#51 – WATERFRONTS

Some biomes are easy to compare, while others are special and stand on their own. Waterfronts are in the latter category. What are waterfronts? It’s rivers and lakes – places with abundant water and shorelines.

Waterfronts was one of the first biomes that we created for the game. Initially, we struggled a bit with finding the right scale of the biome – just how much of the area must we show?

At this time, all the lakes in the game are impassable while all the rivers can be crossed over. A crossing may take anywhere between a day and a week (for example, a party may decide to build a raft) – depending on who is in the party, what are their skills and what events the party faces as it attempts the crossing.

Eventually, we settled on a particular perspective that worked for both lakes and rivers.

Dangerous events at the waterfronts include death from drowning, being pulled in by a strong current, getting attacked by underwater animals and losing some of the party’s inventory items as it struggles with wading the waters, as well as catching illness from long exposure to cold water (if a character is inclined to fall sick easily).

The overall feeling of this biome is that of a place with abundant water.

Bridges provide a convenient way of crossing the rivers: not only fast (just an hour), but also safe from the dangers related to open water. At the same time, bridges may be guarded by garrisons, and in general are a place with a higher probability of encountering other parties, which poses a different set of risks.

As we started to work on the color concept, we explored different hues of water.

What helps with crossing the rivers as well with using the waterfront biome in general? Having a high Travel skill as well as having the secondary skills of Swimming (belongs to Travel) and Fishing (belongs to Monstrology). Swimming helps cross rivers faster and safer.

And when a character’s Travel skill is high enough, they can even cast a temporary magic bridge over the water, made of ice (such bridge holds for a time sufficient for the party to cross over, then dissolves in the river).

Finally, we had the “flowing” image that everyone on the team liked. Here you can see how a color concept turned into the final asset that you will see in the game, as lots of details were added.

The easiest use of the waterfront biome is fishing. A more challenging ambition is to harvest pearls that are extracted from snarers (pearls, like precious stones, can be sold or traded in towns and villages). Waterfronts are also a source of lake nettles, a stinging plant that is nevertheless a useful alchemic ingredient.

Some of the resources that can be collected in waterfronts.

Mermaids are currently the only non-human dweller to live in waterfronts. If you succeed in negotiating with them, then you can have them provide you with both nettles and pearls, taking away from your parties the risk of extracting these resources.

However, originally mermaids are not too friendly. Unlike drowners, they don’t need a “god” to worship, and thus are harder to convince to cooperate. On their own, they like to play with humans (regardless of age or gender: mermaids are long-lived hermaphrodites and don’t distinguish between different humans), with most of such games ending in drownings – hence their bad reputation with human settlements, who see them as a threat to young or naïve.

You can choose to trade with mermaids, or you can choose to hunt them and use their tentacles as a valuable alchemic ingredient.

Mermaids are a source of “mermaid tentacle”, an alchemic ingredient that you might eventually require. But killing a mermaid opens a direct confrontation with the species, driving up the chances of having your parties attacked during any future waterfront visits or crossings.

Waterfronts are one of the biomes that we plan to further expand during the Early Access period, as we have a few more creatures specific to this biome that are already designed but not yet in production as we wait for the main campaign to be complete before balancing the world with such additions.



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