Enshrouded

Since Enshrouded launched into early access in January of last year, players have been clamoring for water. The big, beautiful world of Embervale already has lots to offer, especially since you can build on or modify the terrain just about anywhere on the map you want… but would a couple rivers and lakes here and there be out of the question? We like that sorta thing in our big open world games.

This week at Gamescom, Keen Games revealed that Enshrouded’s next big update would finally get players wet, with a whole new biome dedicated to water. And while I was expecting a few rivers and ponds, there’s a lot more to it than that. Here’s the trailer to whet (ha) your appetite, but I also got to watch a short demo of the new biome and talk to Benjamin Westphal, Enshrouded’s lead game designer, about the Wake of the Water update, which arrives later this year.

The demo began with Westphal’s character chilling in the new tropical biome, outside a base decorated with deck chairs and umbrellas beside a pool filled with sparkling water, as if it were Embervale’s premier vacation resort. A larger pool was connected to a wooden trough by a gate, and opening the gate sent water down the trough where it began spinning a large water wheel.

Yep, Enshrouded’s water is dynamic. If you’ve got a water source near some plants you want to keep irrigated, you can deform the land and dig a trench. The water will flow from the lake through that trench to the area you want to keep watered. Even just seeing a few small examples of the dynamic water flowing through modified terrain made me excited to see what players do with the new system—the kinds of players who spend 10,000 hours recreating Erebor from The Lord of the Rings.

Physics plus water can also be a dangerous combination. Later in the demo, Westphal triggered a trap in a dungeon that sealed the doors and water began pouring in, slowly filling the huge room. Characters can only hold their breath for so long, so finding a way out before the room filled and his oxygen was depleted was a pretty urgent situation. (He was fine. He’s the lead game designer, after all.)

“This new biome is strictly high level stuff,” Westphal said when I asked how easy it would be to reach the region for a character just starting off in Enshrouded. “It’s the current end game, you could say.” But that doesn’t mean players won’t encounter water in other places in the world. “Think about the desert. There could be a small oasis,” he said. There will also be ways to access and use water at your base, even if your base isn’t in the new biome. “So it’s not that [players] need to play hundreds of hours to see the water.”

The new biome also has new enemies, a lizard-like race of creatures you’ll encounter both on land and in the water. And those huge, sparkling lakes in the biome are stocked with fish. The fishing system in the demo felt pretty basic: just cast a line, wait for a nibble, and then yoink the fish out of the lake.

But there are different types of bait you can use and different fishing rods to find, plus new recipes to cook your catches. There’s progression when it comes to swimming, too—Westphal wouldn’t get into specifics, but players will be able to find ways to hold their breath longer and swim faster underwater.

The simple fact that there’s fishing is all I need to get stuck back into Enshrouded when the Wake of the Water arrives this October, but everything else about the update looks great, too. Enshrouded just happens to be on sale right now for 20% off on Steam until September 2.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he’d stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He’s also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.