Hi everyone,
In this dev-blog, we will talk about camping, foraging and hunting.
In earlier articles, we mentioned that hunger is an important aspect of gameplay. “Resting” of course is another aspect that all RPG players are all well accustomed to. And since Terra Randoma overworld is full of dangers, you cannot always count on getting to the nearest settlement before you drain. So we introduced Camping.
When you are on the overworld, you can camp on any tile, except water tiles. At the top of the screen, you can see the danger level of each tile shown with exclamation marks. The plain tiles are less dangerous than forest tiles, which are less dangerous than mountain tiles. There is a day and night cycle, and it is safer at day time than night time. Note that if you have invested points in your survival skill camping will be less dangerous.
So when you click that “Camp” button, you see a percentage showing you the chances of enemies launching an attack while you sleep. Good news is you will be all recovered nevertheless. If you can endure that attack without losing all the precious health and stamina points you managed to recover, then you are fine. Otherwise, you try again until you are sheltered in a warm tavern.
But camping isn’t all about resting. You may simply camp for the purpose of finding food. Food is not cheap, nor very abundant in the dungeons. Each step on the over-world plain tiles takes 1 hour (and twice as much on the forest and mountain tiles), so hunger will be an issue when planning your route. You also need to pay attention at hunger during combat because your character gets hungry faster when his stamina level falls below the half.
You can forage fruits and vegetables in the forests or hunt to find meat. Both options may mean that you encounter all sorts of hostile beasts in order to be able to earn your food.
You may also encounter hunting opportunity as a random incident. Sometimes, when you travel, you will accidentally come across tracks of a boar, or a deer, and use your Survival Skill to follow it. If you manage to get close to the animal, you will attack. Boars are hostile by nature, and they will defend themselves. They are fast and strong, and tend to travel in packs, so can be nasty enemies. Deers however will try to escape from you through the exit tile. Trying to hunt a deer is a fast paced mini game, which we hope you will find very enjoyable. It is kind of a procedural puzzle which you have to solve with in a few turns.
Also like all enemies these animals can have prefixes on their name and are modified accordingly. Every now and then, you may meet a “Berserk Deer” who proves its kind is not always about running off or an “Elite Boar” which is harder to hunt but drops more food.