Love the way Legend of the Veil works, love the feel of it, the variation in the quest, etc. Love the Pirate Lord showing up and launching the quest, and the chapter setups. It just really feels like something worthy of a pirate legend.
The problem is that now the other quests feel really weak by comparison. Hence a request and a quick few suggestions for the two legendary quests:
The Basic Pirate Legend Quest, 8 little quests, followed by a chapter 2 and a nice chest of legend. I think we can do some easy fixes here:
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First, have the Pirate Lord show up on the ship when the quest starts, so he can say that he's learned about a bunch of different treasure stashes, by a legendary pirate from long ago, and he wants you to go find them, and it will take all the skills you've learned to become a legend, blah blah blah.
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Second, let's pump up the treasures here with some of the new Athena treasures - incense, offerings, etc - so that we're delivering a bit more legendary treasure feel. I can't imagine either of these would take a huge amount of time to change - sub some treasure, animate the Pirate Lord a bit, maybe have him show up at the end and say congrats, whatever.
Easy fixes, and will help them feel more in line with Legend of the Veil's more engaged and differentiated feel.
Run on Thieves Haven. I think this one is a bit harder to fix, because it's not quite a legendary quest, even though there's Athena treasure, so I'm not sure it makes sense to just have the Pirate Lord show back up to kick it off. I think that should be reserved for quests purchased from Athena's Fortune. That said, I personally love the idea of dubloon funded Bilge Rat quests as something awesome to do with all the otherwise useless dubloons we have around, and I'd love for the Run on Thieves Haven to really kick it off.
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My first suggestion here is to keep the core quest the same - finding things buried around Thieves Haven three different times, but to add an X to the first two Thieves Haven X "marks the spot" quest maps. The final x on each map would then be a message in a bottle to some other location. In effect this happens now, in that you find all the buried treasure and then the new riddle quest appears in your radial dial, but I think we can just make that transition look better.
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Second, I'd like to eliminate the riddle quests. Instead, let's imagine the story goes like this: pirate hides some treasure, you bought the original map to it from the bilge rats, it uncovers a bottle that will lead you eventually to a map that shows you where even more treasure is buried. At present, that happens with a riddle quest on a relatively nearby island. Instead, let's have it send you to a somewhat nearby shipwreck or a somewhat nearby smaller island, using something similar to the merchant's lost shipment maps, or a riddle that describes an island location or a shipwreck location. Arriving at a shipwreck or smaller island, players search around and find it lying somewhere around the location (think the lanterns for that old Flames of Fate event, tucked away somewhere in the foliage). There's no treasure in these two middle stages, but it does lead you to another X marks the spot map on Thieves Haven.
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Third, level up the loot. In this model, we've removed two treasure finds in this model (the two riddle based treasure chests), so let's up the value of the treasure buried on Thieves Haven. Change the probabilities for gem finds so more rubies appear, provide more valuable chests or athena's loot. I'm not talking about anything crazy, just a 15-20% value boost overall.
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Fourth and finally, let's do something that feels more Bilge Rat friendly. Make one of the treasures on the final X map one of the Tomes you can turn into the Bilge Rats. And then create and then add in a Bilge Rat item of some kind that gives a few dubloons and a truckload of gold when turned into Larinna. Personally I'd love this to be a unique item, something similar in look (not function) to the trident, like maybe a Bilge Rat belt or hat that has to be carried with both hands. I do think adding in a bit of better Athena loot on that final X marks the spot map is a nice addition as well, but if this is a Bilge Rat quest, let's give it a reason to be.
I think changing these two quest designs, in the one case slightly, and in the other case with a bit more work, would do wonders to making them feel a bit more engaging and differentiated.
Update: It occurs to me that if I'm going to ask for some Bilge Rat items, sure, I might as well ask Rare to make a whole uniform of items (hat, belt, shirt, pants, gloves, boots), and add some Bilge Rat commendations for it. Just make sure a random one o the six clothing items spawns as the final treasure of each Run on Thieves Haven. Turn it into Larinna and have her say something like "Oh, it's so good to have this back" or something, give a bunch of gold for it, and end the quest.
