Suggestion: Shoulder tame rework

[Molchane 13]

Hi I want to make tames that can go on shoulders more useful so I came up with things to add to them. Most bonuses I am suggesting will be determined by level like crows to encourage breeding. I tried to give each tame a use for on land and at sea so they can all see more use. Some of it may sound overpowered but can easily be scaled by devs to make it all balanced.

Cat

Current: There is no shoulder trait for cats right now but they are a free source of keratinoid, fish, and rodents.

Cats are already pretty strong with the current uses and their only in freeports so the traits aren’t going to be amazing.

On your shoulder a cat will prevent you from taking damage from hunger (cats get fish, so it can keep you fed without ruining your vitamins) and will regularly deposit a local type of keratinoid into your inventory. This is more of a PVE trait, I don’t want to make cats that good because they already have good value but this shoulder trait should make it so people don’t keep silly amounts of cats laying around. Also I hate farming keratinoid that isn’t bones or scales.

When captaining a boat:  Automatically feeds crew and lowers crew payment (gets fish and people get happy because cat onboard this seemed like a freebie I wanted to throw in). Increased ship turning effectiveness. That’s not a bad trait but not the most amazing should have some value on galleons or maybe someone will make a drifting brig.

 

Crow

Currently: Int bonus impacts cooldowns on ground and sea + crafting.

No change it’s already pretty strong and gets a lot of use. Maybe bring back the reduced fall speed but it’s already got enough use to not bother.

 

Monkey

Currently: Health Regen + Slow enemies on ground

It’s already pretty strong on ground so maybe small nerf to line it up with other shoulder tames and change the regen/slow scaling to be determined by level.

 

When captaining a boat: Increased repair speeds and adds a small resist bonus to the ship.

Basically just using the ground trait and moving it to boats it seems like an easy match but repair speed seems pretty weak and no other tame was using resist so why not.

 

Parrots

Current trait: Increases fortitude

The current traits not that useful, no reason to remove it though. Because I can’t think of anything good for the parrot which is an iconic pirate animal I think just adding a straight damage % bonus to it. Damage bonus applies to everything (maybe not explosives?) so it’s good for PVP and PVE hand gathering with tools.

When captaining a boat:  The damage % bonus applies to cannons, swivels, and ballistas. Maybe at a lower % than ground stuff because I don’t want bar shot to one shot my sails more than they already do.

 

Rabbit

Current: Alert when dangerous animals are nearby.

I think rabbits are fast so I believe they should increase move speed on ground. This should see some use on ground. I often find myself trying to chase down people who are always slightly out of reach so this will provide some options to ground PVP people. The current trait can be kept on there too as a bonus, it’s not that great in my opinion so I don’t think it’ll make the rabbit that much stronger.

 

When captaining a boat: Increased reload speed.

Rabbits are fast so they reload cannons fast.

Seagull                                                            

Currently: Swim speed increased

That’s not that great, I believe it should also increase fortitude in water so you no longer take damage from freezing in water. Not the most useful trait but the boat trait should make up for it.

When captaining a boat: Increased sail speed.

Basically the current bonus seagulls give in water but applied to boats.

A pretty good boat trait to have and should be competitive with crow and seagull.  

Vulture

Current: Food preservation

This was pretty good when everyone was going nuts taming crabs but now I’m not sure if it’s that useful.

I think this could be more of a PVE tame so we can just throw a lot of bonuses at this thing to convince people to breed it. On land increased materials when gathering from corpses (hide, meat, keratin) and digging treasure increase gold and rarely increase # of bps. All PVE bonuses and make them apply to the tames you are riding so they get use all the time.

 

When captaining a boat:  Increasing the materials you get from salvaging boats. Maybe add a % chance to get the exact thing you are salvaging (example: salvaging a mythic galleon you might get one of the mythic gunports while demolishing them).  Also a bonus to generated wrecks and flotsam. Maybe increase quality from ship of the damn flotsam? Maybe? That last part might make it too strong with all the land stuff, I can imagine the requirements for a max level vulture to get the top tier drops when farming sotd.

The vulture gets a ton of PVE stuff to convince people to breed it and I couldn’t think of anything that made more sense for it. The sotd flotsam and map bp % might be enough to convince PVP companies to breed/buy them?

 

So when you freaked out when you saw one tame giving one trait/stat that you think would be overpowered just remember the devs can scale things around to make it balanced. Increased sail speed on boats for example might not be a 50% sail speed bonus, maybe with the highest level seagull its 5% or 10%? Also you’d need to get the 119 breed line running and then max out the levels to get that highest stat bonus, getting to that point is a lot of work and most people don’t manage to get it. The devs would have to spend the time to find a number that doesn’t break the game but still gives people motivation to breed/tame these animals that are unused/overused.