Caves Quest Details! | Patreon Weekly #223

Hey Patrons, apologies for the slight delay in the weekly this week. I just released an early beta for v2.2.0 and wanted to prioritize getting a bugfix update out first.

This weekly is extra long, as it’s meant to combine with this month’s Patreon Poll! I’m finally sharing a bunch of more specific details for caves quest environments and would like you guys to vote on which one’s you’d like me to implement first!

Intro

A bit of structing before we get started. Each environment has four unique features that distinguish it from its cousins. All of these features are meant to complement each other, the caves quest environment, and the player’s ability to dig through walls during the quest:

• A special terrain type, which will show up frequently within the environment.
• A standard respawning enemy, meant to keep some pressure on you while not being any tougher than average.
• A stronger enemy type that spawns in fixed numbers at the start. These enemies are much more gameplay defining, and usually need to be handled in some way other than just fighting them.
• A boss encounter, which will interact with the other parts of the environment to make for a tricky central challenge.

Crystal Cave

The Crystal Cave comes with a unique crystal outcropping terrain type. Aside from being quite colorful, these crystals block your path and are extremely fragile. Even just breaking a wall next to them will cause one of these crystals to shatter. While you’ll need to break through some crystals to progress, be careful about making too many pathways with them.

This environment’s respawning enemy is the crystal wisp, a smaller floating crystal surrounded by magical energy. They aren’t particularly durable, but are capable of shooting crystal spikes toward you for a nasty ranged attack. They can also float right through the crystals dotting the terrain, but can’t shoot through them.

The stronger enemy here is the crystal guardian, a large being made entirely of hardened crystal. They are powerful and VERY durable but can only attack at melee range and move quite slowly through enclosed spaces. They’ll start out asleep, but breaking crystals around them is bound to wake them up. They are capable of smashing through crystals but will try to avoid doing so.

The boss for this environment is the crystal spire, a gigantic crystalline pillar that’s presumably the source of the cave’s sparkly hazards. Rather than attacking it normally, you’ll need to steadily pick away at this crystal using your pickaxe. Breaking it like this is bound to take time and attract enemies, so I hope you’ve planned out how you’re going to avoid the angry guardians.

Mushroom Forest

Rather than a unique terrain type, the mushroom forest instead comes with lots and lots of tall vegetation. Unlike regular vegetation, you won’t be finding any extra seeds or dew (I’ll also probably turn off the Warden’s sight benefit here), but the thick fungus still helps immensely at blocking line of sight.

This environment’s respawning enemy is the fungal spinner, a cave spinner with a big parasitic mushroom growing out of it. The main gameplay distinction from their normal cousins is that these spinners will shoot grass around you, instead of webs. The lack of long-range rooting is definitely nice, but you’ll want to avoid fighting them right ontop of vegetation.

The stronger enemy here is the mushroom sentry, a stationary enemy with high accuracy and a deadly poisonous ranged attack. Confronting these mushrooms is a very bad idea, so you’ll want to use the tall vegetation and cave walls to keep out of their attack range.

The boss for this environment is the fungal core, a gigantic mushroom that is tied into the rest of the environment via a mycelium network. Just attacking it outright won’t do much good, you’ll want to follow the roots branching off from it to find various fungal nodes that are hidden throughout the level. Killing all of these will make the central mushroom quite easy to finish off.

Unstable Encampment

This environment’s terrain is a unique fallen boulder, which takes a bit of effort to mine though (though not as much as a wall). The walls of this environment are also much more likely to be closed off due to prior cave-ins. Pay careful attention to small rubble and larger boulders for hints about where to dig. Unlike in the crystal caves, the boulders here are effective at blocking enemies.

(A quick note about the two paragraphs below. You’ll be fighting gnolls here, but aside from the boss I haven’t decided exactly what types yet. Brutes and shamans are obvious candidates, but it would be a waste to not add some new gnoll types for this environment as well)

The respawning enemy for this environment is a lone gnoll at about the power level of a brute or shaman.

The stronger enemy for this environment is a gnoll camp. These camps feature several gnolls who’ll all attack you at once. Using the environment to keep them separated is a good idea, and they are likely to have mechanics that synergize with each other, further encouraging taking them on separately.

The boss here is the gnoll geomancer, an experienced shaman with a grasp over some pretty chaotic earth moving magic. They’re much more mobile than the other two bosses, able to swim through the earth, cave out walls, and send rocks crashing down upon you. That’s already going to be quite a lot to deal with, but the geomancer isn’t shy about roping the other gnolls into helping it. Clearing the various camps out before fighting the boss might be a good idea.