Thoughts and Questions about the Sunken Kingdom

  • Liberance
    Master

    Hey there,

    A few days ago, I wrote an overly negative post about the Sunken Kingdom additions in some else's thread that I've since deleted, because I wanted to play some more of Season 4 to have a more informed opinion about it. Since I'm a bit late to the season, I may have missed the core of the discussion on this subject—if any, so hopefully I'm not retreading old ground.

    Anyways, I feel a bit conflicted about the Shrine and Treasury additions, since I'm not quite sure what they add to the game at the moment.

    Sirens and Ocean Crawlers were a nice change for Season 3, and they bring variety to NPC enemies. Discovering their lore through the Sunken Kingdom has been definitely fun and interesting, and there's a chill aspect to completing Shrines and Treasuries because—at least in my experience—they are locations that are rarely visited by other players, so they sort of become a single player adventure break if that's what you are feeling like at any given time.

    The thing is, is this actually that good?

    It feels to me that—unless I just had an incredibly lucky run—Shrines essentially double as Tall Tale-like dungeons that you can complete without worrying too much about someone coming in to ruin your day, and so do Treasuries, only in their case they pretty much work as underwater forts. You defeat waves of enemies, then collect the treasure. Although with one significant difference in both cases: your loot is locked away and safe from other pirates until you decide to retrieve it from the mermaid. Heck, your ship can even sink and send you back to the other end of the map, and you can still head back and collect it all taking your sweet time once the coast is clear. And this, to me, is where the risk/reward system that usually makes games interesting kinda falls apart. Unless I'm missing something.

    • Can any player summon and interact with the mermaid holding the loot collected in a Shrine/Treasury, or do they only show up for whoever found the loot in the first place?

    • Is there any incentive to sinking ships anchored over a Shrine/Treasury? I have never been sunk while doing these (one time I did sink it was because of a storm), which at first surprised me, but then again I guess if you see someone anchored at those spots the ship is likely going to be empty cause no one in their right mind would leave it full of treasure and unattended like that.

    • Is there any incentive to chase down players down to the Shrines/Treasuries? It looks like if you were to go after someone, it'd take too long for what it's worth, so better to leave them doing the hard work of finding the loot and wait for them to bring it up—but then again, can you steal it afterwards if you're planning an ambush?

    So even though they're undoubtedly beautiful looking locations, and it's a cool expansion of the lore, I'm still not sure if the Sunken Kingdom brought anything of real weight to the Sea of Thieves experience. Even the puzzles in the Shrines feel redundant after the quests from A Pirate's Life introduced the exact same mechanics. And I can't help but feel like the sea is getting a bit too cluttered with so many points of interest every two minutes. As it is right now, some of the island/outpost/shrine names even get mixed up because there's no room in the map for all the extra lines. It took me a while to find the Shrine of Ocean's Fortune on my first trip there because of how overcrowded with text its area of the map is now.

    Anyhow. Just figured I may share these thoughts to see what the community feels like about the new content.

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  • Limend
    Lord
    Insider

    @liberance said in Thoughts and Questions about the Sunken Kingdom:

    Hey!

    • Can any player summon and interact with the mermaid holding the loot collected in a Shrine/Treasury, or do they only show up for whoever found the loot in the first place?

    Any player who puts an item inside certain shrines/treasuries mermaid statue will "spawn" a new mermaid who can hold up to 20 items inside. Players from other crews can't interact with other crews mermaid.

    • Is there any incentive to sinking ships anchored over a Shrine/Treasury? I have never been sunk while doing these (one time I did sink it was because of a storm), which at first surprised me, but then again I guess if you see someone anchored at those spots the ship is likely going to be empty cause no one in their right mind would leave it full of treasure and unattended like that.

    There's really no reason to sink the ship above a shrine unless- 1. they're on your path or you have voyage for that same shrine, 2. they got long emissary flag and might have loot on board, or 3. they're doing a treasury in which case you might be able to get there in time before they finish it and put items inside the statues as ones they're in there you can't get them outside and no crew empties their mermaid without their own ship safely above the shrine.

    • Is there any incentive to chase down players down to the Shrines/Treasuries? It looks like if you were to go after someone, it'd take too long for what it's worth, so better to leave them doing the hard work of finding the loot and wait for them to bring it up—but then again, can you steal it afterwards if you're planning an ambush?

    You can wait above the water (maybe on their ship) for them to return and release the loot from the mermaid.

  • SweetSandMan
    Lord
    Insider

    How you should approach a shrine vs a treasury from a PvP perspective is quite different.

    For Shrines, these can take players 15 minutes...these can take players an hour...these can take players so long that they abandon the task and never complete it at all. It just depends on the competence/abilities/goals of the player under there. They may just be down there looking for that last journal. They may just be down there exploring. They may really be struggling with the puzzle. You don't know unless you go down and investigate.

    IMO, PVP'ing Shrines is a complete waste of your time unless you're very patient and want to wait it out at a nearby island and hope that the crew down there is going to come up with a tribute chest.

    For Treasuries, these are a unique PvP experience that not a lot of people have figured out yet. There's no puzzle, they're not that hard. They don't take very long to complete even if you're terrible at PvE.

    One unique treasury experience I had was when I was solo. I had done a thorough horizon check before I went down, knowing I can get one done in under 10 minutes very easily. Could a ship roll up and sink my ship while I was down there? Definitely. But, I was confident that I could get the treasury completed and get all the loot in the mermaid before anyone could roll up, swim down, and kill me. And that's exactly what happened. I was putting the last bit of loot in the mermaid when I heard a gunshot and saw a player entering the treasury. I immediately took the mermaid to go back to my ship, which I assumed they had sunk, and they did. My ship had re-spawned a few islands north of the treasury. I sailed back over there anticipating a battle, but they had gone. I simply collected my loot from the mermaid and sold the Breath as planned. I assume after they realized there was no loot for them and no way for them to get the loot from the mermaid, they gave up.

    The point of that story is to hopefully inspire ideas on how they could have approached things differently if they really wanted the loot.

    If you see a ship sitting over top of a treasury, it's likely the better idea to wait patiently from a good vantage point (nearby island) for them to finish, come back up, and release the loot from the mermaid. THEN pounce.

    If you see a ship approaching a treasury and can not only get there and swim down to the treasury in less than 10 minutes, It'd be a unique opportunity to go into the treasury with them, do some hand-to-hand combat, and put the loot in the mermaid yourself. You just have to keep in mind that everyone is re-spawning in the treasury vestibule indefinitely. Unless you're VERY confident in your hand-to-hand skills or know you're out-numbering whoever is down there, you're going to have an endless TDM where you're competing to put loot into the mermaid first.

    To sum it up...I'd say Shrines are not worth anyone's time to actively try and steal....But Treasuries you just have to be patient and strategize your steal instead of approaching it with brute force.

  • MadFrito99
    Seafarer
    Insider

    the sunken kingdom was nice for the commedations minus getting 30 breath of the seas. after you have completed all the commedations there is 0 reason to continue doing them…anytime you have to leave your ship alone is not good so rarely do people actually do them because of this. the one thing they could have done was make the loot barnacled loot to make it more worthwhile to go after

  • Liberance
    Master

    @limend said in Thoughts and Questions about the Sunken Kingdom:

    Any player who puts an item inside certain shrines/treasuries mermaid statue will "spawn" a new mermaid who can hold up to 20 items inside. Players from other crews can't interact with other crews mermaid.

    This here seems to be a problem for me, then. It'd be far riskier if anyone could retrieve the loot from the mermaid. Having it effectively locked away from others makes it very hard to steal, unless someone sneaks up on you after the items surface, but you really gotta be careless to let this happen.

    Which kind of takes us to this other point...

    @madfrito99 said in Thoughts and Questions about the Sunken Kingdom:

    the one thing they could have done was make the loot barnacled loot to make it more worthwhile to go after

    Indeed.

    The barnacled loot is just not valuable enough to justify all the trouble and waiting one would have to go through to steal it.

    Forts could've been a good reference for this: people rarely ambush in regular forts, however it's pretty common with the Fort of the Damned and Forts of Fortune. The value and uniqueness of the loot you get from them makes it worthwhile.

    @sweetsandman said in Thoughts and Questions about the Sunken Kingdom:

    How you should approach a shrine vs a treasury from a PvP perspective is quite different. (...)
    IMO, PVP'ing Shrines is a complete waste of your time unless you're very patient and want to wait it out at a nearby island and hope that the crew down there is going to come up with a tribute chest. (...)
    If you see a ship sitting over top of a treasury, it's likely the better idea to wait patiently from a good vantage point (nearby island) for them to finish, come back up, and release the loot from the mermaid. THEN pounce.

    This was pretty much my conclusion as I was playing them and considering the risks involved. For Shrines, I doubt anyone would've bothered coming after me. With Treasuries it could've happened, but then again, anyone hiding must have been doing a real good job for me not to notice.

    The only Treasury that I think offers a good chance for an ambush is the Treasury of Sunken Shores, since it's pretty close to Smuggler's Bay and that island is large enough that it can cover an entire ship while giving the crew a good vantage point.

    Yet why would someone do this when they could be going after some world event or emissary, I guess.

    I suppose a unique aspect of the Shrines/Treasuries is that part of the crew can always go down there to do them while the rest continue exploring or doing other stuff with the ship. However, I've played them solo and with friends, and no one wants to be the one who stays up either alone or outnumbered manning a ship with half the crew.

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