4Game

Hey all, found something really odd and interesting today so I thought I'd share. I was exploring a very large Swamp area when I noticed a tinge of brown (denoting Plains) at the edge of the fog. I thought I'd take a look and was surprised to find just a tiny sliver of Plains in the middle of a Swamp. I was even more surprised when I discovered that the Plains sliver contained… a Tar Pit!

The Growths were swimming around happily in the swampy water and I dealt with them in due course. I was left wondering how I was going to dig a trench to drain the Tar. I soon discovered that you don't need to. As one would logically expect, the Tar balls float on the surface of the water. When you pop them, you auto-gather them, they don't get stuck in the Tar because it's below the surface. So if you happen upon such a Tar Pit, you can scoop up the contents with no digging required.

But the more interesting thing I noticed is that Growths are allied with Swamp creatures. There were Draugr, Skellies, Leeches and Blobs milling around the Tar Pit and the Growths showed no aggro towards them at all. I wondered whether the devs had made it so because several Swamp creatures are immune to Poison so the Growths couldn't hurt them, or whether it was part of the lore. I decided it must be the latter.

Think about it. The Growths are the black sheep of the Blob family and look and behave just like Oozers and Blobs. They do Poison damage which is the most common damage type in Swamp. And even though they are found in Plains, they are hostile to everything that occurs naturally in Plains. They are obviously out of place and must have come initially from the Swamp.

Are Tar Pits the remains of what were once swampy areas in Plains? Who knows but I'm pretty sure that the devs conceptualised the Growths as Swamp creatures who have become displaced in Plains. It would be interesting to hear their take and the back-story on this.