Newest Patch and Zee Beasts

Sunless Sea
1

In short, after the newest patch, Zee Beasts are no longer worth fighting unless absolutely necessary. Monsters attack more often, for similar or more damage, and move faster than you. Stealth is now the only option for ALL Zee Beasts other than the very weakest, unless you absolutely must get something they carry (like Flukes).

The long:

I have tested this on a large variety of Zee Beasts. Most beasts can attack me once every 2-3 seconds. In other words, they attack more often than I do. They can do this while I am behind them, and they now almost always get out of my forward gun arc after every attack, as well as sometimes (more than 50% of the time) get out of my deck gun’s arc after an attack. Outside of the very easiest Zee Beasts (basically bats and tiny crabs), the rewards are no longer worth the damage that you will, inevitably, get to your ship. Monsters also move much faster than you when charging, so trying to &quotdodge&quot the charge seems to be impossible. I’ve been trying to do it since I got the game and unless I go Full Power to Engines, I have never ever successfully dodged a charge attack. And if expected that every single charge should be dodged by going Full Power to Engines, well, that’s a bit ludicrous.

I get that Zee Beasts were a total joke before this. But now, they aren’t worth the rewards. Nothing like taking 100+ hull damage just to kill a single Zee Beast that drops <100 fragments and some hunting trophies. Basically, 1 fight with a Zee Beast means you need to repair next time you hit London. 2 fights means you better be super careful not to get into any more fights with anything. And 3 means you’re likely to be dead. And getting the better ships really don’t help that much. Another 200 hull is another 2-3 Zee Beasts, at best, before death. In short, killing Zee Beasts went from being too good to totally not worth it. It’s ALWAYS a smarter move to just avoid them. The rewards just aren’t worth it.

Anyway, I am sure there will be plenty of people who disagree with me, but this is seriously a huge problem. Combat is sometimes unavoidable, and even if it was always avoidable, this change has DRASTICALLY decreased the &quotfun&quot of combat. It’s just constant hull smashing from the Zee Beast and a repair bill everytime I put into port, no matter how careful I am. I get that the game needs something other than what it had, but this is not the right solution.

EDIT: Also, not sure if this was part of the patch or a bug, but I now always start combat with my Blue Scintillack on cooldown. No more double shot opening salvos. :(
edited by DragonDai on 2/28/2015

2

The Blue Scintillack is on cooldown for me also, which keeps catching me out, but I’m not finding the Zee Beasts anywhere near as hard as you describe. Mind you, what equipment are you using?
With the Frigate and decent weapons I’m not finding them too hard, just a bit more evasive, which is good. I always begin the fight with the lights off and as far away as possible, reversing away from them when they move towards me, which gives me a good couple of salvos before they notice me. When I see the red exclamation marks appear I light them up. With the starter ship and crappier weapons I might agree with you more but that remains to be seen.

3

Completely disagree with the overall assessment.

Sorry Dragondai, but you can still outrange and kite away at most Zee beasts pretty easily, certainly in a ship with a forward weapon.

I’ve been able to acquire target lock on both my deck cannon AND Memento Mori on most Zee beasts I’ve found (Angler Crabs, Lorn Flukes, Behemoustaches, Albino Morays, Jillyfleurs and Jillyfish) and still unload two shots before they react, and in the case of most Zee beasts get another two shots off before they go from &quot?&quot to &quot!&quot and even begin their attack protocols. WITHOUT using my lump of Blue Scintillack. This kills MOST of the weaker Zee beasts right off.

The only Zee beasts that have been able to get attacks off on me in Blemmigan have been - Lorn Flukes (high HP always means they survive long enough to start attacking even with 6 shots before they can), Lifebergs (for some reason they react a LOT faster than other zee beasts to attacks and home in faster), and Blue Prophets (because they’re super Sonic-the-Hedgehog fast). Haven’t tried Mt. Nomad yet, and have yet to run into an Elder Crab or a Bound Shark (or regular bats, they seem to have disappeared from my map near Venderbight). Did kill the tougher Lorn Fluke though.

Now it might be my strategy though:

Tail a beast and get just into range of both guns and let them fill while they wander around - LIGHTS OFF. Unload and back away slowly while still aiming at them. Other than the Lifeberg and Blue Prophets, most will wander around with a &quot?&quot mark for long enough for my 2nd volley to fill up. Fire that off and usually by now they’ve spotted me and/or are dead. If not, by now my Blue Scintillack should be filled, so click that for Volley #3. Now most stuff other than the toughest stuff is dead. Past that, I THEN turn my lights on for quicker target acquisition and set my reverse to level 2. Usually this let’s their first charge just miss me (except for Blue Prophets, who cover mad distance and battles always basically turn into slugging matches at this point). Then I maximize engine output while in reverse to gain enough distance for their next charge to again just miss while continuing to fire. Unless I back into an island or the Lorn Fluke uses its long range (but super weak) attack, I can still kill most stuff without taking damage (Blue Prophets excluded, again, they gotta go fast).

Obviously I have a frigate at this point and am using the extended range of the forward weapon to my advantage, but I figured this kiting strategy out while in the steamer and with the base deck gun a while ago to fight the basic crabs. It usually still completely works. So well in fact that it’s pretty game breaking, and definitely was when the Blue Lump of Winning was super broken as it was.

As for that blue lump, I’ve found that if you let it fill up all the way, but don’t set it off in a battle, it retains its &quotcharge&quot for the next battle you start, so you can open up with that double volley. If you want to let it charge up without going into battle though, just click on an enemy while staying out of their visual range and hidden. It fills up when an enemy is targeted and you are in &quotBattle&quot mode. Since it retains the charge between fights, you can pretty safely keep it as charged as you want for battles. I forget to do this sometimes though, but I’m fine with it starting uncharged most of the time, because before it was OP as hell.
edited by MisterGone on 2/28/2015
edited by MisterGone on 2/28/2015

4

I had a fight with an eel and it was very entertaining, he seemed to actively attempt to flank me which was nice to see.

5

See, now there’s a thing that’d be interesting to add - flank attacks.

I mean the only issue right now is that you can turn WAY faster, so flanking would probably be less than useful for zee beasts.

Though I still hope they can make it so that diving Zee beasts can essentially use that as a quasi-teleport, moving at double speed and behind you or to your blind spot unless you counter with a strange catch quickly enough.

Hell, I really wish that certain beasts, if getting attacks without knowing where they were coming from, would immediately dive, and search for the player underwater, only surfacing once they’ve hit the “!” (Spotted) state.

6

That would be really nice, I like the idea. I had a Jillyfish circle me very fast, around and around me, pressed right against the ship, and it made me think about how it might attack in reality. They could reach up like a Kraken and drag crew members over the side, then submerge only to surface elsewhere.

Yeah, the more I think, the more complex it gets. Not completely infeasible but I imagine hard to implement. Especially with an endless imagination.

7

Yeah, I figured I should come back and put in a bit more specific details. I was in the middle of a run when I wrote the initial bit, so I decided to finish the run and quit the game before I came back to give more details/examples. So here they are.

I am currently running the Caligo-class Merchant Cruiser. I tested many fights, however, running with the Maenad-class Frigate (in a different save file).

On the Merchant Cruiser, I am running with Blue Scintillack and a Hellthrasher, with the Serpentine as my engine, WE ARE CLAY as my aux, Avid Suppressor as my aft, and Awakened Seal of the Red Science on my bridge.

On the Frigate, I was running with the Blue Scintillack, the Hellthrasher, and the Memento Mori, with the Serpentine as my engine, WE ARE CLAY as my aux, Avid Suppressor as my aft, and a Judgement Resonator on my bridge.

So during my tests with the Frigate, I fought several of each of the following (3-6) Bound Sharks (both types), Eels, Jillyfish, Behemoustaches, Tyrant Moths, and a single Fluke (non-savage).

On my main game, with the Merchant Cruiser, I only flight smaller stuff, but have fought a small number (like 5 or so, maybe less) of Bat Swarms and Auroral Megalops, and a single Western Angler Crab and a Single Behemoustache.

The only fight the two ships had in common was the Behemoustace, and it was identical to each ship. For all fights I waited RIGHT at the edge until my weapons were fully charged and my Scintillack was off cooldown (which we’ll get to this issue at the end of this). So with the Merchant Cruiser, I had 2 shots and with the Frigate I had 4, most of the time. Sometimes the monster would turn and see me before the Scintillack was off cooldown (20 seconds is a long time).

The end result for ALL the monsters, however, was identical. After firing off my shots, the monsters would be in mid-charge. Their charge lasted long enough that it would connect, even while reversing at full speed. Once they had connected, they would immediately start charging again. This charge would start the second my boat was no longer touching them, and in the cases of the larger monsters and the bats (we’ll talk specifically about them in a second), this second charge would connect AND take them out of my front gun’s firing arc (meaning I wouldn’t get a third shot from my front gun for quite a while, if at all). Sometimes with the sharks and eels, this charge would take them out of the arc of my deck gun as well.

If the beast wasn’t out of my deck gun arc, I’d be able to get another shot off before they charged again. If the charge took them out of my deck gun arc, however, I would not be able to get another shot off before they charged again (because of having to turn to reposition). Monsters also did not need to turn to face my ship before starting their charge, often beginning to start their charge while facing 90 degrees away from me and turn mid charge (on a dime) to slam me.

All in all, most monsters would get, on average, 2.5 successful charge attacks per salvo, not counting the Scintillack. On something like a Behemoustache, that’s 50 damage for every time I get to shoot them. Needless to say, there’s a reason I only fought a single Behemoustache in my Merchant Cruiser.

As for the bats, well, that was super. I killed a couple of them with the opening shot, but my irons is low enough in the save with the Merchant Cruiser that if I do min damage, they are alive with 1 health. This only happened once…and that one time was disastrous. The bat charged over and over and over and over. Every charge took him out of my deck gun’s firing arc, meaning that I would have to turn (about 90 degrees) to get them back into my firing arc. In that time, they would have charged again, meaning that I couldn’t ever get a single shot in. They took my fully repaired Merchant Cruiser from 300/300 hull to 85/300 hull, 5 hull damage at a time. It was nuts. I just couldn’t get it to stay in my deck gun’s arc. I finally killed it by fleeing (all the while it’s beating me up, cause at Full Power to Engines the bats are faster than my Merchant Cruiser) to Venderblight and docking and then immediately leaving to finish it off.

Oh, and remember how I had Blue Scintillack? You’d think that’d help, right? Like I’d get my gun to max because of the Scintillack and then I’d only have to have them in my sights for half a second to finish them? Well, sadly, when I used the Scintillack (which I got to use 3 times that fight), the bats weren’t in my gun’s firing arc…and the Scintillack, instead of maxing my targeting solution, reset it. I tested this later on the Frigate, and the issue was present there too. If I use the Scintillack when my target is in the firing arc of any of my guns, all of my guns get maxed targeting solutions. If I use the Scintillack while my target is not in the firing arch of ANY of my guns, ALL my guns have their targeting solutions reset to 0.

This is on top of the Scintillack instantly going on cooldown, without being used, at the start of combat, as mentioned before. If that’s intended, that’s a HUGE nerf to the Scintillack and that alone makes combat at zee FAR more challenging.

But the real issue here is that Blue Scintillack is used at all. Try to take out a bigger monster, with tons of hps, without it. Even in a Frigate it was REALLY challenging and a Particularly Tormented Bound Shark took me from full to almost dead when I decided to not use it just to see. Combat shouldn’t require Blue Scintillack. But right now, it really does.

The big take away from all this is that even if you don’t think combat is too challenging, ask yourself if it’s worth it. How much hull is 11-60 fragments worth (Tyrant Moth). How much for 30 fragments and 1 zee story? Or 30 fragments and 1-3 hull, and a hunting trophy? Cause even 50 hull is a lot for those rewards. That’s before you finish off a 600 hp Elder Angler Crab and get 10 fragments and 2 hunting trophies. Sigh…

Combat just isn’t worth it anymore. The risks vastly outwiegh the rewards.
edited by DragonDai on 2/28/2015
edited by DragonDai on 2/28/2015

8

Sorry DragonDai, maybe your game is bugged or something, but I just wasn’t seeing this behavior you’re describing.

But then, maybe my game is bugged?

Because I’m running on a laptop and I’m getting all of the hitches whenever the game “ticks”, so maybe that’s causing the behavior of the enemies to be more manageable? I dunno.

But I’m not seeing enemies as aggressive as you’re describing in my game.

9

Just realized there was more than one response to my original post (no idea why I didn’t see it before). The only thing I really had to say in response to this was, MisterGone, were all these fights today? Cause this patch went in today. I am assuming you were talking about fights you had while playing today, but I thought I’d ask, just in case.

That being said, I realized that I forgot the most important part of my explanation. So, I start the fight while &quotstealthed.&quot The monster has no symbol (?, !, red !!!, or otherwise) in it’s bubble. It’s completely ignorant of my presence. Before my first shots even hit the monsters, they have ! over their heads, even if they are at max range and facing away from me. Before my second round hits them (from the Blue Scintillack, so by &quotsecond round&quot I mean a round that immediately follows the first), they have turned, are facing me, and are mid charge with red !!! over their head. This is ALL zee beasts I listed having fought. None of them had faster or slower reaction times than posted. And, again, ALL of them were able to close the distance from my max deck gun firing range to my ship while I was reversing at speed 2 in a single charge attack. So yeah. Thought I’d make sure that was all clear.

And I, too, have pretty bad hitching on my (quite powerful) desktop. It doesn’t make the game unplayable, per say, but it’s bad enough to give me a headache if I play to long.

EDIT: EIther way, I should say that the recent change to monsters has completely killed my desire to play. After my tests, I stopped playing. It’s just not fun constantly being at basically no hull, always having to run and hide from monsters, and always having a 100 Echo repair bill waiting for me in port. It’s not challenging or fun, it’s just aggravating and frustrating.
edited by DragonDai on 2/28/2015

10

Thanks for coming back DragonDai.

[quote=DragonDai]The only fight the two ships had in common was the Behemoustace, and it was identical to each ship. For all fights I waited RIGHT at the edge until my weapons were fully charged and my Scintillack was off cooldown (which we’ll get to this issue at the end of this). So with the Merchant Cruiser, I had 2 shots and with the Frigate I had 4, most of the time. Sometimes the monster would turn and see me before the Scintillack was off cooldown (20 seconds is a long time).

The end result for ALL the monsters, however, was identical. After firing off my shots, the monsters would be in mid-charge. Their charge lasted long enough that it would connect, even while reversing at full speed. Once they had connected, they would immediately start charging again. This charge would start the second my boat was no longer touching them, and in the cases of the larger monsters and the bats (we’ll talk specifically about them in a second), this second charge would connect AND take them out of my front gun’s firing arc (meaning I wouldn’t get a third shot from my front gun for quite a while, if at all). Sometimes with the sharks and eels, this charge would take them out of the arc of my deck gun as well.

If the beast wasn’t out of my deck gun arc, I’d be able to get another shot off before they charged again. If the charge took them out of my deck gun arc, however, I would not be able to get another shot off before they charged again (because of having to turn to reposition). Monsters also did not need to turn to face my ship before starting their charge, often beginning to start their charge while facing 90 degrees away from me and turn mid charge (on a dime) to slam me.

All in all, most monsters would get, on average, 2.5 successful charge attacks per salvo, not counting the Scintillack. On something like a Behemoustache, that’s 50 damage for every time I get to shoot them. Needless to say, there’s a reason I only fought a single Behemoustache in my Merchant Cruiser.[/quote]

That actually sounds buggy to me, I’ve never been attacked so relentlessly as you describe. I’d like to see this for myself to make sure, but that sounds insane, especially the bat fight (not quoted). You have your lights off until they notice you, yes?

[quote=DragonDai]…and the Scintillack, instead of maxing my targeting solution, reset it. I tested this later on the Frigate, and the issue was present there too. If I use the Scintillack when my target is in the firing arc of any of my guns, all of my guns get maxed targeting solutions. If I use the Scintillack while my target is not in the firing arch of ANY of my guns, ALL my guns have their targeting solutions reset to 0.

This is on top of the Scintillack instantly going on cooldown, without being used, at the start of combat, as mentioned before. If that’s intended, that’s a HUGE nerf to the Scintillack and that alone makes combat at zee FAR more challenging.[/quote]

Again, this sounds buggy. I just tested this one on a couple of fights between reading your post and replying, and this is not the case for me. If I turn around and let the enemy out of my gun-sights then use the Blue Scintillack, it most definitely does not reset my weapons.

Something may be wrong with your game files because this all sounds a bit bizarre. Don’t give up on the game just yet, because I don’t think you’re being served the right dish here. If you’re playing on Steam then verify your game files and all the usual stuff, or reinstall and try again.

11

Perhaps there’s something strange going on with my game, but I just updated and now I have no Zee Beasts at all, nor ships. There’s absolutely nothing spawning for me.

12

I think it would improve combat if you could do overcharge your engines safely as long as you kept on eye on engine temperature, so that combat could be balanced around using good timing to dash out of the way of a monster charge or out of an enemies firing range.

13

DragonDai - Yeah, I’ve been playing today, after the patch, and haven’t been encountering the behavior you’re describing. The enemies seem to have better charge behavior and the lifebergs, at least, react quickly, but not in the manner you’re describing.

Miss Daisy - I’ve been seeing a bit of that in my game too. Not everywhere, but I’m not seeing the Pirate cutter or the Bats spawn in near Venderbight, and in lots of other places where I normally see enemies I don’t . . . sometimes. Sometimes they spawn in, sometimes they don’t.

One thing that’s been frustrating is that I’ve been trying to hunt the Eater of Names, and it isn’t spawning in at all anymore. I dunno what happened. I saw it spawn in once, a couple updates ago, and avoided it because I wasn’t ready to go toe to toe with what’s supposed to be the toughest “Ship” enemy in the game, but now it’s not spawning in at all. :-(

14

I thought you sort of could?

By which I mean, setting your engines to full, then throttling down to half speed before the temp hits the top, and then throttling back up once it lessens.

Also, I kind of wish ambient temperature affected your engines as well, so that traveling up north actually lowered your base temp, so throttling up there would be safer, and going to the south kept your engines hotter, so the chance of fires would increase throttling down there. But then, that might screw up the game balance, as everyone would go up north to jet around east or west, and would avoid the southern coast more.

Though that might actually just make the game more interesting . . .

15

I thought you sort of could?

By which I mean, setting your engines to full, then throttling down to half speed before the temp hits the top, and then throttling back up once it lessens.

Also, I kind of wish ambient temperature affected your engines as well, so that traveling up north actually lowered your base temp, so throttling up there would be safer, and going to the south kept your engines hotter, so the chance of fires would increase throttling down there. But then, that might screw up the game balance, as everyone would go up north to jet around east or west, and would avoid the southern coast more.

Though that might actually just make the game more interesting . . .[/quote]

I think it might just be random, because it often seems to explode after you’ve slowed down and your engine has cooled.

16

Lights go on after the second salvo is fired. By that point they’ve already taken damage (from the first salvo). Basically, shoot guns, use Scintillack, shoot guns, lights on. If zee beasts aren’t responding to damage (I just assumed they do), than that sounds like a much bigger issue than the issue this update &quotfixed.&quot If you hit a zee beast with a deck gun, let alone a torpedo of flensing shot, it should notice you immediately. Looking over other comments, it seems like zee beasts do not respond to lights, which, again, is pretty ridiculous, and seems like an exploit. Maybe my problem is turning on the lights too soon and not exploiting zee beasts complete brainlessness? I just always figured that having the lights on meant faster target acquisition meant more damage due to more shots. But maybe that’s not the case.

[quote=EnglishInfidel]Again, this sounds buggy. I just tested this one on a couple of fights between reading your post and replying, and this is not the case for me. If I turn around and let the enemy out of my gun-sights then use the Blue Scintillack, it most definitely does not reset my weapons.

Something may be wrong with your game files because this all sounds a bit bizarre. Don’t give up on the game just yet, because I don’t think you’re being served the right dish here. If you’re playing on Steam then verify your game files and all the usual stuff, or reinstall and try again.[/quote]

Verified my files between my last post and this, nothing wrong there. But, tbh, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is bug related. After today’s update, I started having ALL THE BUGS! I got stuck in the Fathomking’s Hold and on the surface and had to quit the game and relaunch to go back to the Unterzee. I went from a small, barely noticeable amount of &quotstuttering&quot/FPS issues last night right before I quit for the evening to VERY noticeable stuttering today. I had the game hard lock and need to be force quit several times around Gaider’s Mourn when targeting pirate ships (something I had happen shortly after launch but than haven’t had happen in a while). And I have an odd sound bug where when I buy/sell items from a store rapidly or click thru story options quickly (like dealing with random ship events I’ve read 100 times or selling souls to the Brass Embassy) the sound effect cuts off early. The last one is a little hard to describe, but it’s REALLY obvious and pretty jarring. Makes listening to the game very…uncomfortable? Unpleasant maybe? I think that’d be the right word. Like nails on a chalkboard. And all of this started today, after the patch, with the exception of the stuttering, which I did experience before the patch, but which got WAY worse after.

But verifying the game files on Steam didn’t give me any help. I’ll try uninstalling/reinstalling I guess.

17

I have to say that I’m liking the more aggressive behaviour, it used to be that no creatures were a challenge the second you had two front guns, and now there’s a good chance that you’ll be in for a fight, stops complacency, which I think is excellent.

I found particularly frustrating the blue prophets and the bats with feathers glued on, the speed of them made it very difficult to get a lock on them and I found myself for the first time in a long time wishing that I had a rear gun as well.

18

I experience this too, both when I was testing the patch and now that it’s been released. I was waiting to see if anyone else had the same issue before I submitted a bug report so I’ll do that now. It’s a legit bug I guess.

As for the issue with getting stuck in the Fathomking’s Hold, I’ve never experienced that. Before the update though, I did get stuck if I traveled to Venice on the surface, which meant I had to return down to the Zee then quit and reload to &quotrefresh&quot the background.
Your game combat really doesn’t seem stable though, let us know how a completely fresh reinstall goes and if it solves any of your issues. I wish I could help you out more, and I hope you get it sorted.

19

I saw a Rat Barge use a Rat Sender for a slight fix while I’m on them. That was interesting.

Seen the bugs where the screen stays in the surface/fathomking’s hold before. The surface one only happened before a patch a long time ago for me. And the Fathomking’s hold happens when you click the enter option before the game fades to change screen automatically when you get into port.
edited by Mica on 3/1/2015

20

Enemy AI has definitely gotten smarter over the last couple patches. Trying to fight by backing away is no longer a great idea, I do it only when I’m in a powerful ship and I’m being impatient. Circling around your foe, using little islands for cover and taking advantage of your deck gun’s wide firing arc is the best way to deal with zee beasts. Also, when they start to lunge at you turn hard away from them and they’ll be likely to miss. Nosing their butt like you’re an a-hole seal works well too but if feels kinda like cheating. >.> The same tactics work well for most ships as well except that you have to get a feel for where their gun’s blind spots are and try to stay in them. The down side to fighting like this is it makes for long drawn out battles and you hardly ever get to use your forward guns, but it’s a great way to turn a ship like the Merchant Cruiser into an effective combat ship, especially when you’ve got an aft gun mounted.