The Painter's Pigments quest could use streamlining

[RottingGem]

A small UI menu-based complaint - I wish the newest update had included a streamlining of the Painter's quest to gather pigments. Craberrations are so rare that I tend to only have one on me at a time, and when I do get one, I rush back to Little Marrow to turn it in immediately. But I have to navigate thru WAY too many ups and downs in the dialog tree to give it to him.

First, I dock and choose to talk to him, that's fine. All those menu options pop up, that's fine. Deliver Flag is the top one, and thus, the first one that a player's eyes will land on. Its placement implies that delivering flags is the most important thing you can do with the Painter. This, i find odd, because flags cannot expire, and crabs can. I always feel time pressure to turn in the Craberrations immediately, so I don't accidentally hit 'sell all fish' at the next dock and lose it. Not possible with the flags, they could sit a Cargo spot for in-game weeks with no risk of being sold by accident.

So I have to tap down several times to select 'change paint color.' Then my entire thought process is interrupted by the question of "Hull or Roof" - and it's 50/50 if I'm turning in the first or second crab necessary to make that change even happen at all. Plus, I'm always going to want the two to match, doubling the amount of menu-taps i have to do to make that happen - could a third option for "Both" be added? But this whole question, imo, should be moved to happen AFTER the color is selected.

Then I have to tap down several times, allll the way to the bottom of the list - but not the ACTUAL bottom, that'll send me back a screen - to click next page, to see the other colors that I am ACTUALLY delivering the crabs for. And to make it more visually cluttered, each option has a green spiky 'quest' marker, so I'm suddenly bamboozled by the game telling me that EACH of these optional colors is EQUALLY important for me to look at RIGHT now. So I have to spend another several taps, going slowly, trying to remember which crab I have in my inventory, which I can't check on this screen, and remembering what color it is, AND looking at each name for the optional colors, and trying to match those up... Even if I count number of areas I've been to, it's still a bit thrown off because Sharp Mint, made with crabs from the marrows, is on page one, under all the basic color options.

And finally, when I get the right color chosen, he has ANOTHER line I have to tap thru, before I can SEE my Cargo screen, and hand over the crab. Then, if it's the second of two for that color, he automatically goes ahead and paints the boat that color, when really, I just wanted to drop off the pigment ingredients! I didn't necessarily want HALF the boat to turn that color, AND it costs time, AND now I will have a mismatched-colored boat unless I go in AGAIN and ask for THE OTHER HALF of the boat to be painted to match... It's a bit mentally exhausting!


So, do I have an idea on how to fix this? Yes, I do - copy the Trader. Heck, even the Fishmonger at Greater Marrow. They have interactions where, if your Cargo or Storage contains the objects for their quests, you get a prompt to deliver the object or just do 'business as usual.' (It would be insanely messy to put EVERY crab-shape on ONE screen - plus, how would you remove them from the running once some had been delivered? So the pattern would probably have to be reworked so the Painter only offers each color in order, like, each player would have to make Sharp Mint BEFORE any other color.)

The deliver option would have the green-spiky-icon to indicate it is important. The 'business as usual' set of options should have somewhere to tap thru to tell the player where the next crabs will be found - perhaps at the end of the list of Colors, there's just ONE option, above the 'exit icon' option, that says "Can you make more colors?" and this leads to a line, similar to his flag-knowledge, that points the player to the area next in the sequence.


Or, I could see an addition of an option to "deliver pigments" beneath "deliver flag" in the main list of his options. (The words "Deliver Flag" and "Deliver Crab" look very similar in English, other languages might not have this problem.)

If the player has one of the two crabs necessary for the next color to be made, it goes straight to the delivery screen as it exists now, for whatever color is up next. If the player has none, it goes to the line, "Looks like you don't have any right now. Try looking around (hint to next game area)." with the only option being 'back'.

Plus, the NAME of the color wouldn't be shown until you go into the 'paint the boat' menu, and see the list of the base colors and Sharp Mint, and then go to Next Page, which would slowly increase in length as new crabs are delivered. (And I suggest that the option to pick "Hull, Roof, or Both" should be given AFTER picking the color.)

The only downside I could see with this change, is if someone realllllly wanted to head STRAIGHT for Devil's Spine to try and make the color black ASAP, so then they complain 'game ruined' b/c they suddenly have to catch 8 OTHER craberrations FIRST. Plausible, but I have no idea how many people play that way, tho. Could be a fun survey, maybe - How do players interact with the painting feature?

[Kylnoffey]

How do players interact with the painting feature?

In my case I had some trouble at first with the dialogues too but it reduces a bit after the second talk and I didn't have to interact too much, I actually did what your suggestion's downside would have prevented.
I only wanted gold and black colors so I focused them as soon as I completed the second area and had a boat good enough to travel far. Wouldn't have liked to farm other colors just to unlock the ones I wanted