Weekly Devlog - Pre-Alpha 3

This week was a fairly major rework to the core game loop. The focus of this rework was to increase the impact of player decisions on the outcome of the game. I believe more balancing and further changes down the line are still required (not to mention making the mechanics more fun to interact with) but this is a good step in the right direction.

Release Notes:

Game Loop Rework:

• The resource tracker now tracks Gold, Ears, Hide, Ingots, and Dust (see further changes to understand how these work)
• The Merchant has been added
  • Now need to click the merchant or the buy button (bottom left corner of the screen) to open the new buy menu
  • New buy menu
    • The merchant offers 5 different deals each day depending on where you are in the game and your current power/resource level
    • Each offer includes either a set of two different unit types (each with 1 or more unit), or one unit type and a building
• Goblins now drop Ears instead of Gold
  • Ears can be exchanged at Merchant for Gold, or used for Rituals
• The Wizard has been added
  • You can click the wizard when he appears (day 4, and then every 3 days) or click the ritual menu in the bottom-left corner
  • Ritual menu:
    • The wizard offers 5 rituals each time he appears, ranging in cost and ritual type
    • A Ritual will grant you one of 3 boons (very similar to how buildings used to work)
      • Basic rituals pull 3 normal or rare modifiers
      • Advanced rituals pull 3 rare or epic modifiers
• Building rework
  • Blacksmith now offers a choice between
    • Sword Damage +
    • Knight Armor +
    • +1 Ingot per day at the cost of 30 Gold per day
  • Leatherworker now offers a choice between
    • Arrow Damage +
    • Wizard and Woodsman Armor +
    • +1 Hide per day at the cost of 30 Gold per day
  • Enchanter now offers a choice between
    • Fireball Damage +
    • (not implemented yet, a specific-modifier-targeting mechanic)
    • +1 Disenchant power per day at the cost of 30 Gold per day
      • After 1 day, this enables the Disenchant menu which lets you spend Disenchant power (a resource exclusive to this mechanic) to remove 1 active modifier (usually gained through normal rituals) and gain dust based on that modifier's rarity
  • (new) Tavern now offers a choice between
    • Long Rest (some of your units heal each day, more the more taverns you have)
    • +1 Dust per day
  • These choices can be swapped out at will per building during the day

Other Changes:

• Increased health across the board
  • This will slow down combat a bit, hopefully allowing DoT mechanics and units with slower alpha-damage application to shine a bit more
    • has already lead to some behaviors that need to be fixed in future patches
• Nerfed Knight damage slightly
• Fixed the lag spikes, yay....
  • ...as far as I can tell

Next up:

In the interest of making the current system more scalable, I'm adding Weapon Types and Armor Types. Modifiers will (generally) no longer target specific weapons or unit types and instead will target some intersection of: (Martial, Natural (new), and/or Magic) weapons, (Ranged, Melee, and/or Channeled) weapons, or (Armored and/or Unarmored) Units.

To use the new Natural weapon type, I'll be adding the Bearkin (mid-design)

I'll also need to take a pass through all current rituals and building modifiers to make them work with the new system (or strip them out and replace them with something more interesting)