Solved Curses! Apothecary Mod and Easter Eggs

[KillPhil]

pretty nice ideas! I think we should reduce the amount auf coins you need to lift the curse. Because if the game has a bad day P ) I think it will take a very very long time too find all of these. Also if you lose one of them, is it ensured that it doesnt disappear from the carribbean?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

What I did now is this:
1. You get cursed if you find a Cursed Coin in any chest. Technically incorrect as per the film, but otherwise people wouldn't notice. And it's MUCH simpler to code.
2. If you have multiple coins, you can give ONE to each of your officers. I still have to figure out how to include non-officer characters.
3. The ONLY way to get un-cursed is by making sure there are 882 into the one chest in the cave on Isla de Muerte.
4. By default, that chest contains 881 gold coins. So if you find a random coin and get cursed, you CAN un-curse yourself at Isla de Muerte straight away.
5. Because there is one coin less than there needs to be in the chest, if you open that chest BEFORE finding a coin elsewhere, you CANNOT un-curse yourself straight away!

Those are some pretty interesting ideas for putting the cursed coins to good use!

Cheers! Seemed like such a waste to have fun items like those and just make them give -2 luck. Boooooring.

- Does possessing one of the coins make the player (and any cursed officers or crew) invulnerable? It probably should do as per the actual curse, no?

I didn't do that yet. Seems a bit of a cheat. Although, if I DO get round to adding your other suggestions, that would give some proper disadvantages to this too.

- When you're wandering around at night as a skeleton, shouldn't everyone in the area either try to run away from you or attack you? Including any town guards? You ARE a walking SKELETON, after all.

That should be possible by adjusting the "camouflage" code a bit. That makes everyone hate you but not see you as far as otherwise.
Do you think skeletons should be visible at smaller distances? Then I can just re-use that code without adjusting anything.

- Rather than having enemy skeletons randomly try to kill you (which, as above, shouldn't be possible), perhaps we could have them occasionally try to warn you to put your coins back in the chest?

That'd be fun. Could have a look at the "random assassin" code or that.

- Maybe over a long period of time, your crew's morale could begin to decrease due to the effects of the curse, and after a while, they could ask you to try to lift the curse.
- While cursed, surely your crew wouldn't require food or rum?

How do we define the whole crew being cursed though?
Right now, being cursed depends on carrying a Cursed Coin. What if only the player has one? Should we have that extend to the whole crew and ship too?

- Perhaps we could extend the effects to the player's ship, such as forcing it to used torn sails after a certain amount of time. I don't think it should also be invulnerable, though.

Should be possible. Add a daily counter and once it reaches a certain number, swap out the sails.
Special case for Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman to use their own cursed sails. And I suppose ships with red sails should get red torn sails.
Hmm... possibilities aplenty.

pretty nice ideas! I think we should reduce the amount auf coins you need to lift the curse. Because if the game has a bad day P ) I think it will take a very very long time too find all of these. Also if you lose one of them, is it ensured that it doesnt disappear from the carribbean?

Right now, Cursed Coins can be found randomly, but are rare. I have to check the item spawning code to make sure they keep showing up though.
I think items start "dropping out" when you get too far above their minlevel.

 

[agentad]

it would be more interesting for me to get more chance to be attacked by skeletons (or even meet them in dungeon instead of smugglers) when we get a cursed coin (like in POTC 1 elisabeth chased by the black pearl to get the coin back, but even with the coin she wasnt cursed)

i think its like 2 differents styles:
- jack sparrow style = being cursed and becoming skeleton (+ other cursed aspects mentioned)
- elisabeth style = not being cursed and just being chased by cursed skeletons (im more like that )

also you said you cant stop the curse by visiting the spannish chest first, no way to uncurse ? should be more interesting to have like a "kind of quest" or "just finding cursed coins" to stop the curse

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That would be closer to the films, yes. But what is the point of putting in elaborate curse-code when most people don't even know to look for Isla de Muerte?
My idea would be to encourage players to look for it if they got cursed by accident. Seems like better game-play to me.

 

[agentad]

mention in cursed coin description ? "rumors are saying you can put that coin in the famous spanish chest of isla muerte to get out the curse, perhaps tortuga could be a good start to find it out ?"

 

[Pieter Boelen]

We could put in some hint, yes. But then... the Albatross also only states "now how to get rid of this?".
Perhaps we should have the Albatross mention something to the extent of:
"It's bad luck to find a dead albatross, as every sailor knows. Now, how can you get rid of it? If only there were someone in the Caribbean with an interest in dead animals..."

And for the Cursed Coin:
"Large golden coin with an Aztec skull depiction. It gives off an aura of great ancient power. Rumour has it that these originate from an island that cannot be found, except by those who already know where it is."

 

[Pieter Boelen]

More progress:
- You can put Cursed Coins into your ship's chest and Weaponslocker
- If weaponslocker, the crewmembers who carry one will look like skeletons at night

 

[agentad]

We could put in some hint, yes. But then... the Albatross also only states "now how to get rid of this?".
Perhaps we should have the Albatross mention something to the extent of:
"It's bad luck to find a dead albatross, as every sailor knows. Now, how can you get rid of it? If only there were someone in the Caribbean with an interest in dead animals..."

And for the Cursed Coin:
"Large golden coin with an Aztec skull depiction. It gives off an aura of great ancient power. Rumour has it that these originate from an island that cannot be found, except by those who already know where it is."

yes i really like both descriptions, much more relevant !

EDIT:

More progress:
- You can put Cursed Coins into your ship's chest and Weaponslocker

- If weaponslocker, the crewmembers who carry one will look like skeletons at night

 

[Armada]

What I did now is this:
1. You get cursed if you find a Cursed Coin in any chest. Technically incorrect as per the film, but otherwise people wouldn't notice. And it's MUCH simpler to code.
2. If you have multiple coins, you can give ONE to each of your officers. I still have to figure out how to include non-officer characters.
3. The ONLY way to get un-cursed is by making sure there are 882 into the one chest in the cave on Isla de Muerte.
4. By default, that chest contains 881 gold coins. So if you find a random coin and get cursed, you CAN un-curse yourself at Isla de Muerte straight away.
5. Because there is one coin less than there needs to be in the chest, if you open that chest BEFORE finding a coin elsewhere, you CANNOT un-curse yourself straight away!

All sounds good to me, especially with the default number of coins in the chest.
And the 'punishment' for stealing coins from the chest if you haven't found the last one is suitably evil.

I didn't do that yet. Seems a bit of a cheat. Although, if I DO get round to adding your other suggestions, that would give some proper disadvantages to this too.

The way I see it, there has to be at least some perks with the curse, otherwise you can't have fun with it.
But then we need to have some down sides for it, otherwise it does become a cheat. People that want to run around with God Mode on with no consequences should use Cheat Mode.

That should be possible by adjusting the "camouflage" code a bit. That makes everyone hate you but not see you as far as otherwise.
Do you think skeletons should be visible at smaller distances? Then I can just re-use that code without adjusting anything.

Whatever keeps it simple is fine by me.

How do we define the whole crew being cursed though?
Right now, being cursed depends on carrying a Cursed Coin. What if only the player has one? Should we have that extend to the whole crew and ship too?

I think it should be linked to the player being cursed, so we can introduce some disadvantages such as plummeting morale to counter the invulnerability.
After all, we can't give the entire crew a coin each (some ships have more than 882 crew, anyway).
We could say that the player has to place a coin in the ship's chest to curse the crew, but I'm not sure why they'd do that unless they were trying to get rid of it, so that might not work.

EDIT: Saw your point about the ship's chest/ weapons locker.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The way I see it, there has to be at least some perks with the curse, otherwise you can't have fun with it.
But then we need to have some down sides for it, otherwise it does become a cheat. People that want to run around with God Mode on with no consequences should use Cheat Mode.

Right now, it is as harmless as Vanderdecken's curse is since it is purely a model thing.
The Dead Albatross is slightly harmful with its stacking -1 Luck, but you can get something back for it worth 300 gold. So that's not too bad either.
As long as we're going with simple, I'm not entirely convinced of truly harmful curses. It COULD make for new, interesting game-play though and is worth adding some time.
And I do think that "camouflage" thing is going to be easy enough.

 

[Talisman]

What I did now is this:

3. The ONLY way to get un-cursed is by making sure there are 882 into the one chest in the cave on Isla de Muerte.

How are you opening the cave on the Isle de Muerte?

Currently it only opens if you have the 4 pieces of the map in the Jack Sparrow story . Or in one of Bartolomeu's stories ( Bartolomeu -The Battle of Aguadilla - I think it is opened by getting a map) it is opened at a specific point in the quest. The rest of the time you can't get to the cave.

Are you going to have the cave available all the time - or is it going to become open when you get the cursed coin (and possibly only as long as you have the coin )

 

[Talisman]

Are you going to have the cave available all the time - or is it going to become open when you get the cursed coin (and possibly only as long as you have the coin )

.....And if the cave is only available while you have the coin - will putting it back in the chest mean you can't leave the location and get back to the beach location and your ship.

I think I remember ( but I am not sure ) that when you approach the abandoned boats on the beach in front of the cave the icon for boarding your ship appears - I don't know ( or remember if it works or not ).

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I simplified things so the cave is now always open. The four map pieces are required ONLY in the Jack Sparrow storyline.
Seems to be working fine. And players who WANT to get themselves cursed can go and do so.

 

[agentad]

interesting (as a huge player of standard storyline )

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Not sure how far I'll go with the realism on the curse. Probably WILL add:
- EVERYONE attacks you on sight while you're a skeleton
- Morale decreases over time due to the curse (but have to avoid bringing it down to mutiny level; how far down would be reasonable?)
- Torn sails and trailing fog after a while (how many days/weeks/months would be good for that?)

Will NOT do (for now):
- Skeletons talking to you and demanding you return the coins: requires additional quest coding
- Invulnerability: too much of a cheat

 

[Armada]

- Torn sails and trailing fog after a while (how many days/weeks/months would be good for that?)

Maybe a month or so?

Will NOT do (for now):
[...]
- Invulnerability: too much of a cheat

With everyone attacking you as a skeleton AND the crew morale decrease AND the -2 Luck, I'd say that qualifies as a "truly harmful curse".
It's just my opinion, but I really think we need something to balance out all these penalties, whether it be invulnerability or something else.
What do others think?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

With everyone attacking you as a skeleton AND the crew morale decrease AND the -2 Luck, I'd say that qualifies as a "truly harmful curse".
It's just my opinion, but I really think we need something to balance out all these penalties, whether it be invulnerability or something else.
What do others think?

I removed the -2 luck thing. The coins no longer change any skills for the better or the worse. The Albatross has luck covered.
The morale thing is quite nasty, I suppose. Depends on how bad we make it though.
But as long as you can get cursed by just finding a coin (which I'll stick to for simplicity's sake for now), suddenly turning invulnerable seems a bit... odd?

 

[KillPhil]

a low morale would be good I think.
And the torn sails and the fog, hmm i think about 1-2 weeks?
Can we make your ship and yourself stronger instead of invulnerability? Because the curse should have a few pros imo

 

[Armada]

I removed the -2 luck thing. The coins no longer change any skills for the better or the worse. The Albatross has luck covered.
The morale thing is quite nasty, I suppose. Depends on how bad we make it though.

I'm not saying the crew morale penalty is too evil; by all means, keep it. I just think the curse shouldn't be all doom-and-gloom.

But as long as you can get cursed by just finding a coin (which I'll stick to for simplicity's sake for now), suddenly turning invulnerable seems a bit... odd?

Well the curse was Disney's idea, so...
Maybe simply having a health boost as Pillat suggested would suffice?

 

[agentad]

i agree with health boost (like the grey monk item ?)