[Restoration] Sneak Peak #5: Giusburg, Pirates, Popup Dungeons, Battle Loot Ratio

Apologies that it's been a while since the previous sneak peak post. The first week or so following the public 0.2.7 release had a fair few bugfixes that demanded our attention. It also gained a few other smaller but long-requested features like limiting autosave and quicksave slots per campaign.

Giusburg Outskirts

Southeast of the Ashe Woods is a new large world map, Giusburg Outskirts.

Giusburg was the capital city of the human kingdoms prior to humanity's exile a century ago. Now it is a series of ruins that still hold some secrets yet to be uncovered. The upcoming main storyline quest, Spelunking for the Signet, will involve searching an underground complex beneath the Libidine dynasty's ruling castle. This quest will most likely not be ready for 0.3 release, unfortunately.

The beginning region from Exile of Aphrodisia geographically takes place a little bit west of this map. With this done, outside of some ocean maps, the grasslands region will likely not be expanded much further in order to focus on adding more interesting things to do within existing maps, instead increasing their density.

Pirates!

Support for encounters with an enemy force on water has now been added. The Free Merchants demon faction dominates much of Aphrodisia's shores, and so running into their ships will be a common occurrence going forward.

When the player party meets an enemy party on the water, a ship-versus-ship battle map is generated. There are currently two variations with differing distances between the player vessel and enemy vessel. Ranged units will likely be stronger than ever on these maps due to the limited opportunity to cross from one ship deck to another.

Here's some artwork of the Free Merchant pirates! Art is by Icy.

Swashbuckers are fairly self-explanatory: they carry swords into battle and attempt to cross their ship to the enemy side.

Pistoleers dual-wield pistols, short range attacks that can regardless deal nasty damage.

Sharpshooters have a very long firing range (4 tiles) but have a 2-turn cooldown and no practical melee attack, so they will also support enemies with their Enemy Ahoy! combat buff.

Seamutts and Seabitches use lust magic at range. They will also have some abilities to have theeir charms distract enemies and entice allies to fight even harder.

Meeky Returns!

Meeky, the mischievous kitsune with a passion for transforming others into one of her many tails, can be found in Giusburg Outskirts when the Absorption theme tag is enabled. After her initial encounter, the party will meet her again in the form of a random event.

Popup Dungeons

One of the issues that still frequently comes up is that outside of quests, it can be difficult to keep the party sustained with money, especially once all the quests in a region have been completed and the enemy parties looted.

Therefor, one of the objectives we're aiming for the next update will be pop-up dungeons. These will provide for repeatable, time-limited opportunities to gather more loot, battle enemies, etc.

Popup dungeons are relatively small maps that will be discovered in various parts around world maps. They will have a chance to reveal themselves either as a flat percent chance each time the map is entered or left, or more likely revealed when the party draws near, similar to Resource Nodes.

Popup dungeons don't tie into any particular quests, though certain popup dungeons may not appear on the world map until certain other conditions are met, like other quests having been completed, or the player exceeding a certain minimum level.

Popup dungeons will be time-limited once they are revealed, meaning the opportunity to enter them and loot them is limited before they vanish again--hence the name "Pop-up". The sparkle particle effect has been added to try and draw the player's eye to them while they last.

A popup dungeon will vanish when the party leaves it as presumably whoever is inside has been alerted to your presence has has taken countermeasures, moved out their lot, etc. The popup dungeon will then enter a multi-day cooldown. After a certain time has elapsed, it may re-appear on the world map with the idea that new enemies have moved in.

Unlike with other maps, the map itself is completely reset, allowing for new opportunities to gather the loot within, fight the unique bosses within, find equipment or potions that can't otherwise be found, etc.

The popup dungeon system is also being designed so the entrance point may take the party to a new dungeon map with a differing layout. Although not currently planned due to the complexities involved, these dungeons could even conceivably be procedurally generated, alongside possible modding support to allow for 3rd-party maps.

"Dungeon" is also somewhat of a generic term. The screenshots above show a Free Merchant pirate cove, but popup dungeons could be hostile forest regions patrolled by wildpeople or corrupted fairies, an Imperium encampment, ancient treasure vaults, a moon nymph cult who has been kidnapping villagers, the camp of an evil witch or other common bandits, etc.

Due to their repeatable nature, popup dungeons won't have any deeper story or quest relevance to them and will be entirely optional.

Post-Battle Loot Tweak

Another change for the upcoming 0.3.X public release is that post-battle loot will now be split up with about 50% gold and 50% trade goods, meaning winning a battle is more immediately profitable and won't require visiting merchants as much.

Quest-wise, we will also soon be starting the bimbo plague quest which will take place in the Giusburg Outskirts.