Controversial Idea: Crafting

My first thought:

A glider. A glider works similar to a basic glider from Breath of the Wild. From a high vantage point (say a cannon launch, an island peak, or a crows nest), you can jump, by jumping a second time, you extend the glider and can coast through the sky (obviously making you a tempting target to any who can see you.) You can end gliding by hitting jump a second time (and falling) or by touching ground. When you end gliding, the glider is consumed.

You may carry items while gliding, (Such as a keg!), but may not use weapons.

@scheneighnay
I can see 3 pirates flying over a ship trying to dive bomb kegs from consumable gliders.

More ideas:
Firefall cannon balls. Launch over another ship, and it explodes, raining firebomb equivalents across a very wide area. Best if exploded at some distance above a ship....tricky timing.

Ability to build cursed cannon balls.

Floating Mines (similar to what is seen from ghost ship kegs)

@d3adst1ck
I would say it depends on the strength of the weapon. Mines, for example, are not particularly strong. (They have potential uses, but are fairly niche and designed to deal with pursuit) As such, components for them would likely be common across the seas.

Firefall bombs? Those could be devastating in combat...you might need to get components from wilds and shores of plenti to get those.

And remember, all of those have to be built at particular spots on the map, not a station on the ship. In essence, I'm aiming for a balance between hard to get and devastating to use.

Though, I would lean towards "tools" more than weapons, but the tools still need to have a certain strength to them...the glider being a good example.

@tybald floating mines is a cool idea but then they'll just say lob kegs off the back

@hornet-hill-19
Yes. (I've wanted the ability to have a small "toss" to kegs for a while.) The biggest issue with throwing kegs off the back is the physics of dropping stuff lends itself very much to blowing your own ship up due to a bad drop.

@d3adst1ck

By all means though, feel free to add in ideas you think would be good as well.

@lordqulex
You aren't thinking broadly enough with gliders. You'd also have another route for boarding, launch a pirate from a cannon and then have them deploy gliders for long distance boards. It also is a different dimension, after all, while they are more visible, they are also not bottlenecked to the ladders....risk/reward.

@lordqulex
I don't want crafting items to replicate existing common found items. Something like curse balls? Given their rarity and random nature, I'd be inclined to let those be crafted, primarily for the potential of being able to choose the type of curseball you want.

I'd also want things to have great use outside of PVP. The white flare can act as a lantern for shadow skellies, a firefall bomb, shot over a fort, could rain fire down on an entire skeleton wave. It wouldn't wipe them out immediately, but it could definitely make the wave easier, especially metal skellies.

@scheneighnay
Kraken bait! (Warning large AOE, could trap own ship!)

@tybald haha that's so true its risky asf!

@elk37k
Why yes, yes you could...

I see dive bombs, long distance boards, cannon and glides, etc.

I wanted to put a bit more thought behind the crafting above, and perhaps, tie it in with some of the other systems I've touched on.

I've mentioned that I believe that components should be scattered throughout the seas, and that crafting items should be powerful and difficult.

There are two different, generic ways, to look at crafting systems from a high level (and these are more of a spectrum than they are hard-and-fast.)

• One way is from a "shop" aspect, where 'materials' are in essence, currencies that you exchange for items at an interface that takes on the form of a crafting station. This is best when the crafting materials are very generic, and can be used over any number of items. Think, for example, a wood-working system that generates furniture. The wood is a currency that gets exchanged for the particular piece of furniture, with some level of 'gamey-ness' in between.

• The other way is to think of the system as component based. Components are, instead of currencies, tokens that you have to have in order to exchange for the item. Unlike currencies which are very generic, components are fairly specific. You have a sword grip and a sword blade, and you can exchange the two items for a sword.

Many games combine the two in a tiered fashion. Instead of using currencies to purchase the item, you instead use the currencies to buy components, which you then exchange for the item you want. It creates a long-term investment in crafting, and works towards creating an in-game economy, as the raw currencies can be exchanged for other currencies. It doesn't work for SoT.

SoT doesn't need a crafting economy. It's not that type of game. So, a crafting system needs to fit into the existing gameplay loops. "Go out, do stuff, return to port, collect rewards" The type of permanence offered by other crafting systems doesn't work. As such, the system needs to be greatly simplified.

I want to combine currencies and components in a way that allows for the game to fit into the gameplay loop, and be easily expandable. If, after the initial implementation, developers want to add in new craft-able tools, it's easy enough to do so, and provides enough flexibility that the crafting system can also hook into other systems in the game.

So, my proposal is as follows:

Crafting is a combination of specific components, and regional based currencies. Each region has craftable based currencies, I'll call them "dust" for now, as they are the magic pixie dust that gets sprinkled on to make things work. Dust is found all over the world in barrels, and is fairly easy to come by. There is a specific type of dust related to each region (Wilds, ancient isles, shores of plenty, and even the devil's roar). Components are more specific, at best belonging to 1 or 2 recipes, or belonging to a group of related recipes (such as cursed cannon balls). Components are equivalent to treasure, and can be found and added in any way that treasure could be found. They may be washed up on the shore, under the water, in shipwrecks, vaults, etc. Specific components, like specific treasures, may only come from certain types of events, while others may only spawn in certain areas, such as the beaches of the devil's roar.

An item's recipe then would be a combination of 1-2 types of dust in various quantities, plus 1 or 2 components.

The crafting stations are set spots in the seas, and are not at outposts. They may be certain items of islands (such as like with the altars for Graymarrow) or they may be entire sets, like the sea forts/siren shrines.

@ghutar

Balance is important. You want very powerful stuff to require more travel (And therefore time) to get, otherwise, it becomes too powerful. It needs to be uncommon, but potentially game changing if used right. Similar to something like a wraithball or stronghold keg.

The key though is everything craftable is temporary and consumable. A rowboat is 'permanent' in that it sticks around for the life of the server until it is sunk. You would only need to craft 1 of them (unless you lose it.). The 'glider' idea? It's consumed upon use in some way, so you'd want to make multiples, but that requires more farming to do. Obviously, numbers made at a time, dust cost, carrying capacity might all change due to balance issues.

Let's not forget that crafted items, components, and dust would also all be able to be stolen, dust is in a supply barrel, components are onboard like treasure, and crafted items....depends on the item, but would either be in a barrel, on a pirate, or treasure, depending on the exact item we are talking about.

@capt-pilotes

I wouldn't want to craft rowboats, but.....row-boat attachments, temporary cannon, temporary hookshot, temporary....something...that could work.