Greetings, gladiators! The road to May 27th's Early Access launch continues and the game continues to take shape quickly.
This update is all about the Halgraxx of Pilthia, the cheerful tavern keeper who travels with your Battle Caravan - and the dungeons he will supply you items for!
Halgraxx's tavern "The Rolling Barrel" does not appear in the demo but he joins you shortly after you defeat the second Regional Champion, Tewtiy the Jovial. Halgraxx sounds a variety of foods and drinks, as well as utility items to keep you alive in the dungeons of Brandor.
When I first designed the Battle Caravan, I always knew I would have a tavern as part of the setup, though I wasn't sure of its purpose. Taverns of course have featured prominently in previous S&S games - in fact a whole game (S&S IV) was set inside a tavern!
In Swords and Sandals Medieval, the tavern was hugely important for keeping you alive thanks to the ever present hunger / fatigue clocks. S&S V's tavern followed a similar pattern and also offered supplies you could buy for dungeon crawling. The hunger clock in S&S games has always been a controversial topic. Some people hate it and find it distracting. Others enjoy the strategy and 'simulation' aspect of keeping your gladiator alive and well fed. For S&S Immortals, I already have the doomsday clock, where we countdown to the Starbound Gladiator's impending arrival.
The game has a lot of systems and strategies already so I kept the hunger clock out of the day to day aspect of the game. We can assume our gladiator is dining at the tavern each day, or perhaps fishing in his spare time. So then, what use for a tavern? Without a hunger clock, what would be the point of food and drink - we already have potions at the tavern to heal you, convey magical powers and so on.
To partially solve this, our tavern keep will still offer food ( reason still to come! ) but also *steeds!* . Horses, tigers, other creatures, that will allow you to travel around Brandor faster. Right now it takes 50+ days to get from Willard's Sound to Eldor Hath. We only have 300 days to play with so that's not going to cut it - but invest in a good steed and this travel time will be cut down dramatically!
In addition to these, the tavern keep will sell *utility items* for dungeons.
I have talked briefly about dungeon crawling being a future addition to S&S Immortals in the past, and it came to me that the tavern (much like in S&S V) could sell you such utility items. Things like torches, lanterns, shovels, lockpicks to keep you alive down there. And of course food.
The dungeons will be very simple affairs, much simpler than in S&S V. Think of them like board game dungeons, ala HeroQuest or similar board games if you have ever played those. We will encounter these dungeons in the wild as optional adventures, simple mazes with a dungeon champion waiting at the end with a powerful reward.
These dungeons will most likely be designed by me rather than procedurally ( to be determined!) Our hero will be represented by a circular tile with their face on it. Traps, locked doors, even monsters will be also represented by icons on this map. Battles will be simulated , you move next to a monster and it tells you whether you defeated them or not and how much health you lost.
There will be a *hunger clock* in the dungeons to keep you pressing forward, as well as a light meter. The further you go into the dungeon, the more your food and light will dwindle. Be caught without these and you could face certain death. Again, much like S&S V but quite stripped down. This is not a major component of Immortals, just something to give the players a bit of variety from the many arenas in the game.
Dungeons will not be coming to the game for quite a few months, not until after Early Access will I start working on them. It's hugely important for me to get a fully playable game world and loop ready for you all before I start adding extra features, but rest assured they are coming.
The tavern will not seem that important when we start Early Access, but once dungeons come into play, we will be glad we have a friend like Halgraxx.
Also , through March I've been locking down the remaining skills for characters to use in the game. Each one takes quite a while to put in , 1-2 hours at least on average. I've been working on elemental effects to do with the main wizard skills in the game. Fireballs now cause Immolation for a turn ( 10% health lost and cannot use special items like potions while immolated)
Another example is Poisoned. When poisoned, you cannot regenerate health and also lose 10% health per turn. (The 10% is standard, but it can be reduced with talents from the survival tree).
You can check out these elemental effects in the latest demo build!
Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios