Sea travel wishlist

For Episode 2 when we get sea travel !

Giant turtle islands.

With wilderness or settlements. They would move around according to a schedule, or weather, or astrology, or sea conditions.






"Leviathan" whales that swallow ships.

You would enter a "whale belly" scene, and have to navigate your way out through its open mouth, fight rough currents if you moved your ship at the wrong moment.





Sea grottoes, navigating through them to go into dungeons or underground towns.

Where is the last screenshot from, I wonder?







"Milky seas"

This is the old name for areas of sea that are luminescent from algae.




Tides and tide pools that recede to reveal dungeon entrances in the right seasons.




Sea monsters, of course.

Including sea serpents, giant squids (krakens), and the mighty pistrix (sea dragon).





Navigating seasonal winds.

Both to achieve faster sea travel along trade winds, and to avoid monsoons.





Underwater shipwrecks and treasure sites, perhaps entrances to dungeons.



Celestial navigation.

Perhaps by turning the OW ocean scene around, requiring you to use navigation methods.



Ghost ships and spectral skeletons.




Sea battles, including ship-to-ship boarding.




Deep sea fishing.



Small, deserted islands with buried treasures.



Useful, strategically placed lighthouses.

So we can see ports in the dark on the OW.




Whirlpools and waterspouts.

 

Hear hear.

 

they have tech for this! the water level in ardoris sewer is variable. (or used to be, haven't checked back in a while)

edit: next day, yes, still variable

 

Oh redfish, thou art a dreamer.

However, I would like to see some discoverable wrecks. One of the great experiences I had in early Ultimas as a young tyke at the shared Apple II GS Library computer was
discovering Captain Johne in the underworld for the first time. Wow, this guy survived town here in a shipwreck ? (well it was a tower, but I digress)

In our game pretty much all shipwrecks are deco only, which is a little disappointing. I'd like to get on them if I swim out to them and fight some skeleton pirates or something, maybe even an "elite skeleton pirate" red or two.

 

Something Ultima V also had implicitly was coral reefs. If you had your sail up and your ship was pushed towards shallow waters, it would get damaged by the reefs.

I don't expect a similar mechanic in SotA, but reefs could be there as good fishing spots.