True, but even with steel plated boots there is no way you can maintain any sort of speed going over what is essentially a 60 foot wide patch of razor wire. New rose vines are no problem. But old rose bushes are new green growth on top of later upon layer of dried out older vines which are much harder and less prone to damage. This is while carrying 60 pounds or more of equipment (assuming heavy armour). Not to mention a shield to protect yourself from the arrows that are probably falling on you already.

It would be interesting to see this kind of thing pop up on battefields. If you have nothing else deploying your troops behind thorny hedges or magicking up a hedge in front of the enemy army could get interesting.

Then again, in the places where the game will be sold nudity is associated with sex, so that argument is made of fail.

I still kinda hope we can 'look up' in Elemental and see stuff in the game sky. You just made the Sun blush there.

Double-entendres aside, strong hedges can take decades to mature and when they are composed well as a barrier to animals, you'll need to do a lot of blade-sharpening on your way through them. That machete path-clearning stuff you see in a lot of film & video is mostly through very watery plants, not the woody vines and other stuff that would be part of a good hedge.

And now I definitely want a tactical-magic cousin to Wall of Thorns, Field of Thorns. Spill enough blood on it, and the roses will be extra-lovely (that's a gardening thing, not a dark magic thing, although mixing them up could be fun for the game).

I concour: considering that it took my mother 20 minuts to cut down a single 3-inch-diameter trunk/stem(when, exactly, does a stem become a trunk) using a CHAINSAW, I could definately see a hedge causing a LOT of trouble, even for an axeman, especially since the thing my mom had to remove was just a dead trunk that had long since lost its branches, while a potential assilant would have to get through feet of extra wood.

One great way to use the bushes is to dig a dry moat and grow a thorny bush inside it. It offers no cover to an attacking force. Can't be chopped down out of the way. And even if you burn the bush out you still have to wait for the wall of fire to subside before navigating the trench.

If you want to be an evil jerk about the whole thing you could put metal spikes on the bottom before growing the hedge on top of it.

And, if they DO burn down the hedge. The spikes will probably be burning hot

Don't underestimate the hedges. They gave a load of trouble to the Allies in the european theater of war. If a hedge can stall a tank it is no laughing matter. Once you outfitted a tank with a bulldozer or flail they weren't a problem but that level of tech won't be making an appearance in Elemental.

Good news! I will reserve judgement until Beta and see how they fit in.