Jump to content

Shipwrecked: Hurricane season lightning excessive and not fun


Recommended Posts

I get that as the counterpart to Winter the hurricane season is meant to encourage the player to get a base prepared to wait out the weather, but at least in the base game with enough preparation it was possible to do some exploration in Winter. In hurricane season, though, the rate at which lightning strikes is so absurd that it feels impossible to go anywhere on land that's not your lightning rod-equipped base camp.

A good example: knowing I had a full moon coming up and not yet having any wildbore houses built near my base, I went to a nearby island with a bunch of flower petals and vegetables to wait for nightfall so I could both load up on manure and kill the werepigs and hammer the house to "relocate" it. As the werepig is pigging out, lightning strikes the manure he's making, destroying it and the flower petals he was eating... fantastic. After the werepig finished running around on fire, it went to the next pile, and the same thing happened again. Then for some reason he stopped being a werepig well before the sun rose? Which was weird but whatever. Then lightning hit a tree nearby and lit the house on fire. I managed to gather enough hail to keep extinguishing the house while waiting for the trees to stop, losing a big chunk of health in the process but whatever. After all that died down, I went to collect the little manure that survived all this mess as the wind blew it away, and while I was collecting it, guess what? Lightning struck and roasted all of that too.

Come on. That's not fun. That's exasperating. And there's no practical solution to the problem but to just stay home and wait for 15 days. I mean I guess you could build a lightning rod everywhere you go but with gold being as scarce as it is in Shipwrecked that's not really going to work in the long run. If there was some practical preparations that could be made to alleviate the concern that'd be just fine, but there aren't.

As much as I generally don't like tossing out harebrained ideas for items and mechanics, I'd like to suggest some sort of headgear that acts as a mobile lightning rod. Obviously it needs to have some limitations or downsides, so maybe it could do the lightning's damage to the player (regardless of insulating items like the snakeskin jacket) with every strike, only take a certain number of strikes before it breaks, maybe both? Just something. Spending all hurricane season sitting around camp or else staying away from land and just waiting for Sealnado to show up is just no fun at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's an option to turn down lightning (and fire spreading?) in world customization. Besides that, the first few days shouldn't be too big of a deal when it comes to exploring and getting stuff done. The further it gets into the season the harder it will be to really go anywhere so spend those days fixing up your base or preparing for the next season. I usually time the raining and lightning, so as soon as it stops I'm off my base island and getting to where i need to go (this works better earlier in the season since you'll have more time between storms). I just think of hurricane season as a time to get things together in my base and then i go exploring all other seasons.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Urfable said:

There's an option to turn down lightning (and fire spreading?) in world customization. Besides that, the first few days shouldn't be too big of a deal when it comes to exploring and getting stuff done. The further it gets into the season the harder it will be to really go anywhere so spend those days fixing up your base or preparing for the next season. I usually time the raining and lightning, so as soon as it stops I'm off my base island and getting to where i need to go (this works better earlier in the season since you'll have more time between storms). I just think of hurricane season as a time to get things together in my base and then i go exploring all other seasons.

Preparing is the smartest move.

Hurricane makes you stay at base, while moonsoon makes you want to leave.

Use hurricane for taking care of base, getting brain of thoughts and other preperations, preferably anti venoms(You will be needing these).

Prepare with sandbags for safety, and or have a temporary base(though the floods reach all islands, not just the one you're in)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So I've thought about the comparison between winter and hurricane season. It's not so much that you can't explore during hurricane season but it's more that you wouldn't necessarily want to. Winters can freeze you, so your preparations are probably some clothing and thermals but thermals only last so long until they turn cold and actually threaten to freeze you faster. Hurricane season doesn't pose that threat. Lightning can strike you and you can get wet, but with some snakeskin clothing, it's not even a problem.
You can definitely choose to go exploring, there's a lot less obstacles in your way if you prepare properly, the only thing you'd be worried about is lightning burning things down and a good source of light (which isn't a big problem sometimes with the frequency of lightning strikes). You wouldn't walk around important things at your base when there's a storm (unless you have lightning rods) so why would you do that on other islands? Get to the island you want to go (or whatever island you happen to come across) and find a spot that doesn't have a lot around. That will reduce the risk of burning too much down if lightning happens to strike something. When the storm stops, get what you need or look around and then get off the island or go back to the spot you chose to camp out at.

TLDR: Exploration during hurricane season isn't impossible, it just takes preparation and patience.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...