Swimming via Personal Floater

[Pet Rock]

I've wanted (rudimentary) swimming to be a part of the ocean for a while now, and think that personal floaters provide the perfect opportunity to add it.

Upon entering the ocean (whether by walking the plank or going down with a ship) players with personal floaters have about 30 seconds to slowly swim (indicated by personal floater durability decreasing). In this time, they can make their way to another boat/land, or try to grab/harvest resources and attack things. Carrying multiple personal floaters can also extend the duration players can swim.

 

This would:

-Prevent cheap "deaths" from drowning when fighting Crab King

-Add more strategy to sailing: Clearing out cookie cutters before they can even approach the boat, gathering resources just outside of the boats reach, or even getting extra dps during the crab king fight would all be interesting ways to utilize this mechanic.

-Add utility to personal floaters so players strategically use them instead of just wasting an inventory slot to negate health depletion

[Milordo]

Never thought of it and I love it very much! Did you get inspired by chance by my post?

Although as you said "rudimentary swimming" was dreamt by everyone since the start of the ocean (2019-2020) or atleast the dream of wurt possessing abilities,perks and interactions/mechanics with the ocean, as the pure spirit of Don't Starve, and thus giving only her the ability to swim.

Anywho, I'm infatuated with your idea, especially for the strategic part, so I want to add/ask, what happens after the time runs out? You'd get the typical drowning? Because if that's so, I'll hook to your idea and add that after the time runs out, you'll get a new reworked drowning, which can be my idea in the post linked or others ones. It is heavily important to fix drowning, especially the teleportation aspect, to make the ocean, finally a level of the game and also a good one. If we take my idea of drowning rework and yours personal floaters rework, they are essentially the same but with the difference; 1) You don't get wet with personal floaters 2) You don't loose hp and items.

This way your idea still remains good and doesn't feels as a band-aid fix + we fixed the ocean a bit more.

The final touch, a revisit to the crafting recipe of personal floaters (boat patches too) as explained here in my same post further down in the comments:

 

 

And yes. That's it. I only wish these things could be added but hey! We don't know it yet. A rework drowning has been confirmed happening, so when the beta will be live, I'll try to bring your idea to attention too!!

Edited June 22, 2025 by Milordo

[Bumber64]

Most ocean threats aren't equipped to deal with players off of boats.

[Pet Rock]

5 minutes ago, Milordo said:

Never thought of it and I love it very much! Did you get inspired by chance by my post?

I did not see your post but it seems like our suggestions have a lot in common! I do think it would be lovely if some sort of swimming was added so players have more of a chance to not die in the first place. 

8 minutes ago, Milordo said:

1) You don't get wet with personal floaters 2) You don't loose hp and items.

I do think a lot of these nerfs to drowning are misplaced. Boats being destroyed is by far the biggest consequence of seafaring (which has largely been reduced considering bumpers/upgraded boats, etc.) and players losing some health and becoming wet doesn't really compare. I even disagree with the removed max health penalty. I don't like losing items to drowning, but personal floaters would give players enough time to sort their inventory so that their precious belongings can be saved.

With that being said, I am glad that your suggestion about spawning at the nearest land was implemented by the devs as that is a great change to drowning.

4 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

Most ocean threats aren't equipped to deal with players off of boats.

Crab King and Malbatross (both ocean bosses) have attacks that hit players directly. Rockjaws also have these (in water) although they mostly use them against abigail  

Seaweeds and water spiders also have attacks that directly hit players.

Sanity creatures, cookie cutters, and (maybe) pirate raids are exceptions but could all be tweaked (or left as is without sacrificing much).

[Milordo]

7 hours ago, Pet Rock said:

I do think a lot of these nerfs to drowning are misplaced. Boats being destroyed is by far the biggest consequence of seafaring (which has largely been reduced considering bumpers/upgraded boats, etc.) and players losing some health and becoming wet doesn't really compare. I even disagree with the removed max health penalty. I don't like losing items to drowning, but personal floaters would give players enough time to sort their inventory so that their precious belongings can be saved.

Yes, by no means the boat destruction is a low punishment, it is easily in second place objectively. Yes I'm "on the same boat" *badum tss* regarding loosing hp and max health penalty. For all that I care they could re-implement the black heart punishment and I would not oppose (new blind people in the ocean too from what I gathered) but ironically by my giant experience and from what I see constantly within my community of new people, the teleportation aspect of drowning is by far the worst, making him first place and what should be aimed to be completely removed, not because it's a punishment of course, but because it's a very terrible design implemented at random without any second thoughts for the ocean, like almost, almost, all things introduced in the ocean. All in all I see the best of worlds with your personal floaters and a reworked drowning. 

7 hours ago, Pet Rock said:

With that being said, I am glad that your suggestion about spawning at the nearest land was implemented by the devs as that is a great change to drowning.

Ehmnnn... in reality that wasn't my suggestion lol. That was a ""quick fix"" made by v2c for the meantime. It also confuses me, because this feature.....it was what drowning already did all the time ahah. It teleported you to the nearest land always, so I can only theorize they made it better??? Plus they said it works only on shallow waters but I literally don't see any differences from the previous version by testing it and it literally doesn't change the situation at all. My suggestion, but what I care more, my argument and criticism about drowning as been taken and they said it will be brought next beta branch for real, and if they make a rework drowning completely different from mine and it fixes all previous problems, it would be welcome. This change doesn't correlate and it's a nothing burger from what I'm seeing. 

7 hours ago, Pet Rock said:

Crab King and Malbatross (both ocean bosses) have attacks that hit players directly. Rockjaws also have these (in water) although they mostly use them against abigail  

Seaweeds and water spiders also have attacks that directly hit players.

Sanity creatures, cookie cutters, and (maybe) pirate raids are exceptions but could all be tweaked (or left as is without sacrificing much).

Yup, you said it. The remains could easily be tweaked, it's not that much of work to do.

[Semind]

I can confirm to you that there was random respawning. Literally, if the nearest shore was always getting picked, me jumping off a boat that was in direct contact with a coast should not have been dropping me off anywhere but close to the boat. Instead, I sometimes ended up on the far shore, across the lake.

[Bumber64]

There was a thing where it prioritized shores near campfires, IIRC?

[Milordo]

1 hour ago, Semind said:

I can confirm to you that there was random respawning. Literally, if the nearest shore was always getting picked, me jumping off a boat that was in direct contact with a coast should not have been dropping me off anywhere but close to the boat. Instead, I sometimes ended up on the far shore, across the lake.

Cool to know. I did drowned a lot in my experience, the mechanic usually dropped me nearest shore if I was near the nearest shore but also in other points. I always theorised it wasn't really "random" per se', but had some conditions that we don't know precisely of. Maybe you were too near the coast? The angle? Who knows. Had*, lol. Has. The change was only done for shallow waters.

14 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

There was a thing where it prioritized shores near campfires, IIRC?

Lmao really?

[Semind]

9 minutes ago, Milordo said:

Cool to know. I did drowned a lot in my experience, the mechanic usually dropped me nearest shore if I was near the nearest shore but also in other points. I always theorised it wasn't really "random" per se', but had some conditions that we don't know precisely of. Maybe you were too near the coast? The angle? Who knows. Had*, lol. Has. The change was only done for shallow waters.

I was in the process of testing out ice generation via WX getting wet with a refrigerant circuit. I jumped off the same plank of the same boat multiple times, was brought back in not the same spot every time. That's all I can tell you.