Whaling: Giving whales their own mechanic

[Sevenless]

Killing whales

Right now killing whales in a "straight fight" is impossible. They are ridiculous stat monsters that break boats. The only option for killing them is luring them to land and cheesing them. While this isn't really the major issue most players have with whales, it's definitely an aspect that makes the game feel cheesier. Lets convert them from being "fightable" enemies and give them unique mechanics.

Harpoons: Whales are now immune to being aggroed and passive. To kill a whale, you marksman throw a harpoon at them which hooks your ship to the whale and starts bleed damage on the whale. The whale will then flee, dragging the whalers behind it until it dies. More harpoons can be used to speed up the process, but harpoons should be expensive in some way so that you don't just throw 30 and kill it instantly.

Boat Damage: Rather than outright attacking and nuking boats, we can incorporate this bit of lore by making orcas "curious" when they're near boats. Following the boat and occasionally running into it for a chunk of damage.

Seasonal: Winter still doesn't have a lot of content compared to the other seasons, maybe make whales only spawn during winter and significantly more frequently during that time. This reduces the incentive to bot them, and this is especially important since the harpooning mechanic should make the content available to more players. Whaling would become a winter industry available to anyone who can afford harpoons and a knarr for the hunt.

Rebalancing the products

Whale meat and curios cause a problem in the game: they're so strong that they obsolete a large amount of food/curio content for groups able to get them because they're so good. Some content invalidating a bunch of other content isn't fun, we like lots of content!

Option A) I think many players would like whale meat / curios toned down. It's much easier to balance one outlier than it is to bring everything up to usefulness if balancing is being done manually. Reducing the values notably would be better overall especially if whales become readily (albeit seasonally) available at the same time. Cutting whale values in half would still keep them relevant I think: But faction boys can give a more informed opinion on that.

Option B) Keep whales as they are, but Harpoons cost some strange/special metal that only comes from very deep mining. Possibly an upgraded form of steel made with a special coal only found on L9. If we're going to obsolete other content, can still give that content a time to shine before whales become available.

[WowGain]

+1 and option A for sure. The simpler the better when it comes to jorbtar reiterating on something.

[DonVelD]

Big +1, both options sound great, though personally I enjoy only making 3 types of food so I'm hoping whale meat wouldn't be nerfed too hard if the option A would be pushed. The option B in my opinion would be the best, because right now all you need to do is to rush whales to get the strength needed to mine on deeper levels, so that change would make rushing mineholes a tad slower than usual.

[mulamishne]

Not a fan of winter whales, the incentive to login during winter should be that winter is fun, not that winter is the best time to grind my character.

I do like using unobtanium harpoons to kill whales instead.

[Sevenless]

Not a fan of winter whales, the incentive to login during winter should be that winter is fun, not that winter is the best time to grind my character.

I do like using unobtanium harpoons to kill whales instead.

My take was more "having something you want to do in winter would be cool, and if it's only available in winter that can help make it a bit more special" + "since other activities are stopped, some kind of relatively stat inclusive activity in the winter would give people something to do with their time".

But intentions don't mean things end up working that way, is true. If the whaling mechanic isn't fun but many players feel forced to do it, winter just becomes another type of annoying slog.

[pawnchito]

Not a fan of winter whales, the incentive to login during winter should be that winter is fun, not that winter is the best time to grind my character.

I do like using unobtanium harpoons to kill whales instead.

Troll bone harpoons hell yeah or something. Whales suck at their core atm.

Winter whales sound like definitive cancer. Have to have a harbor near the ocean or shitloads of roads to get a boat out of the ice. Mammoths tho that makes sense.

[ctopolon4]

spending hours to find cachalot = sucks. how about dungeon reward: item to summon cachalot?
or numen\exp magic to find rare stuff like trolls, cachalots, dungeons.
login into the game, checking spots like a bot, spending hrs for not fun shit = bad game mechanic (also when this type of grind has 0 result or 0.001% luck chance - no desire to login again)

[SnuggleSnail]

Whales being retarded is a symptom of the satiation system not meshing with arbitrary food additions + a fuckload of arbitrary food additions + FEP assignments being functionally random + so many food variations that manually adjusting them is practically impossible.

When push comes to shove I'm pretty sure trolls can be farmed as effectively as whales. If trolls get nerfed too it'll be something else anyway. The FEP system is far too bloated for there to ever not be insane outliers without intense micro-management that is never going to happen.

The best solution I've seen for the above is: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=72059&p=893387&hilit=+food#p893387

[delfer8]

+1

[DoctorCookie]

I like option b. I dont like whales being limited to winter but what about a special type appearing in winter?