Saltwater and Waterborne Diseases

[MCChampion1337 1]

  TerraFirmaCraft's thirst system is a great addition to the game, but thirst honestly doesn't have much impact on gameplay, as long as you bring lots of water bottles with you. Even in early stages of the game, as long as you remain near a source of water, you won't get dehydrated, as you can just walk over to the river next to your house, plop down there, and watch as your thirst bar refills. Water should be a challenge, and I believe that these ideas would help:

 

Saltwater

• Found in oceans
• When put in a bottle, the bottle will display "Saltwater"
• Drinking depletes your thirst bar

Freshwater

• Found in rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water
• When put in a bottle, the bottle will display "Freshwater"
• Drinking has a chance to make you sick (see below)
• When boiled over a firepit, it will display "Freshwater - Boiled"
• Overheating freshwater will make it evaporate

Disease

• Drinking unboiled freshwater has a chance to make you sick
• Causes slowness, depletion of hunger and thirst, and very slow depletion of health, as well as disabling regeneration of health
• Goes away after a random number of days. Sped up by rest (not moving or mining) and eating meals

Other

•   Drinking while standing in a body of water is disabled; you must now sneak to drink
•   Freshwater found underground is safe to drink without being boiled. Players could create wells to tap into these water sources

  These ideas wouldn't make getting water an impossible task, but more of a concern to your survival. It would add further use to the firepit in early and late stages, and encourage players to explore more to find a source of freshwater, as well as ore and wood.

 

EDIT: Apparently, saltwater and freshwater are confirmed for B78.

[Ithildae 2]

This would add a lot to the game, but right now thirst does not really punish you enough in my opinion. Whilst it's possible to add water at other levels than sea-level, I don't know if it's as simple to separate two types of water from one another. If it is however, water and water-storage just got tons more important. Add food decay and pottery is suddenly just as important as in real life. I've never seen a river above sea-lvl though.

 

I am torn on the diseases part.

[0Beechlgz 9]

I'm in full support of salt water and fresh water distinction. It would make sense from a survival point of view that salt water shouldn't quench the player's thirst.

 

I don't think regular non-tainted fresh water should be so dangerous personally. Perhaps a third type of water would be better reserved for that kind of thing, "Dirty Water" or something along those lines found in places like swamps, septic pools and murky jungle rivers. The chance of disease would be just high enough that the player wouldn't want to make a habit of drinking it, but just low enough that drinking it is better than dehydrating to death when there is nothing else to drink.

 

You can develop a resistance to local fresh water as long as it's not polluted or septic upstream. While there's a small chance it can make you sick many people are able to drink river water for years without problems. Since TFC appears to be geared towards an earlier time in history when people had to have strong stomachs or die, I think it's fair to give fresh water a very, very low chance of causing disease. Perhaps there could be a higher incidence of disease for entering a new area (however you would measure that) that would decline with time.

 

It could become complicated when turning one type of water into another. Salt water -> salt should be easy. Same with salt + water -> salt water. But clean water to dirty water and dirty water to clean water could be more complicated. I don't know how you could possibly pollute water in minecraft (especially entire areas of it) except litter it with items, which obviously isn't what we're after here. On the crafting grid it would be easy enough, just dirt + water. Dirty water to clean water may require some kind of filtration, certainly boiling at the very least to make it drinkable.

[MCChampion1337 1]

This would add a lot to the game, but right now thirst does not really punish you enough in my opinion. Whilst it's possible to add water at other levels than sea-level, I don't know if it's as simple to separate two types of water from one another. If it is however, water and water-storage just got tons more important. Add food decay and pottery is suddenly just as important as in real life. I've never seen a river above sea-lvl though.

 

I am torn on the diseases part.

 

  I agree that dehydration doesn't punish you enough. I also think that it would be possible to add different types of water. If, for example, you set freshwater to spawn in biomes other than Ocean and Beach biomes, you could easily have different types of water, as long as you gave them different IDs. For underground sources of water, just put clean freshwater to generate only under a certain Y-level.

  On the subject of disease: Becoming sick from unclean water in-game would be the outcome of drinking it in real life. It deters the simple routine of filling up your bottle and going on your way, which is one of the main problems with thirst right now. Anyway, disease can be prevented by utilizing an underground water source, therefore removing the need to boil your water - at least, until the well runs dry.

[corki99 23]

I also think this is a good idea, water related problems are not always dehydration

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Salt water and Fresh water are already confirmed for 78. You can distinguish them by the plant life (cattails in fresh, seaweed in salt). You can't drink salt water, and you can't fill your jug with it either.

[landryx 36]

no, salt water filled as normally your thirst bar, but inflict a bad status on the player. Like the zombie effect but on your thirst bar.

What you said MMC Champion, it's really cool. I'm tired to just drink water so easily. Want something more complexe like you said. Yes.

[AllenWL 186]

http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/5151-water-changes/

 

I'll just leave this here so people can look up other ideas.

 

also, saltwater should kill most crops and fruit trees and such so you can't build farms near the ocean.

Some types of crops and fruits trees should be salt-resistant though

[MCChampion1337 1]

 If saltwater and freshwater are already confirmed, I suppose there's no point in suggesting them. Thanks for the support.

[AllenWL 186]

But there can be point in suggesting what they should/might do.

If all saltwater does in not get into jugs and have seaweed, I think I would be a smidgen disappointed, wont you?