Sea monster
- Not to be confused with the Kraken lair Sea Monster Hunt.
Sea Monsters are one aspect of Atlantis outposts and come in three different varieties:
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The Triketos is the most common Atlantean sea monster. It likes to ram vessels with its nasty trident and shoot arrows at its opponents. The arrow is equivalent to one small cannon ball. When it dies, its corpse leaves behind a certain magic that, when a ship runs over it, will partially heal the ship. Essentially ignored by most war frigate captains, Triketos are nearly harmless to them. The Triketos' ram move, which is similar to a ship using a double forward maneuver, can be harmful towards war brig and smaller ship classes. If all the Triketos escorting an Archelon or a Gorgonyx are killed off, the bigger monster will almost always retreat. Players should avoid killing the Triketos if they wish to kill the bigger monster. Killing the Triketos and forcing the bigger monster to leave is also a viable tactic. |
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The Gorgonyx is a strong attacking monster; it can ram a vessel with its shell and shoot arrows at a predator. Shooting the equivalent of double medium cannon balls, their most dangerous attack is the "super-ram", a double forward attack that deals up to 40% of a war frigate's health per hit. A Gorgonyx will also drop dragoons on a ship that sits on an adjacent tile, though it will not drop as many as an Archelon. |
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The Archelon can ensnare a ship in a net (the net does no actual damage to the ship), costing it moves and sailing tokens. It also has the best treasure haul rewards of the three sea monsters. The biggest risk of an Archelon is the dragoons they drop aboard nearby ships. A single Archelon's drop is difficult to fray and defeat; two Archelons or more might easily launch a ship-wide fray an unwary war frigate that tangles with them too long. |
The 'double forward' maneuver of Triketos and Gorgonyx monsters differs from the similar move available to ordinary ships in two ways: firstly, it will push any ship type, even a grand frigate (or monsters of higher class including Archelons); and secondly, the monster will not take ram damage if it uses its double forward.
Of these, the sea monsters' strength alters from Scout, Light, Heavy, and Elite, which prefix the name of the monster. The difficulty of the monster can also be determined by the color on the monster's back: light blue(above) for Scout, dark blue for Light, red for Heavy and black for Elite. The farther into the board a ship ventures, the more intelligent the sea monsters become. Difficulty does not affect the damage required to kill a monster, but it affects or appears to affect move generation, AI level, repair rate and the number of dragoons dropped by a Gorgonyx or Archelon.
All sea monster encounters are sinking.
Approximate damage required to sink
| Cannon Balls | Small Cannon Balls | Medium Cannon Balls | Large Cannon Balls |
|---|---|---|---|
|
12.5 | 8.33 | 6.25 |
|
25 | 16.66 | 12.5 |
|
50 | 33.33 | 25 |
Players may need to add a couple of shots to these values due to the monsters having healed slightly over time. Atlantis monsters heal fairly rapidly, faster as their rating (scout, light etc.) increases. To sink a trike in 1 turn it requires 6 shots. All bigger monsters require at least 2 turns to sink for a single War Frigate and as such their "health" is affected by repair rates.
Trophies
The following trophies are awarded for sinking some number of the given sea monster:
Bronze Archelon
Bronze Gorgonyx
Bronze Triketos
Silver Archelon
Silver Gorgonyx
Silver Triketos
Golden Archelon
Golden Gorgonyx
Golden Triketos
History
- Sea monsters were implemented on production oceans on September 4th, 2007.
- Sea Monster names were changed from Narwhal, Nautilus and Turtle to Triketos, Gorgonyx and Archelon respectively with an ice release, on August 31st, 2007.
- Implemented on the Ice Ocean on August 16th, 2007.[1]
- When Atlantis was first introduced, the sea monsters gave rise to the term "Sea Monster Hunt" or "SMH" as another name for a voyage to Atlantis. After the introduction of the Cursed Isles with release 2008-11-19, "SMH" was extended to refer to those voyages as well, and has come to be an umbrella term for all four types of voyages. However, the former meaning still persists, and many players take "SMH" to mean only a voyage to Atlantis, while they have referred to Cursed Isles and Haunted Seas as "CI" and "HS", respectively.
