Geode Cave (New Biome)
zimmym
Australia Join Date: 2016-12-18 Member: 225102Members
Australia Join Date: 2016-12-18 Member: 225102Members
My Idea involves a new biome called the Geode Cave. Here are some details:
Style: Rock walls with large jutting crystals everywhere. The cave is lit by a mixture of purple, blue and pink light from the crystal formations.
Location: The Geode cave is located deep below the dunes (500m depth.) The entrance is a simple hole in the ground which is rather large and extends quite far downward
Fauna: The Geode Cave consists of various common fauna that exist deep below but also includes an abundance of the Mesmer fish.
Resources: The Geode Cave contains multiple rare resources such as mercury ore and aluminium oxide. It also contains a new ore (Geode) which can be crafted into new interesting visual related items such as binoculars.
Related items: Possibly new vehicle modules, such as a "Focusing array module" which adds a sort of zoom feature to a vehicles hud. Geode could be used to upgrade the laser cutter to increase it's (painfully slow) speed perhaps. Upgraded power transmitters with larger range.
What are your thoughts?
Style: Rock walls with large jutting crystals everywhere. The cave is lit by a mixture of purple, blue and pink light from the crystal formations.
Location: The Geode cave is located deep below the dunes (500m depth.) The entrance is a simple hole in the ground which is rather large and extends quite far downward
Fauna: The Geode Cave consists of various common fauna that exist deep below but also includes an abundance of the Mesmer fish.
Resources: The Geode Cave contains multiple rare resources such as mercury ore and aluminium oxide. It also contains a new ore (Geode) which can be crafted into new interesting visual related items such as binoculars.
Related items: Possibly new vehicle modules, such as a "Focusing array module" which adds a sort of zoom feature to a vehicles hud. Geode could be used to upgrade the laser cutter to increase it's (painfully slow) speed perhaps. Upgraded power transmitters with larger range.
What are your thoughts?
Comments
Should be gorgeous. I'd like to see it. Geodes don't naturally glow, though. (However, if you had bioluminescent life like Jellyshrooms, that could account for the light and be visually striking at the same time.)
Good place for it; the dunes are a little too spartan as it is, and adding it in post V1.0 would be pretty straightforward. Making it accessible to only smaller vehicles might be a good move, though, unless you plan those crystals to be seriously damaging to a Cyclops, thus forcing divers to be very careful with navigation of a large sub.
No argument here.
Not sure why we'd need binoculars seeing as how they don't really work well underwater. (Aside from that, crafting the lenses from plain old glass would be easier and simpler.) But perhaps the new ore could be used for upgrading - in the Modification Station, add two Geode pieces to a laser cutter and it'll now cut twice as fast, perhaps. Sky's the limit there.
Okay, ya lost me, buddy.
Apart from the inverted-gravity bit, I like this a lot.
1. Hot water. Large crystals typically form in mineral-rich, pretty-darn-hot water. Low-grade heat damage would be a way to keep divers on their toes (and keep out-of-vehicle excursions short).
2. Treacherous navigation. Many crystals are pretty sharp by nature, and crystals growing in such an environment wouldn't be very organized. Making this quasi-geode in the mold of Naica Cave could be interesting from a gameplay perspective. Here's a picture of Naica, in case you're not familiar with it:
3. Difficult navigation. Think on the order of "house of mirrors." Difficult to maintain sight lines, easy to get lost.
Of course, I worry that such an environment - while I'd dearly love to see it - would turn my laptop into a giant Note 7 from the sheer rendering demands, but hey...that's my problem.
Something you drop into and feel like you're in a field of stars rather than the ocean.
Maybe it could have Naica like branches within it, too boot. Can't be worse than the Mushroom Forest, right?
I do like the idea of finding a new resource type that can be used for some sort of upgrades. Maybe even crystals we can...grow? Glowy crystal plants?
Yeah, a giant geode Biome would be cool.
Thanks for the feedback.
Just to clarify, i kinda went wild with the ideas for moment there. The gravity part seems a bit extreme and serves no purpose other that to "wow" the player. Therefore it is simply just throwaway material because the real focus is the biome itself. Binoculars were just a first thought idea. I didn't really think to deeply about what could be made with geode clusters but i like some of the ideas you spoke of. The house of mirrors idea seems completely awesome and i'd love to see that as well.
Always go wild with ideas, @zimmym.
The Picture really got to me. Once again the feeling how less we know about our own planet and how small we can be in comparison. And awe inspiring at the same time. How the first guys that found this cave must have felt?
@zimmym Really nice idea...if the Devs decide to add new mini biomes or caves to the map this should be way up there on their list of possible things to add if you ask me.
Just a nice image to help convey my idea. :P
(Picture no longer works and cannot be finxed)
@ThePassionateGamer Truthfully? Probably annoyed.
They were gypsum and precious metals miners. Naica mine works pulled silver, zinc, lead, and gypsum from the ground. In 1910, they found a lesser cave about 160m shallower that they called the Cave of Swords. Cueva de las Espadas has large gypsum crystals, too, but not nearly as large; the Swords crystals max out around 1m in length.
In 2000, the mining operation was drilling the adjacent Naica fault because they were concerned about potential flooding problems. They broke through into a void that what would become known as the Cave of Crystals, although often just called Naica Cave. That's the one the picture came from. Discovery credit is typically given to Javier Delgado and his brother Eloy. The Cave of Crystals was originally flooded; the mine's pumps emptied it out, but there's significant underwater spring activity. When the mine's pumps are shut down, the Cave of Crystals will reflood. (Some reports indicate that happened already in February, but that's as-yet unconfirmed.) That's not a bad thing per se; the crystals were deteriorating due to exposure to air, and they only remain stable and growing when immersed in hot, gypsum-rich water. While we wouldn't be able to access the cave anymore, the crystals would re-stabilize and resume growing. (Verrrrry slowly.) And we could always pump it out again later if we needed to go take a peek.
For the record, these crystals don't grow fast. U-T dating (uranium-thorium, necessary for non-organic materials since carbon dating won't work) marks them at around 600,000 years old.
It's also worth noting that the cave is pretty dang dangerous for exploration and documentation work. If you look at the geologists in the photo, you'll see that they look like they're wearing pretty heavy suits and practically astronaut backpacks. Well...they are. The temperature in the cave hovers from 112 to 136*F, and humidity ranging between 90 and 99 percent. Unprotected, the average human doesn't have long in the cave before passing out from overheating. So, they wear a suit that's essentially a bunch of reusable cold packs put together into coveralls to keep cool. On top of that, the air they're breathing is pulled in through the backpack, which runs the air through tubing immersed in salt icewater. The humidity condenses and is collected, which was a problem, but the air is be cool enough to breathe without spiking core temperature. Even with all that gear, excursions are limited to about 30 minutes before overheating becomes a problem. It's not a tourist spot.
Even so, there was life, and still is. In small bubbles in the crystals, pollen grains and microbes have been extracted. Despite being 50,000 or more years old and having been locked inside boiling-hot crystal, they're still viable. Some research suggests that the microbes are contaminants from pooled water in the caves, but there's still agreement on age. The ability to survive in an environment like that is pretty slick, even by extremophile standards.
Where's that picture from? Looks like a bit like ARK-Survival Evolved (at least the smaler crystals look like it).
@scifiwriterguy Thx for the extended info...and yes as I read the temperature there I knew that you would not be able to stay there for long...but still it must be awesome to take a look at it. Since I am a sauna and steam sauna user I could maybe even go in there without heavy equipment.
Another image to further improve upon my idea. Unlike the image, it would remain underwater. The focus is on the actual terrain.
Once again, just focus on the terrain style rather than the fact that it isn't underwater.
Just thinking of a place like this underneath one of the most dangerous biomes in Subnautica, the Dunes, sounds like an adventure that would definitely be worth it to obtain rare materials in order to make some serious upgrades and learn more about the geology of planet 4546b.
Maybe, the Geode Caves could be like a maze of small tunnels that, eventually, empty back out into the Dunes and connects with one of the lava zones. What kind of larger predator would be able to live in a biome like that, though? That would be very interesting. What could this biome tell us about the story of Subnautica?
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