A boat used to be a private thing. You earned the skiff licence, you sailed, and to everyone else you were a person sliding across the water. That is over. Boats are now real objects in the shared world: everybody sees the same hull in the same place, and other people can get in.
Four seats
A skiff has the helm and three passenger seats. Walk up to a boat and press E to board.
- Passengers need no licence. Only the owner has to have earned one.
- Every seat is a working seat. Passengers can cast a rod and fire any weapon from where they sit, while the owner steers.
- The deep water is a group trip now. Coral Islet and the open sea are boat-only, and Tidebreaker, the hammerhead that hunts out there with two escorts, is fought from boats.
Boats behave
Sharing raised a question that never came up before: what happens to the people in a boat when its owner leaves? The answer we settled on is that nobody is ever dropped in the water. A parked boat waits two minutes after its owner goes, then takes itself back to the pier and puts its riders ashore.
If you left your boat somewhere inconvenient, a recall button brings it back to you. It has a short cooldown, so it is not a teleport.
Boats also misbehave
Explosives do not hurt friends, but they do push. A blast close to a boat throws everyone aboard into the sea. We consider this a feature.