Let me start by saying that i am utterly in love with Sea of Thieves BUT i am worried about the longevity of the game at it’s current state. I do agree with the people that say that this game is in dire need of more content, so i compiled a list of ideas that i think would significantly add more variety to the list of things you can do in Sea of Thieves whilst remaining as lore friendly as possible. These suggestions come from a place of love and interest for the future of this game.
A rework of the merchant company
As it stands the quests of the merchant company feel like a chore. My friends and all the people i met ingame and chatted with had their merchant company ranks way lower than that of the other two companies because they found them boring to complete.
Suggestions on how to improve this:
- Hunting Sharks & Whales with a new weapon or ship accessory; the Harpoon (perhaps using pigs or chicken as bait in the water?). Additionally, hunting the Kraken for a tentacle trophy.
- An island economy. Outpost ‘x’ produces gunpowder while outpost ‘y’ produces bananas (or silk, or spices, or sugar; you get the idea). You can buy these resources at a specific location and sell them in another one where demand is high. Additionally, certain uninhabited islands could be used as plantation locations (banana isle, spice isle, incense isle etc.) in which players can find and manually pick resources, pack them and sell them at outposts.
- Alternative to Skull Forts. Merchant asks that you deliver specific cargo to specific location within specific timeframe. Whilst you’re doing the delivery you’re a target for other ships (similar to how skull forts are visible for everyone, perhaps through a unique flag or ship skin?) these quests should provide an alternative to skull forts, so they should have a high buy in cost and high reward if successfully completed.
Player driven content through new company
Players can set bounties on other players and their ships, which people can take from outpost billboards. This can be a bounty hunting company.
- Player 1 has an unfortunate encounter with player 2 and is salty about it. Player 1 can then place a bounty for the sinking of player 2’s ship in an outpost, with a custom amount of gold which player 3 (or 4 or 5 or as many are in the server) can take as a mission. If player 3 (or 4,5 etc.) manages to defeat player 2 and sink their ship, he/she must recover the ship’s wheel and bring it to the outpost to receive their reward. Players can set bounties only once every now and then to avoid griefing.
An additional type of quest for the Order of Souls
This is a suggestion for the hardest type of quest that could be offered by the order of souls.
- Capture live skeleton captains and deliver them to outposts for gold. Once a skeleton captain is weakened in combat they can be caught with a new item, the net, and then they can be picked up and carried to the outposts. However, you will need to keep them in a weakened state while on board otherwise they will break free from the net and spawn skeletons that will climb aboard your ship and fight you. Shadow captains need to be constantly under the light of a player’s lantern, Gold captains need to be thrown buckets of water and Green captains need to be kept away from water at all costs (waves, rain, water flooding the ship etc.).
- Whilst carrying skeleton captains, you’re essentially a crewman down which exponentially increases the difficulty of sailing and all that can happen during that time (pvp with other ships, storms etc.) If the skeleton captain manages to jump in the sea, the quest is over.
More interesting locations through unique raids, bosses and rewards.
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As it stands there is zero incentive to explore the islands. Either because they are very small and there is nothing happening at places that should have something going on or because there is no meaningful reward for the exploration of these unique locations (cave systems, etc.).*
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This can be improved with the addition of more unique locations and the chance of unique raids and rewards on said locations.
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In order to avoid players ‘farming’ these unique raids, they can be made to be very rare quests initiated by finding random clues on random islands. For example, you find an ancient tablet in some ruin (or message in a bottle in a shipwreck, or journal dropped from slaying an epic skeleton captain) that has clues and riddles on a sequence of things you must do before initiating the main raid on specific locations.
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These events should be significantly rarer and harder than your run of the mill quests, they should take you in specific locations (cave systems, underwater hidden temples, shipwrecks, unmarked islands etc) that are inherently interesting and worth exploring (instead of a random beach or jungle).
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They should reward you with unique treasures, either very rare chests, skulls, artifacts and/or even unique player customization skins.
An ingame, non pvp off-world social hub:
- By speaking to a specific npc you fast travel to a large city, off the world map, in which you can’t engage in pvp and serves the sole purpose of meeting new friends to crew up and sail on adventures. This allows lone players who want to meet new friends or teams that need an additional crew member to first meet and chat ingame before sailing on adventures together.
- Additionally or alternatively, a handshake emote that when activated by two players adds them as friends in the xbox app and let’s them team up immediately.
Additional Ideas in short:
- Mortars that fire slowly explosive rounds (also a major hazard for the operators).
- Players throwing things at a distance (crates, bananas etc.)
- Primitive grenades and molotovs.
- More musical instruments (Violin for those sad moments, drums for those fear and awe inspiring dramatic moments).
- Player Harpoon for underwater fishing of small sea creatures, snatching and pulling crates from a distance.
- Ship harpoon for hunting large sea beasts and pulling enemy ships closer for boarding.
- Rope swinging from the crows nest to jump and board enemy ships
- Hatchet that can be used to cut enemy harpoon attached to your ship or thrown at an enemy like a tomahawk.
- A 3 person ship like a brig with two masts and two sets of cannons on each side, slower than the sloop, faster than the galleon.
- A 6 person ship like a frigate or man-o-war with 4 masts that is exceptionally slow and hard to handle but carries cannons in the stern and bow.
- For the love of Davy Jones, ROWBOATS please!!!
- More sea monsters, Megalodon, Giant whales, sea serpents, hydra etc.
- Sirens, while on treacherous seas (rocks, reefs etc) they sing and have the same effect as being drunk etc.
- Visible anchor underwater that can be cut whilst deployed from daring swimmers.
More customization options (ship wheel, flags, anchor etc)