The Ocean & Cave Experience, what's Needed

[JaxckLl]

I love the ocean mechanics in Don't Starve. I loved Shipwrecked and I love the mechanics in DST. It's especially satisfying to be able to bring an entire mini base and to prepare a ship for all the challenges it will face. What's not so fun is when mechanics are janky or outright broken. There's also a lot of fundamental mechanics missing that would make the Ocean significantly more enjoyable to interact with.
 

• Frostjaw absolutely sucks. His fight is miserable and defies the convention of other boss fights in a very uncomfortable and unfun way. The slipping mechanic is fine in a vacuum, but the reality is that the player has no ability to interact with slipping other than moving slower. This is completely the opposite of literally every other fight in the game (not just bosses but all fights). Now it's fine for a fight to have unique requirements for success, it is not however acceptable for a fight to have conditions that invalidate preparation that would be ideal for literally any other part of the game. The slipping mechanic needs to not exist or it needs to be interactable. The actual rythm of Frostjaw's attacks are fine (although it is extremely bad feeling that the correct item to bring to the fight is a teleporting staff, which also speeds you up and thus makes you more vulnerable to slipping), and the character is fantastic. That he shows up with a different name every time & taunts the player is hilarious. What's also funny, but also extremely stupid, is that I've never actually managed to finish fighting Frostjaw. Every time I've gotten close he's managed to glitch off of his shrinking island (why the hell does the island break up like that?) and switch to his defeated state. I would be upset if the fight was fun, but it's not. I'm honestly amazed that this boss released in the condition that it did. 
• Continuing with Frostjaw, but now lets look at the Loot. Trading ocean fishes is a good mechanic. It rewards fishing but without requiring total investment or consideration of relative farming potential compared to other foodstuffs. We should have more traders like this, with requirements for relatively niche resources where players who engage with everything the game has to offer will be most rewarded. However the problem with Frostjaw's loot is that it invalidates sailing as an interesting mechanic. Why would I want an item that removes what makes an entire mode of play distinct? The real loot from the fight is all the ice the island generates as it breaks up, which frankly is far far too much. Comfortably I can collect 8-9 stacks of Ice which is more ice than I will ever need. It seems strange to give the player so many free resources.
• Ice is a good segue into my next complaint, which is the lack of a Crockpot & general hunger rework. It's kind of odd that Not Starving requires so little effort with even moderate engagement with any kind of farming mechanic. It feels very strange that there's no real downside to foraging & eating food raw. With most forageables, the player isn't even leaving any potential hunger value on the table. My dissatisfaction primarily comes from not being punished for failing to make a Crockpot. In my most recent game, I didn't build a Crockpot until I was almost in first Spring and that was with a Very Long Autumn and Long Winter. Yes I am a more experienced player and I did get Juicy Berries in my world, but that's kind of my point. The agricultural mechanics in DST are fantastic, but in practice they're totally superfluous. It would've been simpler for me to just relocate some Juicy Berries near some Marotter or Catcoon Dens and voila I'd never starve. There is something missing in the relationship between how easy it is to keep hunger filled and how rewarding farming mechanics can be. Really what I'd like to see is a slight nerf to raw foods across the board, forcing players to at least use a campfire in order to maximize their forage (Raw Carrots -> 8 Hunger, leave cooked at 12.5 for example). Seeds probably shouldn't be edible raw at all (including crop seeds. Sidenote, is there any way to make crop seeds usable in place of default Seeds in crafting recipes? It feels super archaic that Birdcages can't be made with crop seeds for example). Meat is in a good place generally, where the raw stuff gives a significant sanity downside that will build up if abused.
• Ironically the Caves & Ocean have the opposite problem to the mainland (the Lunar Island has the same issue to a lesser degree). While foraging on the mainland is trivial to the point of making entire modes of play unengaging, foraging in the caves or oceans is a pain in the ass. There's a real culture clash when going into the Caves for the first time under the current balance of the game, because the Caves only have reliable forage in a couple of biomes. I'll go into more detail on my wider issues with the Caves later, but the lack of unique foragables is one of those major problems. Lichen, glow berries, bananas for some reason, that's about it. Eels can be slowly & painfully collected from cave pools (We should really get an Eel Trap structure to give us some cave-specific farming/basing options). Technically Bat Wings are also a cave resource, although it's generally just more efficient to collect them on the surface. The lack of reliable & quick options for basic cooking in the caves is part of the problem. Meat isn't an interesting forage choice like it is on the surface since there is not the expectation of being able to easily drop Campfires when needed to cook collected forageables. What the caves need are a handful of additional forageables that are unique (ideally at least a couple of those should be easily farmable with a simple base/building, the same way Marotters, Juicy Berries, or Bees/Flowers work on the surface), a Charlie-resistant method of quickly cooking things (Lava/geothermal steam cracks perhaps?), and better nuisance mobs that can be turned into a resource (ala Bees, Moles, Rabbits, Marotters, Catcoons, etc. The caves have Bats, literally everything else is a drop from the surface. I'd suggest Pill Beetles. To complete the pun, perhaps they have a secondary drop besides Insect Morsals in the form of Insect Jelly a decent Sanity/Health item that drains Hunger).
• Ocean forage has much the same issue as the caves, in that it isn't reliable to simply survive on the sea. Now it is not a completely fair expectation, but again it's a culture clash when the mainland is survivable largely just by existing while even short ocean journies can require significant preparation. Kelp being a core resource for quickly & rapidly heading to sea is great. Kelp is also an interesting foodstuff, with a fun mix of downsides & upsides very similar to meat. Fishing is however not good enough compared to hunting on land. One of the first farms players will ever build is the bunny trap. It requires only basic resources, no fighting, and it generates a constant trickle of a potentially extremely high value foodstuff. Fishing on the other hand requires Silk (for the rod itself & for bird traps to get the feathers necessary for early game floats) which practically speaking means fighting Spiders. The balance around Silk is very strange and overemphasizes the importance of spiders in the game. Killing lots of spiders is necessary, which in turn overloads the player with Monster Meat. This is great in that it pushes the player towards Crockpots as the answer to that question, but it's awful in that it completely cuts into the pace of just going to sea. What I would suggest here is to massively buff the drops on fish, with bigger ocean fish dropping 2+ pieces of fish meat (each representing a single fillet) and several morsals. Monster morsals have been needed for a very long time as a nerf to spiders. I'd also add a Twine resource that is used in place of Silk to craft ocean-related things. Twine could efficiently be made from Silk (1-1) or inefficiently from Kelp/Grass (3-1). This would allow players to craft fishing supplies at sea, masts at sea, and to farm birds without first needing to farm spiders. Spider farming would still be preferential, but it would no longer be a blocker to sailing, agriculture, and basing in general.
• It feels really weird that there are entire sections of the caves that are essentially just a shitty version of the overworld but with Bunnymen. It feels actually bad that there are entire sections of the caves with nothing in them but rocks, Lock Robsters, and Bats. There's so much space to the caves that is completely underutilized and most of the unique biomes are totally lacking in any reason to visit. The problem is largely that there aren't great reasons to visit those parts of the caves. The resources available can be better gathered on the surface, either because it's more efficient (mushrooms, rocks, gold) or dramatically safer (guano, monster meat, rocks). Bunnymen, Lock Robsters, Bats, cave Spiders, & Splumunkeys are less interesting to fight than many surface enemies or they offer a fundamentally similar experience. Pigs & Merms are very similar to Bunnies, but they're more interesting because they're less prone to swarming and thus less likely to overwhelm an unprepared player (Merms in particular are great fun to farm in the early game as they spawn near Mosquitos & Spiders so an intelligent player can hang around and collect resources with less effort). Lock Robsters have absolutely no place in the game other than being a nuisance, eating resources a player would rather be collecting (they do have some utility in being useless mobs to be fed to the Great Depths Worm as sacrifices). I'd give Lock Robsters a Heart of Gold, a special drop which can be used to farm gold by converting regular stone & flint into gold over time. This would give them a cool drop that justifies the difficulty of their fight, while also making their biome a cool one to explore. Rock Lobster Dens could be their spawning location, where the Robsters gather gold & gems that they've either slowly produced themselves or they've collected from Earthquakes. This would also cement the Lock Robsters as an ally mob to the player, similar to how Pigs are on the surface. Cave Spiders are just more annoying versions of regular spiders, and regular spiders are not particularly fun enemies to fight (Depths Dwellers have a place in the Labyrinth but the way you can't interact with their spawning zones sucks. In my current world almost all of my natural Splumunkey Pods happen to be on Depths Dweller webbing, which makes fighting Splumonkies even more of a pain than it usually is. I'm almost at the point of completely switching off Depths Dwellers completely since they don't offer any unique challenge in the areas of the caves I usually encounter them). Bats probably have the most potential, as their pattern of the attack is both swarmy and gives the player time & space to react. Giant Bats should exist with 250 hp and a swooping attack (that's faster & linear, dodgable by kiting horizontally) instead of the usual bat's slow tracking of the player. Splumonkies are a very cool enemy with great loot, a unique interaction with the nightmare cycle that really makes them feel at home in the caves, and a cool aesthetic that sounds great and in practice is terrifying. However the problem with Splumonkies is the way they swarm, especially during nightmare phase. They're something to run away from not to actually fight, which is fine but not as engaging as a real fight. Clockwork Rooks & the Deerclops are also very terrifying early on, but they can be fought mano-a-mano since they don't swarm. Bunnymen can be dealt with by not provoking them, plus they'll run away if injured. Splumonkies have no solution which makes being in their biome just uncomfortable. What I would suggest here would be a Splumonky Charm crafted with Dreadstone & Palmcone Scales (and perhaps the Monkey Paw trinket) that makes Splumonkies always neutral to the player, unless that specific mob is attacked. This would let the player interact with the very cool Splumonkey biome without periodically being molested by shade-throwing primates.
• To get back to the oceans, the resource web feels quite disconnected. There's a Salt biome, a Barnacle biome, a Mangrove biome, the Moon Quay, the Lunar Island, Pearl's Island, Frostjaw's Glacier, Crab King, and Malbatross spawn points. Sea stacks dot the sea, and Gnarwails, Rockjaws, Ocean fish, and floating debris can be found mostly anywhere. There's a lot of stuff, but there's not an obvious flow to it. On land you go from basic forage -> gathering logs/boards -> silk & gold -> science & crockpots -> boss fights, with a basic outline clearly established naturally through how different resources are used over the course of this basic progression. At sea however there is not this same progression. A big part of it is the lack of expectation about when a player will actually make it onto the water. A player needs a Science Machine to be successful at sea, but in practice that means they also have the resources for an Alchemy Engine so the natural progression is to stay on land and start basing with Crockpots before likely facing Deerclops as their first boss. I've already talked about the issue with Silk, but Gold is also a major problem in the progression to sea. What I would suggest is reworking the Alchemy Engine. Instead of requiring functionally the same resources as a Science Machine, have the Alchemy Engine use a new Weird Stuff resource. Weird Stuff is actually the blood of Wobsters/Lock Robsters (Hemocyanin - Wikipedia, the blood of real life crustaceans is fundamentally different from the red blood of us vertebrates), and with the magic of the Constant it allows for materials to be transformed into other materials. A small amount of Weird Stuff can be collected in non-renewable Fossilized Crabby Dens found throughout the rocky biome, with Wobster dens being a renewable source. This wouldn't change the basic progression of the surface much at all, major sources of gold would still be co-located with sources of Weird Stuff so going straight from Science -> Alchemy wouldn't be too hard, but it would put that valuable material tantalizingly a single boat length away from shore. Similar to how Marotter Dens, Kelp (which should also appear in larger but non-renewable Kelp Piles, with a single Pile providing enough resources to make at least two Kelp Rafts), and Message Jars encourage placing single boats along the shoreline. Push the player to engage with the mechanic, at least a little bit, to build up experience (with rowing/managing inventories on boats) with sailing so that when they're confronted with going to the Lunar Island or seeking out the Moon Quay it isn't such a chore.
• Continuing from the above, we really need Larger Boats. The current boat size is perfect as a raft with space for a couple of small upgrades and maybe a firepit. However it is completely insufficient to fit all the machines and very quickly becomes overcrowded with even two players and a minion/pet or two. Normally I'm not one to say that mods do it better than vanilla (you guys at Klei are really good at building out complete mechanics and improving them over time), but the Boat Shapes mod really stands out as just being better than vanilla's boat designs (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2229630615&searchtext=boat). I particularly like how the Caraval feels like an actual boat (and oh my goodness a flat edge is not what I realized I was missing in my life while sailing), with a clear front & back, while the Moon is both seethrough (which makes lining up a Pinching Winch much easier) and good for collecting Kelp fronds due to its shape. I would also suggest a larger version of the regular boat (somewhere between a third to a half bigger), but with a hole in the centre. This hole could countain a structure which would act as a passive supply of some kind of resource while sailing. Kelp, Fish Morsals, Barnacles, or Weird Stuff. This would help solve the lack of forage at sea, while the larger construction area would allow for Science/Alchemy at sea, Crockpots & Firepits, or Storage without blocking space needed for Masts & Anchors. This new boat design should use Palmcone Scales, as should the following. A Ship's Boiler that provides a small amount of heat (enough to stave off Winter with the right clothing) and can cook basic foods but needs fueling (aka a mini Scale Furnace that uses fuel and can only be built on ships). A Ship's Lantern that provides light at sea in a given direction and can be changed to green or red light if placed on the starboard or port side of a ship (Navigation light - Wikipedia) for that extra nautical flare. An Oil Press which can convert fish meat or inefficiently kelp into Sea Oil for fueling the Boiler & the Lantern. These set of items would give us a complete set of mechanics for staying at sea basically indefinitely, occassionally visiting Moon Quay or the Lunar Islands to stock up on wood, scales, and rocks. Small Sandbars which are tiny islands with some Barnacle rocks and natural Moon Quay plants would make exploring the sea so much more satisfying.
• Speaking of rocks at sea, the Rockjaw needs a rework. Not because it is uninteresting or too dangerous, both of those things are untrue if armoured. Rather because it is literally impossible to keep the damn thing aggroed and thus it is a pain to hunt them for their rocks. Gnarwails too are not aggroable once their horn is gone, which feels really bad. It suuuucks to chase one of these big sea creatures that feels like it should be a little goody bag of meat, only for that creature to swim off screen and get lost. I would suggest adding in a Harpoon weapon that functions like a spear, albeit one that can be shot from a cannon and attached to a Dock Piling preventing the Rockjaw/Gnarwail from swimming away. This would give a unique use to the Cannon as a hunting tool that still allows for a longer fight using traditional melee + kiting. Chum should also be added as a way to reliably attract a Rockjaw, allowing us to farm for Rocks & Flint while at sea (Have it be a Fish Food made from fish meat instead of Barnacles. In other words, let us turn a pile of Rot into Rocks by feeding the fish meat we get from killing Rockjaws into summoning more Rockjaws). Speaking of, regular Fish Food badly needs to lose its Silk cost (if necessary, replace that cost with Twine or Kelp) so that it can be crafted & used consistently while at sea. It would also be great to have Shark Stacks which periodically spawn resident Rockjaws so the Harpoon is mandatory to farm them. Sea Weed Seashells need to be collectable by Polly. Yes I know they're weapons, but cmon. Moon Quay Pirates are a really fun little challenge if the player is well equipped. However they're overwhelming if not and if the players die they effectively lose their ship (which feels awful and in practice is almost always a reload rather than a recover). A White Flag item that can be raised from any mast where the Monkeys will take some items but not everything and will not be hostile while doing so would be ideal.

I know this is a big post, so thank you anyone who's read even a decent portion. I love this game and I'd love to see sailing get the kind of love & attention it got back in the days of Shipwrecked. I've tried to highlight the key points & suggestions.

[Well-met]

great post

frostjaw is still unfinished as far as I know, but the only thing I hate about him is his charge attack destroys nearby docked boats when it really should not.

I don't think you're actually supposed to be able to survive or thrive off a caves-only or sea-only environment, I think its better to view them as complements to the main land.

that said I fully agree alot of biomes are empty and pointless and suck still to this day.

don't really care for bigger boats, it's clear klei never had any plan beyond the default boat RoT launched with and never will.