Objects in Zones
Zone objects, such as gather nodes, can now change the stats of the zone, affecting things like ambient mana, cover, and terrain difficulty. Objects can have levels, each level increasing their effect on the zone.
Gathering or scavenging these objects reduces their levels, reducing their effect on the zone.
Monstrous Growths
Monsters can now plant, build, and level constructs and growths to increase the ambient mana they need. In turn, they will attack growths from other monsters. The player and other users can destroy or gather these growths for resources.
If a monster spawner is conquered by the player, a resource associated with the monster horde will be available to farm in the Anomalous Nexus.
Destructible Objects
Not only are monster growths destructible, but many other objects will be (including types of gather nodes). AoE can damage or inflict status conditions like burning on objects in zones.
Lootable Objects
While gather nodes can provide extra items when gathered, some objects can be looted outright for items (and then scavenged for more loot).
Lootable objects can also be locked, requiring the appropriate skill to advance a task for breaking the lock, or they can be broken outright if you have an ability such as Fire Touch at a high enough level.
There can be multiple kinds of locks and skills required to unlock them. I intend to apply this functionality to doors and windows as well.
Terrain Gating
To enter a zone, you need the associated terrain skill equal or greater to terrain difficulty. To search a zone for hidden objects or openings, you need terrain skill that equals the difficulty times the level of the search.
So, a ten difficulty urban terrain would require twenty urban terrain skill for a level two search. Scavenging and removing objects to lower terrain difficulty can make that easier (and also make it easier for monsters to enter the zone).
The hidden objects in the zone determine the max search level. A level three hidden object requires level three search completion to reveal.
Speed Mechanics
With all the X of Y progress tasks in the game, I decided that your base attributes, not special speed stats, will be used as much as possible to determine the speed of progress-advancing actions.
So, the speed of picking a lock would be determined by your dexterity score, the speed of hacking a lock would be determined by your intelligence score, and the speed of searching an urban zone would be determined by your perception score.
Note that you gain a small amount of experience in an attribute when leveraging it for speed.