Why Was the Ritual Skull Stash Change Made?

@zaleravon

"In order to stop players from farming Fort of the Damned Raids for easy Emissary Value and Reputation, the 2.0.15 patch made only one Skull Stash Voyage available per month."

This was likely due to alliance servers farming dozens of these if not 100 very easily as I said in the thread you necro'd. Even still, it would not be hard for a galleon crew to farm ~4 of these an hour by themselves without the limit in place.

I'd say the only way to remove the current limit would be to rebalance the skull stash cost and make it more a pay for convenience type thing which it always was supposed to be. Since the exchange rate is about 200 gold per doubloon, and the average FotD vault value is ~94,000 gold average before emissary bonus, I think the skull stash should cost between 300-450 doubloons if made unlimited again.

Also, FotD was supposed to be a rare event. One that when players seen it up would draw them to it no matter what else they might of been doing before. With unlimited skull stash voyages, it was more common to find it up on any server you were on back in the day. Made it seem way too bland to even bother most times.

@zaleravon said in Why Was the Ritual Skull Stash Change Made?:

[...]Also I did the FoD recently, sold, and returned without there having been a server merge, and I swear to god the lights were out. If other people haven't experienced the same and I just hallucinated that happening, feel free to tell me. But did they actually change it so that the lights go out after you finish the event? Because that would be a whole new level of irritating changes.

Either way, the suggestion is to roll back this change.

AFAIK the lights always had to be relighted when you want to do it again.

@lem0n-curry

Just don't sink. They're all on your boat. I'd say Pink/White lights are more difficult to come by than the ritual skull.

Op should focus on getting pinked first then worry about the rest. By the time you chase down the storm, you've probably sailed past a few dozen Captains.

I guess I'll be polite and go back to leaving one at the fort when I log off. Or bury a few there.

@pithyrumble when I'm solo I will often activate the Fort just to pull attention away from me and what I'm doing. Half the time it still hasn't been done the first time on a server when I find a skull so all the lanterns are lit as they are every time a fresh server spawns. Tends to pull PvP focused folks right to it so I can sail in peace for a little bit.

@zaleravon if you have plenty doubloons just farm the chest and key voyages it's not a bad drop rate of skulls unless it has changed

I think the FoTD could use a slight overhaul. The flames of fate exercise is a bit...tired. More FoTD activity is great for the game as a whole. The Ritual skull change was fine (and certainly a rebalancing for discord alliance servers), but the lights could use a minor tweak.

I feel the lights should automatically re-ignite every full in-game day after the event has been completed. The exercise of having to go get them is just silly and is the primary reason nobody bothers doing it...with all the loot buffs around the seas, the FoTD just no longer is worth the time investment to get the lights.

Plus, those lights and the mechanics behind them are so cool. It's a shame they're only really used for 2 things as a standard in the game.

Why not implement more cool stuff around those flames of fate? Make them usable for ocean crawlers and for phantoms...make them a means by which to do a territory based activity with the beacons...so many cool things they could do and we see them for the FoTD and Thieves Haven Runs....neither of which are worth the time/effort anymore.

@zaleravon

Okay, that's great, we can constantly simp for the developer's perspective if we want, but was there actually a reason for the change?

Considering I was never given the chance to respond back from something I said 2 years ago. I still, to this day, stand by what I said. It doesn't make me a a simp, the dude just wanted easy steals from naïve crews. The skulls are everywhere, if you are going for lights, you are bound to see a situation that has them. Besides the Ship event, getting them by other means is relatively easy. I think you are just making excuses at this point. You practically don't need to go out of your way if you are already putting the leg work into lights.

Honestly, getting the lights is by far the more tedious of things to do in comparison. I will take sinking a Skalleon, an effort that takes a couple minutes, over a long winded expedition of getting zapped by lightning and finding another player to kill me.