Equipment Alchemy? | Patreon Weekly #106

Hey Patrons!

Firstly, here are the results for Patreon Poll #18:
Keep Unblessed Ankhs as-is: 14%
Unblessed Ankh Proposal 1: 10%
Unblessed Ankh Proposal 2:  83%
A pretty definitive result here, Proposal 2 wins by a landslide! People generally didn’t like the random chance aspect of proposal 1, but loved the idea of having to fight to reclaim your items. I’ll see about refining this idea bit and putting it into v0.9.4.
Keep Blessed Ankhs as-is: 17%
Blessed Ankh Proposal 1:  38%
Blessed Ankh Proposal 2:  66%
Proposal 2 also won by a pretty strong margin here, though not by quite as much. Some patrons were concerned that the turns of invincibility might be too strong. I do intent to evaluate the balance of that once it’s actually in the game, and reduce the duration or even step back to proposal 1 if needed.

For the rest of this weekly, I’m going to share my early plans for new alchemy recipes to add in v0.9.4 that accept equipment as ingredients! These recipes are aimed at giving players ways to recycle thrown weapons and wands, rather than just having them eat up inventory and quickslot space.

Thrown Weapon Recycling

Thrown weapons already have a resource system that alchemy could tie into: durability. The only way to boost durability at the moment is to upgrade a thrown weapon, but it might also be nice to transfer durability from thrown weapons you don’t want into thrown weapons that you do.

Players will be able to turn thrown weapons and a little alchemical energy into ‘metallic essence’. This essence can then be applied to other thrown weapons to repair them! The amount of essence the player gets would depend on the quality of the thrown weapons used.

Wand Recycling

Just like with thrown weapons, it would be nice for the player to be able to get rid of excess wands they don’t want, rather than feeling compelled to use their charges. So, just like with thrown weapons, it would be nice for the player to be able to consolidate their wands.

Wands are much less expendable than thrown weapons, so an alchemy recipe using them has to do something fancier than just give recharging. I don’t yet have a definite plan for this, but some ideas are giving low level wands upgrades, boosting the recharge speed of low level wands, or letting the player create a wand with two effects in one.