(Poll) Community perception towards Pearl's quests

[gaymime]

3 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

I'd need to be corrected on this but I'm pretty sure that's not a mechanic 

-shrugs- it seems to work for me though i can go make sure. i think one of my worlds is still in summer

well, i have officially grown tired of monkeys. i started obs 5 TIMES to capture footage and every time the monkey raid starts up within a minute or two of streaming and there is only a day left in summer on my only world that is not in autumn or winter :/ i think i finally understand why people hate these guys

[aidankocherhans]

My only issues with her are that after unlocking the pinchin' winch, most of the reward for her tasks is just story progression (or niche fishing items), rather than immediate tangible rewards (even crab king doesn't drop anything immediately useful because of the pearl)

And I think she should go in her house at night instead of dusk, since there's not much to do if you get to her a little late and you just have to wait around for morning

[Wumpair]

I feel like sunken chests are ok as a long-term incentive to go trough the pearl quest line, if you kill pearled ck. And the addition of the saw horse also was nice; I think pearl is ok over all. Plus some characters get specific questlines by visiting the island, like wendy geting sea-shells for the grave movement, wx gets the music module, we could say wortox benefits from getting more jars, etc.

I have two things to say about pearl though:

1. The quest is very un-intuitive & i belive (although can't really confirm) begginer non-friendly. Like how would you know that you need to build a chair from ruins to get the saw hourse bluerint? How do you know you should give her insulation/umbrella? How would you know that she likes flower salads? (Without reading wiki/watching videos). Sure pearl makes coments about wanting bees to produce honey, or that she misses the taste of berries; and the house part is obvius. But still, I think from one hand the questline tried to be "let the player figure out stuff on their own" mysterius, and on the other it can be a big roadblock for players to get to cc [Counter argument ofc: I can see the shadow questline is just as counter intuitive to new players as the lunar one]

And then also I have another point:

2. Like the poll that Guille mentions from the start (the one asking why lunar questline isnt as "fun as shadow one") I saw a lot of people make great points, that compared to shadow where you have to go to literal hardest place in the game (ruins), the lunar questline is just diferent. More microminaging stuff. Over all I think that is ok; like a lot of newer content, sometimes it can feel out of place with vanila ds that has been forever. Ocean in general, it feels more like an add-on with monkeys & salt & stuff. The game changes, and I think the current iteration of the quest is fine as it is. I am glad tough that we got all the QoL changes to both pearl, ck, the sunken chests, ocean in general (man it was slow to travel at the start...).

Have a good day guys! :]

[layangan putus]

3 hours ago, Wumpair said:

1. The quest is very un-intuitive & i belive (although can't really confirm) begginer non-friendly. Like how would you know that you need to build a chair from ruins to get the saw hourse bluerint? How do you know you should give her insulation/umbrella? How would you know that she likes flower salads? (Without reading wiki/watching videos). Sure pearl makes coments about wanting bees to produce honey, or that she misses the taste of berries; and the house part is obvius. But still, I think from one hand the questline tried to be "let the player figure out stuff on their own" mysterius, and on the other it can be a big roadblock for players to get to cc [Counter argument ofc: I can see the shadow questline is just as counter intuitive to new players as the lunar one]

By spending time with her when she's out from her hut, she would say various things implying something to do.

[GenomeSquirrel]

It's weird to be reminded that fish weight exists solely as a mechanic for Pearl to reject fish, and to prevent fish from being stackable 

 

I forgot some nuances to my hatred of her ...

[_mylilsunshine_]

i don't mind doing pearl's quest, like at all. i love walter's interaction with her, and how her affinity toward you progresses with each quest completed. some examples of the exchange:

• "A Pinetree Pioneer is always happy to help the elderly!"
• "Your jerky's ready, ma'am!"
• "Hello ma'am! Can I help you with anything?"
• Inspecting Pearl's Pearl: "I gave my Pinetree Pioneer's oath to protect it with my life!"
• Inspecting Cracked Pearl: ""Oh no, oh no no no no..." (this one makes me sad)

about the quests themselves, i don't mind any of them since i usually start after spring year 1 so i can finish 10 points, but i can see how the leafy bulb is a problem for boss-runs. a lot have been said about some of the more RNG aspects, so i won't go into it.

about how players can figure out her questline, i think the environmental and dialogue clues are very well done, but you can't really figure out if you have successfully completed a task. the only real indicator is her bundle of thanks, which are only given at friendship level 2, 5, and 7, that's not great. if i figure out planting berry bushes is a task, how will i know how many do i have to plant? how will i know if have to fertilize them as well?  etc. etc.

i feel like forumites have a different perspective on pearl's quest, as people are more informed and knowledgeable about how and why should you do it. for a fresh player, i believe if they hang around pearl enough they'll eventually finish her questline without much help. klei did a good job on that.

does pearl's pearl have a scrapbook page? i can't check it right now and the wiki doesn't say anything about it. if the scrapbook hints to socketing it on crab king, then it's even better than i expected.

as much as i'm into boss-rushing, i'm someone who is also into roleplaying and leisurely playing, so i have never thought about the "reward" for completing pearl's quest, whether it is her pearl for the endgame item, or guaranteed treasure chests. i argue the real reward is hanging out with her like she's my grandma. anyway, i believe that ocean content are not developed enough to make pearl's questline interesting, as it still asks for too much of the mainland's item instead of the could-have-been-bountiful resources from the ocean, the only exception might be the flower salad.

[aidankocherhans]

22 minutes ago, _mylilsunshine_ said:

about how players can figure out her questline, i think the environmental and dialogue clues are very well done, but you can't really figure out if you have successfully completed a task. the only real indicator is her bundle of thanks, which are only given at friendship level 2, 5, and 7, that's not great. if i figure out planting berry bushes is a task, how will i know how many do i have to plant? how will i know if have to fertilize them as well?  etc. etc.

She'll say something about the task to indicate you've completed it

[_mylilsunshine_]

5 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

She'll say something about the task to indicate you've completed it

idk these seem vague to me

[Cheggf]

2 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

It's weird to be reminded that fish weight exists solely as a mechanic for Pearl to reject fish, and to prevent fish from being stackable 

 

I forgot some nuances to my hatred of her ...

Fish are an animal, non-weighted fish from ponds also don't stack. The only living creatures that stack are buuugs.

[GenomeSquirrel]

2 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Fish are an animal, non-weighted fish from ponds also don't stack. The only living creatures that stack are buuugs.

they used to stack until Pearl and the fish scale came along

[WilsonHiggs]

3 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

It's weird to be reminded that fish weight exists solely as a mechanic for Pearl to reject fish, and to prevent fish from being stackable 

 

I forgot some nuances to my hatred of her ...

Sharkboi

[00petar00]

Just let me kill her or allow us to steal pearl from her house and change it so when she is giving you pearl she goes to her house to pick it up.

If we steal from her the punishment could be that she won't trade with us for a year or however long as a lot of people including me don't trade with her at all.

This is a sandbox game so there should be more choices here, I don't see a reason as to why this is the only way to obtain pearl.

[Cheggf]

14 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

they used to stack until Pearl and the fish scale came along

Which is more of them fixing an oversight instead of them nerfing something because of Pearl. Rabbits & spiders have never stacked, and they're the most directly comparable to fish. 

[GenomeSquirrel]

4 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Which is more of them fixing an oversight instead of them nerfing something because of Pearl. Rabbits & spiders have never stacked, and they're the most directly comparable to fish. 

Inventory spiders are newer than Pearl.

Having out of water fish being dead is not an oversight.

I'll admit, I am curious about why Klei created the short, strange existence of pocket fish, how much merms dropping fish when they die is involved, and why merms want fish to die in their pocket, is this a unilaterally enforced balancing component for the better ocean fish, or is the expiry also another means to fail Pearl.

 

 

[lowercase skye]

23 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

It's weird to be reminded that fish weight exists solely as a mechanic for Pearl to reject fish, and to prevent fish from being stackable

Well, the weight mechanic was added BEFORE Pearl, as a way to let players compete a bit in an activity that irl is a common (and oftentimes competitive) hobby, and I imagine it being incorporated into the Pearl quest was just a nice opportunity to reinforce a new mechanic + make Pearl feel like socializing with a real person in-universe. But that being said, Weight is also taken into account for the Frostjaw's trading now, and more importantly it directly corresponds to how much meat you get when killing the fish, with heavy small fish giving a full fish meat and heavy medium fish giving an additional fish morsel. It's definitely not "soley" for Pearl.

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Inventory spiders are newer than Pearl.

Having out of water fish being dead is not an oversight.

I'll admit, I am curious about why Klei created the short, strange existence of pocket fish, how much merms dropping fish when they die is involved, and why merms want fish to die in their pocket, is this a unilaterally enforced balancing component for the better ocean fish, or is the expiry also another means to fail Pearl.

 

 

Oh you're right, I misremembered. The reason they stacked is because they died. They still stack upon death, you can perform the murder action on them to make them stack. Pearl didn't change that at all.

[somethin]

On 4/3/2025 at 11:18 AM, GenomeSquirrel said:

It's weird to be reminded that fish weight exists solely as a mechanic for Pearl to reject fish, and to prevent fish from being stackable

One of the recent update make it so that heavy fish drop more meat. Small ocean fish drop big meat and big ones drop an extra morsel iirc

[oregu]

On 4/1/2025 at 10:27 PM, Guille6785 said:

I really wish they were replaced with broken shells instead but I'm pretty sure people would complain because that would make cookie cutter shells have 1 less use and clearly that's unacceptable

Ooh, this gives me an idea.  Pearl can sell cookie cutter caps for 2 bottles, then players who want to somewhat skip killing cookie cutters can do magic with that. Though getting the bottles could still be worse in some situations, it still lets the cookie cutter shells have some use. Unless the hat gets some buff 2 bottles is fair. Id rather let a quest have multiple ways to do it.

[lowercase skye]

26 minutes ago, oregu said:

Pearl can sell cookie cutter caps for 2 bottles, then players who want to somewhat skip killing cookie cutters can do magic with that.

This is already sort of a thing, tackle boxes (sold at level 3 friendship) deconstruct into 2 cookie cutter shells, while any of her level 6 friendship lures each give 1 cookie cutter shell when deconstructed. The issue what that is that getting the bottles to trade + staffs to deconstruct is always going to be way more of a task than just killing some cookie cutters.