Should Wurt and merms Be able to swim?

[Jakepeng99]

Lorewise there is tons of evidence they can swim. There is even a loading screen of a merm swimming in the ocean.

Obviously there will be restrictions for balance, like maybe reaching full wetness makes you sink, not being able to attack, being slower, ect.

 

As for the merms, they shouldn't outclass webber water spiders. So, they could be more restricted by the friction of the water and deal less damage and stuff. Maybe be unable to swim in deep waters, doing so they will sink under the water and climb onto your boat or the nearest land.

 

[marshyds]

Oceanic merms should be utterly useless on land, wurt should consume like 1 hunger a second while swimming and drown if she starts starving.

[Jakepeng99]

3 hours ago, marshyds said:

wurt should consume like 1 hunger a second while swimming and drown if she starts starving.

This is significantly better than my Wetness idea, and has cool synergies with other items. She could be unable to eat while swimming.

[marshyds]

12 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

This is significantly better than my Wetness idea, and has cool synergies with other items. She could be unable to eat while swimming.

yeah that was my idea too in my skilltree for her

[Well-met]

the majority of ocean mechanics rely on boat calculations so that's probably why klei doesn't want to consider it

otherwise I agree

[grm9]

2 minutes ago, Well-met said:

the majority of ocean mechanics rely on boat calculations

which specifically except flotsam spawner?

[marshyds]

1 hour ago, Jakepeng99 said:

synergies

belt of hunger and the drink hat notably, might add a little more time to her swimming abilities... but i think that it being used for crossing gaps and just swimming to pick up kelp and stuff is enough, it would have a lot of casual inbetween uses which is good.

If you know where an island is and it's close then it could be used to go there without paddling, since the movement would be consistent.

[Mike23Ua]

Hounds are now able to swim, prior to ocean content update they did not..

Bees are now able to fly over open water, prior to ocean content update they did not..

If Merms are made able to Swim, then you couldn’t hop on your boat and paddle away from the edge of land so they stop chasing you (Merms are hostile to everyone who isn’t Wurt)

Letting them Swim wouldnt just effect Wurt it would make them more dangerous as a hostile mob Without Wurt.

Kinda like how Water Glider Spiders aren’t a good thing unless you’re playing as Webber.

Now if ONLY WURT was allowed to Swim it would make sense, she’s been reading Wickerbottoms book & the crazy old librarian lady could’ve helped her learn to swim.

This wouldn’t change Merms as a mob for everyone who isn’t Wurt, but would still let Wurt swim.

Lastly… If Merms WERE made able to swim then when they lose their Loyality towards Wurt and start to pathfind back home they’ll just jump in lakes and swim off screen to reach home, currently they’re not so intelligent A.I. gets them hung up on the edge of land sometimes and that allows Wurt to Re-Hire them before they go home.

You really have to think about everything that “let all Merms swim” would actually impact before we can just suggest that.

Letting only WURT Swim, would however be like playing as Walani in Hamlet.

(Aka You can enjoy the small convenience of always having access to fast & easy water travel, it makes the character feel Unique)

And since we are already on the topic of Swimming Mobs-

Frogs should be able to swim too (but frog rains won’t happen at sea, or happen in extremely limited mob spawn) they swam in the Shipwrecked & Hamlet DLCs, them NOT swimming in DST doesn’t make any sense & just feels like something Klei has yet to program to update to account for the game now having an Ocean.

[Creatorofswamps]

4 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Lorewise there is tons of evidence they can swim. There is even a loading screen of a merm swimming in the ocean.

I don't want to disappoint you, my friend, but he's in the Forest

[marshyds]

5 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

This wouldn’t change Merms as a mob for everyone who isn’t Wurt, but would still let Wurt swim.

another option is making a seperate ocean merm hut only available in wurt's skilltree, so basic gameplay remains the same.

[Creatorofswamps]

Just let the moon mermaids swim and the shadow mermaids walk on the water (as Maxwell's shadows do)

[Jakepeng99]

32 minutes ago, Creatorofswamps said:

I don't want to disappoint you, my friend, but he's in the Forest

He is underwater. Notice the bubbles, those tree looking things are probably seagrass.

34 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

Letting them Swim wouldnt just effect Wurt it would make them more dangerous as a hostile mob Without Wurt.

Merms dont spawn in the ocean, and they only aggro if you go near their house. 

[Creatorofswamps]

3 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

He is underwater. Notice the bubbles, those tree looking things are probably seagrass.

I know about the bubbles, they confuse me too, but there are definitely trees in the background. In any case, there are either bubbles out of place or trees

[Mike23Ua]

9 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

He is underwater. Notice the bubbles, those tree looking things are probably seagrass.

Merms dont spawn in the ocean, and they only aggro if you go near their house. 

Plot twist: What if Merms can not actually swim and instead just sunk to the bottom floor of the ocean where they could live and breath, and where an underwater forest shard exists?

Merms don’t spawn on the ocean right NOW but I can bet you 50 billion dollars that if they took the extra time to add animations to let Merms Swim that they’d also add some At Sea Leaky Shack huts held up over water on sticks with plank walkways or something.

Like this but without the boat platforms under them: 

[cameron8800]

I’d really rather memes and pigs be able to row boats like monkey pirates. This way wurt would receive the best version of an ability that all survivors have access to. It would also keep boats relevant. 

[Venurix]

9 minutes ago, cameron8800 said:

I’d really rather memes and pigs be able to row boats like monkey pirates. This way wurt would receive the best version of an ability that all survivors have access to. It would also keep boats relevant. 

Then they row the boat at high speed straight to the salt zone like how woofgang did to me one time no thx i rather have my time at sea.

[Golden Daemon]

Giving merms the ability to swim opens up possibilities for even more ocean content and merm variants (Having ocean based merms rather than swamp based merms sounds pretty dope).

Hopefully, Klei will touch up on merms and include swimming in the upcoming 'follower update' sometime in the future.

[ZeRoboButler]

Instead of the wetness regen I would not mind that perk getting replaced with swimming, and possibly making it so the player has to either take swimming or wetness dmg protection with you being locked out of the other option as a trade off.

[Bumber64]

Wurt has enough going for her that she doesn't need to be the only character that can swim. (Even Wes's inflatable vest doesn't let you do this.)

It's fine for NPC (grown-up) merms.

[Mike23Ua]

3 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

Wurt has enough going for her that she doesn't need to be the only character that can swim.

It's fine for NPC (grown-up) merms.

I legit don’t see why everyone is so against letting Wurt Swim, Woodie already sort of can do it as a Goose.. just going crazy over the entire ocean, but that isn’t what we want Wurt to be able to do, Wurt shouldn’t have anywhere near the time Woodie can spend exploring the ocean, she should at best have a stamina bar that depletes like the one in Lego Fortnite while swimming, and if she isn’t back on dry land taking a rest for stamina to recharge (either on land or by building a boat, Dock, or new Water-Placeable Merm Building) then she drowns.. simple as that.

She would be like adding Walani to DST, with one huge nerf, Having a Stamina bar that requires resting periodically.

Wurt has Fish & Octopus skins- pretty sure if any character should’ve been able to Swim it should’ve never been Goose Woodie…

[Dr.Webber]

10 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Lorewise there is tons of evidence they can swim. There is even a loading screen of a merm swimming in the ocean.

Obviously there will be restrictions for balance, like maybe reaching full wetness makes you sink, not being able to attack, being slower, ect.

 

As for the merms, they shouldn't outclass webber water spiders. So, they could be more restricted by the friction of the water and deal less damage and stuff. Maybe be unable to swim in deep waters, doing so they will sink under the water and climb onto your boat or the nearest land.

 

I think the only restriction there should be is they can’t fight  while actively moving 

[GreenBowers]

8 minutes ago, SSneaky said:

fix your spelling some.

Make less threads every single day

[Bumber64]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

I legit don’t see why everyone is so against letting Wurt Swim, Woodie already sort of can do it as a Goose.. just going crazy over the entire ocean, but that isn’t what we want Wurt to be able to do, Wurt shouldn’t have anywhere near the time Woodie can spend exploring the ocean, she should at best have a stamina bar that depletes like the one in Lego Fortnite while swimming, and if she isn’t back on dry land taking a rest for stamina to recharge (either on land or by building a boat, Dock, or new Water-Placeable Merm Building) then she drowns.. simple as that.

She would be like adding Walani to DST, with one huge nerf, Having a Stamina bar that requires resting periodically.

Wurt has Fish & Octopus skins- pretty sure if any character should’ve been able to Swim it should’ve never been Goose Woodie…

Woodie can't do anything but move while a weregoose. No armor. No inventory for wereforms (IIRC, haven't played him since DS).

I've no clue what a Lego Fortnite is. I'll assume the stamina is the same as Zelda BotW.

Surfboard was Walani's one perk. You're saying Wurt gets to swim for a while on top of: Merm guard, keeping inventory on drown, no wet sanity drain, no tool/weapon slip, wetness as armor, etc.

[Masked Koopa]

2 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

Woodie can't do anything but move while a weregoose. No armor. No inventory for wereforms (IIRC, haven't played him since DS).

Being able to move is honestly the best thing you can do if you're exploring the ocean when not on a boat. What exactly are you planning to do with swimming that'd be so OP in the first place? Everyone here is talking about restrictions like some crazy OP exploits would be opened up yet noone is actually providing a single concrete example. The best example you could have had was crab king, who was made moot this very same update.

[Bumber64]

12 minutes ago, Masked Koopa said:

Being able to move is honestly the best thing you can do if you're exploring the ocean when not on a boat. What exactly are you planning to do with swimming that'd be so OP in the first place? Everyone here is talking about restrictions like some crazy OP exploits would be opened up yet noone is actually providing a single concrete example. The best example you could have had was crab king, who was made moot this very same update.

Eat or heal, for one thing. (Winnona also got the ability to temporarily bridge small rivers with a 4 minute cooldown using one of her perks. That'd be Wurt just swimming over whenever at will.)

You can drown while the ice is melting during CK fight. (Saw an early video of someone drown right after beating him.) Even as Woodie, you'll drown if you weren't prepared to go weregoose at that moment. Sounds like Wurt would be immediately ready to swim.

If Klei wanted any character to swim whenever, they'd have done that. As I've said, Wurt already has enough going for her.