Weather effects are conditions on single maps which influence the gameplay slightly. Most weather effects do damage to all characters on the map at regular intervals (they don't affect monsters because they are used to the weather conditions). The damage should be very low. The natural HP regeneration of an average character should be enough to counter the effect. It is not intended to make an area inaccessible but rather to simulate the physical uneaseness of the character when exposed to bad weather.

Mechanics

Every map has a list of weather conditions which can occur on it and how likely they are to occur in percent. Only one weather condition can be active at the same time. A weather change happens every real-time hour. When there is already an active weather condition there is a 50% chance that it stays active. When it doesn't stay active or when there is no active weather condition a random weather condition can be activated.

List of weather conditions

Rain

slight water damage

Storm

slight air damage

Thunderstorm

moderate water and wind damage, random lightning strikes at random positions which do a lot of damage when they hit something.

Sandstorm

moderate earth damage

Snow

slight cold damage

Blizard

moderate cold damage

Heatwave

slight fire damage

Ash rain (volcano areas)

high fire damage

...

Visualisation

Weather effects should be visualized with overlay effects and map-wide particle effects. How exactly each condition is visualized should be defined in a client-sided XML file.