Water

Water is one of the fundamental elements of each location. Not only does it provide an aesthetic, it has many uses such as hydrating the nearby area for plants. There are five different kinds of water in the game, each with their own unique features.

While there's natural water in each area, you also have the ability to generate your own water by using a variety of drinks obtained at vending machines. Each drink gives a different kind of water and you get an infinite amount of spit outs of the water to create the flow that you desire. You can hold ZL to adjust the height of the placement of the water, but it will need to be attached to something to start such as being next to a block or another bit of water.

You can also suck up water after completing Piplup's request with Paldean Wooper in Bleak Beach. Hold Y to suck in and press ZR and it will suck in any nearby water, sometimes even removing it.

If a plant is submerged, it will no longer grow while under water. Fire will also be put out. Any water placed near other water that would flow after it replaces the water. For example if you put Ocean Water on a cliff above Fresh Water, it will overwrite some of the Fresh Water. If you then remove the Fresh Water, it will then take the area for the Ocean Water. However, you cannot directly overwrite water sources with any other water.

When you place water down, its movement is decided in a very unique way. If the entire area around it is flat with no drops or walls nearby nearby, then it will spread out in a puddle leading out in a circle in 6 tile directions.

Lava has different properties to water, however, and goes half the distance and move a lot slower, but it has different properties entirely when going towards cliffs.

However, if the water is funnelled with some walls, the distance it can go from one drop of water is basically 25 blocks along a trench, or 12 blocks for Lava. However, for each side that it goes off, it will decrease in length by two until it's around a 6x6 area. It can also go through small diagonal gaps when there is a diagonal gap between two bricks, meaning it can flow in all 8 directions as long as the adjacent tile is a gap off the same level as it

All of this comes off from the specific water source. There are two different kinds of Water Sources
Primary source: This is from where all the water begins. Remove this and all the water will vanish
Secondary source: After a drop and the water hits the ground, it will act as a secondary source. From here, the water will act just like it does from a primary source, but removing it will not permanently remove the water. If a bit of water goes 23 blocks, hits a drop and then starts again, it will act fresh and go however far it can based on the standard mechanics of water.

There is something that changes how water flows however, and that's a drop. If you place a water source within 4 spaces of a cliff, or a drop of any sort, rather than the water spreading out as it does on a flat surface, the water will instead go towards that drop. Even if the drop is not directly within but requires going over four spaces to get to, it will do that and take two blocks width to hit it. This causes a complete straight line with the water and it will not spread out

If there are multiple different drops equidistant to the water source, then it will go to all of the drops at the same time.

As the water drops, it will continue to spread out like all sources until it hits the final flat area and spreads out as far as it can.

Lava reacts a little differently than normal water in this regard. Instead of just beelining in a straight line towards the drop, it will start to go to the drop, but then on the second tile, it will start to spread out again as it heads out to the cliff creating a small puddle like the ones it normally would. This puddle doesn't wrap back round to behind the primary source

Due to this, on areas where there's higher concentration of drops, rather than just go for the nearest cliff, as it spreads out following the first tile, it will potentially hit even more drops and surface area despite Lava having a shorter reach as standard.

The below examples show a comparison of the area in Sparkling Skylands after several water and lava sources are created alongside the peak as seen below. This showcases the different lengths that water will go