Weapon Abilities | Patreon Weekly #182

Hey Patrons! In this weekly I’m going to be talking a bunch about some implemented Duelist weapon abilities!

This weekly also has an audio Q&A in it! Go and give it a listen if you’d like. You can find audio timestamps at the end of this weekly.

Weapon Abilities!

The Duelist’s concepting is at a point where I am very confident about the overall structure and direction, and so filling in specific details has started progressing much faster. We’re now full steam ahead on implementation, though there is still quite a bit of implementation to do!

This week I spent most of my time on base class features, mainly weapon abilities. I now have solid concepts for almost every weapon, and about 2/3 of them are implemented. For now I have decided to give weapons within the same functionality group the same ability, though lower tier weapons often have a slightly stronger version.

The goal for each ability is to improve upon the weapon’s existing theme while varying gameplay a bit. Some abilities are more about directly using the weapon, while others are more focused on utility effects. Here are some examples of abilities that have been implemented:

• The Duelist can lunge with her rapier starting weapon. This attack requires an enemy to be 1 tile away, but is guaranteed to hit and deals a whopping +67% damage. The main goal of this ability is to make weapon abilities a significant part of the Duelist’s earlygame power and encourage a little bit of early positioning gameplay.
• The Duelist can cleave an enemy with regular sword type weapons. This is a fairly simple ability that guarantees a hit and does a little bonus damage. It’s best used as a finisher, as a kill makes cleave instantaneous and lets you cleave again for free. Lower tier swords get slightly more bonus damage.
• While it is a sword, the runic blade has a unique runic slash ability. This is still guaranteed to hit, but offers a bunch of extra enchantment power instead of cleave’s other benefits.
• The Duelist can sneak with dagger type weapons, letting her blink to a nearby tile and granting her 1 turn of invisibility. This is great for repositioning or guaranteeing a surprise attack hit. This ability costs 2 charges, and lower tier daggers get a bit more blink range.
• The Duelist can spike enemies with the tip of a spear or glaive. This attack doesn’t work on adjacent enemies and deals reduced damage, but is guaranteed to hit and knocks the enemy one tile back. This is very handy for working around a spear weapon’s lower attack speed.

Audio Timestamps

• 0:07 "how does it feel to be a successful indie game developer? and similarly, how do you feel about the people who call shattered pixel dungeon their favorite game/spend most of their time playing/analyzing it?" - radiantchaos
• 1:42 "what do you see happening to the social media landscape after twitter's infrastructure inevitably crumbles now that there are no staff left to maintain it?" - depresbian
• 3:50 "who is the most attractive character?" - radiantchaos
• 4:30 "What kinda tunes you got? Don't tell me you sit in front of a computer in dead silence. I need some recommendations" - Supernewb
• 5:46 "Whats your favorite genre of video games?" - Cake
• 6:39 "Which artifact is your favorite from a mechanics standpoint?" - heyseth
• 8:02 "Adding onto that, have you considered adding any more artifacts to the game?" - heyseth
• 9:09 "honestly you can just add "how was your day" to every qna going forward bc im going to ask every month anyways" - depresbian
• 10:31 "whats your best/worst/most memorable experience with a fan/someone communicating about your game?' - radiantchaos
• 14:30 "how long does it take to implement certain content additions, like for example an artifact/ring/wand, enemy, trap, puzzle, etc" - radiantchaos
• 16:25 "Will you ever think about adding a level/dungeon editor/creator?" - sc29
• 17:28 "Will you ever add multiplayer?" - sc29
• 18:23 "Could you share some statistics about the playerbase?" - Yhtomit
• 22:44 "If heroes could fight each other in game, who do you think would most likely win?" - Fcelon
• 24:14 "if you had to fight a giant demonic fist, which would you choose?" - depresbian
• 25:44 "How can (or at least could) the game generate floors past floor 26 (like in Q&A 7)? And why does it generate in that shape?" - Fcelon