Forget Wurt swimming as a skill

[Jakepeng99]

Instead, let all characters temporarly swim, and Wurt is the best at it. 

 

Core Mechanic

Any character may right click the water to jump in, they will move slowly, and after 6 seconds, will begin to struggle and then sink slowly after. They will instantly have their wetness set to at least 50 when they jump in the water and become Wet fast. 

Only really effective if:

• You fall or glitch off your boat.
• If you really want to cross a gap.

You may improve swimming with various methods:

• Wes' balloon vest and balloon hat will increase the duration you can swim by 2.5 seconds each. 
• A new item: Red inflatable vest. Crafted with 5 mosquito sacks, and 4 silk. Increases swim duration by 7.5 seconds and swim speed by 20%. No health penalty for drowning, and drops less items.

WX can not swim. He is too heavy, rusty, and is too afraid wise too go in the water.

 

Wurt (and why i believe it should be implemented this way)

Wurt swims for 16 seconds, and swims 25% faster. 

I dont think it should be a Wurt skill as people probably wont pick it because it wont be practical, so it would be akward for a skilltree.

[AveHortor]

Would Woodie be excluded from this, given his quotes?

[Gotheran]

22 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I dont think it should be a Wurt skill as people probably wont pick it because it wont be practical, so it would be akward for a skilltree.

I think thats a big issue with most skill trees is what ought to be innate character abilities end up less appealing vs straight combat buffs or crafting bonuses like woodies plank recipe. Offtopic rant incoming:

Spoiler

They could give us an in-game machine that lets you unlock special buffs not available at the start with certain gating accomplishments or resource requirements that give many of the same bonuses as skill trees and it would already be 1000x Better. Wurt could trade in 8 fish or beat crab king or befriend pearl or something and gain bonus swimming power, it would tie these bonuses to tangible game progress instead of checking off points on a list outside of regular gameplay to gain 10% bonus damage vs cacti in winter.

But yeah, I agree that a little flailing/short swimming thing should be available mostly in the case of broken boats or accidentally glitching off a boat which I'm seeing a LOT of with the videos i'm seeing in the crabking reworks, a short lived swim would let players get back to their boat or some sort of land in the short period they have without insta losing the fight because you got respawned back on the mainland. Though i think jumping into the water on purpose could be left out, and WX shouldn't be excluded, he already is going to suffer from being wet, the idea is to prevent accidental glitching from being devastating.

[Deactive41year]

1 hour ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Wes' balloon vest and balloon hat will increase the duration you can swim by 2.5 seconds each. 

A new item: Red inflatable vest. Crafted with 5 mosquito sacks, and 4 silk. Increases swim duration by 7.5 seconds and swim speed by 20%. No health penalty for drowning, and drops less items.

Wurt swims for 16 seconds, and swims 25% faster. 

WURT + WES SYNERGY WHOOOOOO

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, AveHortor said:

Would Woodie be excluded from this, given his quotes?

I guess? Or they can change the quote to "i cant swim well"

 

He already has the goose and basically has no downside, so maybe he shouldnt swim.

[Bumber64]

4 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Wes' balloon vest and balloon hat will increase the duration you can swim by 2.5 seconds each.

Not sure a hat above water would help you swim. Balloon vest needs to keep its no drown penalty, since you can't use two vests at once. (You shouldn't be able to swap vests while swimming.)

Balloon vest popping (e.g., being hit) should immediately trigger the return to shore. The 2.5 seconds could be reflected by its durability decreasing after the player's timer is up.

You could possibly have a vest be required for swimming for all characters, with Wurt just being faster (making better use of her time). Strictly durability-based, can't repair while swimming.

[Jakepeng99]

8 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

Balloon vest needs to keep its no drown penalty, since you can't use two vests at once. (You shouldn't be able to swap vests while swimming.)

It did. I never said i removed it.

 

Balloon vest is just a worse red vest.

8 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

Balloon vest popping (e.g., being hit) should immediately trigger the return to shore. The 2.5 seconds could be reflected by its durability decreasing after the player's timer is up.

If i buff its swimming increase, maybe.

8 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

Not sure a hat above water would help you swim

Maybe.

8 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

You could possibly have a vest be required for swimming for all characters, with Wurt just being faster (making better use of her time). Strictly durability-based, can't repair while swimming.

Nah, nobody would use that at all if so.

[Catuna_]

You acknowledged that no one would pick the perk because it'd be impractical, what's the point of implementing it as a mechanic at all at that point?

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, Catuna_ said:

You acknowledged that no one would pick the perk because it'd be impractical, what's the point of implementing it as a mechanic at all at that point?

Because your not giving up on anything since its not a skill tree, and it would be niche.

 

[Pet Rock]

One think I don't think has been considered with swimming is that it would allow archipelago world generation to be implemented in a more reasonable way.

Archipelago generation rant ahead:

Spoiler

At the very least, if the mainland wer separated into a few canals, swimming wouldn't allow players to reach nearby islands for resources relatively easily, while also giving boats a faster route through the mainland. 

Of course, islands farther apart would  feel more like actual islands and encourage engaging with sailing earlier on, but players wouldn't easily be able to swim to them. To take away some frustration of getting badly separated islands, probably the main gripe that people would have with this, some things could be constant inbetween worlds like:

-The general number of islands (3-4)

-The generation of certain biomes (for example, the antlion desert could never spawn on the starting island, deserts would never generate on the same island as swamps, etc.)

-Biomes between islands (Waterlogged and salt formations guaranteed)

These changes would help people feel less disappointed about their world generation with archipelago generation.

Archipelago generation would also give klei the opportunity to make islands visually distinct and add more things to and around them, so anything that makes this vision more realistic is a plus for me.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

Swimming to prevent some instant drowning would be useful as well though. Especially in the crab king fight this drowning seems relatively easy (and punishing) for a simple misclick. I also have this glitch where my character glitches off the boat and drowns. This might be a mod issue but swimming would definitely help counteract this.