Does anyone remember if T2A era deep sea serpents are supposed to make leather?

[Talia]

Personally, I think it would be nice to be able to skin the DSS and get perhaps 20 pieces of leather. It would make killing the wandering ones at least a little better without being game-breaking in terms of reward, and help keep more of the random ocean spawn clear.

[SgtScooter]

Also, you will recover the sunken treasure even if the SOS isn't in the top level of your pack, and the serpents don't seem to automatically attack you.


Personally, I like the fact that I can remain hidden while fishing, but I understand why that would be changed. However, it would be a pain if the SOS needed to be in the top level of your pack.


Not that we should pick or choose accuracy.. just saying.

[Talia]

I hadn't tried fishing up the treasure with the SOS buried yet, so I haven't run across that one. The serpents not auto attacking doesn't seem to be 100% of the time though.

[SgtScooter]

It's tough to tell whether they're attacking automatically or because they acquire you as a target as any new spawn would.I think it might be based on proximity? If they pop near the edge of the screen, they can definitely sometimes wander off.

[Talia]

True, it could just be opportunistic targeting.

[Jack]

Well some changes that will happen so far when I get around to them (probably in the next few patches):

• Fishing will unhide you.
  
• The proportion of deep sea serpents to sea serpents that spawn will decrease. Perhaps an overall sea creature spawn decrease.
  
• Neither deep sea serpents nor sea serpents will carry leather, but instead, extra meat (sorry, era accuracy :/)
  
• You will no longer gain past 95 fishing from shore.
  
• Treasure maps and MiBs will appear directly in your pack instead of on the serpent.
  
• There will be a bit of a nerf to the chance to catch an MiB. Stratics lists this as 1 per hour on average.
  
• There will be a small chance to fish up MiB loot with 0 fishing, if you have a MiB in your pack.
  

<url="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.games.computer.ultima.online/sea$20serpent/rec.games.computer.ultima.online/RK-wT9M5jvA/XfXNrtrdsaAJ">This post in April 1999</url> suggests Sea Serpents throughout the ocean should not be very common. However later posts complain that Sea Serpents are far too common, after a patch - which was then fixed. I think we can find a reasonable middle ground, I will take a look at the amount of sea/deep sea serpents.

edit: URL formatting not working
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search...XNrtrdsaAJ

[Talia]

• Treasure maps and MiBs will appear directly in your pack instead of on a serpent.
  

Unless the fished-up serpent is also going to despawn after a period of time, this is going to increase the spawn cluttering up the ocean. I don't particularly care one way or the other, this is just an observation.

[Jack]

Yeah, I will have a look at that one. I was assuming they currently do that, I will look into it though.

[Talia]

My observation is that they do not currently despawn, or else the despawn is on a very long timer. I tested it today by hiding and fishing for a couple hours. In that time I pulled up two sea serpents and one deep sea serpent, none of which had despawned more than an hour after I quit fishing. I actually sailed to shore, did some town business, then sailed back out where I had fished them up, killed them, and collected the maps/MiB.