Annoying things about Swamp (WAS: Rune locks)

[Jeremiah]

Kind of a different topic, but the thing that makes Swamp annoying for me are:

1. Monsters that run away and submerge when wounded. If you're a high level character blitzing through Swamp to get to the rune then fine: just ignore them and carry on, but if you feel you need to kill as much as possible for the XP (or piety) then it can be tedious to try to track them down and kill them.

2. Monsters that are really awkward and can be hard to kill (or have annoying status effects) but aren't actually dangerous and are worth virtually no XP. The main culprits here are insubstantial wisps and vampire mosquitoes.

Also all that water is in itself quite annoying if you don't have a reusable source of flight/levitation, but that could equally apply to Shoals.

[njvack]

Mod note: split into new topic.

[Blade]

My main problem with Swamp is that virtually every annoying monster in the game (vampire mosquitoes, insubstantial wisps, ugly things, jellies, swamp drakes, lots of silly things that I'm missing) is there, to the extent that it feels like it was made purely for the sake of irritating players.

My other problem is that it has bizarre difficulty spikes. Usually, it's the easiest branch in the game. Sometimes, it has a tentacled monstrosity.

[roctavian]

I wish that submerging creatures used submersion in more interesting ways -- what if swamp worms hid just out of sight like wandering mushrooms, until they hit a certain critical mass of "lots of swamp worms" and then rushed en masse? Is that even feasible? Would it be even more obnoxious?

[sardonica]

The damndest thing about Swamp is how cool those wisps are, and how they can ruin a caster's day if he doesnt stop and think a little bit. And they're totally wasted on the crappiest level in the game.

[rebthor]

What about making submersion less of a "get out of jail free" card for a monster and let you attack the submerged square. People spearfish all the time from outside water, boiling or freezing water will affect anything underneath it, why should submersion be equal to "nyah-nyah you can't hit me!"?

[XuaXua]

Add more food to Swamp, but make every non-aquatic square affected by Leda's Liquefaction.

[JeffQyzt]

RE: Submersion - perhaps weapons with "reaching" could be allowed to attack adjacent submerged targets. That said, it's unclear just how deep "deep water" really is, so how plausible this is is kind of open.

[Galefury]

They already can. It's pretty broken.

[BlackSheep]

You can use reaching weapons to hit submerged creatures. (in deep or shallow water) Almost all aquatic creatures can be poisoned. Summons that can chase creatures into deep water will force them to surface. There are lots of ways of dealing with fish and worms.

[JeffQyzt]

They already can.

Heh...guess I never had much problem with them and never tried that.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Swamp should probably be changed from an open level with water to a place choked with overgrowth. Like, corridors and rooms where the "walls" are trees and plants. There you have the option of following normally or cutting your own way through.

[TehDruid]

Swamp should probably be changed from an open level with water to a place choked with overgrowth. Like, corridors and rooms where the "walls" are trees and plants. There you have the option of following normally or cutting your own way through.

That sounds more like a jungle than a swamp, though.

[cjo]

I really liked Swamp the first couple of times that I survived to find it, but I found over time that Swamp has become tedious and does not have the same replayability as the other branches for me.

* Swamp worms: these alone would be enough to make the level tedious. They are never really a threat, because you can just step away on land. But they deal non-trivial damage and can choke off my line of retreat, so they aren't safe to just leave alone. They start submerged, so I can't use most spells against them (I usually play caster backgrounds). Then they submerge again once they're wounded (which is worse than creatures that merely run away, because there are less options for attacking them). Once they're dead, I've often taken enough damage so I have to mash '5' key. The result is that they soak up a lot of time compared to their interest level.

* Terrain: it's interesting conceptually, but there's two issues. First, it can be really really deadly if I have no way to cope. A mid level character who gets spotted by a couple of hydras in a part of swamp with no handy land is in big trouble. Second, it can be mostly neutralized by the flight spell. This gives me a big incentive to not visit Swamp until I have flight, which might take quite a while to stumble upon. Once I do have it, we go straight to the thread about permabuffs and how recasting buffs gets horribly tedious.

* Vampire mosquitos / leeches: They're cool and thematic, so I used to love to hate them. But somewhere along the line I started merely hating them. They drain resources in the long run while offering only a minor threat in the short run. This rewards dealing with them in the most efficient way possible, which rewards optimizing play, which sometimes just gets dull.

* It's too easy except when it's too hard. I slog my way through all those swamp worms, vampire mosquitos, maybe a swamp drake or two, then suddenly face a nine-headed hydra, maybe with a couple of alligators for company. Even if I myself am standing on land, these creatures will move so fast through the water that I don't get many spells off before they're on me.

My favorite thing: will o the wisps: for something that uses the same mechanic as blink frogs, they feel very very different. They are interesting and can be surprisingly deadly if I make the mistake of not taking them seriously.

I like some of the suggestions posted, such as making Swamp have "rooms" and "corridors" created from plants, and making the dry land provide a slow effect.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Swamp should probably be changed from an open level with water to a place choked with overgrowth. Like, corridors and rooms where the "walls" are trees and plants. There you have the option of following normally or cutting your own way through.

That sounds more like a jungle than a swamp, though.

Have you ever seen a swamp? They're pretty overgrown too what with trees, vines, tall grass, roots, and moss everywhere. Heck, sometimes you can't tell where water starts because there's so much algae and stuff growing on the surface.

[Jabberwocky]

Swamp should probably be changed from an open level with water to a place choked with overgrowth. Like, corridors and rooms where the "walls" are trees and plants. There you have the option of following normally or cutting your own way through.

That sounds more like a jungle than a swamp, though.

Have you ever seen a swamp? They're pretty overgrown too what with trees, vines, tall grass, roots, and moss everywhere. Heck, sometimes you can't tell where water starts because there's so much algae and stuff growing on the surface.

It depends on the kind of swamp. There are swamps like the ones you describe, there are open swamps without any trees created by beavers, there are open bogs which look just like a meadow but are filled with mud.

[TehDruid]

It might just be my idea of a swamp then. Lots of relatively shallow pools of water that impede walking fast but not that much floral growth that gets in the way of you moving. Maybe the word "marsh" is what I'm thinking of. I'm not a native speaker of English so I don't know what the exact difference between bog/swamp/marsh/wetland is.

[crate]

Annoying things about swamp: #1: water

[JeffQyzt]

...I don't know what the exact difference between bog/swamp/marsh/wetland is...

The main difference is what the common usage was in the region where the speaker grew up. They're all potentially synonyms, but individual speakers will draw their own distinctions. Don't forget mire, slog, fen, bayou, etc....

[XuaXua]

Swamp should probably be changed from an open level with water to a place choked with overgrowth. Like, corridors and rooms where the "walls" are trees and plants. There you have the option of following normally or cutting your own way through.

Requirement for swamp: fireball.

[roctavian]

Another thing I was thinking, is that Swamp seems to have a lot of conceptual overlap with Shoals -- wide open spaces and water -- but is a blended up, nearly homogeneous mass of land and water tiles. Maybe if there were a few "rivers" criss-crossing the level to give them a more definable geography, it would be more interesting to cross?

Another idea -- what if falling into deep water while in Swamp shafts you down to the next floor? It's still an undesirable effect, but it might do something to alleviate the player sensibility of "just don't go into Swamp until you get clarity/rPois."

[banei]

A chaotic mass of plants in swamp would sure make it better. With a great deal of tightly packed plants, we could just shoot a few wands of lightning and let the fire kill all of the monsters. It would certainly take away the boredom.

[XuaXua]

A chaotic mass of plants in swamp would sure make it better. With a great deal of tightly packed plants, we could just shoot a few wands of lightning and let the fire kill all of the monsters. It would certainly take away the boredom.

Doesn't work too well on submerged. :/

[ebarrett]

Apparently most of you weren't around in the days of swamp worms hunting down the player forever and doing terrifying damage if you actually stepped on the water. And the days of having to answer a prompt to make sure you didn't want to take a dive into deep water. And the days of just plunging into deep water if moving there while confused, no prompts at all.

These days the swamp is a vacation spot, really. Vampire mosquitoes are the annoying "new" thing, but it isn't a real vacation without annoying mosquitoes, is it.

[Tiber]

It also is a little bit unfair that shops will never generate in Swamp, but they will in Snake and Shoals.

[tcjsavannah]

These days the swamp is a vacation spot, really. Vampire mosquitoes are the annoying "new" thing, but it isn't a real vacation without annoying mosquitoes, is it.

This is a scroll of acquirement! Make a selection:
[o] Deep Woods Off