Allow Crab King to drop the Celestial Tribute if 3 iridescent gems are inserted instead of the Pearl

[Guille6785]

IMO a big design flaw with ocean content is how the game essentially forces you to complete the entire questline of a seemingly unrelated NPC simply to interact with the lunar equivalent of the Fuelweaver questline. With the addition of skill trees and rifts this is quickly become one of the greatest issues I have with the game as many characters who would be encouraged to prioritize Celestial Champion over Fuelweaver essentially would have to suck it up and redo an entire sidequest every single playthrough that quickly stops being interesting after doing it a few times, as it is time consuming and gives the player very little freedom on how to approach (for example, cookie cutter RNG can be avoided by using green gems, but this just shifts the RNG to green gems instead since you need multiple and they aren't actually guaranteed from the ruins, so ultimately you're just picking your poison).

I think players should be given the option whether to include Pearl as a part of the lunar questline (for her trade items) or not. In its current state, most players have next to no reason to complete her questline outside of fighting CC since most of her items are related to fishing and the developers have done very little to address that, so this would potentially give Klei a good reason to make Pearl offer items that are more useful to a wide variety of playstyles beyond just fishing and storing twigs.

I think allowing Crab King to drop the celestial tribute if 3 iridescent gems are inserted (instead of the Pearl) would be an elegant way to allow players who want to prioritize CC to not have to spend as much time doing a sidequest that doesn't benefit them. Visiting Pearl would still be necessary in this scenario for the Pinchin Winch, but the rest of the friendship points would be optional, and it would fit nicely into the world as the 3 iridescent gems are given in the archives (thus potentially hinting at their importance). It also just plainly makes sense since iridescent gems seem to be made of the same lunar material as the Pearl, so 3 being equal to a Pearl makes perfect sense in-universe (their buff power is also equal, with 3 iridescent gems powering up the Crab King by the same amount as the Pearl).

[MihmetCrido]

I think this is a great idea for people who want a different path through the game. It will allow for more flexible ways of playing the game which is only positive in my eyes!

[oregu]

being able to make this choice is everything DST stands for

[Guille6785]

23 minutes ago, SSneaky said:

correct me if i'm wrong but would this fight be harder than with the pearl?

Pearl would be a bit harder since 3 iridescents would equal to (3 of each type + 6 other gems, for 24 buffs total) whereas Pearl would be (3 of each type + 8 other gems, for 26 buffs total) although in practice they'd be essentally the same. Alternatively a fake pearl of sorts could be a craftable item made with 3 iridescent gems that behaves the same as the Pearl in order to make both fights the same

[Auth]

7 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

Alternatively a fake pearl of sorts could be a craftable item made with 3 iridescent gems that behaves the same as the Pearl in order to make both fights the same

Maybe you could insert 3 into a Moonlens to make a fool's pearl!

[Beetrice]

Anything to make me not have to listen to Pearl the walking checklist.