Is sailing supposed to be an abysmal experience?

[Theukon-dos]

As someone who genuinly enjoys sailing and actually does it pretty often whenever I pick the game up... yeah pretty much. 

I'd say the real problem with ocean content is that it's never just allowed to be good with no strings attached. Salt Boxes are more effective than fridges, but can only hold raw ingredients. Above average mangrove trees protect the area around them from wildfires, but can only be planted in the ocean. Monkey Tails and banana bushes give you a renewable way to transplant reeds and bananas, but are both tied to the moon quey and ergo pirate raids, which are still the single worst mechanic that Klei has ever invented. And I say that as someone who has done nothing but complain about rifts and skill trees for the last two years. 

With the one exception of the two ancient trees introduced a year or so back, there's just not anything out on the ocean that can do something not done just as, if not more effectivly than the options players already have access to on the mainland. 

A couple years back I had an idea for a new ocean resource whos main purpose was, amongst other things, serving as a stackable, non-spoilable, and highly effective fuel for both campfires and similar structures and; more importantly; lanterns and miner's hats alike. This idea ended up getting added to the mod Uncompromising Mode, which means I can say from experience that... yeah. It's pretty nice. 

It may not be enough to carry the ocean on it's own, obviously. But being able to keep both fire and lantern fuel in a single inventory slot without having to worry about spoilage is a really nice quality of life feature that the vanilla ocean is just severely lacking in.

[Milordo]

Since this has became a conversation about our unfortunate level of the game, I must oblige;

 

I'm sorry if this starts to become annoying, for how much repetitive I posted it, but is reasons like these that we should unite and push klei to fix their errors step by step. Since they have touched it, a total rework to drowning would make things a little more beautiful.

Edited June 18, 2025 by Milordo

[Mike23Ua]

Oh yeah and somewhere years ago I posted an actual video of just how awful the deck Illuminator sucks at doing its job of being a boat light source. It still hasn’t been buffed & to this very day, campfires, lanterns and Wilson’s Torch Toss provide better lighting then an actual upgrade Kit you have to apply to a resource exhausting Boat Mast.

If your not calculating the numbers in your head you need 1 gold, 4 logs, 4 Rocks to first craft a Science Machine, THEN you need 4 planks (16 more logs) to craft a Think Tank, after that you need 4 planks to craft a Boat Kit for a platform, After you finally have your pitiful little boat platform placed in the water (this is still a pain in the butt to do on Xbox by the way Klei when it should be as simple as Willow Firespell Casting to place by now) You need to now Craft a Mast Kit- 3 Planks, 3 ropes, 8 Spider Silk.

Finally FINALLY after all that… you can craft the Deck Illuminator to apply to your Boat Mast with 1 Plank, 2 Ropes & 4 Flints.

that is a grand total of- 52 Logs, 15 Grass, 8 Spider Silk, 4 Flint, 4 Rocks & 1 Gold 

All to Effectively build a Deck Illuminator.

Meanwhile: You can literally just use a Lantern or Miners hat to achieve far better lighting to actually SEE Where your going with. 

[MondayNight]

I come out of pure chance 1,5 irl years later after I quit this game to solely ponder: was there any interesting ocean update in that time, making it more lively/fun? Any new island, patch of some biome like those giant trees I forgot the name of?

[Wormboi]

4 hours ago, MondayNight said:

I come out of pure chance 1,5 irl years later after I quit this game to solely ponder: was there any interesting ocean update in that time, making it more lively/fun? Any new island, patch of some biome like those giant trees I forgot the name of?

We got ice shark boss, eaister way to find monkey island, sea otters, and water teleportation 

Edited June 20, 2025 by Wormboi

[Milordo]

5 hours ago, Wormboi said:

We got ice shark boss, eaister way to find monkey island, sea otters, and water teleportation 

Don't forget also new ocean dungeons, better treasures, new cool large boats, new very good crab king loot, two new plants as rewards, a questionable new pirate raid, sea salt stacks don't bodyblock the boat anymore, a questionable very weak new kelp patches, new cool rockjaw loot, new recent personal floaters and the new very cool system of plugging yourself or items for boat leakings for giving you more time into fixing the boat.

The only bad new thing added is the new crab king fight rework. There is a mod for revert it to the original one but with the new loot.

And now incoming total drowning rework. All in all @MondayNight the ocean is getting fixed (and a bit better) step by step slowly.

Edited June 20, 2025 by Milordo

[Milordo]

7 minutes ago, milsonmeow said:

*plugging

also since when rockjaws got new loots 🤨

Lol thanks for the typo.

Rockjaws always only dropped 4 large fish meats. Now, thanks to the first ocean rework of 2024, they drop that plus + few rocks + few flints + barnacles + and a rare chance for large fish, so another food.

Pretty pretty good.

Edited June 20, 2025 by Milordo

[Bumber64]

4 hours ago, Milordo said:

Don't forget also new ocean dungeons

The what?

[Milordo]

2 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

The what?

Dungeons. Set pieces. Skeletons. Whatever you wanna call them.

[ShadowDuelist]

On 6/18/2025 at 10:30 AM, Keller Max said:

I just wish boat was easier to control. Faster steering, Sharper Turns, etc... Ironically, Ocean isn't big enough for anything other than Oar.

Sailing would be much more fun if our average map gen looked like this:

Oh man, this, and a much larger endgame boat would be soo cool.

[Dwight34]

Not meant to be probably, but it has some flaws. The biggest for me being how you either have to use a lot of resources for the sails + wheel + anchor combo, or simply use the paddle. The paddle is objectively better in every way (less resources and infinitely better control) except for the fact it forces you to spam right-click hundreds of times in a few minutes, which is bad both for my hand and mouse. So I'm forced to use a mod to auto-row, which has the unintended bug of not consuming oar durability but eh, I'll take it.

As for other changes, I wish there was a way to stop pirate raids, since it doesn't make much sense for them to continue when you've burned down and destroyed every single house and killed every single monkey. And it doesn't seem like the Queen herself would ever send them after you. For Crab King, his design is very interesting,but the one-hit KO possibility of drowning, made more likely by the fact boat jumping detection isn't perfect, and ice can randomly make you trip through no fault of your own, makes it an extremely stressful fight I'm forced to gunpowder-cheese every time.

Klei is making the ocean more interesting over time though, and right now it does have good biomes to live in like the waterlogged, and good objectives with the sunken chest. One must be careful to not make the Ocean too filled with stuff, it is somewhat supposed to be relaxing, a place of escape from constant chaos. I do wish they'd replace or rework the angry flowers at sea though, as they're genuinely pointless as of yet, their loot is worthless, they're dangerous, and I always either avoid them or destroy them at night because... why would I ever keep them alive?

[00petar00]

Ocean has some content but its nowhere near as packed as surface or even caves but caves don't even have much going for them.

Food is scarce and not very efficient to gather while sailing so you are better off the more you delay it besides going to lunar as you will be able to get bundling wrap BP or bearger bin. It is not a bad idea even without these items for short trips because food doesn't spoil that fast so just make some meatballs before engaging with ocean.

I think that sailing would be a much better experience If there were less sea stalks and they didn't respawn, they pretty much ruin sailing for me and I often use driftwood oar most of the time no matter how long I played on the same world because of them.

Pirates aren't fun and now with the new boss arena on hermit island, on my current world gen it was next to moon quay so pirates kept spawning while I was trying to learn how to fight Scion by reviving on a boat outside of the arena. This just reinforces the point that pirates are terrible experience, they spawn so often and you are punished for killing them while boats are very vulnerable.

When you aren't sailing it is easy to escape or have life giving amulet to revive but If your boat sinks that you spent a lot of time building it can be quite punishing. When I want to take sailing seriously my boat has 3 winged sails, anchor, steering wheel, furnace, 2 fishing bins, pinchin' winch, mushlight with shard, houndius shootius, crab king bumpers and tall chests. Losing this boat is much worse compared to dying or losing a beefalo and now gloom bell exists.

Edited June 21, 2025 by 00petar00

[Mike23Ua]

I wish Klei would go play “Skull & Bones” on an Xbox using an Xbox Controller, because that right there… is how fast and accessible boat functions should be to a player. It would make sailing in DST when you don’t have people to help pull masts, drop anchors, steer etc so so much easier.

[Antynomity]

I just dont get why they ended up nerfing the initial boating speed beta buffs from a few years ago. It was genuinely so much more fun to at least move on that damn cookie

[AliceShiki]

11 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I wish Klei would go play “Skull & Bones” on an Xbox using an Xbox Controller, because that right there… is how fast and accessible boat functions should be to a player. It would make sailing in DST when you don’t have people to help pull masts, drop anchors, steer etc so so much easier.

Mike, you do realize that nobody will take you seriously if you use one of the biggest flops of modern gaming as an example of what a good product is, right?

[Mike23Ua]

33 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

Mike, you do realize that nobody will take you seriously if you use one of the biggest flops of modern gaming as an example of what a good product is, right?

Rather it’s a flop or not is irrelevant, what is important is that all the boat functions can be performed while at the captains wheel, press A to raise masts, B to drop Anchor, and honestly? I wouldn’t count this game out just yet.. there’s quite a few huge updates coming for it, including sword duels & land combat/exploration. All of which is scheduled to come out by the end of this year. And if the PvP is what scared you away.. they’ve moved that to its own game mode so that only players who actually WANT that can play there, I got the game for 5 bucks when it was on sale so I’m not complaining.

I just do not understand why klei wants us to walk around on the deck of the boat raise masts, drop anchors, steer, etc..

They said from the very beginning that they wanted boating to feel like a cooperative experience so each person on deck could do something, but personally I’d prefer just having a captains wheel that when mounted let’s me press buttons to quickly toggle the boats features.

[lowercase skye]

8 hours ago, Antynomity said:

I just dont get why they ended up nerfing the initial boating speed beta buffs from a few years ago.

It was ridiculously overtuned. This is supposed to be a whole ocean, but you could get from one end to the other in like 30 seconds if you had two players with driftwood oars.

[AliceShiki]

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I wouldn’t count this game out just yet.. there’s quite a few huge updates coming for it, including sword duels & land combat/exploration. All of which is scheduled to come out by the end of this year.

Just like how people kept being on denial about DefiantX being a flop... It's not happening. This game won't be the next No Man's Sky that has a miraculous recovery. It's a complete flop.

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

And if the PvP is what scared you away.. they’ve moved that to its own game mode so that only players who actually WANT that can play there,

I didn't even know the game had PVP, it was irrelevant to me. I'm just saying that trying to use one of the biggest flops in modern gaming as a reference point does not make for a good argument... Because yeah, Skull & Bones took way too many millions to develop and sold like hot garbage.

Edited June 29, 2025 by AliceShiki

[Antynomity]

8 hours ago, lowercase skye said:

It was ridiculously overtuned. This is supposed to be a whole ocean, but you could get from one end to the other in like 30 seconds if you had two players with driftwood oars.

You're correct but that is merely more of an ocean size/true obstacle (land masses blocking your way that aren't the mainland) issue, rather than a boat speed issue.

Especially now when we have THAT ONE STUPID SHARK BOSS THAT I HATE giving you full on map-wide boat teleports.

[somethin]

15 minutes ago, Antynomity said:

Especially now when we have THAT ONE STUPID SHARK BOSS THAT I HATE giving you full on map-wide boat teleports.

Well, that just mean we don't need the speed buff then 

On another note, I hope they tune the pirate raid timer to have at least a grace period. Getting raid TWICE back to back is no fun.

[Dwight34]

Adding on to the issue, Crab King's difficulty is ridiculous, maybe excepting the newly released boss I know nothing about, he's by far the most difficult fight in the game. he is supposed to be the lunar equivalent to Ancient Guardian progression wise, but he's more difficult than the literal Fuelweaver, and vastly more punishing. Endless minion spam who can jump onto your boat (and if they do that it's game over, you are stunlocked to death with no counterplay and no way to escape), insta drown mechanics, endless canon towers spam, canon towers who can spawn through your boat and oneshot it or almost oneshot it, the biggest resource dump in the entire game, requires perfect execution the whole way through... Nobody at Klei has played against this boss, he's genuinely unbearable to fight. At least with Fuelweaver I can tp out of the arena, with CK you just DIE, and since the ocean is so badly designed, you have to make a new boat and stuff to get your stuff back. I'm fighting CK with literal shadow rift gear and he is STILL a massive pain in the a**. I brought him to low health, but the massive crab guard knight king whatever with his 1300 hp plus his cohort of knights immediately jumped onto my boat when I escaped the shattering ice platform, which means my only option was to facetank a wall of hard-hitting combined 2500 hp on a boat where you can dodge nothing, and that's not counting the towers or claws. What the hell were they thinking? CK's minions from the ice platform should NOT be able to follow you onto your boat, if they do it's instant game-over. Can't fight, can't dodge. And yeah I know some will say panflute, but I put one purple gem too many because I only had purple/blue/red left, and blue and red are apparently even worse. Playing solo, it seems only green gems are not an insta-lose pick with Pearl's pearl, which is incredibly stupid, the boss is not customizable in any way if there is only one combination that doesn't insta-lose.

Malbatross is also bad, but much much much easier. The boats simply are completely unusable in any combat scenario and only create frustration for the player, every single time. You can't maneuver, dodge, or do anything.

 

And those dumb mobs are genuinely CAMPING MY BOAT WHERE I DIED. I couldn't even get my stuff back without a strong ranged option or using my ornery beefalo to destroy some good 1000hp left, they don't even despawn. This boss has never been playtested, it's obvious at this point.

And the pearl counting as 3 gems of each is simply too much, if it counted as 2 it would allow some wiggle room, but the way it is if you put the same gem twice in, it produces a massive effect. Red/blue/purple you die, orange he'll never die, yellow makes the towers almost immortal, only green gives you a chance because the claws can neither jump onto your boat nor damage it. And to think at release, the threshold wasn't even 5 gems but 4, so any single gem you'd put in after the pearl would be an insta massive powerup.

Edited June 30, 2025 by Dwight34

[cropo]

Crab King felt harder than most bosses for me as well. It was very weird hearing everyone saying he's so piss-easy, I would say he was about equal to Fuelweaver in terms of difficulty in my experience.

It was really only two things that was causing the difficulty as well for me; the first being canons popping up under your boat and ending the fight(because your boat is usually being pelted while you're on the ice and that's the nail in the coffin) and the weird range of the pan flute and randomness of effectiveness on the mobs.

[Dwight34]

1 minute ago, cropo said:

Crab King felt harder than most bosses for me as well. It was very weird hearing everyone saying he's so piss-easy, I would say he was about equal to Fuelweaver in terms of difficulty in my experience.

It was really only two things that was causing the difficulty as well for me; the first being canons popping up under your boat and ending the fight(because your boat is usually being pelted while you're on the ice and that's the nail in the coffin) and the weird range of the pan flute and randomness of effectiveness on the mobs.

There are some cheese methods, or abusing his low health pool by playing the typical clickbait youtuber way of playing Wolfgang + Volt Goat Chaud Froid to not even give his mechanics time to happen, but playing a normal damage character without Warly's cheat meal is just painful. Fighting the boss legit is one of the most horrid experiences in the game. And those crabs are deceptively strong, the little ones do 30 damage per hit, the big one does 80, and they all attack very fast and often, on a platform where you can't dodge if there are more than 2 enemies. The only solution I can even begin to imagine is to not get your boat close to the ice at all, rather use the lazy explorer to get in and out because you never have time to kill the minions if you don't want CK to heal to full, and if you don't kill them they follow onto your boat and destroy you.

This boss requires more resource dumping and execution skill than Fuelweaver, it's ridiculous. The design is good, but many things must be tweaked for the fight to be reasonable.

[Edible Coal]

39 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

There are some cheese methods, or abusing his low health pool by playing the typical clickbait youtuber way of playing Wolfgang + Volt Goat Chaud Froid to not even give his mechanics time to happen, but playing a normal damage character without Warly's cheat meal is just painful. Fighting the boss legit is one of the most horrid experiences in the game. And those crabs are deceptively strong, the little ones do 30 damage per hit, the big one does 80, and they all attack very fast and often, on a platform where you can't dodge if there are more than 2 enemies. The only solution I can even begin to imagine is to not get your boat close to the ice at all, rather use the lazy explorer to get in and out because you never have time to kill the minions if you don't want CK to heal to full, and if you don't kill them they follow onto your boat and destroy you.

This boss requires more resource dumping and execution skill than Fuelweaver, it's ridiculous. The design is good, but many things must be tweaked for the fight to be reasonable.

panflute

[Dwight34]

6 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

panflute

Already addressed it. And it's not good design to have the panflute be mandatory or almost mandatory for a fight. If panflute is the answer, then purple gems can't be put in, as I said, most gem combinations are simply stupidly devastating to the point no one with the knowledge would ever input them. CK gets too much of a buff with the pearl (which is the only reason most players would ever fight him) for most potential gem combinations to be anything but instalosses.