A mace, good food, and most importantly patience. The Swamp is very hostile and dangerous. It rains almost all the time which will mess with your stamina, there are several mobs in there that have a very dangerous poison that could potentially one shot you if you're hurt.

Take it slow, pick your fights, and work your way to your objective. The enemies aren't like greydwarves where you can just pace yourself mid fight, they will just rush at you and attack.

Bring portal mats and enough wood to make a workbench that you put alongside a sunken crypt. Then put a steep ladder over it - yes I know you can jump to the top of a crypt but in the heat of fear and wetness, your jumping may be iffy. Know that the only thing that can get you on top of a crypt is a night time baddie. All other enemies can't hurt you up there, well skeles can plink at you but that's it. You can explore in a circle around the crypt then move to the next one when you find it. You can safely store stuff in chests up there too.

Until you are comfortable in the swamp never try to melee leeches, they poison you if you get in the water with them. Always use bow. Watch for them as very important resource. It's always good to set up a leech farm path to come back to regularly, even better if there are some other "glowy" things to farm along the way. The swamp is actually quite a fun area but is indeed a step up from black forest. Turn up your sound, most everything announces itself. Very small swampy areas, too small for crypts, can be great resource farms, especially if it butts up against meadows. Lots of loot waiting for you. Keep track of time, do Not be out there at night until you are much better equipped. Always carry stam and health potions and don't be afraid to use them. Dying in the swamp doesn't have to be a right of passage.

For those crypt outposts, have a portal and a chest OR a workbench(dismantle it after you finish the other two), not all three at once. I had a raid on top of a crypt once. Good thing I had already put stake walls around the top. There are free chests inside the crypt that are handy for storage if you just want to do portal and workbench.

Also, workbenches can go on platforms up a tree to keep them out of reach of everything but archers. Campfires don't stay lit very well in the swamp, but they don't have to to suppress spawns. There were a couple blobs that always spawned next to one of my pathways. I raised a little bit of ground, put a campfire on top, and those two never came back.

Bring a stagbreaker with you inside the crypt.

Originally posted by Sackett:

Just starting to adventure into the swamps what gear should we bring in?

5 stones and 2 pieces of wood.

Bronze mace for sure

plenty of good tips here but I'll just add that your goal going in for the very first time or two is turnip seeds. I set the vegetation to low so those yellow flowers are easier to spot. getting your turnip crop going will give you access to foods that will make the swamps much easier. happy hunting!

Bronze armor + finewood bow to start with poison resist meads.

Get root armor and banded shield ASAP. Root armor is absurdly good in the swamp.

Bronze + shield
Finewood bow
Good food
Poison resistance mead can help

Fully upgraded troll armor.

Poison res potions are a MUST. This makes the swamps quite bearable, almost easy.

When you encounter spawners, be aware you will get overwhelmed so stick and move constantly and focus on one spawner at a time to destroy it.

Mark crypts on your map for future reference.

For food, of the top of my head boar and deer meat and queens jam. Once you get enough entrails, make sausages.

Bring a hoe to level/raise ground so your feet aren't always wet and you have paths that you can move along quickly.

Troll armor works fine too as long as you are careful, and you should be careful anyway. Stay away from anything with purple eyes until you know what you are doing.

Find those yellow flowers asap. They're pretty rare, but very important.

I'd say lvl 2 troll armor at least

A hoe to level out land

3 good buffs, deer meat, boar jerky and queens jam

A fine wood bow and a stack of fire arrows

I would probably bring a bronze axe and 2 deer antler picks

You can shoot the spawners from a distance so you don't have to get too close.

Do NOT stick around at night. wet plus cold.. and a harder enemy spawns. Go back home and sleep.

1- make a small hut on stilts or on top of a crypt
2- pocket portal
3- troll armor
4- bronze shield
5- good food, deer stew, minced meat and carrot soup, replace minced meat with sausages and carrot soup with turnip stew as soon as you can.
6- poison resist mead

The swamps is a big spike in difficulty, but once you get your bearings you know how to deal with it. Don't sprint everywhere, jump over water, use a hoe perhaps but don't run out of stamina, you always run out of it if you're not careful when needed most.

Oh yeah, the big ones don't like fire, you will know what i talk about when you see the big one and fire... well it's around there.

Originally posted by DarthTanyon:

I'd say lvl 2 troll armor at least

A hoe to level out land

3 good buffs, deer meat, boar jerky and queens jam

A fine wood bow and a stack of fire arrows

I would probably bring a bronze axe and 2 deer antler picks

You can shoot the spawners from a distance so you don't have to get too close.

Do NOT stick around at night. wet plus cold.. and a harder enemy spawns. Go back home and sleep.

All good tips. Definitely don't waste time fully bronze-ing up. The upgraded versions of that stuff will swiftly be matched or outclassed by base level iron gear. Other than having to set up or travel at slightly further reaches of the world, progressing through swamp is much faster than black forest in many ways.

If you are going to rely on melee, blunt damage is the indisputable best choice in the swamps.

Also the tip people keep mentioning about bringing a hoe is not to be understated. Mercilessly get rid of those ponds puddles you find in your path and you will always have a clean escape route when you need one. Leeches will be hopeless to get near you.

Finally poison resistance meads. Neither healing meads nor recent food should be relied on for surviving poison. And remember, you need to drink it BEFORE you are poisoned. Just like with your smelters and furnaces, more fermenters means faster production.

Originally posted by Cooperal:

Originally posted by DarthTanyon:

I'd say lvl 2 troll armor at least

A hoe to level out land

3 good buffs, deer meat, boar jerky and queens jam

A fine wood bow and a stack of fire arrows

I would probably bring a bronze axe and 2 deer antler picks

You can shoot the spawners from a distance so you don't have to get too close.

Do NOT stick around at night. wet plus cold.. and a harder enemy spawns. Go back home and sleep.

All good tips. Definitely don't waste time fully bronze-ing up. The upgraded versions of that stuff will swiftly be matched or outclassed by base level iron gear. Other than having to set up or travel at slightly further reaches of the world, progressing through swamp is much faster than black forest in many ways.

If you are going to rely on melee, blunt damage is the indisputable best choice in the swamps.

Also the tip people keep mentioning about bringing a hoe is not to be understated. Mercilessly get rid of those ponds puddles you find in your path and you will always have a clean escape route when you need one. Leeches will be hopeless to get near you.

Finally poison resistance meads. Neither healing meads nor recent food should be relied on for surviving poison. And remember, you need to drink it BEFORE you are poisoned. Just like with your smelters and furnaces, more fermenters means faster production.

We should take all these comments and make a "just Swamp" guide ha. Everyone has at least 1 or 2 good tips.

youre about to enter the worst biome in this game for now. no jokes. swamp is the worst. youll constantly have a stamina penalty due to WET status beeing auto applied just by beeing inside this biome even if it doesnt rain and you arent in water.

DO NOT BRING A BOAT NEAR A SWAMP unless you have secured a landing side for it. especially not at night. wraiths will ruin your boat and your day if you do that. swamp is the worst biome in the game to land a boat on because of wraiths and leeches.

establish a small base for your portal. near the shoreline towards open ocean. once you have established that you now have a site for your boat to land later to transport the tons of iron scrap back home. since iron is needed for freaking EVERYTHING even lategame its still in high demand you wanna plunder the crypts and then bring the iron to your boat. set sail once boat is full. (use longship once you got 10 iron it can transport ALOT more and is faster)

once youre stronger the swamp becomes less painful. but first times there is plain cancer.

Originally posted by autumndragonfalling:

If you can find a crypt and get on top of it you and your portal will be pretty safe from most swamp hazards.

Yep, this works fine. In swamp we only build portals on top of crypts and raise the terrain around.

I did not bring karve into swamp. I was made aware if the danger beforehand and proceeded to utilise a small outcropping about 100f off shore. I got engaged by said abomination when entering further into the swamp after a short swim; ran up one of those big trees and it proceeded to W key my boat and portal. I could not swim faster than it could walk and it just ate everything in about two hits.

i just shot fire arrows at it from a safe distance and it died

Two things that help:
1). As others have said, try to find a swamp next to a easier biome. Meadows preferably, but more often it will end up being a Black Forest. Set up a base at least 100 meters (preferably more) from the Swamp as stuff comes out of the Swamp at times and may see your base. Build a portal and put a wall or trench around it to protect it. Then walk to the Swamp.
2). As for the Abominations, besides what others have said, one thing to look out for is the occasional fire spouts you see in the Swamp. They are great for taking out Abominations if you can lure them there into the fire. Be aware you will need to deal with the creatures that are found by the fire, but they are not that bad once you see what they do (I don't want to give away too much here). Otherwise, if you don't see any fire spouts, just outrun the Abominations. They are relatively slow, though if you are swimming they can catch up to you.
Further along, once you get a better axe made you can take them on with that and a good shield. But the Bronze Axe will take a while, so hold off if you can until you can get better gear. Just avoid them.

Good luck!

They are nasty early on, but once you learn their attacks you can dodge, parry, or just move out of the way relatively easily. They are weak to fire so just hit them with your torch, or lead them onto a surtling spawner if one is nearby. Fire arrows are ok, but you'll need a lot of them.

They are quite common so be ready to face a lot of them, especially if you want to build and upgrade the root set.

I found Abominations are a lot easier to melee than Trolls (Tree log ones). I think it's because the default roll works better as their attack range is lower. Axes and swords make pretty short work of them, but they are an intimidating sight. I first killed one with fire arrows which honestly was a huge waste of time and ammo. It got me in more trouble than it was worth given all the kiting just caught the attention of new spawns.

This is the slowest thing in the game, and its extra stupid about pathing, and it isn't as good at mashing trees etc to cut a path to you by knocking the world down. All in all, escape from it should not be too difficult, next time run -- preferably, out of the swamp to avoid pulling more tough things that are better at chasing you.

You haven't been reading the other posts of folks just like you. Dropped anchor in the swamp. Nope, bad idea. Now you know. Approach swamp on foot, always.

You can also stand on the fallen indestructible trees that are everywhere and chop him down with your axe, be under him and aim for left front leg, its left, not yours, or jump on a crypt and put a new portal there.
One portal stays near the swamp, leave it for now, the next one is a roamer that you take from crypt to crypt.

The whole thing about boats in this game is folks use them instead of exploring on foot and it leads to many problems. You can't leave the boat in water in swamp as everything wants to destroy it. And if your rng is bad, you get the abomination welcoming committee. Same with plains, just don't do it.
Live and learn.

I wouldn't say you are unlucky.. they are pretty common. I fought 3 in a row once I went into a swamp. Using wood/flint/fire arrows seems to work ok gonna take like 20-30.. axing him is also great is animations are pretty easy to avoid. He also gets stuck between obstacles often. Easy to just go around.

Jump on a crypt, they can't reach you. Or kite around one of those indestructible trees. Shoot with many fire arrows.

Don't land your boat in swamp. Just don't. Same with plains. Getting off your boat on a new island is the single most dangerous thing in this entire game.

It is very tough to harm it with arrows, jump on the lying big indestructible trees. Not to low, and use Slash weapon on its legs. It go's faster down. Or if you want to level your bow, go with the arrows. Good luck.

If you can find a crypt and get on top of it you and your portal will be pretty safe from most swamp hazards.

Just kite it with fire arrows. Preferably not in the swamp if you are not geared but toward the nearest biome.

It W key my boat on a rock outcropping along with my portal and then proceeded to kill me while trying to save said portal.