Hi The Alley Guy,
First of all, I want to express my appreciation for the game. It’s an incredible experience, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it! I’ve been thinking about a few ideas that might enhance gameplay, especially around resource management and skill progression. I hope you find some of these suggestions helpful!
- Cooking System for Healing Items I noticed that many enemies drop food-related items. It could be interesting to introduce a cooking system where players can combine these items into healing dishes. To maintain game balance, perhaps these dishes could only be used outside of combat, preventing them from lowering the difficulty of fights. Especially in the early game on Pirate King difficulty, getting ambushed by high-tier units can abruptly end combat. Being able to craft healing items yourself—without spending precious early-game gold—could reduce grind and fit nicely within the game's theme. Cooking could take place at the bar or in the ship’s kitchen, and maybe there could be a cooking skill that unlocks new recipes or improves the potency of healing dishes. This would allow cooking to scale with progression, preventing it from becoming overpowered too early.
- Energy System for Hunting to Avoid Overuse of Healing Items To prevent players from "cheesing" hunts by stacking healing dishes and exploring entire maps without consequence, perhaps movement across tiles during hunting could require stamina or energy. This would add a layer of strategy, forcing players to plan their exploration more carefully, rather than running around with zero HP just to grab treasure chests. The energy cost could scale with the difficulty of the hunting area, for example, hunting in Hajimeru could require less energy per tile than in Shells Town. This mechanic would make exploration more rewarding, while allowing for some level of stategy, instead of reducing combat to an obstacle for grabbing the treasure chest.
- Adjusting the Skill Point Requirements for the Hunting Skill The current skill point requirement for the "Hunting" skill feels a bit too steep at 4 points per level in my experience, especially early in the game when skill points are limited and there are many valuable skills to invest in. Perhaps a gradual increase in skill point costs would feel more balanced (e.g., level 1 = 1 point, level 2 = 2 points, etc.).
- New "Survivalist" Skill to Reduce Energy Costs If you decide to implement an energy requirement for tile movement during hunting, a new skill called "Survivalist" could reduce the energy cost per tile. This would be a great way to reduce grind in the late game and tie the energy mechanic into the overall skill system.
- Improving Line of Sight While Hunting Increasing the line of sight while hunting would also be a helpful addition, to allow for more carefull planning of movement. You could introduce a passive skill, perhaps called "Observation Haki," that increases a player's vision range. The increase could scale with the Haki level, where every 10 levels of Haki increases the line of sight by one tile. Alternatively, you could build this feature into the existing Hunting skill.
- Treasure Hunter Skill for Enhanced Loot I really enjoyed the treasure chest feature! It would be cool to add a skill like "Treasure Hunter," which increases the quality or quantity of loot found in treasure chests. Higher-level hunting grounds could yield more valuable treasures, and perhaps some unique items could only be obtained through leveling this skill.
I understand that implementing these ideas might not be easy, but I just wanted to share my thoughts and spit some ideas. I believe they could add some aditional depth to the game while maintaining its challenge and rewarding progression.
Thank you again for creating such a masterpiece! I’m excited to see how the game evolves.
Best regards,