Originally posted by Similar:

Thanks all. Lots of good tips. Kind of glad swamps actually are hard and I'm not just hopeless...

The reason I picked that swamp was that, after sailing for weeks, it was the only one I'd seen that had crypts I could spot. All the other swamps I'd found were narrow stretches on the coast (that map had a lot of that sort of thing. Black forests were the same way) and it didn't seem likely they had many crypts, or any at all.

I also didn't know ship landings caused that much attention. I'll keep that in mind.

I think I'll go for bronze armor this time. Never tried it, so it's kind of about time.
And then massively overprepare next time I start a swamp.

yeah building, combat and wood chopping, especially, is really noisy. They usually don't rush you, so if you got sneaking. you can probably agro one or 2 to dispatch, then when the others arrive, you can finish them off too.

in the daytime i use the karve to look for a crypt close to the shore
make a quick landfall, kill everything before they kill you -draugre are slow and fire arrows work well. poison resistance is vital , smash all leaches , put down a workbench , jump into crypt - get 10 iron and build a longboat - all swamp landings can be done this way and get much easier with a longboat , scout the shore from a safe distance , if you see mobs or blueish looking things find another spot , sometimes black ofrrest rocks stick out from the swamp you can land there too - same process - kill everything and drop a workbench - 10 wood
some say dont land in the swap but i always do with the above method- the workbench helps keep the boat repaired as you truck iron out to it - bonemass swamp i drop a portal in a raised shack usually or if its a swamp with lots of crypts ....bloodbags can be portaled - i love me some bloodbags
eliminating spawn pools in the stone circles can calm a swamp down in a hurry , it could even become peaceful
you only need 10 iron to start really , with a longboat you can start travelling the world
swamp abominations are just trees , chop them down , burn them a bit first if you must - they run away , dont follow, its a ploy to engage more enemies, if you eliminated the spawn pools you can follow them , otherwise they are just looking for friends to join the fight
use the longboat to get serpents and use their scales to make the shield- its a good shield until later when you get black metal
abominations let you make the root armour
my last seed had an awesome bonemass swamp on an island with a swamp river separating it from another swamp , no way to get there from another biome , you had to land there

Just put your toe in. You need to accumulate some materials to help you handle the swamps that can only be found in the swamps so run around the edges for a while. One of the most important things that you need to find in the swamps are your first set of turnip seeds.You need to plant them and grow some and expand them before you are really ready for the swamp. You need them to upgrade your cooking station and to use them as ingredients for better food. The flowers are bright yellow and easy to spot in the swamps but they are quite rare. You might have to wander a bit deeper into the swamps and be prepared to sprint out if you draw too much attention.

You also need drops from dragur and leeches. For leeches just walk up to the edge of the water and let them come to you. You can use your finewood bow on them but its takes 3 or 4 shots to kill one and they have an annoying tendency to run away when they are down to a sliver of health and then despawn so your best bet is to come to the very edge of the water and wait for them to gather and then use a melee weapon from the bank of the water on them. Leeches don't do too much damage from the attack the issue with them is the DOT poison damage that ticks away after getting hit. If you get your self in the right place and stay onshore you can kill a couple and grab the drops. If you get poisoned back away and use a small healing mead. The uptick on health from the mead will counter the down tick from the poison. You can also just take a poison resist mead and wade in. A lot of players think the poison resist meads don''t work properly. That's because you have to drink it before you take the poison damage for it to be effective. If you drink it after you have been poisoned it doesn't reduce the damage from the attack(s) taken before the mead was consumed.

You'll get swarmed by dragur and skeletons only at night or if you are near a point of interest (like a crypt, a body pile, or a dragur village). If you see more than 1 dragur in the day time go into sneak mode and look around to see if you can spot the POI. If its a body pile you can eliminate it from range with your bow. Body piles spawn more dragur and have an annoying tendency to spawn dragur elite. You'll want to eliminate most of the body piles you find but save a couple to farm dragur drops after you get iron gear.

If you do get swarmed there are a couple of things you can do. One is to use the secondary attack with a bronze atgeir. This weapon does pierce damage which isn't very effective against most of the things in the swamp but its has cleave which means it does full damage against multiple targets which should stagger them and give you a chance to back away (or run away). It takes quite a bit of stamina to use it so keep an eye if that's the way you want to go. Attack, back away and regain a bit of stamina, repeat making sure that you back away toward a different biome (remember you should only be on the edge of the swamp). You can also use the back away tactic with a bronze buckler and a single handed weapon (mace is effective on most things in the swamp) and lead swarms of swamp creatures to the meadows where they will attack any greylings, deer, boar, and neck they encounter which will give you a chance to snipe a bit with your bow and recover some stamina and health. Even better if you retreat into the black forest and have your swarm run into a group of greydwarves or a troll (troll is especially helpful against an abomination).

Handling an abomination is tedious. They are very resistant to pierce damage (arrows) but they take extra damage from fire (flaming arrows). You can use the back away and dodge trick while pelting them with flaming arrows or you can kite them with your axe. Keep a stamina mead on you if things get dicey abominations are slow enough that you can out run them and get away if you have enough stamina.

If all else fails pop your Eikthyr forsaken power and sprint away. If you have enough stamina (or a stamina mead) you might be able to get completely away and even if you can't you'll spread the mobs out. They all have different speeds. Leeches can't leave the water, skeletons are fast, dragurs are slower, and the abomination is slow. Spreading them out will give you more time to deal with each group.

To handle the foul smell from the swamp raid the trick it to not handle it. The raid spawns a total of 3 entities (dragur or skeleton). If you kill one, another immediately spawns at the center point of the raid. The raid lasts 150 seconds if you stay within the raid circle. If you exit the raid circle (and stay out of it) the raid will last 3 game days. If your base isn't protected by earthen walls and a moat you'll come back to a completely annihilated base. Instead just alternate walking and sprinting around the perimeter of your base (making sure you stay inside the raid circle) and occasionally firing an arrow to whittle them down a bit (but make sure you don't kill any). Lead them a merry chase around the outside of your base so they don't damage anything until the raid expires completely and then finish them off that way no more will spawn. Later on when you have an iron buckler and better gear you'll want to kill then all while the raid lasts for the dragur drops.

In any case, good luck. Skoal!

Ideally your first trip to swamps will want to be connected to a Black Forest or meadows biome.. that is the proper way to get tot he swamps.

Just a quick question - why aren't you carrying the required mats to make a portal whenever you are exploring?
I always take mats for a portal, workbench and when playing vanilla a storage box. Building a small base at the edge is fine but it means you have to return to it every night to head back to home base, cutting down your exploration time.
With the portal and workbench mats on you just keep exploring until just before night then put up a portal, store portal restricted items in storage box and go home. When your inventory is full or you're close to being encumbered head back to your boat or build that portal and transport non-restricted items back to home base.
Stuff that you build won't get attacked if you're not in the vicinity so it's safe to leave it there overnight or for several days if needed. If you're in a crypt and have built this stuff on the ground then it might get attacked as the game considers you in the vicinity. The crypt roof is safe from attacks.

Troll Armor should be fine. But absolutely do not swim, do not go in there at night, and avoid abominations. Set up a portal at home, find a nice swamp, sail there and place the other side of the portal. And then go thru the portal only during the day, with rested buff and good food & mead.

Armor does play a large role in reducing damage (obviously, but more than some other games). The extra armor from bronze might be considered overkill to some, but it could be a difference maker.

I do find that a good shield is more important, so an upgraded bronze buckler works better for me. A parry will block more damage than large shields, has a lower speed penalty, and parries cause enemies to recoil and take critical damage for a couple seconds, making for much shorter fights.

And the swamps are quite threatening overall. Dipping your toes in the water is basically begging them to be eaten by leeches. Draugr are plentiful and painful if left unchecked. Abominations can sprout anywhere and can't exactly be ignored. Blobs and oozers require particular care or poison resist potions to deal with. It's definitely a lot less welcoming than the previous areas.

I was terrified of entering the swamp until I watched a greydork take a good amount of health from a draugr so I decided to at least try to melee one. They are terrifying until you realize they are nearly only as dangerous as the greys from the Black Forest. In a very short period of time I learned to parry with the bronze buckler and draugr are really not much of a threat at all. I've killed two abominations easily by kiting them like I do trolls and running them into other mobs to give me time to recover stam and pepper them with fire arrows. The blobs you have to keep away from you until you can craft some poison resist potions. I think you will do fine if you follow the above advice about being rested, having good food and not ever going in there at night. Use the bronze buckler (I only have troll armor so I am pretty sure that's sufficient). Making the time to make a safe passageway to and from the swamp would be a good idea. I was lucky enough to have some swamplands attached to my Meadows/Black Forest biome. I have a tree fort where I keep my portal up in the Black Forest at the edge of the swamp so I can portal home to sleep/repair/replenish. Good luck~ It's a lot of fun, but risky.

Abominations were added later. Every zone now has a physically big high health, hard hitting slow guy not counting the meadows. The plains may have 2, depending on how you feel about wildlife.
The wraith comes out at night only, and you should wait a while before hanging out there at night.

How to handle it.. hoe a path is a good plan. Leeches are not that dangerous but swimming in deep water with 20 of them is indeed a bad plan AND they will chew on your boat AND the like to have stars (or maybe its large quantity = more starred about).

the tried and true approach to the swamp that works for me:
find a safe way to take a peek at night without going in. Circle it but stay in a lower biome, and look for the bright green torches. Mark the estimated spot on your map via crud line of site triangulation. Come back in the day and check out the sites you marked. Find a crypt and get into it asap, even if you have to train half the swamp to the door. Once inside, the fights will be 1x1 mostly and almost completely under your control, and even rangeable. Collect your 30 pieces of iron and run back. Repeat a couple times. Go make better stuff, and it becomes as easy as anything else does vs harder stuff. If you feel confident in your ability to grab crypts and stay out of trouble, an iron pick is a must have first item. If not, shield/weapon first.

i try to never beach on a swamp as you aggro everything in like a 2km radius lol, troll armour is great for sneaking and agilty but you gotta be real good with it i use bronze it can take a beating and i'm not in it for the sneak, can't say i really bothered with troll armor, though i hear you can skip a lot with it, but ya gotta be on the money with parry etc, no parry with the tower shields.

if ya have to go to that island i'd stay in the boat and try to pick a few off with a bow from a distance, before trying to land, reduce the numbers, if it gets hairy sail to the black forest and let em come to you?

in my recent playthrough i wanted to see mistland in it's entirety. So i got past swamp stage with just copper sword (max tier) and bone shield. iirc that shield would be a tower shield? i only had to use it because of the draugr archers. they hurt man.

Mind you, my main focus was how far i was from my portal and water level. It's been in the game for awhile now, but areas with those long reed grass poking out of the water means you can walk on it without your weapon being automatically sheathed. I also bring along enough wood to build a crafting table and my original hoe to flatten out areas for a road (not a real road because that costed stone). I also marked the road on my map and sometimes in dark places i put torches to light the new road.

move slowly, fight whatever you agroed, break line of sight to force archers to come closer if they're under water. Oh yeah don't go out at night. Even if you do and the ghosty bois kill ya, come back later because they'd despawn. Oh not sure if they helped my portal stay alive but it was in a core log cabin.

oh yeah the triple spawners are really just a dps check. If you can't break some of the spawners in time, as a solo player, that section of the map becomes a no go zone until you get more damage later (more armour if you've managed to spawn some draugrs).

Oh boy that one sounds a bit rough. I honestly would have avoided the island swamp in the first place, it's hell trying to land a boat in a swamp without some chaotic BS like that happening to you. But since it's already a bit late to take the "eh, i'll find another one" route since you eventually want to recover that stuff you lost, let's see if anyone can help find a solution.

Troll armor should indeed be enough, and for the time investment that bronze takes it might not be worth making that for the extra like 8 damage protection unless you just plain have abundant bronze already (i personally hate bronze age so this is never the case for me, i get exactly what i need to move on to swamps and 0 of anything I don't NEED to do so). If you do happen to have more bronze than troll since you've been funnelling your troll kills into armor upgrades for armor you are currently trying to get back, then yeah, the bronze might be the easier loadout for getting your stuff back.

This one might be one of those "we'll get it later" recoveries though. It also sounds like you got a death cycle bad enough that you simply wont be able to properly prepare to recover your stuff before your skill drain protection is gone, so rushing the recovery will probably just make your situation even worse. Take that time to remake another troll set or a new bronze set (whichever is more reasonable based on what resources you still have, if back to square 1 both will take time anyway). If that swamp is a full island, with absolutely nowhere safe to land on it, then it may indeed be best to set up a forward base with a portal on an adjacent landmass (you did mention more land across a smaller canal, if that lands offers meadows or even black forest somewhere nearby that may be feasible). that forward base wont get you back to your corpse, but can at least get you back into the area from a safe nearby location, plus you can use it to try different approaches to that swamp.
A land bridge across the canal with a hoe would probably be the safest way to cross the leech infested waters over to swamp island, but if that isn't possible it might also be worth considering finding one of the large ancient trees on the shoreline you can toss a workbench down on top of (safely out of enemy reach, they cant wreck the giant trees) and use that as a "landing" so you can try a raft approach. Leeches will decimate boats if given the chance, so it might not be the worst option to bring the materials for 2 nice cheap rafts, one to get there and one to get back if the leeches ate the first (but you already have the resources so you arent wading through shallow leech waters trying to find the bits of the first raft they broke, these are meant to be disposable rafts for the sake of recovery basically).

If all else fails, there are players willing to help with moments pretty much exactly like this. As in there are groups dedicated to helping players recover from deaths they can not reasonably recover from themselves. You might be able to reach out to one of them and have someone join your game to help you get your stuff back.

Naval landing is not the safest way to start new biome, especially swamps.

Here is my algorithm of starting swamps(way too safe because I play ironman):
0. Always use poison resist potion while in swamps.
1. Scout several swamps reachable on foot.
2. Find some turnip seeds.
3. Build base near swamp in the forest. It is perfect if there will be mountain and plains nearby.
4. Farm some Draugrs and cook sausages.
5. Find crypt and build shelter nearby. You need safe crypt without inside spawn point close to entrance.
6. Farm some iron and craft iron armour. Put all iron in armour upgrades.
7. Now you may go deeper into swamps.
8. Clear all spawn points on your way. Move there, destroy single spawn point, run away, destroy pursuers, repeat.
9. Clear all abominations on your way. They are very durable but their hits are very weak. Spend all stamina to deal damage, walk around indestructible tree to restore it, repeat. Drink healing potion if needed.
10. Farm enough iron to craft/upgrade/build whatever you need.
11. Kill Bonemass using the same tactic as vs abominations.

If you aren't sure in your skills you may terraform swamp. Raise ground. Chop trees. Build workbenches to block most spawns. Build shelters everywhere. Build roads for cart. That's very time consuming but if you are on day 137 you obviously don't hurry.

Thanks all. Lots of good tips. Kind of glad swamps actually are hard and I'm not just hopeless...

The reason I picked that swamp was that, after sailing for weeks, it was the only one I'd seen that had crypts I could spot. All the other swamps I'd found were narrow stretches on the coast (that map had a lot of that sort of thing. Black forests were the same way) and it didn't seem likely they had many crypts, or any at all.

I also didn't know ship landings caused that much attention. I'll keep that in mind.

I think I'll go for bronze armor this time. Never tried it, so it's kind of about time.
And then massively overprepare next time I start a swamp.