Message in bottle Complete Revamp - 2 things - Leads to new chest that can be opened by crew to unlock rare skins and message bottles can now be stolen from ship.

  • Bigchop00
    Sailor

    Right now message in a bottle is an unrealized mechanic that hasn't been fully realized yet and just leads to a subpar single stage voyage that is usually ignored. Here's what I want to propose.

    1. Discovering a message in a bottle is a legitimately exciting event, so exciting you'll want to delay everything else, your current voyage, or your plans to run a fort, etc, to go seek out the mystery of the bottles fortune.
    2. Finding a message in a bottle requires placing the bottle on your voyage table. It's a physical item and it can be stolen by another pirate crew who wanders up to your voyage table and grabs it.
    3. Messages in a bottle are a separate entity than the quests found in barrels, I'm talking about the physical bottles that are occasionally beached on islands.
    4. They can vary in difficulty or be multi-quest that lead where it leads to another bottle, BUT, the end result is a special chest that your crew must deliver to a special vendor, maybe its a roaming npc ship? This chest can be stolen. The delivery of this special chest reveals and unlocks a single skin that is immediately awarded to all players in your crew. (you have unlocked Blackbeards trousers!), etc. These are skins that only exist by seeking out and running messages in a bottle. You only get 1 piece of clothing, but there will be full sets with multiple tiers of rarity. But the idea here is that finding a message in a bottle is exciting and has great value.
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  • A Cranky Eskimo
    Master
    Insider
    Founder

    I completely agree with the idea of rng based rewards from rare voyages that can only be found this way. I think they make them appear so often because of the complaints about how linear and fetch questy the voyages are, abd these provide more emergent gameplay by finding them, and when they add more to the pve gameplay loop they will likely dial them back, but after you mentioned rng, made me wonder what youd think of my “New Pirate Legend Voyages” thread.

    Leave a comment there if you have anything to add to it.

    As for the messages in bottles, i would like to see new quests where you find stranded sailors or they sometimes just have pieces of paper that tell you where a shipwreck will be, or that have vouchers for plank banana or cannonball crates or even rowboats to be retrieved from the shipwright. Things that add activity but arent voyages.

    Heck if you read my legend “voyage” (might change the title to activity) idea maybe these bottles could have a rare chance to drop a gold hoarder key to non legend crews. Things that drive gameplay and make people want to level up, but dont handicap them for not having done so, to keep the level playing field for combat.

  • MaliceVanRow
    Captain

    i really like this. Right now, the message in bottles/barrels are an annoyance that cant be discarded. Id like to see this implemented as the mystery of what you get at the completion of it is nice. Especially if its cosmetics that can only be obtained by completing these.

  • Arch iDeall
    Marauder

    May I suggest that the new physical treasure maps would drop from the encounters?

    For example each megadolon would drop an unique bottle and have it's own colored set.

    Each time you do the voyage you unlock one part of set. The progression would be fixed so one person might get the first item (belt etc) while another crew member who has done it many times might get the last item (hat etc).

    The bottles would float in the water for the duration of 2 in-game days so that it's easier to retrieve when you die or exciting to find randomly.

  • Bigchop00
    Sailor

    @archaell
    Interesting idea.

    How about this.
    Events & bosses could have a chance to drop a "cosmetic" chest. The chest has a chance of appearing as 1 of 4 tiers. Common, Rare, Golden or Legendary. When you turn in one of those 4 chests you have a chance to get a skin from that pool of skins. (A legendary cosmetic chest turn-in awards an item from the pool of legendary skins, etc)

    Messages in Bottles are random, you don't know what tier chest you're going to find until you dig it up. Perhaps megs would be slightly geared higher towards the better 3, and not from the common pool, a shrouded meg could be a guaranteed legendary chest, etc

  • Arch iDeall
    Marauder

    @bigchop00 I am not a fan of different colored lootboxes.

    The Monster Hunter approach is much better - you kill a megadalon (or the skeleton ship / kraken) you get a treasure map that gives you part of its set seems better than RNG loot. The encounters are rare enough - getting the Shrouded Ghost set would be hell. ;)

  • Bigchop00
    Sailor

    I wouldnt want a shrouded ghost set. What I'm saying is - Messages in bottles lead to 1 of 4 chests, random, common more likely. So you can theoretically run enough messages in a bottle and eventually come across a "legendary" cosmetic chest, giving you acess to that pool of skins. Now as an incentive to kill the monsters of the game, they also can have a chance of immediately spawning one of those 4 cosmetic chests without any searching required. This chest can, of course, still be stolen, and it still needs to be delivered to the correct npc before the crew is awarded a skin. So by this method there is no "shrouded ghost set" It's just that a shrouded ghost, because of its rarity, gets legendary cosmetic chests added to its loot table as a guarantee.

  • Sw1tchO
    Seafarer

    I am in 100% full support of making the bottles more rare, but they should be better-than-voyage rewards. After all the SOT fun is going on an adventure/fight you didn't expect.

    Or AT LEAST make it so that the mission is tied to your current level or higher in that faction.

    Right now they're only fun if you get lucky with a multiple X/multiple captain on a small island for quick loot.

  • Bigchop00
    Sailor

    @sw1tcho
    What we're saying is, not only should they be more rare, they also shouldnt have anything to do with the current voyage system, they should lead to special chests (also can be stolen) that unlock rare cosmetics. When you run a message in a bottle, the final result is a cosmetic chest, the chests come in 4 tiers of rarity. if you lucked out, you found a legendary cosmetic chest and when you succefully turn it in, you get access to 1 item in the legendary skin pool of items chosen to you at random, you don't pick it. To get them all would require a significant amount of dedication to running these missions... or a whole lot of creative stealing from other players.

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