too unreliable to be any sort of assistance to you day to day, made worse by the fact you can't recruit them, which would have been great. 

 

With the first point I made, having herded them to one place, it's hardly a task you want to do more than once in your life. 

[Ohan]

My first experience with them was when i loaded an old world after the update and not realizing an otter den got retrofitted right off the coast of my base until i walked by and saw my boat and other stuff near it entirely ablaze because an otter kicked out a sunfish from a tin bin… lol 

Otters wouldve been the perfect candidate for a sailing follower/helper. Like ballphins from SW. 

Why make them just another annoying mob that u cant do anything with except kill? 

all new content always just boils down to new things to kill its so boring. 
 

@ADM has an awesome looking mod on the workshop that makes otters followers. They can patch up boat leaks with seaweed patches! I have not played with it yet but i definitely downloaded it as soon as i saw it 

[ADM]

Just sayin' if it can be helpful but there is no such thing as a priority with the type of items and Marotters. But what they will take is a little more complex.

What they prefer to do first thing first is take items off the floor and they can do so every few seconds. This is a different cooldown from their ability to steal from containers or players so if they can't pick, they'll steal. They prioritize any (must be closed) container before being able to steal from players and will decide an item at random. If you have the feeling they're stealing more often from a certain container, there can be two causes :

• One is more full than the others, they pick between the items available so if there are more somewhere, odds are they'll likely pick here
  (this isn't about stack size but different stacks)
• But they will also not bother to look into other possible containers if they already have 21 items to pick from. So if they reached that many they will make their pick between the containers that were selected and not look beyond this because this is range based (closer > further).
  
  Considering a Fishin Bin has 20 slots they already tank a lot of the chance to be stolen from if full, but they can't assure 100% select rate because you need at least 1 extra item so they will look the rest of another remaining container. But if you add any other, they will be unable of looking into it unless it's closer from them.

 

Anyway all that to say that they don't care about the item beyond can they eat it or not and you could supposedly exploit this to protect certain items. Even if I reckon the easier way would be to push them away from your route... and probably don't carry eyeballs on the sea. : )

And outside of all that targeting talk... I seriously love how Marotters work. I find them awesome to deal with, they really are little evil pirates that board your ship and loot stuff. But unlike your observations I don't think they do anything too fast. There's time to pick back what item or fish they kicked out a chest, or just jump into combat and they'll have no choice but leave them behind. Simple enough but that's our part to hold them. I like that they are effective at their job instead of holding back in some form, loosing a fancy fish won't be the end of me.