4Game

So here's an anecdote (I found no fitting flair)

I thought it would be a good idea to make a temp forge base in the swamps on my first playthrough. The Idea is to craft all the gear on site and not have to sail home with it.
It was a good idea, but making the base wasn't anywhere near as easy as I thought, since we were severely undergeared, and there was a non stop assault by abominations. I mean, there were 1-2 abominations in sight all the time, knocking on our base walls and hindering our exploration of the first two crypts.

Since we felt utterly helpless against the abominations (we killed a couple with fire arrows, but were mauled every time we tried anything else), I searched for some tips and found that bonfires are quite effective weapons.

Armed with that strategy and all of the materials (4 kinds of wood and a surtling core – that's a lot of inventory space for a single magic trick), I set out exploring the rest of that swamp, hoping to get materials for a root suit.

Then we made a base in another swamp, then went on another iron run…

During all of this time, with three players spending a cumulative 6-8 hours in swamps, we found only two abominations, one of which ran away never to be seen again.

So I only got to kill one abomination, but the set of bonfire materials are now known as my abomination ward. If Murphy's law holds, it should keep me safe for as long as I don't want it to.

Cheers!