Swamp comments

The swamps look very beautiful, and eerily serene at night. The sky, the shimmering waters with lily pads, the trees.

Some comments and suggestions, though I'm keeping in mind you guys are still working on it.

MOVEMENT
* Moving through bog waters should be slower than moving on land since you're kicking against the water. Its not that easy to run through a swamp.
* Movement should get even slower when you're moving through sedge (bulrushes, etc). Currently this is treated just like walking through tall grass, but its not the same because in reality its very thick and comes up over your head and the roots might start somewhere in the water. It should be treated like a kind of "thicket," like bushes you have to push through.

WILDLIFE
* Poisonous toads and marsh snakes.
* Insect swarms.
* Crows/ravens on dead branches of trees

* Possibly other birds like owls, though these would all be great in forests too, especially deep forests.
* In some places, exposed tree roots. Some swamp trees naturally grow like that, but what also happens is that the soil is eroded by the water and the water level is lower and you have exposed roots.
* In some places, mossy trees.

MONSTERS
* I don't know if wisps are planned for the game, but marsh lights.
* Hydras, whether the polyp type monsters in U6, or the Lernaean hydra from Greek myth that lived in swamps, or some plant like monster. Something with many necks and/or tentacles that tries to drag you into the swamp waters.

VECTORS FOR POISON AND DISEASE
* Insects.
* Open wounds when going through the water.
* Snakes and toads.
* Leeches.

 

Felt weird that every time I went into a swamp pool in full plate armor I'd start swimming.
There is no sinking feeling enywhere.

 

* chance of being poisoned w/o requisite survival skills, also, rare reagents like mandrake and nightshade should only be harvestable in these types of regions.

 

Great ideas in this thread.

 

Forgot one vector for poison and disease:

* Swallowing bog water, by your head going under the water. This could happen from going too deep, or being knocked back by an attack, say by a bear or a weapon.

As for open wounds being affected by the bog water, it seems it would happen every time you're hit with some type of attack like Rend that causes bleeding. When hit by a rending attack and standing inside bog water, there should be a high chance of poison adding to the bleeding damage, and a chance of disease

 

I was thinking more along the lines of overland map travel... Encumbrance + survival skills = speed in getting through anything that is not a road on the map.

 

Something I noticed is that I couldn't loot anything that died under the water.

 

I forgot to suggest with water snakes, constrictor snakes or something like them. That is huge snakes that can coil around players and squeeze them. These could also be dragon like. There was a a serpent in medieval bestiaries called the hydros, which lived in water, and all serpents in bestiaries were depicted in a dragon-like manner.



There was also the hydrus, a serpent that entered the mouths of crocodiles, and ate its way out of their stomach, killing them.

And of course, the hydra, which was depicted with its heads both both in snake-like and dragon-like form. The hydr- prefix meant that they were from water, usually swamps or rivers. In Ultima 6, it was a polyp-type creature, though similar in that it resided in swampy waters,,



You also had the tangle-vine, which as I remember wasn't in swamps, but something like it would make sense in swamps,


In fact, I saw a concept of a plant version of a hydra.

D&D has shambling mounds.


And of course, boards would be good both in forests and swamps,



I also made a suggestion here about a type of demon crow or lich-crow .

 

Needs some good splooshing noises as you walk through.

 

Swamps do have insect swarms but the staple of large swamps is not the swarms of bugs...it is the presence of LARGE bugs. STUPIDLY large ones. Like, carrying away unattended children.

Do not forget gators/crocs depending on where you are, wild hogs, hten there are the mythological critters like the skunk ape, the Rugarou.

Some bats make their home in swamps depending on the amount of canopy coverage. Snakes, various lizards, some forms of spiders make large web formations that are more akin to Caccoons. We have bullfrogs, crawfish, earthworms, muskrats, red wolves, newts, dragonflies, cranes, even beavers make their home in the wetlands... Lots of flora and fauna to choose from.

 

@WrathPhoenix,

Yea, re: gators/crocs... I think there should be a difference between tropical swamps and more temperate swamps in the game with different animals, monsters, herbs, etc.