I just died in that crater due to "Fire damage received" and the last line was as I mentioned in another context (wind vortex) that I had been killed by my own Fire damage. At first I thought I had been attacked but it looked like my Avatar was burning - so I thought, too late, it might be Damage-over-Time, just like from the Lava Fields in the "Blackblade Foothills". In the crater in Verdantis Foothills it comes a bit surprising, as the water did not seem to indicate that it was THAT HOT. Even the player yakuzi looks hotter with bubbling water and steam over the water than the water in the Verdantis Crater. So - if it really was the water that caused a DoT fire damage in my opinion it would need to be more obvious what is happening. Remember - the last time I ran past the lava fields in Blackblade Foothills I was surprised to suffer so much fire damage just from stepping in the lave with one foot while running past it. Here is no lava or magma, just water. If it is that hot, it should be boiling, bubbling, hissing, steaming - and if possible it should name the damage e.g. Steam damage. It at first never occured to me that I got fire damage from the still water.
I think it's supposed to be damage from the shard in the center. Been a while, but I seem to remember only taking damage when close to the middle of the crater.
Does it say that anywhere? The only thing about the shards I noticed is the message when entering the zone that the Shardfall seeps away the strenght of those who enter (to create the limit of max. 110 to adventurer level and skill)? If the seep then I would have expected them to, say seep more instead of doing fire damage.
No, I made an assumption, just as you did. I got close to a big chunk of magic rock that fell from space and started taking damage. I figured that meant "don't go near the big chunk of magic rock that fell from space." This was well before the level cap, and any messages about seep, so I'm reasonably sure the "seep" has nothing to do with it and is only in reference to the level cap. Regardless, if the damage is only suffered while in the water in the crater, I suspect it was devs being lazy. Which seems to have been a consistent issue in the earlier days of the game.
It doesn't look like regular water and it's in the center of a massive crater in a pvp scene... I think that's warning enough. And since you don't really lose anything from dying, other than the walk to an ankh, I don't see the problem. Little surprises like this are what make the game interesting. It looks perfectly fine to me. Not sure where laziness comes into play here. Maybe check it out again if it's been that long for you. Level cap has been in for quite a while now, so maybe you don't remember exactly how it looks.
Because if the intent was that the shard is damaging you via the water, by poisoning it or imbuing it with chaos energy or whatever, then just slapping a vanilla fire damage effect on it is lazy.
Oh yeah, i get what you're saying. It would be pretty neat if it applied the Chaotic confusion poison effects instead of fire damage.
Thanks for the report! At a minimum, maybe the damaging water could have some kind of smoke/fog effect. Issue #71182
Maaaaybe rename the damage type to something more fitting while you're in there, if that's feasible. To make it a little clearer as to what's happening. I mean, it's enough to just let people infer the magic space rock is hurting them, but it seems also that taking fire damage from standing in water is confusing to (some) people. If Chaos damage is a thing, that might work, seems like it would make sense for any chaos mages to have some resistance.
