George Catcher

I personally came to minimalistic base. Last season I was building a castle with like hundreds of useless ceilings and walls (useless in PVE). And each time I was approaching my base I had a lag issues until all loads. This season I built just 5 simple 3x4 houses (each with purpose) tames pen and trading chain. I happy now, because when I approach my base - all loads fast with no lag. I wonder if all players who build their million pieces grand palaces, are happy to, unable to approach their bases without extremely tailspin lags for minute or two? : ))

Just quick update about damned loot. I'm sorry for what I'm about to say, but I feel that you actually do hate PVE players... : ( 35 - Ship POV issues. When we use steering wheel, camera is zoom out, help us to sail, maneuvering and navigate the ship. And this made just right. What made wrong is, that center of point of view located right in the steering wheel. It means, if I put my wheel to ship stern, I'll be able to see all in front of my ship. If I use "design for my playstyle ©" and put steering wheel to ship's nose, then all I see is just my sails cover most of my screen: And IMAO current zoom out distance is a bit low. So... please make it the way, when we use steering wheel, then camera zoom out, and center of our view moves to ship center (you can attach point to ship's frame or something). And current zoom distance is side of my ship covers half screen long. Make it a bit farther. So side of the ship will be 1/3 screens long.

I do... I mean not complaining, buy when I build my damned ship destroyer, I make it as simple as it gets, No railings. No beautification. Smallest entrance to low deck. Smallest deck guns attachments. I put there as few parts as I can. Also, because most of SotD damage in regular old fashion battles lands in the middle part of my ship, I keep this part just empty. But there is a hole and 10 ceilings there. I wish I could choice my deck with no holes in middle and front parts, because I anyway put there 10 and 4 ceilings and paint those in chess style to ease maintenance, but devs didn't make any options for me here. So all those talks about "personal designs" and "I build a ship to my playstyle" goes down the drain, after you face what game required from you. I wish I could build some cool looking ship, at least surround my steering wheel with railings, but I then will get extremely annoyed by repairing, or even replacing and paint all damaged and destroyed extra parts. Trust me. I did hell alot of damned ship huntung. I took down like 1000 of them in 2 years and my current destroyer design (or should I say "lack of design) - is crown of my experience I came through successes and mistakes : ) I'm looking forward to see what devs will brings us here : )

I later done all by schooner with 4 usual common cannons. So there is just my experience. I also saw guys who farm mythos by a Brig with 17 mythic cannons on a stern 225% damage each. Hydra couldn't reach waters lol : )) Some say, they do it with like 40 bows and 2000 arrows. Some say, they somehow do it with grenades. And yeah. One important pro-tip. If you gather hydra's corpse (with pick, or axe until her body disappear) she then respawn the same spot immediately. I wish I knew that, doing powerstones. It would save me a lot of time. And yeah. There is a way to reset keystone timers. You've got any info about how to do that???

33 - Sea battles loot. As far as I joined damned ships hunt, I immediately noticed that LOOT GOT WORST than ever! I mean, cmon devs, you wanna us to go to the ocean and fight damned ships in PVE or NOT??? Today I took down lvl-37, lvl-34, lvl-22 Galleys and lvl-56 brig of damned. And all i've got in reward is some low quality blue (journeyman) BPs and some normal quality green (fine) ones. In couple days I also saw NO large sails, no planks, and no gunports. Just decks, all kind of cannons (with useless in PVE mortar, this one is most common) and a lot of basic ammo, like barshots, mortar shots, liquid flame etc which I never use in PVE as well. There is even lack of gold in reward, Just 100 coins for lvl-37 damned galley? I've got same amount of gold for lvl-2 treasure, which I can solo naked with wooden stick in my hand. So the situation is sad. I risk my boat, I engage fight with strong enemy. I loosing my planks and gunports, I survive, and after all I've got a loot chest and THROW ALL FROM THERE TO THE OCEAN. I don't believe you hate PVE players that much. but really. Do you??? 34 - Leveling One more thing. I'm now 70. How many ways do I have to level my pathfinder more??? As many as whole one, right? I need to find three-four lvl-16+ bottles, sail from my G8 to B2 (the only longest way) done all of those to get my 71 and that's it? What if I don't wanna tame a tiger and dig treasures? What if I wanna just play happy farm-guy and breed bears, elies, dinos? I put hell a lot efforts to that. but then I don't level up. What if I wanna just build a battle ship and fight damned ships, kraken, squids? I don't level up. What if I wanna explore whole world, and goldens, fighting all cyclops, elementals, hydras and drakes there? I don't level up. This is a bit unfair. I mean it's not a problem for me to do like lvl-22 treasure solo, but... right now it just some kind of stuff I don't wanna do, but have to, because there is no alternative to that. I busy leveling my BRIG for Kraken battles, and in order to get more pathfinder levels, I need to stop doing that, and do just treasures again, which I already made hell a lot...

Just wanna share my experience of this quest, playing PVE Official SOLO! I wouldn't say things were easy, but it definitely doable solo, with no cheating. Because I didn't do Kraken yet, I wanna talk about getting all 9 powerstones. Perparation. Alright, all you need is: - Any ship that can shoot backward. I personally done this by a schooner with 4 common cannons on stern. - A riffle. - Gliding suit. - Couple nuclear bombs for when you'll get killed 10 times in a row by stupid leatherwing or dump bogo-wogo tiger, while you run naked, and then you freak out and wanna blow this island to hell!!! I'm just kidding, but you should prepare yourself to a lot of butt igniting deaths. I dunno, make chamomile tea, or something : ))) (I met guys hunting hydra by Brig with 17 225% damage cannons on stern. Hydra couldn't reach the shore). Hydra killing tactics. The main idea is simple. You go (or fly on glider) to a shore. Spot hydra. Shoot from far to her head. Fly back to your ship. Sail away 4.5 - 5 knots. Shot hydra from stern cannons until it die. Please practice flying. Right now glider made the way, when you fly from the rock, or schooner deck, you can fly and even raise a altitude until your stamina is out. It's down-speed-up. Pretty easy. Notice that hydra wont follow you forever, so if she far from the shore, you'll need to fly and reload your riffle same time. And then stop, shoot again and continue flying. This one is tricky part. So things to do is: - To park your ship with nose to the ocean and stern to the shore. - Put all your stuff in box. All armor, weapon, tools, etc. Go naked with just glider suit to check if hydra out there. If not - back to your ship and sail to next spot. - When you spot hydra, go back to your ship, pick riffle, then go as far as possible on the way from boat to hydra, from where hydras heads are visible. Shot her head far from the distance, then don't wait - turn around, fly and do your riffle reload. This is most tricky part. After reload is done, land, shoot again, don't wait, fly. - If you on the ship, and hydra is near - you made it! Just sail away and enjoy you hydra killing. With common cannons there are 200 cannonballs needed for each hydra. Important TIP which would save me hell a lot of time. After you kill hydra, you loot her for 2000 mythos. And if you then gather all resources from her body (hit her with axe or pick until her body disappear) she will respawn immediately at the same spot! Hydra spots: Right now we have 6 islands with hydras: G7 - with hell a lots of aggressive lions, wolves, spiders and medusas. I couldn't move from the shore, so this one is not worth it. H7 - one of my successful island. Not many aggressive animals, but anyway, watch for cyclops and rock elementals. Northern spot is the easiest one. E7 - Most popular island because all spots are easy accessible. There is a problem tho. You most likely find not just a Hydra but also guys who farm mythos by killing her. Watch for cyclops. E6 - didn't go well for me. Tons of fire elementals and this far shore it hell bunch or wild and aggressive wolves, tigers etc. I for the first time here wish to blow them out, and even spent an hour to shoot all those bastards. Killed like 30-40 of them but amount of enemies didn't decrease. E5 - is fine I guess. I could walk there for some time. Didn't see a single hydra there tho. G5 - is one of the people favorite island as well. Didn't meet a single hydra there either. So basically it's F7-E7. One more tip. If you find a guys do their mythos farming, ask if they can give you keystones. They'll probably give you like 6 stones, or 9, or like 12... because they don't need them. This happen for me and save hell alot of time. Also if they don't wanna share - just stay in the area. Don't go in their way, just watch they killing hydra and keystone appears in your inventory. Also guys told that there is a way to RESET keystones timers. I didn't ask them how to do that, so any information about that will be usefull. Keystones: After you kill Hydra, you'll get your Keystone. - You can use one to any powerstone cave. So you can kill 9 hydras in just G5 and then sail to every powerstones caves. - It'll spoil in 2 hours (there is a way to reset timer but I don't know it yet). - If you die, keystone will stay with your corpse. You not pick it up, then it wasted. Powerstones: All powerstones are in the same caves and same spots the fountains of youth are. In order to do it safe I did the following. - Put all stuff (keystone also) in my boxes. - Run naked to cave entrance, check if it save to run there. Lure dangerous animals away if needed. - Enter the cave, run to the bridge and check if there are monters there. Sometime there are like 15-20 monster staying on the bridge. So I aggro them and jump down, to lure them all from the bridge. Sometimes it needs to be done couple times. - Then I pick keystone an run to the altar. After I pick power stone I try to jump of the bridge to lure all monsters from the bridge, so next player who go there, make his way safe. I really try to do my best to take care of other players. Unfortunatelly after you gather a powerstone, fascinating book will be open, and you'll likely be killed at this moment. So devs should really do something about that. And one more thing. Powerstone cave in F5 is hell!!! The entrance is surrounded by cyclops, dinos, tigers and lions. I died there for like 15 times before I was able to enter inside. On the bridge I found like 40 monsters. And they didn't allow me to jump off the bridge. So I died there for 15 times also before I somehow decided it safe. And worst is, it wasn't. After I went there with keystone, some bat pushed me off the bridge and I died down there. And I wasn't able to pick keystone back, because each time I jump down and got hit by enemy I was then teleported to the surface above the cave. This is some kind of glitch, and I wasted 2 keystones in the cave. So do this one with caution.

32 - Feats. In certain situations I can not use all of my feats together. Sailing ship, I never use Nature Touch or Flag placement. Riding my tame I never use overdrive or rally. And of course walking alone all I can do is dance, and do this fast repair and fast reload features. And yet, I have all feats in my feats menu, and most of them are red. Also I have like 10 different dances now, but I can only use four. So... 1) - I would make only feats I can use right now are visible on my panel. I ride a boat - Rally and Overdrive at F1 and F2. I walking - then only fast reload, repair, instant equip and flag. I ride a tame - nature cry and touch. 2) - Move dances out of there and put them in to round menu.

If any1 success - post a screenshot here. We need to see that!!!

29 - Shop SIGN maybe??? While I was in the middle of treasure hunting, I opened a shop to sell all those hundreds of BPs and stuff I've got. And NOT A SINGLE PERSON visited my shop. Because no one know it there. I mean really, you don't think players will stop at each base they see, to check if there is some shop there!? So players who wanna trade (not those trading routes) in order to get attention, build their monstrous signs from walls. So, maybe you introduce some lighted sign for shop? Small, but yet visible from the ocean somehow, so all who sail by, see there is something selling there? (player forgot to unlock his shops on picture above, btw). 30 - Wall hooks are way too weak. You know there are a lot of players who love to paint and light their boats. There is a problem tho. Wall hooks has just 500 hp. So when I put one on my mast and put there a lantern, it only need a single hit from damned ship, to destroy it. I mean you can not imagine how many times I had to attach another hook to my mast, instead of destroyed one. I have a box with some maintenance stuff (planks, ceilings etc) and there are also 10 hooks lying there. And they don't stay there for long. And you know... those lanterns serve just a cosmetic purpose. So... we have figure head serve cosmetic purposes that is indestructible. Maybe you make wall hooks indestructible too? 31 - Power stone and book with fascinating story. Alright, today I finished gathering power stones. And whole journey there was one issue that pissed me off. So here is the deal. When I get my key, I run naked to this powerstone cave, and rush to the altar. Typically there are like bunch different high level enemies around. All those snakes, lions, bats, spiders, scorpions and of course damned army there. All around 150-200 lvl. So my goal is to pass them safely and then... This is good form rule for me. I do my best to take care of other players. After I use the power stone, or this fountain of youth, I jump off a bridge, to lure all enemies from there down, so when next player arrive, he will be able to pass a bridge safe, not facing like 40 lvl-200+ enemies staying there. I always try to do that, but with power stone, after I pick one, then my pathfinder immobilized and book with a story of power stone is open. I mean CMON guys, I surrounded by hell bunch of monsters, I need to escape, and you force me to read some kind of book. I can read one later, it's always available in discoveries menu!!! 32 - Custom sail painting disappear after I die and respawn in my ship's bed. After 10-15 minutes, it appears back on the sails.

I'm on my way... as I told before, 75 tentacles required either 50 000 gold (pve official price) or submarine to farm them. To get submarine there are 9 powerstones needed (just gathered last one). And then - next step. Kraken. Not sure how to deal with that solo. But I guess I'll have to create a BRIG, level it a bit and go there waiting for other players came to kill one. Then join the party. After I defeat kraken and lots of damned ships, not sure why the hell I'll need this Kraken Ship, but... well. I'll buy one just to test it (and we are do testing right now).

Yeah, I do understand that now. It just not obvious. For example, how do I know, that If I kite hydra in the ocean it stops shooting and just follow my boat, so I can just kill it with my stern cannons??? Only by watchin youtube videos, and it's not "play smart" it just "watch guides to exploits and repeat". Maybe one guy will spend like couple moths to gather all mythic armor and upgrade it, then go for lvl-16 treasure and... he will be killed by damned warrior with one hit. And I spend half day to tame high lvl tiger, make a Grog, and make this treasure done in common armor with a shovel in my hands. All past mmos experience doesn't work here, and you need to know all guides, all exploits, all weird working stuff, to get success. I'm not sure if devs meant that. I just wanna remind that when first fountain of youths appeared, there were like hundreds of 100 years grandies, running naked to this fountain. Doesn't look smart enough for me. More like ancient barbarian mechanic, just to rush. So, you mean you can solo Kraken with just Schooner? Why then guys who gather party to Kraken only accept Galleys and Brigs?

No region difference to me. The highest ones I found were in just regular grids, some on Lawless, some on just regular ones. I personally don't hunting them. I sail somewhere, and if I see wrecks on my course, and it's no bit turn required to hit em, I do that and see the numbers. If there is something below 16 for me, I don't bother. Once I saw strange...

Huge thx every1 for all advises. Got my 1st Hydra down totally solo (shoot one with riffle, then glide to my ship and kite her in the ocean shooting from stern cannons. The only difference from video above - my cannons do 220 damage each. so it's around 300 cannonballs each hydra). But let me get straight. Do I see it right? The Voyage of Power is: - To gather 8 powerstones? - To gather 9th stone from ghost ship? - To kill a Kraken, right? Meaning to get battle ship for killing kraken, I need to kill Kraken first? What's the point of it then? It's like I play World of Warcraft and in order to kill one boss I need to get lvl-300 gear, but to get this gear I need to kill this boss first...

Thats why every Galley loads with lag : )) And if there is a tribe that have like 30 Galley lvl-1 parked in harbor for art reason, server is goin into a tailspin p.s. - oh, and 2day I saw gr8 example of "I design my ship for my playstyle!!!"

28 - Glitching after long sailing. If I play for a long time with no log outs, and if I sail alot all this time, then after I cross some glitches start to occur. Sometimes I see this: Sometimes all moving parts double themselves. I have like double doors, double cannons, etc. My ship wont allow me to move anywhere, do all rubber stuff. Sometimes my crew disabbear, or sail loosing painting and goes white. It's all cured by re load the game. 29 - Server message behind sextant buff. And I just wanna remind you of this issue.

27 - Bottles issues. First of all - some islands have like plenty untouched bottles. Another ones - no bottles at all. And in both sides the situation is sucks. When you have plenty bottles around, you'll have headache because of chimes. When you have no bottles - waste hell lot of time to sail another island and search bottles there. The solution is simple. a) - Make bottles respawn faster. b) - Make bottles decay faster. There will be less bottles around then, but there will always be some bottles for treasure hunters. ------------- One more thing. You know the higher bottle you gathered, the farther away you'll sail for treasure. And, well... the current map made the way, that highest bottle will have just a single farthest route possible and will lead you to the only grid. Because I'm now doing only purple bottles, if I happy enough to find really high level one (16+) in my base island at G8 it will lead me to jus a single B2 grid, because it's the farthest possible. Even neighbor B1 will have shorter route. You can not imagine how many times I made this G8 to B2 voyage. Solution is simple here too. Just make distance to grid totally random. Got lvl-20 next grid? Lucky you. Got lvl-5 half atlas away - better luck next time.

25 - Wind issues You realize that sail through calm wind and sail upwind (and especially sailing both calm and upwind same time) is NO FUN AT ALL right??? But with current wind system we spend most of our time through calm and upwind. I just wanna remind, that current wind just slowly rotate in direction clockwise, and raises full strength blowing eats and west, then fall to calm, blowing north and south. So why do we sail most of our time with not cool condition? It simple. When we sail downwind, we get wherever we want fast. When we sail upwind - we slow. So imagine I need to go couple grids west for treasure, and then go back to base? I sail there within just 15 minutes, then I sail back for like 40 minutes. Then I find another bottle leads me south. This time wind rotates south and calm, and I sail there for 35 minutes and then go back within 1 hour 5 minutes. So overall: - I spend 55 minutes in fun strong wind and 1h 45 minutes in boring calm wind. - I spend 50 minutes sailing downwind and 1h 45 minutes sailing upwind. Those numbers are fictional of course but in most cases it actually works this way. ------------ 26 - Oh and bring XP boost sailing through the rain. Things is simple. - We get X3 of normal ship XP gaining, sailing through the rain. - We get X5 of normal ship XP gaining, sailing through the rain with tornadoes. - If we didn't hit a single tornado, then all XP we gained since enter tornado zone till exit one (its from start to end of disaster or from enter the grid till exit one) is doubles. This way players wont be so unhappy playing Pacman with funnels.

24 - So do you wanna us to go to the ocean or not???

24 - Treasure spawn inside bases. There are structures blocks resources spawns nearby. Maybe they should block treasure spawns as well? This is not cool to sail half atlas and find your treasure behind someone's walls. I know this is not his fault, because he didn't know that there is treasure there. It was not mine either I didn't choice where another bottle will lead me.

There is : ) I mean, if you check Tundra Lawless - you'll find a lot of free space. Like I had my neighbor base. Then a guy dropped the game and his base decayed. Then another player came and spent a month building his monstrous base with huge gates and walls. After he was done, he dropped the game and his base also decayed. The only problem - he tamed some animals and bears (with hats), lions, cows and chickens stays there, but overall... there is a huge free space near, and in 5 days all tames will be available to claim : ) Other hand of my base - the same. I see like 3rd guy building there : )) Well... while I agree, try to think of it this way. Maybe someday fractions will be released. And then we'll have "Nordic people" - south-east. "Europeans" - south-west. "Africans" - north-west. And Latinos - north east. But... well, my personal fav is western tundra zone, and I don't like that all of islands this type are far-far away from freeports, Goldens and all other points of interest. And... yeah, this "central tundra" - snowy desert with snowy palm-trees and snowy cactuses - is some kind of joke. Yeap. They told they wanna us to go ocean, and made everything so we don't need to go there. In my point of view they either have no clue what are they doing, or this all is part of bigger plan that didn't reveal for us yet. But anyway - that's why we (at least I'm) are here. To test things. To write our suggestions. That's what I do alot. And I have some feelings they do read my messages (at least ships with modules system was in one of my huge thread of thoughts). Yeap. I feel the same. When we first settled - that was adventure and survival. We had to stay warm, sailing 6 grids away for saps. We had to build our defense lines against alphas. Now... it's just a routine.

From what I found - this happens when you demolish of replace something in your base. Like once we built a wooden castle. After we start to rebuild one to stone (by just placing stone parts over wooden ones) half of our pier ceilings and railings was disappeared.

23 - Better quality shipyard. Attaching shipyard sturdiness to +max ship level was stupid idea. Because, I can build like 107% shipyard, 113% shipyard, or 100% shipyard - they will cost me different resources, and it will show I have different quality of ship, but... 107% quality ship is the same as 100% quality. It shows, it cost more that 5000 gold, but it cost 5000 gold... Instead of attaching +levels to shipyard sturdiness, you should introduce +max ship levels to shipyard stats, and only depend on this stat, increase ship gold cost.

Big picture post. 22 - Some skills issues. Basics. Tames: Ranged weapons: Firearms: Shipwright:

21 - Your game physics is sucks. I have to suicide myself because of how you game works. I've killed an hog to gather meat. There were abandoned tames of player who drop the game nearby. Lion tames came to gather this meat as well, they just run over me and now they standing with no way for me to move them anywhere. I'm flying inside with no way to escape. I know U busy adding some stuff for like 0.001% of your player base, that no one else can (or don't wanna) use. But PLEASE, work with old stuff. Improve the game overall itself, so there would NOT be this issues like stuck inside animals, projectiles hit invisible walls around enemies, etc.

I guess it somehow connected to future updates, related to these fort-tower islands, trading ships will use as waypoints. (Just guessing).