Most of the world in the Cataclysm is lush forest and fields. I do not like this and plan to change that and luckily it looks like it may be easy to implement.
As a start, I would add toxic varities of the forest and swamp biomes: More dead trees, replace water puddles with sewage and even some toxic gas vents. The Cataclysm meant death to lots of organisms, including humans and also plants.
They should still be semi-rare though.
Something which should, in my opinion, be relatively common would be dead and warped foliage. So basically add a variant of forests and swamps where there are more dead trees and some water is replaced with sewage with a relatively low chance. No toxic gas vents.
And something experimental which would fit into the current lore really well: Warped foliage. Basically distorted dead trees, think of branches stretched into different directions and strange patterns. This is purely cosmetic.
Maybe also mutate bushes and fruit trees, so they bear pyramid-shaped fruit or something.
My clear focus is to implement the dead and toxic varities and also the warped dead trees, not the mutated trees and bushes and so on. This should basically encourage the player to scavenge more and that living off the land will be harder.
The implementation would basically be modifying the chances forests and swamps can spawn and add some dead/toxic varities, this should be relatively easy™.
Since this might be really harsh, this is just an idea for now: Add a variety of dead/toxic biomes, e.g forest_dead_80, where 80% of the stuff in it is dead, also forest_dead_70 and so there will be a smooth blend between dead and mostly alive biomes. However, this is meant to be used when a significant amount of biomes are dead or toxic, so this would make New England truly apocalyptic.
Might be a good idea for a challenge mod even if it will never be in the “vanilla” game.
Another evil idea which I would not implement (yet): Leech plants looked really interesting. Maybe let them infest a few forests.
Edit: Maybe also something something radiation so it actually gets used more often?
Thoughts?
2 Likes
I wouldn´t expect dead and dying biomes to be something that would be too common even a few years after the cataclysm. Nature and the biospere is a lot thougher than most people including the devs give it credit for, especially considering that the fall of human civilazation would offset much off the harmfull effects of the cataclysm in the short and long term.
It would however still be a cool feature to see warped,dead or toxic biomes. Either as the after effect of human polution seeping into the enviroment now that nobody is looking after it. Think churnobells radioactive red forest or dead vegitation with generic toxic waste and sludge everywhere. Might be a place where special enemies live as a result of the enviroment.
Warped enviroments are definetly a very interesting consept. Maybe instead of just having wierd vegitation there should be some wierd things going on with physics or space. Think floating stones, gravity suddenly reversing, increased chance of a portal being present, creatures getting a speed boost or debuff in a certain area or tiles a result of time warping etc. Maybe make it interact with portal stormes to make them very dangerous or outright deathtraps if you are caught in one during a portal storm.
Idit: if you want too nerf foraging maybe do something with that product foraged from around dead or radioactive spots are also toxic or radioactive and things from warped areas could have wierd effects or give netherworld attention. (get hounds of tatalous on you for eating mushrooms)
What would you consider to be a reasonable balance of dead or toxic biomes? Maybe 30% of all forest?
To be quite honest, I am not a fan of all the reality-warping lore (just a personal preference really) but I do recognize that this is the direction the game is going and think that warped trees (only the dead kind) are compatible with both my preferences and the current lore direction. Besides, I am not a coder and e.g those hound of tindalos effects when eating mushrooms would be too much for me to code. But brainstorming some potential ideas for the future is still nice though.
Another thing I am considering to do is to add more varities of poppies. Apparently, all poppies without any exception in New England mutated when the Cataclysm struck. There should be like 70% normal poppies and 30% mutated ones or something. And maybe an extremely rare variety which you only find in labs or so which is even stronger than the normal mutated kind which is also way more dangerous since it can knock you unconscious for longer times. I think I might actually file a feature request for this.
This would be really cool the game really does need more biomes because besides structures and buildings its just forest swamps and fields and everything cool about them is very random loot and enemies. They dont even have to be toxic harmful inhospit biomes. Some mundane biomes like different kind of forests that restrict the type of trees that appear on them would be a nice addition to make the world more fun to explore in between cities.
Still I really like the idea of warped biomes i think they would fit neatly in the game so it would be cool if you bring this to fruition.
My new favorite site for the moment is:
https://www.invasiveplantatlas.org/
Theres some really interesting invasive plants there which can be potentially implemented once we have biome support in the future. One idea I already have are vines smothering vegetation and perhaps even buildings. Some of the invasive vines in real life New England can already girdle and eventually kill trees.
Another interesting but unfortunately unsuitable plant is alligator weed: alligatorweed: Alternanthera philoxeroides (Caryophyllales: Amaranthaceae): Invasive Plant Atlas of the United States
Basically clogs waterways, smothers existing vegetation and provides an environment for mosquitoes.
I think a reasonable balance would be something like 20-30% being outright dead/toxic/alien biomes. You shouldn´t be able to find edible things here readily. But for balance a few things should be edible on their own/if prepared in a certain way and having certain mutations/exotic metabolism should allow you to eat more things. I would however add some reason for a player to go to these biomes regardless. Think something like being able to get chemicals or certain heavy metals from the things that live their as a result of exotic biology.
The flip side is that the ¨normal¨ biomes slowly change over time and fill up with mutants, undead and nether creatures. This wouldn´t just include creatures but also various nether/mutant plants and things in between. So finding a good meal in in the forest would get more and more difficult and dangerous as populations of most tasty normal creatures go extinct and more things try to eat you instead. In the end we could have the normal biomes looking a awfull lot like the alien biomes.