Automatic Punt Deployment

[Aubble]

Heya Sami and/or Erkka,

I have a suggestion regarding the use of punts in the wilderness map.

Whenever you use a punt, you have to first deploy it on the zoom map and then you can zoom out into the wilderness map. After that, if you happen to come into contact with land, you need to once again enter the zoom map, row to the shore, pick up the punt, and then you can go back to the wilderness map.

I find the aforementioned process to be incredibly tedious, especially when you need to cross a large distance on land--running into rivers in Driik territory is especially frustrating; manoeuvring the Islanders' region is also quite annoying.

My suggestion is as follows:

If someone has a punt in their inventory and a paddle equipped, the punt should automatically deploy if they attempt to walk off the shore and into the water. Likewise, if they are riding a punt, the punt should automatically be put back into their inventory (if they have space) if they attempt to row into a land mass. This should all happen regardless of whether the person is using the wilderness or zoom maps.

Ideally, this change could be toggled in the settings--I would greatly prefer that the player is not asked to confirm the action every time it is attempted. After all, the overall objective is mostly to allow one to quickly travel long distances by, for example, holding whatever button they use to walk/row forward.

Thank you for reading~

-Aabri

[JP_Finn]

This was the way it was before gradual freezing and melting of ice was implemented.
So to add to the suggestion: allow automatic deployment of punt during open water season only, when wielding a paddle and carrying a punt.

Spring and fall, would still have to be manual embark/disembark.

[Aubble]

Instead of limiting the feature to only open-water season, perhaps it could simply work so long as the particular tiles of water are not frozen?

[JP_Finn]

When the shores start to freeze, the punt is stuck, if one doesn’t break the ice ahead. And the wilderness map might still show the water as unfrozen.
It’d be very confusing to maybe allow, maybe not allow auto-deploying punt.
Some times after cold night, the shores are frozen, but later in day thaw off again.

It’d need lot of notifications, and it’d still likely end up getting reported as bugs. There’s also a dev note to make waterway traveling include hazards, this suggestion would likely be coding time used against the other part.