User blog:Whitemagus2000/Of sandsharks and conflicting mechanics

I wanted to give some feedback about the new Prawn update. First off, I've been through the all the content three or four times, so I'm not really a noob, nor do I have a thousand+ hours on my account.

I like several new features in the prawn update. I like the radio signals to help new players find the other life pods. I can now see the floating island from the western side of the grassy plateaus, so new players would be more likely to find it early on (which seems really important these days). I haven't played around with the prawn suit much yet, so I don't have anything to say about that.

Now for the negative feedback....

First and most annoying; the increase in aggression and frequency of the sandsharks (some times stalkers too). So, other than a few loose fragments in the safe shallows and kelp forest, most of the fragments are around the wrecks only. Ok, fair enough. It makes logical sense. But when I went to the wreck at pod 17 in the grassy plateaus, the area was swarming with sand sharks. You can't really scan anything when you are constantly being chased by two or three or more sand sharks, don't have any weapons, and don't even have a seamoth to hide in. While a number of fragments littered the area I eventually had to just give up and try somewhere else. I eventually found the other wreck in the grassy plateaus that was only guarded by two sandsharks that I was able to pull, one at a time, and stab to death with my knife. At the wreck just north of the safe shallows, in the kelp forest, I found that a laser cutter was required to get in, and the area was guarded by 2 to 4 stalkers at any one time. There is no way to spend a minute and a half cutting through a door with at least 2 two stalkers biting you, at any given time. Now that I had a seamoth I was able to ram two of them too death and stab a third too death, before I could get in. So in a game about exploration and survival and NOT killing everything, I would say that things are currently poorly balanced. As an experienced player, I can figure out stratagies to deal with this, but I'm not sure many new players could. And it annoys me that while not supposed to just kill your way through the game, thats currently them best option.

Second is the sandstone. Where did it all go to? Silver was already too rare, now it's even worse. The only ones I've been able to find are at the borders of the grassy plateaus and kelp forests. Within the grassy plateaus (and kelp forest), I spent a couple hours looking, and didn't find a single one.

I really love this game, and am not trying to hate on it. I just feel like these two things may be huge deterrents to new players, and are still pretty irritating for experienced ones (at least for me).