Winter encounters: Snakes

I want to start this by saying I am in no way ir form a reptile expert. I'm going with my general knowledge of reptiles found in north europe under the assumption that because of their "cold blooded" state snakes worldwide have similar behaviours based on common needs. If I am wrong please educate me.

The thing that bothers me during the winter phase of the game is that there is at least one encounter in a snow covered region involving a very active Snake. Usually that sneke should be slumbering underground or at some other warm-ish place to survive the sub-zero temperatured in the surrounding area. It shouldn't be out there in ice and snow freezing its little tail off.

So what I am suggesting is that - if at all possible - the encounters are checked for snakes in peril of freezing. In case of battle encounters too if there are any involving snakes in the northern biomes. Either to be suspended during winter phase or to be replaced with an encounter that is more along of the line of our wolf finding a bundle of snakes in an old burrow.

This is of course purely cosmetic and not any lifechanger. I just thought it would add a bit to the immersion.

I think that once we get some new encounters and later on, encounters could be changed to be slightly seasonal / make better sense. So no snakes on the winter and have some other encounter replace eg. the snake you showed in the post. 

Which would also mean no reptile slaying quests on winter I guess. 

So support! 

Well, there could be reptile slaying quests in the desert/rainforest, those probably don't get snow, right?  But yeah, support for making animal encounters seasonal when appropriate.

Yes. In the swamp desert and rainforest it should be good. I am just not sure if there are other regions that have snake encounters - I'm not sure I have found them all or remember them right.
I don't think I saw any snakes up for battle in any region where snow would fall? Which I find strange since I expected them to be at least in the mountains in summer too.

I'm not sure if the snake quest is all that fair anyway - can you get it when you have not yet unlocked a region with snakes? All the other battle quests are doable in any biome from what I saw because there is birds and coyotes and stuuf in every biome, right?

Snake doesn't give you any quests that you cannot do. So you won't get slaying for reptiles or marine animals unless you have unlocked that biome. And it won't ask you to bring any items either that you can't find yourself.

In general, I agree - only if we replace that specific encounter with another one that also has the "collect quest item" action.

@#8683 - You're not wrong. Snakes in (most of) North America also have periods of dormancy--as do a huge chunk of species, reptile or not, across the world. Anything from bears, to many types of rodents, to alligators, and amphibians all go through some type of dormancy throughout parts of the year (most commonly winter), to varying degrees depending on environmental factors and specific species. Non-tropical reptiles and amphibians tend to brumate in winter, but will sometimes wake up for brief periods on warm days to bask. Likewise, there is a hot-climate equivalent called aestivation wherein certain species will hide away underground or anywhere else that might be cooler during very hot and arid summers.

Keeping all of that in mind, it would be kind of neat if more encounters were more/less common or altered/replaced for various seasons and weather types. Some of them don't necessarily even need to be functionally different, just different in art and/or text. Like, with that specific snake encounter in the Grasslands/Mountains, maybe it could still give you quest items, but instead you just happen to find the item after stumbling upon a brumating or basking snake. Likewise, if they ever added more frog encounters, maybe those could be pretty common in the rain (or directly after it), or certain encounters in the southern regions could have alterations or reduced chances to appear during heatwaves.

Of course, as said above, this all would also have to take the quest snake into consideration, since it would really suck to miss out on a day or two's quest just because the seasons decided to make certain encounters even more fickle than they already are. I don't expect this to be something that could easily be done any time soon, especially with how new the game is, but it'd still be cool to see.

(Also sorry for my rambling, I sometimes get a bit too... wordy.)