With The Sunken Curse now in our hands, though a reasonable size i’m sure many of us including myself are gasping for a chance to fight evil Merfolk, indulge a Merfolk themed live campaign, and explore their nests in a fearful light, so here are a few ideas I had about a Merfolk expansion I would for the moment dub, Fate of the Drowned.
Firstly, I think the world could easily use more reefs each with their own theme, whilst the current reefs are gorgeous and mysterious, it would be nice to have a couple of larger areas, each with more scattered shipwrecks perhaps each holding a bit of explorable mystery to their former careers.
Secondly, these reefs would contain new Merfolk enemies, using only their teeth and claws and the occasional Merfolk with a trident perhaps. They would be visible only at night via their glowing eyes or by swimming admidst shipwrecks from which piles of ungatherable glittering gold would be flowing from.
Thirdly, whilst these reefs would be free to explore somewhat deadly PVE areas most of the time, on a rotation the reef’s would take the form of a Mer-Lair, an experience similar to a fort but from an underwater perspective. Whilst the Sunken Curse introduces statues destroyable for doubloons, there is no concise reason as of right now to destroy them when the event is over, so as an alternative function I believe they could become an objective for the Mer-Lair activity, for example destroy 10 sapphire statues (sapphire to avoid multi-crew issues so solo players can feasibly solo assault Mer-Lairs) and a Merfolk boss will appear who may drop a key for a vault hidden within the Lair. This offers a similar but not copy and paste underwater experience to forts with a new dynamic, Lairs would also be marked to the world by Mer clouds similar to Skull clouds but distinctly Mer themed.
Finally, as an expansion this would make players keen to dive into what Sea of Thieves’ underwater experience has to offer, but I wonder if the sea lacks the living breathing nature of the islands. Wild creatures under the sea each serving a special purpose would breathe life and interesting new gameplay opportunities, such as a large puffer fish you can suck air out of as a small oxygen point (I understand puffer fish are poisonous and horribly spikey so perhaps it would come at the cost of some health or a random fictional fish would take its place) or whales that slowly patrol the reefs at a height, swimming in their proximity may scare sharks from your position keeping you temporarily safe, manta rays could be gliding across the sea floor that you can grab onto for a short but not unlimited speedy way of travelling until you are shook off or stunned off.
At the moment this is all i’ve been able to come up with, if anyone has any feedback on changes to this or additions they’d make I would love to hear them!
