Temporal eels

[Thalius]

On the topic of mobs suggestions-

When swimming around in the lakes, especially the deeper ones, I've often thought it would be quite creepy to have some sort of a temporal eel looking thing snaking it's way up out of the depths to attack you.

Let them be the water mob counterpart to drifters.  The deeper the water and the deeper down you go, the more dangerous and larger versions of the mob can be found.

Let them spawn in greater numbers during temporal storms.  The more deadly ones can also have bits of rusty metal attached to them, like larger, sharp, rusty looking fin blades.

Let the largest of these mobs perhaps have bits of metal that spark occasionally as it swims.

They drop meat and fat, and the larger ones have a small chance of dropping rusty gears.

Humbly suggested for consideration...
~TH~

Edited March 6, 2021 by Thalius

[Thalius]

Probably should not get meat from these, upon thinking about it.
Fish oil/fat and small chance of temporal gears from large or giant ones.

Allow small to medium versions that we can catch on a hook and line or in nets. When brought in they flop around on the ground and bite if one gets too close. They need to be killed, and can be cut up into fish bait with a knife.

Large and giant eels should live in very deep lakes/ocean areas and only come up when a player is swimming in their vicinity down deep or even up near the surface when above them.

[Prin]

You know, I'll argue against that no-meat. Eels can and are eaten in some places in the world, jellied eels is a traditional food of England, for example, as there was a time when eels would swim en masse up the river Themes and eating them seemed like the most natural solution. That said, you're not going to get much fat from an eel, depending on the season - winter eels, for example, would have the most, but summer eels would have the least because they would have used those fat stores up to survive the winter and wouldn't have had much time to build them up again.

That said, it depends on how big you want these eels to be. If they're big enough to eat a person, they're absolutely big enough to be eaten by a person cut into steaks.

A secondary option, beyond eels, make aquatic snakes? This would mean they could chase someone onto land to a degree as well.

[l33tmaan]

If there are eels, I can make eel sushi.

There should be eels.

[Thalius]

Lol, well, eels that we could eat would be a fine thing to have, I suppose. More food options.

My suggestion leaned more toward a temporal water mob counterpart to drifters on land- a temporal creature of the water that is not entirely of this world. Not exactly something we might want to eat. After all, I'm sure drifters have some flesh on them, but if I go along with the rpg element of the game environment I don't see them as a food option given their other-worldly nature and all.

Perhaps the take-away so far is that we need aquatic eels we can catch and use as a food source, and a larger, other-worldly temporal cousin from the deep that tries to eat us in return.  I guess it could not hurt to get some meat off the larger ones as well.

Jellied eels.
We certainly gotta have that in the recipe book one of these days...

[l33tmaan]

Personally, I think corrupted wildlife would be a great addition at some point. Seeing bunnies and wolves with gears growing out of them would be a good way to signal lands that are temporally unstable. Eels could just be a part of that.

[Prin]

15 hours ago, l33tmaan said:

Personally, I think corrupted wildlife would be a great addition at some point. Seeing bunnies and wolves with gears growing out of them would be a good way to signal lands that are temporally unstable. Eels could just be a part of that.

I think the only real limiter on that would be the storyline of the game. Given that the most messed up looking mobs so far in the game are found in the caves or spawning during storms, I don't know if it would make sense for the otherwise basic looking animals to go corrupt. This is one of those, we'll have to see where Tyrone takes it.

[l33tmaan]

I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that

Spoiler

Drifters were people who were corrupted by going underground? 

 

[Thalius]

I'm not sure we know exactly what the origin of the drifters are. I thought it had been postulated perhaps that they are ancestors of our race that had been caught up in and twisted by the temporal instability plaguing our world.  The most unstable parts of the game world are underground, so it would make sense that they like it there and the more dangerous of them would be found deeper down.

It was not their going underground that made them drifters, it was their becoming drifters that moved them to prefer being underground.

I think I did hear some part of the lore that hinted, due to so many ruins being found underground and in caves, that the brokenness of the world made them shelter in caves in the ground, but to my mind that only got them closer to the temporaly unstable parts of our world, bringing about and hastening their change.

Thus I thought of how fitting it would be in the deeper lakes that there were some temporal water mob swimming around down there that we had to keep an eye out for, and large eels felt like a good fit to the vibe when swimming around down there.

Not sure how many natural creatures would otherwise have spent so much time down deep in the world on a regular basis so as to be changed.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Thalius

[Prin]

I've had similar theories based off of what I could glean from stuff in-game, but it's more or less unconfirmed conjecture as far as I know. The how/why of drifters feels a bit of a chicken vs. egg story. But my understanding of it feels incomplete.

In any case, any large underwater beast could fit the bill, if that's the route they want to go. I'd even consider piranhas, which could also double as an underwater mob that would function similar to the bees.

[l33tmaan]

1 hour ago, Thalius said:

I'm not sure we know exactly what the origin of the drifters are. I thought it had been postulated perhaps that they are ancestors of our race that had been caught up in and twisted by the temporal instability plaguing our world.  The most unstable parts of the game world are underground, so it would make sense that they like it there and the more dangerous of them would be found deeper down.

The thing is that there are unstable areas on the surface, though - typically around surface ruins or shallow underground ruins. Since there isn't anything the player can do to combat the instability besides go somewhere else, that implies to me that the area itself is a blight on nature. Why wouldn't the wolves and sheep near the ruin be affected by temporal stability? The only reason for that would be that stability only affects seraphs, but I just don't like that since it would limit possible game mechanics and mob types.
It would be great if creatures had their own kind of temporal stability score, like the player. Those that stay too long in unstable areas can reach 0 stability, but instead of being mauled by drifters the animal turns into a corrupted version of itself permanently. I sometimes find animals in caves because they were stupid or running away from something on the surface and they have no way of getting out, so coming back a month later and finding a mutant bunny that attacks you and drops gears would be cool. Same thing for animals that nest near ruins, they would be a very organic enemy type for this kind of game.

Terraria does it to great effect with the crimson and corruption changing the existing enemies of an area as it takes over, so a zombie becomes a big bloody screaming monster or a spiky plant-like humanoid. I think something similar would fit here.