Swimming
| Swimming | |
|---|---|
 "Nine drops of rain-water, | |
| LP Cost | 500 |
| Skill(s) Required |
Fishing |
| Skill(s) Enabled |
Boat Building |
| Hearth Magic(s) Unlocked | None |
| Required By (0) | Nothing |
| Go to Skills Page | |
"You know how to get yourself out on deep water, which unfortunately carries with it the risk of never getting back alive to the shallows again. Death by drowning is a real risk for the unwary, and Hearthlings need a high "Constitution" value to swim for any considerable durations of time."
Swimming is needed to enter and cross deep water without a Boat or Raft. Please read this page carefully to avoid watery grave.
Higher Constitution will make you use less stamina while swimming.
Certain equipment items or gildings grant a Swimming bonus. This amplifies your swimming abilities as if you had that amount of extra Constitution. Example, Walrus Boots grant +15 Swimming ability, so if you swam it would be as if you had an extra 15 Constitution, without the actual health buffs and whatnot. Swimming ability buffs from equipment is generally quite high.
Health Warning
Drowning (running out of stamina while in deep water) will begin to kill your character, piling on Asphixiation damage at a rate of 10% of your MHP per second. This means you will die in 5 seconds! It doesn't deal 10 flat damage. So, if you have 210 max health, it will be doing 21 damage instead! This can kill you quickly. If you die in the water, you leave a floating Corpse that portrays your incompetence to every passing boater. It is advisable to use caution while swimming, and consider if you need to buy swimming until much later. Raising constitution will allow you to cross larger rivers.
A character with 10 constitution and a full stamina bar, can only cross 10 tiles safely before drowning. The maximum distance character can swim increases at a non-linear rate similar to quality. [Verify: swim distance increases non-linearly.]
Remember that if you do drown, your character is permanently dead.
Toggling Swimming
You must toggle swimming on and off via the adventure menu.
Adventure > Toggles > Toggle Swimming
Notes
Some of this information might be outdated as swimming was revamped in W8-10 and not all information here has been verified.
In Legacy, you drowned instantly after running out of stamina. Swimming was considered so dangerous (and not prerequisite to Boat Building yet) that many people never unlocked it, so they couldn't toggle it on even by accident. You may find guides on Internet dating from this era that exaggerate the dangers of swimming.
Game Development
- Strange Crown (2022-10-23)◎ >"Stuff carried overhead while over water will not be insta-deleted if you lose your session, but, rather, will only be so when the actual character logs out. Should imply a short grace time to log back in if you lose connection while carrying stuff over water, or such."