Rivulet

''Breathes underwater, and moves through the world with ease. These adaptations are essential, as you'll be pitted against a world of increasingly frequent floods, where time is of the essence.''

The Rivulet is one of five playable Slugcats in the Downpour DLC. They begin the game with a swallowed pearl in Drainage System, and have a variety of unique mechanics, including greatly increased movement speed, swim speed and jump height, greatly extended breathing capacity underwater, and the ability to pop by holding it. Cycles are much shorter and shelter failures are more frequent in the Rivulet campaign, making Rain much more frequent.

For the main Slugcats page, see Slugcat.

Food
5 food pips are required to hibernate, while up to 1 may be stored for the next cycle.

Opening
The Rivulet's opening fades in to show a room in Drainage System. Two explosions are heard, before a dead and Rivulet fall into water from a shaft in the ceiling. Rivulet also opens with the Mark of Communication.

World Changes

 * Cycles are much shorter than usual, sometimes with only 6 pips (~3 minutes) of length.
 * Hard mode spawns are enabled. New aquatic predators are added and are more common.
 * Brother Long Legs are close to, if not entirely absent from.
 * The water in Garbage Wastes and is now blue.
 * has been consumed so badly by the Rot that it's been renamed to . This altered and expanded region contains water sections where pipes have decayed as well as Brother and Mother Long Legs, with much of it having gravity anomalies.
 * Incidentally, the Rot has spread to as well, with Rot cysts like the  being much more common. This has made it one of the most hazardous and challenging areas in the game.
 * Pieces of the Underhang have fallen into the, spreading the Rot and the native fauna into the subregion, ironically making it slightly less dangerous than when the s were around.

Standard
Rivulet is much faster than Survivor at ~2.5x speed, also possessing increased jump height, swim speed and a very high back-flip. When running at full speed, enemies cannot grab hold of Rivulet allowing them to easily bypass enemies such as and. Likely an unintended side effect is that this affects the climbable tendrils of proto-long legs, which are required to progress in.

Sliding
Rivulet has a very powerful slide, being able to traverse around 2/3rds of the screen at will. This is ideal for traversing flat areas quickly. Jumping during the slide covers a great distance.

If Rivulet slides and jumps into a wall or other solid obstacle, it gains a massive burst of momentum and fling upwards; this is likely unintended.

Spearing
Rivulet has difficulty getting spears to stick in walls, needing to stand very close for spears to stick.

Swimming
Rivulet can boost themselves through water at high speeds and has overall significantly faster swim speed. They can also eat food underwater. Contrary to several in-game descriptions, they cannot breathe underwater and merely have greatly increased lung capacity. Boosting drains Rivulet's remaining air by a large portion however, so it should be used sparingly in deeper areas. This can be toggled off in the Remix menu if desired.

Crafting
Rivulet can pop Bubble Fruit by standing still for a short period of time without dropping it. This is independent from popping Bubble Fruit by submerging it in water, which still removes the fruit from Rivulet's hands.

Tips

 * Ignore any fights that are not absolutely mandatory. Due to short cycles, running fast between shelters is the key - fighting is likely to waste valuable time. Rivulet's high speed means most predators cannot catch up and most can be slipped past with ease. Enemies such as and even all variants of   of cannot grab a full speed Rivulet, so even they can be mostly ignored.
 * Avoid unless you are well prepared. The sheer amount of rot makes traversal extraordinarily difficult especially before running out of time, and currently Rivulet cannot consistently grab onto the tentacles that are needed to progress.
 * If a shelter failure occurs, you have more time to get progress done. Beware that this prevents cycling at the same shelter. Take note of routes to previous shelters if needing to build up Karma.
 * Rivulet has enough lung capacity to explore most underwater areas, however their underwater boost swiftly drains their air supply; use it with caution to avoid drowning.
 * Scavengers standing around Scavenger Tolls flee when the rain is close, making it easy to slip past with enough time to reach the next shelter.
 * Rain is much less dangerous for Rivulet than for other slugcats. Their high air supply allows for travel in flooded areas, and flooding can be used to swim to normally hard-to-reach areas.

Trivia

 * Rivulet has the most detailed designed eyes, having a ring of magenta color surrounding the iris, although this is only reflected in official arts, not in the actual gameplay. All other Slugcats only have pure black (or white) as their eye color.
 * Rivulet is based on an Axolotl. As a result they have a similar appearance to.
 * Looks to the Moon calls Rivulet "Ruffles".
 * Rivulet’s character portrait on the selection screen changes what they are holding based on progression: it starts as a initially but transforms into a  once acquired.
 * Rivulet is implied to be female through 's ending, though this likely isn't canon.