Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-26172435-20160124120705

Holly trees
Holly Trees have tough spikey leaves that cause significant damage to any exposed skin or other soft tissues on a large body. Also wearing fur will not be helpful while finding your way amidst Holly bush undergrowth. Riding through a dense forest of Holly trees would seem something any mounted animal would simply refuse. I propose to add a similar effect to the Holly tree leaves as now used for the Stabbing Thorns found in Mordor, but with maximally half of the damage. I'm not sure yet about what would be appropriate in terms of NPCs and animals to do when approaching Holly tree leaves: avoid them or just let them bump into them? Your views? With current biome settings and this spikey leaves effect on Holly trees, Eregion would become a very inhospitable place, and that is not intended. Therefore the second part of this suggestion is especially meaningful.

Eregion sub-biomes
Lore based sources describing Eregion suggest it is a land of roling hills and it didn't have a very lush vegetation troughout much of the second and third age. It is suggested in the third age the area's forests grew again, but as Holly trees grow and spread rather slowly, new forests will typically not have been dominated by holly trees. In the mod Eregion is defined as a forest biome variant: there are many very dense forests, which seems to contradict with the nature of the land. Holly trees are now set to be the predominant trees in any biome variant of Eregion (spawn chance vs. oak and chestnut = 1600:300:150), which seems to contradict with the 'natural' spread of Holly trees in comparison to other trees.

Proposal
I propose to change two aspects:
 * 1) Reduce the number of forested variants and give it more hills and biome variety.
 * 2) Reduce the occurence of Holly trees in favour of other, faster growing and spreading tree types.

Proposed biome variant changes
Ad 1) This can be done by replacing the biome additions 'Forest' and 'Forest_light' with 'Set_Mountains'. Current setting:   addBiomeVariantSet(LOTRBiomeVariant.SET_FOREST);    addBiomeVariant(LOTRBiomeVariant.FOREST);    addBiomeVariant(LOTRBiomeVariant.FOREST_LIGHT); Proposed:    addBiomeVariantSet(LOTRBiomeVariant.SET_FOREST);    addBiomeVariantSet(LOTRBiomeVariant.SET_MOUNTAINS); This will lower the occurence of forests while adding the 'rolling hills' effect similar to the other regions bordering the west of the Misty Mountains. Note that 'Set_Forest' includes the variants 'Flowers, Clearing and Hills', and 'Set_Mountain' includes 'Forest and Forest_Light'.

Proposed tree occurence changes
Ad 2) this can be done by reducing the occurence rate of the normal Holly tree variant and by addding trees that occur in similar environments like beech (Lone Lands) and larch (Misty Mountains Foothills), to produce a richer vegetation, in line with the notion of Eregion being a fair land. Current setting:   this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.OAK, 200);    this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.OAK_LARGE, 100);    this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.CHESTNUT, 100);    this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.CHESTNUT_LARGE, 50);    this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.HOLLY, 1500);    this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.HOLLY_LARGE, 100); Proposed:    this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.OAK, 300);    this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.OAK_LARGE, 100);    this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.CHESTNUT, 100);    this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.CHESTNUT_LARGE, 50); this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.HOLLY, 500); this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.HOLLY_LARGE, 100); this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.SPRUCE, 200); this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.LARCH, 300); this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.FIR, 200); this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.PINE, 200); this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.BEECH, 100); this.decorator.addTree(LOTRTreeType.BEECH_LARGE, 50); Maybe for the sake of aestetics it may turn out wiser to leave out one or two of the proposed additional tree types. I hope the above proposals will lead to improvement of the immersive character of playing and settling in Eregion. 