I believe there could be a number of small additions that could be fun, at least in my opinion, giving players more options to pursue piracy both in their downtime and while sailing the high seas.
1st) A Devils Roar sea fort, Sunken Treasury, and Sunken Shrine. These obviously would need a slightly higher difficulty level than the standard ones in the larger area of the map, maybe with the sea fort being built around a freestanding volcano like most of the islands, while the two sunken areas are likely to have more enemies and ashen variants in the treasury, and lava-flow hazards inside the shrine.
A couple names might be The Shrine of Sulfur, the Treasury of Tinders, and (after our favorite traitor) Stitchers Sea Fort.
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grog acts as a minor healing item. One tankard can get you slow health regen, up to half health. Effects are maybe 5hp/amount of grog drank, with the risk of getting drunk faster while at lower health. Testing the risk v. Rewards of healing off of grog.
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boarding axes. A simple pair of weapons that allows pirates to climb most wooden surfaces at a quarter the speed they could climb a ladder, does slightly more damage as a weapon, drawback being you only get two swings in a normal attack, and both heavy and normal attacks are much slower than swords. You have a no block with the axes, however, as the axes come in a pair (one in left and right hand) you can swing each axe independently, and to activate the heavy attack you have to hold both the attack buttons at the same time, for a downward cleave dealing massive damage. Due to the weight of these weapons the cooldown from a heavy attack is also longer than that of the sword or throwing knives.
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Tavern Games. Gambling halls in the upstairs area most taverns have closed off would be an interesting way to earn gold/rep/dabloons from various games, all supervised by a new character group for each of the taverns (Gambling Gabriel, card shark Carrie, etc). All games can be played against other players on high or low stakes, or bots on low stakes only. Low stakes games, obviously, have low rewards. Bots can can be anything from other pirates to ghosts/skeletons/ocean crawlers/even sirens in fish tanks, all following the rules of ceasefire laid out by the gambling hall) and while most bots are locked in low stakes areas, high stakes games can have special appearances from Larissa, Duke, The Pirate Lord, and other high ranking characters of the world. There are 4 main types of games. They are the games of fate (order of souls themed), games of luck (gold hoarders themed), games of precision (merchant themed), and games of skill (Athena/Reaper themed).
- Games of fate would be dice games, such as Hazard (or krabs since the more common name is “vulgar”), cee-Lo or poker dice.
-games of luck would be slot machines, maybe pachinko, and other things that really don’t require much thought or practice (obviously out of the time period but pirate magic can explain it away). - games of precision would be games like blackjack and roulette where you are trying to hit a very specific number without busting
-games of skill would be like Texas hold’em, liars dice (Davy jones makes a special appearance for this one) or other other table games where reading your opponent and bluffing your hand are important.
And what pirate tavern game wouldn’t be complete without cheating? This mechanic would allow players and bots to tilt the odds in their favor, at the risk of getting caught and thrown out of the game (lose small amount of money and health, wake up at the base level of the tavern like you would spawning in). Low stakes games give you 5 strikes for cheating, with various probabilities of getting caught displayed clearly (hide a card 15% chance to get caught for example) the more you cheat the higher the probability goes up. The high stakes games you only get 3 chances to cheat and the probability of getting caught is much higher, and not displayed. Tavern games also add in a new title for captains and their ships “The Gambler” and it benefits from playing these games and winning or Losing provides ranks and titles, trinkets, and ship cosmetics. Titles might include masterful cheater, for getting away with cheating x amount of times; or Losing streak, for losing x amount of games in a row.
