Detailed Feedback and SPOILERS regarding finding the Sunken Sea's legendary weapon.

[Xaelon]

Finding the legendary weapon parts in sunken sea requires too much luck because of how large the area is and how little information the game gives you. I absolutely never would have found any of the locations without the help of the community's map tool (https://www.craiginsdev.com/maptool.html#) because I didn't get lucky enough to have any of the locations spawn near any of the sea's bosses I love that there's hidden stuff like this buried in the game, but I do not love spending 20+ hours sailing around in the sea aimlessly. Maybe the spawn range for the locations of the parts could be constrained some?

Now that the bow's existence is common knowledge I feel that some changes should be made to make finding the parts more intuitive. I'm not asking for another locator to tell me exactly where the parts are, but I would like the game to tell me that I'm on the right track somehow. Here are some of my ideas on how that could be done.

On the Large Cities

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• Give the three large cities in the sunken sea different colored floors and/or walls. This way you know immediately when you've found one.
  
• Give each large city different colored floors and/or walls and apply the same color pallet to small cities in the same distance band.
  
  This could just be something as simple as changing the color of the glass that appears on the walls and floor tiles. This would let the player know that these cities are different from the earlier ones somehow. It also provides a nice visual indicator of how far you've gone into the sea.
  
  As an additional step, hints about the sea nation's lost treasure being related to the three different colors could be written into various item descriptions.
  
  

  On the Vault

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  • The admin key could have the added mechanic of allowing the player to play "hot and cold" to find the vault. Beeping or blinking faster as the player gets closer to the vault.
    
  • Put the vault in the center of another large city. Making the vault bigger will make it easier to find. Bonus points if you give the vault city special colors that scream "This place is really special!". Make it Core Keeper's "El Dorado".
  
  

  On other aspects of the hunt

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  • If you've gone too far into the biome (ie far enough that the three large cities cannot spawn anymore) the game should let you know somehow. Maybe the water could change to be darker, or the player character could remark that "I don't see anything of interest on the horizon anymore" or something similar to clue you in that everything beyond this point is more of the same.
    
  • Add a piece of equipment that causes coordinate information to appear under the minimap and/or on the main map. This would be tied into generating objects with codes hinting at the location of the large cities and vault. These items would show up as rare drops like the treasure items that can be dug up or found in containers.
    
  • Some kind simple short range scanner to find the parts. It could look like a stick with a light bulb on the end of it. If I'm holding it and I sail by the vault or one of the large cities the light glows green, otherwise it glows red or just doesn't turn on at all. The idea would be to have a quick method to eliminate islands or cities without the need to sail around them or step on them.

[Ereene]

I guess it could be nice to do what you propose, apparently I got a nice map myself with my friend, the 3 dungeons and little isle forms a rhombus (also makes sense) but then he showed me his own world and it didn't appear that way, but the distances between the dungeons and isle seemed same-ish.

If you find 2 of the dungeons, I guess you could draw a circle between these and then the remaining points of interest should be inside that perimeter.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/954778541491363870/992855295300734986/unknown.png

I believe they could also make use of their Glow Tulips and have some kind of hint in some dungeons as to where you should look for the parts.

[Xaelon]

Originally posted by Ereene:

I guess it could be nice to do what you propose, apparently I got a nice map myself with my friend, the 3 dungeons and little isle forms a rhombus (also makes sense) but then he showed me his own world and it didn't appear that way, but the distances between the dungeons and isle seemed same-ish.

If you find 2 of the dungeons, I guess you could draw a circle between these and then the remaining points of interest should be inside that perimeter.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/954778541491363870/992855295300734986/unknown.png

Two of my cities ended up being reasonably close to each other, but out in the middle of nowhere. The vault and the third city were all by themselves and out in the middle of nowhere.

This is my map with the four locations circled.
https://imgur.com/a/VJa4ZQV

It's lucky I chose to explore the right side of the map first, otherwise it would have taken me even longer to find the locations.

[Are Cuenty Wotta]

Its not about luck. Its about persistance. I took this screenshot when I found the last piece.
https://i.imgur.com/pw0e8nI.png

[Xaelon]

Originally posted by Are Cuenty Wotta:

Its not about luck. Its about persistance. I took this screenshot when I found the last piece.
https://i.imgur.com/pw0e8nI.png

Would you like to share how long this took you to do?

Because I'm going to guess that you spent longer exploring the sea than you did playing the rest of the game. Doesn't that strike you as bit off? Seems pretty lopsided to me that you can spend more time searching for one weapon than you can playing through all the other content in the game. Getting the weapon is optional sure, but that doesn't change how badly designed this weapon's "quest" is. I really like this game, and honestly the only part that I found infuriating was trying to track this thing down.

If there was unique and interesting content to be found in the sea the entire time you're looking for the four locations it would be one thing, but you've seen everything the sea has to offer after about 20 hours or so. After that, it's just aimless wandering. I don't know if that sort of thing is fun for you, but spending hours and hours making no progress and having no idea if you're going the right way isn't fun for me.

The biggest problem with the sea is that it expands infinitely in one direction. You can't sail far enough that you hit a boundary that shows you that you've gone too far. If there was such a boundary you could use it to find the limit of the biome, and explore from there. That's what I did to find the throne room. I used the edge of the biome to chart out how large the area was, split it into two halves on my map and explored one at a time. There's no real way to do that in the sea because without outside information there's no way to know how deeply the cities spawn into the sea.

[Are Cuenty Wotta]

Originally posted by Xaelon:

Would you like to share how long this took you to do?

Because I'm going to guess that you spent longer exploring the sea than you did playing the rest of the game. Doesn't that strike you as bit off?

I did not count, but I belive it took me something around 8-12 hours split among few days. Yes, it was boring, but the thrilling of a challenge, a dedication made it for me.

[DY5L3X14]

We're talking about objectively the strongest weapon in the game here. A weapon that rewards those with the persistence (or curiosity) to explore everything and everywhere. It shouldn't be an easy 'gift'.

You can explore vast areas of the Sunken Sea much faster than any other biome and the fact that the merchant sells an item that you have no idea about is surely a huge clue you might want to seek out a hard to find something.

Could there be more clues laying around as to what you might find and their whereabouts? Sure, I wouldn't disagree on that (same for Runesong), but any kind of 'go here' scanner and you might as well play a Ubisoft title.

[Delta]

Bruh, it ain't that hard to find.

Someone told me the ruined cities all spawn around the Titan Boss in a triangle and guess what?

They did, took me maybe 2 hours to find and go through the cities to find the parts.

[Xaelon]

Originally posted by Delta:

Bruh, it ain't that hard to find.

Someone told me the ruined cities all spawn around the Titan Boss in a triangle and guess what?

They did, took me maybe 2 hours to find and go through the cities to find the parts.

You were lucky.

If they were as easy to find as you claim I wouldn't be here suggesting ways to improve the experience now would I?

Any tip about all locations being near anything else or being in some shape is just hearsay and completely incorrect. You can check how my map ended up and see that for yourself: https://imgur.com/a/VJa4ZQV

The only thing set about the positions of the city is the distance bands they spawn at. Beyond that they can be anywhere between the two edges of the sea biome.

If you really want to see if your little strategy to find them holds up, go make another world, find them again, and let us know how it went for you.

[RonEmpire]

This video will help you guys that are having trouble:

https://youtu.be/asOcTKxaVd4

[Xaelon]

Originally posted by RonEmpire:

This video will help you guys that are having trouble:

https://youtu.be/asOcTKxaVd4

Thank you for the suggestion, but without some sort of concrete in-game way to measure the distances just knowing the numbers doesn't do much good. The main problem is that the distance bands in this game are a radius rather than a straight line, meaning you can't just go to a landmark and sail straight.

The best option available to find the parts of this thing is this tool: https://www.craiginsdev.com/maptool.html# which will overlay lines for you to follow on the map.

[Daitengu]

Originally posted by Delta:

Bruh, it ain't that hard to find.

Someone told me the ruined cities all spawn around the Titan Boss in a triangle and guess what?

They did, took me maybe 2 hours to find and go through the cities to find the parts.

Mine weren't like that at all. I had the boss about midpoint and everything else spanned one side of the sea to the other. My vault was even inside an island. I truly did spend more time in the sea than any other biome. And that's with a basic out of game knowledge on the radius of the city locations.