Tone Down the Lightning

@jonaldinho

This is temporary during the Festival of the Damned:

Lightning Strikes - Prepare for (even more) treacherous weather conditions! Players who brave a storm will be able to tempt fate with an increased chance of lightning strikes being reported across the world. This additional peril is forecast to last for the duration of the Festival of the Damned before conditions return to normal again.

Sea of Thieves on Twitter / X

@sgt-palooggoo I strike faster than the lightning 👀

I like the addition of lantern colors but idk why they are earned through dying.

Would be cooler if you had to catch lightning with your lantern raised to get a white flame, collect enough snake venom in your lantern (or in a new potion vial item, to then be added to your lantern)

Let us earn them while still alive lol..

@sshteeve still they could have made it so that getting them handed to you after death is an option, and earning them while alive is too. Maybe give the death ones just enough commendations for the items, and then have the “legendary” commendations be to earn them in ways while alive.

Then if there was a title exclusive to unlocking the commendations the harder way, people would have a cool exclusive to go for, or not.

I get the connection for halloween and the ferryman, but this isnt the update to spawning many of us were talking about with updates to the ferry. It would be like if they put a hat on the mermaid teleporters and called that an update.

Not trying to complain, i have always asked for lantern colors but i wish there was more to it than dying over and over for just commendations. Something like new ghosts enemies or even adding zombie looking skeletons with names of people from the community/forum/alpha as a funny way to include the community, etc. as much as everything in the game already does need more variety and improvements, would be nice to see assets being added other than cosmetics, that actually add to the sandbox like the speaking trumpet. Lantern colors do this i guess i just wish they would have an event that isnt designed to be accomplished by everyone, and not by killing ourselves lol..

@q-WOMBAT-p is right, it is horrible.
I'm going to use some of op's wording to show how far it went the other way.

Last night my experience in SoT was rather frustrating. I duo'd with my friend who needed to get each light. I began searching for a storm after getting the easy green and blue, knowing it was the white that would be hardest. Oh how little did I know.
It took over 2 hours of sailing in storms with him at a sliver of life to get hit. Doing nothing else other than him in crows nest, on the wheel staying still, holding every object we could think of.. nothing would get him hit. Shooting him up into the storm, sitting in the sea, on land.
Nothing worked.

As an almost pirate legend, this was incredibly frustrating for me. I can only imagine the frustration that a NEWCOMER to the game might feel. I get it that the lightning has been toned down due to complaints like these, but this is a little excessive. The lightning should still feel somewhat natural, like if you are holding metal in the sea, you should be a conduit. The longer you are in a storm, the more chance you get (pseudo random chance). Make it so if they are holding a metal object they get struck at an increased rate, if they are not (hands empty/wood/banana/etc) they rarely get struck.

Rare, I know people complain about volcanoes hitting them, about lightning hitting them, but remember, they can learn to steer clear of things. That is truly more like what the sea would hold, instead of "scary looking" volcanoes, and "threatening" lightning, you would have actual pirate killing, ship wrecking dangers out there.