Skull Ball!

@whispernest what enhancements do you believe the skulls would give when they hit the ship? Separate from the cursed cannonball effects of course.

@tesiccl I don’t think it’s necessary for them to offer specifically new effects, as the curses within the game are already pretty functional, but I wouldn’t be opposed to there being additional options, if that’s something we can think of.

By having the effect be random, and intrinsically cost the crew money on fire, I am intentionally trying to design something that wouldn’t tilt combat to solely spellslinging, but would instead make finding that random villainous skull washed up on the beach interesting to other trade companies…

Do you have any cool curse effects in mind?

@remakoro yooo! Imagine if you could toss that sucker into your cannon and as long as you held the fire button your whole cannon spit focused flame!

That's a fun idea, I like it.

I would point out that villainous skulls are by far the easiest to obtain, and so scaling potency with value is perhaps the wrong way to go about it. Maybe villainous skulls, being more pure and focused, could be fairly predictable, while foul ones are more random and have the potential for more devastating effects?

@eldritchbear

Excellent point! You’re right that the power should be tied to rarity, not value!

@whispernest well it would be important to try to distinguish the effects. Here’s my idea to align with yours:

Fire the new skull we use for FOTD that has all 6 flames of fate. Set your flame colour choice and fire it out, if it hits the ship, then whatever colour it’s set to curses the crew for a period of time.

Let me elaborate.
White light? Lightning strikes come down to hit the crew.
Purple? Poison the crew
Red? Ship goes on fire.
Green? Skeletons spawn and attack you on board.
Blue? Random shark bites happen and take off 50% health.
Pink? Anchor is dropped and stuck there for a short period of time.

Some similar to cursed balls already but at least relating to the skull itself.

@tesiccl personally, I don’t mind the skulls simply having a randomized version of preexisting curses, albeit with some relationship between rarity of skull and potency of its curse. Yes, it’s a redundancy, but one that allows for more of a totally functioning preexisting, pre-balanced effect, without impacting the spawn rate of curse balls themselves.

Sort of like how a healing spell, healing scroll, and healing potion all offer roughly the same thing but come in different packages.

Curse balls are still way better, as they’re not randomized and you aren’t losing money by firing them. (Should you be able to sell cursed cannonballs to OoS at log?!) but this endows skulls a totally unique quality, differentiating it entirely and reinforcing the nature of the faction it represents.

I think your weaponizing the Skull of Destiny is super cool, and spending doubloons for a super shot would make that (until recently) pretty-dusty economy all the more interesting

Homing cannonballs, perhaps? The better the skull, the better the tracking “skullware”?

@foambreaker a BilgeBall XD