Swimming

Whether you fancy a relaxing dip after a long day slaying elementals, are trying to reach an elusive cave on the ocean floor, need to harvest a submerged resource deep in a swamp, or merely want to get to the other side, it's inevitable that — at some point — you are going to go for a swim in a large body of water.

Let's wade in with some basics and then go for a deep dive.

## The Basics

The WASD keys still move your character the way you expect them to underwater.  In addition:

* Pressing **SPACE** moves your character **UP** (towards the surface).
* Pressing **LEFT-SHIFT** moves your character **DOWN** (deeper into the body of water).

If you get into trouble, press **0** to initiate a **Recall** back to your home solace.

## The Deep Dive

You don't need much more than The Basics for quick forays into shallow water.  When the water gets deeper, however, things get a bit trickier.  The light fades, it gets really dark, and visibility drops to almost zero.  You *do not* want to drown and dump your inventory in such conditions.  Recovering your stuff is likely going to be extremely difficult — in many cases, impossible.

### Location, location, location

If you are harvesting resources, position yourself directly on the icon before diving. Expect to have to scout around a bit once you reach the bottom.

If you are diving off a boat then you can use the position of the boat itself to mark the location of your dive in the event that you drown and need to come back and recover your stuff.  Boats do not (currently) drift so, as long as you headed *straight down* — did not use WASD to go off at crazy angles — your stuff should be right under the boat.

   If you don't have a boat, pressing **F4** brings up your Location [x,y,z] indicator on the left hand side of the screen.  The X and Z coordinates indicate your position to within ±10m.  Taking a screenshot before you dive gives you something to reference if things go wrong.

The Y coordinate indicates your vertical position in the world.  'Sea Level' is at Y: 800m.  The surface of all bodies of water — swamps, ponds, lakes, seas, oceans — are at this level.  So if your Y coordinate reads 797m then that means you are 3m below the surface of the water.  If Y reads 700m then you are 100m below the surface.

Closely monitoring your depth is important for two reasons:  Firstly, if you drown then in order to recover your stuff quickly you need to not only know your precise [x,z] location, but your [y] depth as well.  Secondly, it helps you from drowning in the first place.

### Air Supply

   As soon as your character's head goes under water (Y < 800m) they can no longer breathe and the amount of oxygen in their lungs — their Air Supply — starts running out at a steady rate.

From 100% down to about 50% the air supply indicator is white in colour.  If you are diving down then 50% is a pretty important number because it means you still have half of your air supply left.  Since you swim up at the same rate as you swim down, you still have enough air left to make it back up to the surface before running out.

    Once your air supply drops below 50% the indicator's colour changes to yellow.  This is drawing your attention to the fact that you should really be on the way back to the surface by now — at least if you want to avoid running out of air and suffering the consequences.

The indicator remains yellow down to about 10%.

    Below 10% the air supply indicator turns red.  You are in imminent danger of running out of air.  Unless you are mere seconds away from the surface you are going to start drowning.

Forget whatever else you may be doing — your focus should now be on survival.

    This is what it looks like when a character has run out of air and is drowning...

You lose 5% of your maximum health *every second* until you either reach the surface or die.

Assuming you started your dive at full health, if you lose 5% of your maximum health every second you will die exactly 20 seconds after running out of air. Level 1 or Level 100, it doesn't matter — everyone drowns in the same amount of time.

At this point you should be hitting your panic button(s) — whatever they may be.  Healing potions/abilities/spells can buy you a few more precious seconds to reach the surface.  You should be furiously running the numbers through your head — frequently checking the Y value — to try work out if you'll make it to the surface in time.

If it looks like you won't make it, hit 0 and Recall back to your home solace.  In the vast majority of situations it is better to bail and then work your way back than it is to die.

### Death... and recovery

    It's highly likely that, at some point, for whatever reason, your character will drown.  Whilst you are making your way back, reflect on what happened and try and think of what you can do differently the next time you're in the same situation.  There's no point doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

The skull on the main map will give you a rough idea of where you died, but it's not very precise.  Use your boat or noted/screenshotted [x,z] coordinates to return to the exact location, then dive down to the right [y] depth and scan around for your bags.  If you were close to the surface when you died there might be enough light for this process to be relatively simple.  If you were a (lot) deeper, then, well, do the best you can.  Many bags have been lost to the murky depths.

At the time of writing (v0.6.2.16) there is no 'trick' in the game (at least that the author is aware of) that can be used to light up the dark or otherwise make it easier to see and recover bags from the depths.  Torches and Light enchants (although they technically do still emit a bit of light) are increasingly ineffective the deeper you go.  If your character drowns you should quickly take a screenshot whilst the [x,y,z] coordinates are still showing.  Accurate coordinates are your best hope of getting all your gear back.

## Going the Distance

If you are swimming primarily *across* bodies of water, rather than *down into* bodies of water, then what you probably care more about is speed.

In-game testing has shown that characters swim at ~12km/hr.  Small Boats, on the other hand, travel at ~28km/hr.  If you have a large body of water to cross, then it's definitely faster to row across it in a boat than it is to swim.

If you *must* swim a (very) long distance for some reason, you can press R to start swimming, then press M to bring up your map, use Q and E to point your character in the right direction, and then go do something else (read the Wiki or catch up on Discord) while SC continues to run (and your character continues to swim) in the background.  Check back every now and then to make sure nothing weird has happened.

## The Future

Malkere has indicated that things like "Water Breathing Potions" are planned because they are required for fleshing out his plans for the underwater realm.  When that time comes we'll probably see the light issue get some attention as well.  Thus in some future release swimming underwater is likely to get a whole lot easier.  Much of what has been written above may be either less useful or completely redundant at that time.  Feel free to update it as the game changes.