With the temporary removal of washed up items, many complaints have surfaced about the current state of player exploration. Beyond sight seeing and maybe some lore discovery, SoT does not offer the player much in return for exploring its beautiful landscapes, other than some washed up items on beaches (once that feature returns).

I would like to offer a content suggestion that I think could change that: Pirate Tombs.

Overview

Each of the large islands present in SoT could contain a large labyrinth below them that serves as a Pirate Tomb. The islands that have a tomb could include (but are not limited to)

Smugglers Bay

Old Faithful Island

Lone Cove

Crescent Isle

Cannon Cove

Kraken's Fall

Wanderers Refuge

Plunder Valley

Crook's Hollow

Discover Ridge

Thieves Haven

Devil's Ridge

The Pirate Tomb would contain multiple floors that are made up of puzzles/riddles that must be solved for the crew to progress through the tomb. These floors could also have traps in them as well.

The Pirate Tomb would contain loot along the way and in the final chamber.

A Pirate Captain would lie in wait for the crew to try and steal the treasure he/she wanted to take with them to the afterlife.

Spawning a Pirate Tomb

The idea is to promote exploration, so it makes no sense if these Pirate Tombs are always active because then players will know exactly where to go. Instead, the tombs should activate randomly, and give no worldly indication (unlike Skeleton Forts) that they are up. Players will simply stumble across them while exploring the larger islands.

Exploring islands should reward the player

It also makes no sense to have the entrance in one location, because players will simply check the same spot every time they pass an island. Instead, each island should have multiple locations where the tomb entrance can spawn. Each entrance on the island can lead to the same tomb, but the initial "door" location should vary. If we consider the entrance to look like the archway in the picture above, these could be added inside of caves, in the sides of rocks, etc.

Entrance in rocks (red), in cave (yellow), underwater tunnel (orange). All connect to the same Pirate Tomb

Furthermore, players should be able to be made aware of these tombs by talking to NPCs, or finding journals in the world. Tavern keepers can tell players when they have heard of a new tomb discovered nearby (but not give exact locations). NPCs at campfires can explain to players that they were on an expedition to explore a tomb before they got marooned. You get the idea.

Taverns are a great place to get the latest scoop on recently discovered Pirate Tombs

Progressing through the Pirate Tomb

I was thinking that the Pirate Tomb would consist of multiple floors (3-5). Each floor is chosen randomly from a set of pre-made floors. With a large enough set of pre-floors each Tomb should feel decently unique when considering all of the floors together.

The crown jewel of these tombs is that the floors all have puzzles/riddles that need to be solved before the players can advance to the next floor. I was hoping that the puzzle would resemble the types of puzzles seen in Uncharted, Golden Sun, Zelda, etc.

An example from Uncharted of what a floor could look like

The floors could also contain traps that, once activated, spawn a wave of skeletons that attack the players, or simple damage the players who activated it. It should be noted that the tomb floors are focused on exploration and puzzle solving so the waves don't necessarily have to have any special skeletons. Save the fighting for the burial chamber...

To make the puzzles and floors more interesting, treasure should be available on each floor, that requires you to solve the puzzle a different way if you want to get to the next floor. Here's an example below (couldn't get a great picture)

The player starts on the bottom left. The exit is to the top left, but a chest is on the ledge to the top right. The player must solve the puzzle two times to get both. From Golden Sun

The Burial Chamber

The whole idea of the Pirate Tomb is to make it to the burial chamber. Here, deceased Skeleton Captain will engage the player in battle after emerging from their coffin (all Skyrim draugr-like). For some possible fight mechanics suggestions, see my post on Ghost Ship Raids where I list several different skeleton fight mechanics.

Some possible skeletons the players can fight in the burial chamber

Defeating the Skeleton Captain will reward the crew with a cursed skull: Ancient Legend Skull. This skull will spawn skeletons around the player holding it while they are on land (not including outposts). Its turn in value is similar to the cursed chests (Chest of Sorrow and Chest of a Thousand Grogs).

The skull should have distinct features that make it obvious it has a special effect

In addition to the cursed skull, the burial chamber should have a random assortment of loot for the crew to pilfer. The amount of loot should be slightly less than a skull fort because there are treasures on the floors leading to the burial chamber.

A SoT legend hideout concept art but it kind of works here too

Please leave some comments with suggestions and feedback. If you liked this idea, please check out some of my other suggestions.