Skip Sprites

Searching for water-based Powers I found ignore_water. I was using Pixie at the time and it caused me to "fly" under the water, with all the physics and gravity of flight. It was super satisfying, but needed some active boost, or you would just glide to the seafloor. I tried Dust to boost at first, but that just felt like an underwater Forge Sprite (and indeed, they both apply the same velocity to their boosts)

So I moved Elytra to be conditional on dust, which fit with the thematic "these creatures use dust to fly around." And made them lose dust when gliding above the water. This was satisfying, but I still needed some restriction on the boost.

At this point skip sprite had Air Breathing, but aquatic origins that **can't** breath underwater always catch my attention. Air as a restriction allows more powerful swimming/underwater talents/etc. 

So my lightbulb moment - if I force them to go up for air, then they'll be in a state that costs dust. This created a (small) game loop, mechanics driving mechanics that loop back into other mechanics in an infinite playstate.

Geyser, was my solution to allow them to start flyswimming. It also functions as a panic button (like Forge's push), and a substitute for the seeming lack of surface mobility.

I say "seeming" because, if you are near a body of water, this Origin's skill ceiling is *incredibly* high- probably the highest I've designed. Let's break it down...

Gliding (in air) with full dust, is about a minute of flight time, tripled (3m) in the rain.
Dashing uses air bubbles and will deplete all air in about 4.5 seconds.
Dash moves you at an *additive* (not set) 0.3 speed, constantly.
Speed underwater is capped at 2.
If you're still reading, thanks.

You might look at this and think "oh, well if I can fly for a minute, why would I go back into water?" - first thing is, you have no dash in air, and rockets are expensive. Seoncdly, it's all about the max speed. Alternating between underwater flight and surface flight, skipping, will keep you near the speed cap of 2. PvP is going to be chaotic, as you will have to dash in and out of water to have any mobility (though with rockets, this origin may be op).

Sun and Forge sprites are gated by dust - if they spam their mobility, they will have to wait to use it again. The Skip Sprite has infinite mobility while near a body of water. The only limit is the skill of the player. This is why I say high skill ceiling. It is unmatched if you play perfectly in the right conditions, and does not have nearly the same weakness as Forge Sprite's water buckets.

I'm super proud of Skip Sprite specifically. Thank you so much to Neville, the Fisherman of Stinky SMP, for their testing, feedback, and insight into aquatic origins!
