The World of Sea of Thieves feels both amazing and predictable. Now pvp and other players are the main driving force in unpredictability. I believe its time we made the pve side of the world feel alive, not including World Events.
Animals
The Sea of Thieves is a tropical paradise and is supposed to hold a large number of animals, but here's the problem. You are more likely to encounter a skeleton than a boar. And the new animals: Lizards, Jellyfish, etc. feel way to scripted so let's change that.
First of all, make wildlife like boars or sharks, more common than Island enemies. I swear every time I set foot on an island Skeletons immanently spawn and in a high frequency. Turn that down. Secondly, Have the Jellyfish, Lizards, and schools of fish move around when a player gets close to them, like how the old animals act. No set paths like the lizards, no staying one spot like the jellyfish, just sporadic behavior that is hard to predict.
Add some new animals as well since a lot are mentioned in the lore:
Jaguars
Manta rays
Hammerhead sharks
Crabs
Turtles
You get the Idea, have an actual ecosystem, into the game. This will allow us to be surprised when enemies actually spawn. In addition to this have ambient spawning fishing spots whether it's in open sea or off an island's coast.
NPCS
Right now, the inhabitants of the sea of thieves are more boring than anything else. Taverns where we should see crews mingle and what not are practically empty. Not Just with players but with Npcs as well.
First, lets add some inhabitants to all the taverns, especially Port Merrick, Have these folks be useful, having a drink or meal with one may give you a new type of quest, a fun interaction or even help explain the story of the game, allowing both old and new players to catch up.
Second, allow us to buy food and drinks from the tavern and have us enjoy them while sitting down. which would help players interact with the residents as mentioned before.
Most importantly, have all the NPCs fully voice acted. since the smugglers are, we should have Larinna, Merrick, The Pirate Lord, Flameheart, etc. be fully voice acted.
New Chance Encounters on Islands
The seas have a huge variety of encounters that can happen, lets allow the islands to have them as well. I'm not talking about more enemies spawning like I said before, its annoying. rather new dynamic encounters. Here are a few Ideas
Phantom Camps
Flameheart has sent his Spanish Phantoms on certain Islands looking for ancient treasures. On large islands you can encounter these campsites of these soldiers. You can sneak around and listen to them speak, and sneak away with the loot, or fight them head-on which will give you a fight like a seafort but shorter, the phantom captain will drop a new skull The Conquistador's Skull Players can sell or use it to see where the phantoms have stowed a good stash of treasure. The sneaking allows players to grab a map of where they buried it instead.
These camps can also be encountered on demand via a smuggler voyage where you have to head to an island where a spanish fleet is docked, but the voyage provides a rowboat and encourages the sneaking mechanic introduced in season 14, a successful sneak play will grant smugglers with new loot and high value cosmetics, old timelimited cosmetics that can be stolen at the camps.
Captain's wrecks
On Islands, the skeletal remains of a washed-up captain can be found, when inspecting Players can find a key and a map to a shipwreck, these wrecks are different as they are coral encrusted, and lie with in reefs, sirens and sharks spawn in greater numbers but are much easier to kill. Using the key on the wreck players will find, a stash of barnacled chests for commendations, breaths of the sea, horns of fair winds, High value supplies, coral loot, and loads of rare trophy fish. The wreck will always be off the coast of the island but won't spawn until after the players interact with the skeletal remains on the island.
Skeletal Expeditions
Using his oracle, Captain Flameheart has learned where caches of weapons needed for his plans are being kept. To gather these arms, he has sent his skeleton fleet across the sea of thieves to find where they are buried and bring them to him. Players will see a skeleton ship pull up to a large island, whether they are on the island or not has not effect on if it will happen. Players will see new skeleton rowboats fall from the ship; the Skeletons follow a map to a location on the island where a weapons cache is being kept. Players can choose to sneak behind the skeletons and follow them or immeadently fight them, sneaking is preferred as it will guide players to where the cache is, however time is of the essence, as once the skeletons open the cache and take the weapons back to the ship, the ship will sail to reaper's hideout. If players are successful in sneaking and taking the key to the cache. They will be rewarded
The cache grants:
1 storage crate full of meat, cannonballs, bonecallers, and 20x chainshots
1 Black Powder Barrel
1 obsidian ashen winds skull
1 new reinforced cannon of rage. (20 cannonshots, longer range)
1 new crate of muskets, which can be sold to merchants or opened for five new weapons, One shot kill
1 crate of cursed cannonballs, which contains 1 of every type of cursed cannonball in the game.
These Caches are available to explore on large islands, But they will only have those items when a skeleton expedition is active
These are just some basic ideas. Let me know what y'all think
