In this entry: Making Adventurer class.

April 6

Before I start working on the new class, I still have a few unfinished things I have to take care of. Today I have been making final improvements to the town of Siw. The biggest change is that I've improved the contrast of Siw's tileset:

April 7

I've been fixing glitches and minor issues today. Also done a few balance changes: - Reduced character starter health. - Reduced Mage equipment health bonuses. - Reduced "No Smoke Without Fire" quest class level requirement to 12 from 20. The health was reduced to speed up the combat. This will probably require further tweaking.

April 8

I did some testing and bug fixing today.

April 9

Preparations are over, time to work on Adventurer class! It's an exploration and questing class that unlocks areas and unique activities.
Today I have implemented Adventurer leveling and area discovery system: Visiting an area for the first time grants experience in Adventurer class. I've also started working on explorer marks. Explorer marks will be objects found in remote corners of areas - finding and interacting with them will give Adventurer XP. So today I've made sprites for most of the planned marks:
Cairns and ribbon posts. The idea that, for example, the player would find a cairn in Moonrise Desert and would add a rock to it to leave a mark that the player has visited the place. Tieing ribbons to posts and building cairns should feel pretty good and it makes exploration even more rewarding.

April 10

Has only a few hours today, I'm nearly done with the explorer marks.

April 11

Explorer marks are done and quests now give Adventurer XP.

April 12

A good day! I have finished implementing the removable obstacle systems. Leveling Adventurer class unlocks items that are consumed to remove obstacles, which can give access to new areas and create shortcuts. Currently, there are two items that destroy obstacles: Metal cutters and alchemical bombs. Cutters destroy barbed wire fences and bombs blow up iron bar fences:

Bar fences are new and have been added to places in Moonrise Desert and Eastern Trilith.

April 13

With today's additions, Adventurer class 1.0 is now done! It's lacking content just like Alchemist class, but this will be addressed in the future. For now, it's enough for me to design quests with Adventurer class challenges.
The strange things in the screenshot are talkstone teleporters. Using a teleporter activator item, the players can teleport between teleporters. This requires level 44 in Adventurer class. I will use teleporters to design special locations, shortcuts, and quest challenges.
First of the locations accessible with teleporters. It's a puzzle - there are several ways to get to the red chest, which contains the highest level Warrior class helmet in the game. The players need two iron square keys to unlock the locks on the way to the chest. The knight with red armor drops one of the keys, while the other one has to be obtained from other puzzles that feature locks and iron square keys. The chest contains a square key as well, so the players will not lose the key required for other puzzles. There's also a completely unique way to get to the chest: By using alchemical bombs to destroy iron bar fences to the right of the chest. This way the player can get their hands on extra iron keys and bypass other puzzles. However, alchemical bombs are rare, so this could require some grinding. This could be very important if the player manages to lose some of the square keys - it's an 'expensive' option to increase the number of available keys. Destroying iron bar fences is a puzzle in itself because by carefully positioning their character, players could destroy more fences with fewer bombs, so there could be several solutions to that as well. This whole thing is a good example of how interconnected I want my game to be, with interesting decisions for the player to make emerging from simple mechanics interacting with each other. Anyway, that's all for this entry. Looking at the design notes, it seems like I have everything implemented to work on the quests nonstop from now on. it's likely that I won't post another entry for several months until the quest campaign is completed. So thanks for reading and until next time!