The Captain's Quarters [Chapter 4]: Sunken Curse

  • Murkrage
    Commander
    Insider
    Boatswain
    Founder

    Prologue

    Ahoy there fellow Pirates!

    Today's 'The Captain's Quarters' isn't just the fourth chapter, it's also one month since I started writing them. As some of you may have read in last week's chapter 3 about community ideas, I now have a small crew to help me do these things. I'm grateful for them taking the time to voice their thoughts and opinions and what you are about to read is written with their input in mind!

    Just a reminder that the purpose here is to encourage healthy discussions about the things that have been added. Any arguments should be settled according to the Pirate Code: on the seas.

    Here's this week's The Captain's Quarters!

    Bilge Rat Adventure no.3: The Sunken Curse

    Our waters be cursed and our brave explorer hearts are put to the test while we search and destroy the Cursed Mermaid Statues that roam around the islands.

    Sunken Curse Event - Cursed Mermaid Statues are the latest addition to Sea of Thieves. Hidden in the shallows around island shores, they radiate ancient magic. For this adventure, the Bilge Rats are challenging all brave pirates to seek out and destroy the statues. Not all statues are bound by the same curse but they all regenerate health over time, and while some will require more firepower than others to destroy, no more than four players will be required to destroy even the toughest statue.

    First things first; when I heard about the name for the third adventure I was very excited. As we all know the release date for Cursed Sails is going to be in July. The timing and name of this adventure were absolutely perfect for a build up event towards Cursed Sails. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Yes, I burned myself by expecting something and not getting it. Still, I feel this is a missed opportunity because the timing would have been absolutely perfect!

    So what is it that we have to do this time around? Well around the island there are these mermaid statues, as you can see pictured above. There are three variants: Sapphire, Emerald and Ruby. Coincedently the third generation of Pokémon games were also called: Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. I am counting on the next adventure to have something to do with Diamond and Pearl, otherwise I'll be very disappointed. What? Sunken Curse? Oh... right.

    The three types of statues have an increasing difficulty. Sapphire is easily done solo where you'll need some help to take down Emerald and Ruby. There are players who've done all three solo, so it is definitely do-able! I would suggest trying out yer skills and see if you can take them down yerself.

    Finding the statues isn't too hard. There's a new type of ambient music that comes with the statues and you can usually hear it when on deck. If you happen to sail over one, like we did quite a lot, you'll hear it. In my crew's case this meant that two of us would go absolutely crazy and yelled: "I CAN HEAR ONE!" and subsequently jumped overboard.

    How do you take them down? Well, there is a variety of ways. You could hit them with your sword or you could use your guns. There are players out there, however, who are incredibly patient and put a couple of barrels above the statue and waited until they sank to the bottom of the sea. When timed correctly you could blow all of them up and take down the statue.

    Disappointment
    Okay, I'm going to start with something a bit negative here. Yes, I was rather disappointed with this adventure. The name got me thinking that we'd have a curse we would face at the bottom of the sea somewhere. We would fight something and cure ourselves, or the sea, of said curse. I didn't think we would be hitting statues until they explode which, granted, does look pretty cool.

    I thought the Skeleton Thrones were okay simply because there was some skill involved regarding your cannon aim. There were a few easy ones, a few harder ones and one that got players so mad they drank all the grog the sea could offer. Yes, I'm looking at you Marauder's Arch! Anyhow, the gunpowder skeletons were very cool because they put some dynamic into Order of Souls and Skeleton Forts. They made you run for your life.

    Mermaid Statues, however, aren't really that exciting. Well, not if it's the main focus of your gaming session. Which brings me to my next point...

    Side quest to your main quest
    While hunting down statues and mind-numbingly hitting them until they explode isn't all that exciting, it really can be if it's an addition to whatever it is that you are already doing. I think the strength of this adventure lays within doing a voyage, like you normally would, and finding them along your voyage.

    This is exactly how my crew and I went about it. There's still a few crewmates left who need to become Pirate Legend so we let them decide what type of voyages we were doing. When arriving at an island we would simply do that voyage and one of us would have a quick swim around the island to see if any statues are there.

    Doing it this way caused two things. One: we were just doing voyages for hours on end and having an incredible fun time doing it. Two: there were other crews who did the same thing which meant that most of the ships you'd find had a decent amount of loot on them! The battles that then occurred were amazing because all ships had something to fight for now.

    Finding sunken items is a pleasure as well. You'll just run into them and can stack them next to the rest of your loot.

    Overall thoughts
    I've seen people rush to the end of this adventure, earning every single commendation there is. Afterwards they'd complain that it was too easy and boring to do. While I agree, I also feel that is in part due to the way these players went about it. Now, don't get me wrong, players need to be able to play this game the way they want. That means that if you want to focus on taking down statues, you should be able to and that is totally fine! I just feel that this particular adventure has been designed to go alongside your regular voyages. So I agree that focussing on this adventure alone really is boring. Doing it alongside your voyages, however, makes for a couple of great moments and battles.

    Food for thought: Lore
    This one was mentioned by @Skulliah and I think it's something to think about. There isn't a single bit of lore around these adventures. Surely Rare could come up with even a tiny backstory as to why the Skeletons decided to become meaner and carry gunpowder kegs or why there are now Cursed Mermaid Statues appearing across the sea.

    Given the short lead time that THD and these adventures had, we understand that this could be overlooked. Hopefully lore will be a key point of adventures still to come!

    The Wailing Barnacle Set

    A new adventure also means a new set of cosmetics. Last adventure we were able to gain more items for our Bonecrusher set but, luckily, this adventure we are able to purchase an entirely new set. While I originally didn't like the bits of red on the shoulders and along the side, after I dug up a Chest of Sorrows I figured out what it's based off. It made me appreciate it a bit more.

    Now that we are on the subject of cosmetic sets that we can buy with Doubloons: why do we have to run all the way across the island to put it on?! We go into the Tavern to find Duke. We spend our hard earned Doubloons to get a new set from Duke. Great, you now have a new cosmetic set! Do you want to try it on? Yeah?! Great, you have two options: run back to yer ship or run to the clothing shoppe. You can't put it on right there at Duke's. Rare, please, give us a clothing chest near Duke 😊.

    Commendations, titles and Doubloons

    This time we are able to earn a total of 10 commendations, well 9 but I'll get to that. Only 7 are worth a couple of Doubloons. I think the new ribbon across the commendation is a lot more clear than that little thing we had previously. I'm glad that there's a new design for each new adventure. It makes filtering through the Bilge Rat commendations a lot easier.

    Okay, so about this 10th commendation. Number 9 is the Legendary Curse Breaker. To achieve this you need to destroy one hundred mermaid statues. This will simultaneously unlock commendation number 10: "Legendary Curse Breaker" title. Surely this could have been added to commendation number 9? I understand this is probably done to fill out the remaining space, but come on. It feels a bit, lazy.

    Bilge Rat Flag

    In last week's The Captain's Quarters I talked about having a Bilge Rat Flag. One of our community members, @archangel-timmy, even created a couple of designs of what these flags could look like. Then patch 1.1.5 came around and lo and behold Bilge Rat Flags were added to the game for Pirates to signal they are doing the new adventure! A great, and highly requested, addition.

    There is one thing, though. As you can see in the image above, the Bilge Rat Flags are present on all three masts for the Galleon. The flags we already have, like the Jolly Roger, is only present on the main mast with smaller, but similar colored, flags on the other two masts. I'm don't like having three flags. I like the approach of having a similar colored flag!

    Main Menu Pirate Animations

    As small as this addition may be, I'm incredibly fond of the new Pirate animations that populate our main menu! Each time you log in, your Pirate could be holding one of nine items. As you may remember, this was also the case for the Infinite Pirate Generator when you created your Pirate! It's great to see such a small thing being added here, because I feel it really enhances your experience to some degree. It throws you right into the environment you are about to step into 😊.

    Epilogue

    As is usually the case with these things: it's been a long read! The read is over, though, and I thank you for making it this far. I would love to know what you think of this update and what your thoughts on it are.

    A big thank you to the following people for either sending in a screenshot of their main menu, or helping out with thoughts for this chapter:

    If you think I can do something better with The Captain's Quarters (TCP), please let me know. I want to create the best TCP I can make each time around so I'm open to all feedback 😁.

    Smooth sailin' to ye,
    Murkrage

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  • xCALYPT0x
    Master
    Insider
    Boatswain

    @murkrage Oh baby. I've been waiting for this post so I could shred Rare like cheese mwuahahaha! Let me start with the good because I really truly enjoy the game and want to offer constructive feedback and not just complain all the time.

    The Good

    • Wailing barnacle set - Personally I really like this set! I've seen some people express a different opinion but I think it looks nice and I'm gonna wear it for probably the entirety of the next 2 weeks until new clothes (hopefully) come with the Cursed Sails DLC.
    • Bilge Rat Flag - More flags are always a good thing IMO. The current set of flags is very small.
    • Main Menu Pirate Animations - Excellent!! I've thought about how boring my pirate was in the menu screen for a while but never voiced it. Glad someone else did but I love this change.
    • Rare removed the requirement for another crew while they work on giving us tools to make it easier. I enjoy working with other crews but it's obvious we don't yet have a way to reliably do this past days 1 and 2 of each event. Removing it temporarily was a good decision IMO.

    The Bad

    • Cursed mermaid statues are BORING. You said they have "different" curses. All that is is a different regen rate on their health... I excpected actual curse effects and actual variety. Wish you would have had mermaids defending the statues and the different statues giving the mermaids different abilities/buffs
    • This event wouldn't be so bad if I could do Athenas and just hit statues at each island stop but... Athenas is broken. It's probably a decent event for people doing normal voyages but how many times are you going to let such huge bugs into your production build. You mentioned it in the dev update video though so I won't hold your feet to the fire this time. But next week I expect a clean build.
    • Wailing barnacle set is only jacket, dress, + hat. You didn't even include the eye patch that you showed us pre-launch????? First off, I don't know why the cosmetics that have been in the game before launch are being used as temporary content. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy time limited events. But they should be NEW. The stuff you already made should just be in the game... Second, why are the sets only a few pieces? Obviously people hated when you did that with black dog. I'm not saying we need equipment in the set as well but at least give us a full clothing set, cmon.

    I think that's everything. I'm sorry I had a lot of negativity this time around but I really believe that fixing these issues will make the game better for everyone.

  • Murkrage
    Commander
    Insider
    Boatswain
    Founder

    @xcalypt0x said in The Captain's Quarters [Chapter 4]: Sunken Curse:

    I've been waiting for this post

    I'm not sure if I should feel flattered or not haha, but it's great you've been looking forward to it!

    Rare removed the requirement for another crew while they work on giving us tools to make it easier. I enjoy working with other crews but it's obvious we don't yet have a way to reliably do this past days 1 and 2 of each event. Removing it temporarily was a good decision IMO.

    I completely forgot to mention this! Yes, it's great they removed the multi-crew requirement. I'm glad you still need to work together with your own crew tho.

    Cursed mermaid statues are BORING. You said they have "different" curses. All that is is a different regen rate on their health... I excpected actual curse effects and actual variety. Wish you would have had mermaids defending the statues and the different statues giving the mermaids different abilities/buffs

    Yeah I couldn't see the different curses either. That was quite a b****r to be honest.

    This event wouldn't be so bad if I could do Athenas and just hit statues at each island stop but... Athenas is broken. It's probably a decent event for people doing normal voyages but how many times are you going to let such huge bugs into your production build. You mentioned it in the dev update video though so I won't hold your feet to the fire this time. But next week I expect a clean build.

    I'm hopeful they'll have a fix for this by tomorrow. Seems like there's no weekend for Rare this week!

    I think that's everything. I'm sorry I had a lot of negativity this time around but I really believe that fixing these issues will make the game better for everyone.

    *Constructive, not negative :)

  • Ixxolos
    Lord
    Insider

    Olleh, Kudos to you and ye crew this was a very nice read.

    Whilst enjoying this adventure myself due to the added things to search out for during voyages i can see how it feels somewhat lackluster to many.

    So the statues are Cursed right, but we are destroying them.
    Does this mean we are destroying the curse along with the statue or are we releasing the curse unwittingly upon the seas thus triggering further event and adventure tie-ins for upcoming content etc in the future?
    I'd like this to be the case say for instance the Cursed Sails Captains hunting those pirates down who have the gaul to mock them with sitting upon fake Skellington Lord Thrones etc.
    So many ways to tie in some good hefty lore that the adventures could use alil more of imo.

  • Skulliah
    Legend
    Insider
    Boatswain
    Founder

    @Murkrage

    First, well done again matey!

    I think we, in a way, all thought this event (Sunken Curse) was a bit related to Cursed Sails because they both have the word "Curse" in their name. It would have been really awesome if the events could be used to introduce step by step the big updates! Anyway, it was the first 3 events they were doing and they now have a lot of feedbacks which I hope will be used to build those after Cursed Sails.

    And as you mentionned me (hehe), please Rare add some lore around them! It's really frustrating to have one guy telling you 'Hey this week we found mermaid statues around the islands, go destroy them!'. But... I don't really know why I should do that? In a narrative way, something doesn't feel right. I know, it's my own adventure and I could imagine what I want but I'm not sure here it's what I want to do because it's a common goal. Anyway, don't get me wrong, it feels really nice to explore underwater, everytime I hear the sounds I just jump off the ship and tell to my crew "MERMAID!! TAKE THE HELM!" which create some good laughs. I love so much the VFX! That being said, I really understand they had only 2 weeks to develop each event but adding more context and some backstory would really help in the immersion of these adventures.

    As you pointed, I like the fact we could do this event peacefully while we do our voyages and I don't get the players who are rushing to do them as fast as they can to be the first. I guess everyone play the game how they like but looking at the players scuttling their ships, to me, it's the best way to find this event boring. I like the fact I'm trying to find a chest and then I hear the mermaid sound. You know, it's these little things that bring you out of your journey for a few seconds and add something different. The thing is, the mermaid statues might still be there after the event but I'm really not sure if after my commendations I'll go destroy them again. Sometimes I ask my crewmates if they want to do the Thrones again but no one want to do that again. As far as I like they are still in the game and were a time limited event, it feels a bit sad we don't really care about them after completing them. The powderkeg skeletons in the contrary brought something which will impact almost every journey we'll have in the game.

    About the Barnacle set, it really don't fit my character and my tastes again. Some of my friends look very awesome with it but on me, nah. The long jacket just don't fit me and we already had two in the Bilge Rats cosmetics. I'd like more choices as a shirt! Especially for us Pirate Legends who have just almost nothing to spend our doubloons (no I don't want a letter of recommendation for Athena as I think it's a bit pointless at the moment). I hope we'll get one day some cosmetics a bit more expensive but which won't be time limited (or at least not in a 2 weeks span). Nope, I'm not thinking about some fancy ship skins :P

    I love the Bilge Rat flag! I was a bit surprised when I saw the 3 flags but well, I don't really have any thoughts about that except we can see quite far away it's the Bilge Rat flag a galleon is rocking.

    The pirate animations on the main menu are just awesome! The little thing that bother me is the fact the shovel or the hurdy gurdy are not the actual skins my character has. It doesn't feel it's my items then. I hope it could be tweak in a future update!

    Thanks again for this lengthy review and to create a discussion on each events :)

    Cheers!

  • xCALYPT0x
    Master
    Insider
    Boatswain

    @murkrage

    I'm not sure if I should feel flattered or not haha, but it's great you've been looking forward to it!

    Well I definitely intended it as a compliment :) It can get kind of exhausting seeing the same posts on the forum about topics that have been discussed a million times. Can't really blame most people because they just didn't know the topic has come up but it still get's exhausting rehashing the same thing.

    This is why I enjoy your Captain's Quarters series so much. I know it will be a well written, detailed, and thought out post about the current events in the game and will actually be a good launch point for meaningful discussion. So I hope you continue to do them :)

  • Murkrage
    Commander
    Insider
    Boatswain
    Founder

    @ixxolos said in The Captain's Quarters [Chapter 4]: Sunken Curse:

    Olleh, Kudos to you and ye crew this was a very nice read.

    Thank you very much :)

    So many ways to tie in some good hefty lore that the adventures could use alil more of imo.

    Aye, there's a lot of possibilities in regards of lore and storytelling. While the latest behind the scenes video makes a great point that the center of the narrative is the player, it would still be great to have some sort of backstory as to why we are doing these things during an adventure. What made the statues appear? Let me worry about why I am killing them, but let me know why they are here.

    @skulliah said in The Captain's Quarters [Chapter 4]: Sunken Curse:

    The pirate animations on the main menu are just awesome! The little thing that bother me is the fact the shovel or the hurdy gurdy are not the actual skins my character has. It doesn't feel it's my items then. I hope it could be tweak in a future update!

    I hadn't thought of that! It would be great if the pirates were holding your actual in-game skins, much like you are wearing your in-game clothing.

    @xcalypt0x said in The Captain's Quarters [Chapter 4]: Sunken Curse:

    @murkrage

    I'm not sure if I should feel flattered or not haha, but it's great you've been looking forward to it!

    Well I definitely intended it as a compliment :) It can get kind of exhausting seeing the same posts on the forum about topics that have been discussed a million times. Can't really blame most people because they just didn't know the topic has come up but it still get's exhausting rehashing the same thing.

    Aye, that is exactly why I started writing these :). The forums can go around in circles at times, making the same point over and over again. That is fine, that's usually how it works on a forum. I just wanted to break the cycle!

    This is why I enjoy your Captain's Quarters series so much. I know it will be a well written, detailed, and thought out post about the current events in the game and will actually be a good launch point for meaningful discussion. So I hope you continue to do them :)

    Thanks very much! I appreciate the compliments :)

  • Mr SHATANGO
    Commander
    Insider
    Founder

    Yay onwards to the next one :)

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