Dev Log — May 2023

Hi everyone!

After 12 hotfixes for the prepatch, I have moved on to the next update, which is planned to feature player trading, stashes, vendors for buying and selling items, and new clothing sets!

I initially thought I'd release the clothing sets promptly after releasing the prepatch, but with the changes to NPC trading, selling, and buying in the next update, I thought planning it into the new systems was wiser.

Stash, Vendors, and Player Trading

Stash

I am currently working on a stash or chest for players to store their items. Each tab in the chest will have a size of 10x10, which is twice the size of players' inventory, not including the heirloom container. All players will receive one stash tab, and backers will receive an additional stash tab for every tier starting with the Student tier. In the future, there are also plans for special tabs that can store any number of a particular type of item, such as talismans, dyes, and charms, so you won't have to clutter your stash with stacks upon stacks of these items.

Vendors

Vendors will allow you to sell, buy, and trade items without having to interact with other players. Vendors will buy almost anything for crowns, a new currency item included in the next update, which can be traded with vendors in exchange for Sol Talismans.

Sol Talismans are expected to be the universal trading currency between players, which is why 100 Crowns can always be traded for a Sol Talisman at a vendor, and vice versa. There are a few reasons for this. One is that having the value of "gold" directly tied to a useful item prevents situations such as in Diablo, where gold is largely useless, meaning players have to find alternative means for trading valuables, such as in Diablo 2, where it becomes the Stone of Jordan or Jewels, which were useful. Another reason is that being able to trade in fractions of a Sol Taliman, instead of wholes, makes trading less valuable items easier.

Besides acting as a means for selling unwanted items and exchanging Sol Talismans and crowns, vendors also provide players will upgrade paths for many items with high fungibility, such as talismans, soap, beads, dyes, and charms. This is done to prevent the market of any item from crashing, by having its value always be multidimensional. The easiest way to achieve this is to have any talisman and similar item worth fractions of another more rare or valuable item.

You can see the full list of prices here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yDCmkyX-LSjTOcg21VcWU4R7XldYyGPiKFXOXUD4M7E 

An example would be Blood Moon Talismans, which can also be valued as 1/2 of an Ornamental Charm, 1/6 of a Chromatic Dye, or 1/16 of a Talisman of Eclipsing. This means that if the supply of Blood Moon Talismans becomes too great compared to the demand, players can trade them with the vendor for an item with higher demand, removing Blood Moon Talismans from the supply in the process until an equilibrium between supply and demand is restored, preventing the market from crashing and making sure common items will continue to have some value long item the game's lifetime without the need of an economy reset, as often seen in games that continue to make resets because they lack a means for balancing their economy. Common items becoming worthless would lead to the brunt of a new or casual player's trade items losing their value and in turn create a more steep entry curve to the game over time, as you'd have to play for more time before you have anything worth trading.

Player Trading

Player trading will work like you'd expect from most other games, meaning you can trade any number of items, for any number of items, including giving items without receiving anything in return and vice versa. Gifting items, if you will.

In addition, I would also like to add a sort of trading scenario where you force-feed a consumable to a downed opponent.

I've also been playing around with the idea of allowing players to trade crafting services such as enchanting and transforming an item, and being able to use items on another player's items as part of a trade, but it probably won't be until a later update.

Scrolls

With the addition of NPCs being able to sell items, some of Hilda's services will be replaced by scrolls, which you can by from her at use immediately, or at a later time. These include any of her services that requires an item as a target, and the slot of placing an item will be removed as well.

I imagine trading services would work by buying a blank scroll that you can use as the target of a crafting service, say, enchanting the scroll instead of an item, and the scroll can then be used on an item later, acting as a proxy that can be traded.

PvE Overhaul — Completing Challenges

Last month I shared a design document describing how the upcoming PvE overhaul will work, and today I'd like to share with you my second document, which describes how players complete challenges.

Instead of rolling straight numbers for determining the outcome of a challenge, you roll eight eight-sided dice (8d8). Four red and four blue. To complete a challenge, you must place up to 5 dice into a row in any order you see fit. The sum and placement of the dice will determine the outcome of the challenge. You score additional points for placing dice of the same color next to one another, dice of the same value next to one another, and for placing dice in a staircase (2 followed by 3, etc).

There are numerous things that will alter your dice throughout a run, including lust, which will turn sides of your blue dice yellow starting with the highest value, until your blue dice have been entirely replaced by yellow dice. The issue with yellow dice and sides is that they give 0 to your score when used outside of sexual challenges, meaning you become steadily better at sexual challenges as your lust raises, while you become worse at any other challenge, and significantly worse at mental challenges, since the color of a dice roll receive bonuses from different challenge types.

Each stat will also help you complete challenges, together with a new tag system that gives you advantages and disadvantages in certain challenges. All tags are associated with a nature, and a player of that nature receives a flat +1 to all associated stats, helping them perform in particular challenges.

Spell actions, as has often been the case, is a bit of a special stat, since it doesn't directly help you succeed in any challenge. Instead, you will sometimes be offered to use a spell you know to gain a special die during a challenge that will give you a steep advantage and potentially change the outcome of the challenge in interesting ways.

You can read everything about the system here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hMsz6-XizcUs1mKHQrFnoRfy-I7An3FGbjdPmUpmvr0 

Thank you all for your support and I'm looking forward to sharing the stash, vendor, and player trading systems with you hopefully already later this month! ❤️

Cheers,

Tinon