Imagine: Shipwrecked boats with limited range unlocked with Pearl tasks (Miniboats)

[Well-met]

I don't mind the idea however you can't forget RoT only exists exactly because klei didn't want to make another shipwrecked.

[Walrusst]

The one case I could see this working without walani is if we had a lifeboat module for our main ships/docks. I'm going to call normal DST boats as ships for this.

• You get like 3 minutes of lifeboat time before it sinks and you need to return to your ship/dock to re-inflate it, if it sinks if your ship still exists you respawn on the ship rather than the shore. You can refill the station with mosquito sacks and silk. Redocking with your ship repairs it.
• Leak causing enemies can attack the timer on your lifeboat directly, so the danger against enemies that can cause leaks is extremely high.
• If your ship hasn't sunk the lifeboat has a leash on it binding it to the main boat. You can manually unhook your lifeboat at the cost of this speeding up your sinking timer. If this leash isn't broken the penalties for letting the lifeboat sink for a normal survivor are massively reduced compared to loosing a full ship.
  • The unhook penalty prevents these from being used for exploration instead of being simply an auxiliary complimenting the functionality of your main ship.
  • Unhooking has fewer penalties if your ship is critically damaged. So it can actually try to work as an emergency lifeboat.
• Wurt doesn't suffer penalties aside from the material loss of lifeboats.
• The lifeboat timer pauses/resets to 2/3rds its limit when you beach the lifeboat, allowing you to go ashore using the lifeboats without having to damage your ship and repair it repeatedly docking with the coast.
• In the ship sink animation your character will try to jump to the lifeboat, because that's what its for.

My reason for liking this idea variants really simple.

It adds a lot of QOL while doing the minimum possible damage to our current gameplay here.

• You can do work at sea with less micro-spacing of your ship.
• A kelp farm can more easily be done by putting up a lightning rodded ship and using a lifeboat to access a natural kelp patch at sea instead of always just ramming a stack of 5 kelp into a characters gather range on one tile. Giving you a more organic and less cheesy way of using common resources.
  • There's a lot of ways to do organic stuff with this like using a lifeboat dock as a ferry network in your base or something.
  • Its less cheesy than current methods but more intuitive/immersive/lazy.
• The leak damage mechanic for the life on the boats makes it so you can have enemies which are balanced to fight on the lifeboats while also allowing pivotal encounters with stuff like crab king to be left as a "best done from on a ship" challenge.
• It gives reach to well placed docks that make them more purposeful/useful as you can have a little more space to work with without giving them unlimited range.

 

[Anis5240]

59 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

In other words: In Shipwrecked, you do not have boats, you have walking on water.

In other words, in DST, you don't have boats, you have pancakes on water.

[DegenerateFurry]

It'd be nice if boating was less carpal tunnel syndrome-inducing. I use a mod that rows for me because I don't want to get an RSI from going to Pearl's and back. Maybe Klei should implement something like that as a quality-of-life feature, something where you just hold right-click (or even just toggle rowing by right-clicking the water once with an oar) to row? That could give us a reasonable speed, and if they really want timing your rowing while risking getting wet to be a thing, they could let well-timed rowing (as opposed to auto-rowing) give you a slight speed boost or something. 

Also, rowing with a driftwood oar (close to free) should not be faster than sailing with a sail. 

[Mike23Ua]

11 hours ago, loopuleasa said:

The ocean has enough things for sailing even now

You have to try it to get a feel for it

And this would open up more design space later to add content on water

Right now any content added on water is met with an "eugh, this is water content, I have to sail"

For instance, the Wortox Soul Jars now require a bottle which can be found on ocean and all newcoming Wortox characters collectively rolled their eyes seeing that requirement because sailing is simply not fun.

Implementing it that way would make everyone never use DST boats, and only use boards

It’s interesting to make Wortox soul jars require being on water. But if that water looks stationary with no movement and feels like I’m slowly going through a cleverly disguised loading screen. That entire gameplay loop is still highly boring.

I LOVED the Shipwrecked DLC, I hate Ocean Content in DST. That should speak volumes in of itself.

But what Shipwrecked does right… (and DST does wrong) is that there is actual content out and about in the ocean peaceful and hostile mobs, moving water waves, and of course the biggest thing: Islands to sail to and explore to gather resources to craft a wide variety of different boats using a wide variety of different resources.

When you get stuck on Pearls Hermit Island with no way to obtain resources to build any sort of vessel to leave said island- That’s when you know DSTs ocean content isn’t up to par.

Klei could easily fix this by allowing players to talk to Pearl, and she gives you a make-shift (shell bell and bottles) free of any charge or friendship levels raft just to get you to go away and get off her island.

To me, personally the last 3 years of content updates to DST have been small… meaningless and full of disappointments, but that’s ONLY because I get frustrated by the way the content is implemented into the game.

PalmCone Trees can only be found on silly Monkey Island, but: Had Klei designed DSTs ocean content like SW was designed, PalmCone trees could be found on multiple islands across the waters, which would have then allowed us to gather material from them to make boats out of Palmcone scales/Palm leafs whatever…

As the game stands right now, most people just toggle on year of the Dragon Boat and get fully decked out vessels with lucky gold nuggets.

Shipwrecked DLC was EPIC, DSTs Ocean Experience still leaves much to be desired.

[lowercase skye]

55 minutes ago, Anis5240 said:

In other words, in DST, you don't have boats, you have pancakes on water.

In Shipwrecked, you have boats that you place on water and mount and they are instantly absorbed into you, allowing you to use WASD to move with them as if you were walking with a different animation. You walk, attack, pick, place, and mine things exactly the same as if on land, with the difference that there is a boat displayed below your feet. These boats degrade ambiently over time like equipment, requiring a unique sewing kit-styled item or to leave them next to a sea yard. There are mobs that fight you at sea, and they function identically to the ones on land, with the only difference being their ability to summon waves. Functionally, they are like a combination of clothing and armor that equips into a unique slot below you.

In DST, you have boats that you place on water and can then walk on as if they were a platform of turf. Using WASD will make you walk around the boat while it stays still, meaning in order to move you'll either have to physically walk to one side and row with an oar, or build a unique sail structure and steering wheel that you interact with in unique ways. These boats have a health bar, but will only lose durability when ramming into rocks and such at sea, which may also cause a leak which you can interact with in many ways, including patching it up with a boat patch applied to that spot. There are mobs at sea that will fight you, and they all use your boat in unique ways, such as drilling holes in it, jumping on board, ramming into it with their own boat, destroying your sails, shooting sharp projectiles to cause leaks, all things that would not work for a mob on land. Functionally, they are an entirely unique mechanic that makes you interact with their section of the world incredibly differently from land.

When people say SW boats are like walking on water, or call them "water shoes", this is what they mean. Their mechanics are so simple and similar to how the game plays on land, that they might as well just be shoes that you equip to walk on turfs that are blue.

[loopuleasa]

Boats in many game that have it imply a loss of control.

(My fav boats in gaming are the ones in Raft, Subnautica Cyclops and in Sea of Thieves)

So the formula becomes:

What you lose:

1. You lose control over your character (you are limited to a boat with ITS controls)
2. You limit the space your character can move on (you are on a boat, and your gameplay revolves on it)

What you get

1. You gain stuff to do on the boat (presumably interesting stuff)
2. You benefit of the fact that you can carry all your storage and facilities on boat with you
3. Optionally: You get more power near your boat (like having ability to man the cannons)

This formula is out of whack in DST boats

[Danila6300]

I wouldn't mind a new addition to DST. It will be called "Don't starve together shipwrecked" 

[ShadowDuelist]

15 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

It'd be nice if boating was less carpal tunnel syndrome-inducing. I use a mod that rows for me because I don't want to get an RSI from going to Pearl's and back. Maybe Klei should implement something like that as a quality-of-life feature, something where you just hold right-click (or even just toggle rowing by right-clicking the water once with an oar) to row?

Sails. I hate rowing too, I just make one sail, and it makes back and forth travelling 100 times easier. It may seem expensive at first but it saves more and more time the more you use it, specially after killing sharkboi.

About the thread’s topic, as others pointed before me I also disagree with SW boats being ported, and I agree that instead they should just make the current boating experience better.
 

I think it’s not just about making boats faster, but they should probably aim to make the whole sailing experience more rewarding to make using clumsy and expensive boats more fun.

Klei did give a step into the right direction by making sunken chests more rewarding, improving the boats control over time, and giving boats a way to teleport across the ocean.
I think what’s left now, is to make pancake boats slightly more maneuverable , add more life to the ocean, more islands to explore (or an archipelago worldgen mode) and add really large slow boats so we can do late game real boat bases.

Characters like lunar-oriented Winona, Wanda, or specially Wortox can skip most of sailing anyway, for those who want to avoid it.

[loopuleasa]

58 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Sails. I hate rowing too, I just make one sail, and it makes back and forth travelling 100 times easier. It may seem expensive at first but it saves more and more time the more you use it, specially after killing sharkboi.

About the thread’s topic, as others pointed before me I also disagree with SW boats being ported, and I agree that instead they should just make the current boating experience better.
 

I think it’s not just about making boats faster, but they should probably aim to make the whole sailing experience more rewarding to make using clumsy and expensive boats more fun.

Klei did give a step into the right direction by making sunken chests more rewarding, improving the boats control over time, and giving boats a way to teleport across the ocean.
I think what’s left now, is to make pancake boats slightly more maneuverable , add more life to the ocean, more islands to explore (or an archipelago worldgen mode) and add really large slow boats so we can do late game real boat bases.

Characters like lunar-oriented Winona, Wanda, or specially Wortox can skip most of sailing anyway, for those who want to avoid it.

This doesn't fix the problem either. Played a few wipes with the "Sailing Rebalance" mod that gives better steering and a slew of other buffs to sailing. It just doesn't fit.

DST boats are primary use a base on water, and secondary use a moving boat you explore content with.

I have a vision of "Carrier" boats, that carry these miniboats with docks roaming the seas, allowing people to roam freely around the "main" boat.

I also have a vision of people returning with damaged miniboats ready to be repaired by the boat crew like in Formula 1 pit stops

[DegenerateFurry]

8 hours ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Sails. I hate rowing too, I just make one sail, and it makes back and forth travelling 100 times easier. It may seem expensive at first but it saves more and more time the more you use it, specially after killing sharkboi.

I agree in theory, but rowing is actually just straight-up faster than having one sail, and they're so clunky to use. Auto-rowing should be base functionality or sails should be made more responsive to controls (tighter turns like what you can get with rowing). 

[loopuleasa]

On 3/7/2025 at 12:57 AM, DegenerateFurry said:

I agree in theory, but rowing is actually just straight-up faster than having one sail, and they're so clunky to use. Auto-rowing should be base functionality or sails should be made more responsive to controls (tighter turns like what you can get with rowing). 

I don't need auto-rowing necessarily, I at least want a very satisfying critical "splosh" sound (as juicy as old wanda alarming clock hits), that has like +50% row

Why not make it an actual satisfying rhythm minigame while at it

Animation cancelling using items is satisfying and natural, but rowing lacks the feedback that hit the rhythm at all

[DVGMedia]

I think boats are fine I just think need more ocean stuff.  There are definitely enough space in those rough oceans to spawn some unique landmasses.

I think it would be nice if 3 islands spawned from the random biome pool  that way have more chances of getting sought after biomes like mactusk or killer bee field 

Or these islands can have their own new biomes with new resources. 

The ocean is really barren and really has no reason to be searched beyond what's needed 

[Well-met]

6 hours ago, DVGMedia said:

The ocean is really barren and really has no reason to be searched beyond what's needed 

unfortunately this has been said every day ever since 2019, and if 6 years couldn't help it then nothing will.