Forums: Suggestions

I would like to see more options to customize my characters and make them unique. New weapons and armor are always good, of course (I’d like to see shields, if they aren’t in the game already), but even more so I would like to see a new types of equipment. Amulets would probably make a good next step.

Amulets would work on the following rules:

1: Each character could wear 1 amulet.

2: Amulets would have there own skill. The ‘amulet’ skill would go up randomly in battles based on the difficulty of the opponents, but amulets would not be ‘used’ per se. Amulet skill would not raise for any character not wearing an amulet.

3: Amulets, once worn, would always be active and have passive effects.

4: Amulet effects would generally be synonomous with existing powers. For example, an amulet might provide a permanent ‘firecoat’ to its wearer. Therefore, the wearer would always have an active ‘firecoat’ on himself, based on the level of his amulet skill, and the quality of the amulet. The advantages would be that a) the firecoat would not be random, and therefore you would not have to worry about bad luck upon activating it (I HATE getting a 1 or 2 point firecoat!), b) the firecoat would always be active, saving action points, and c) nobody would have to have an item equipped to place the firecoat on the target.

5: Amulet effects would NOT stack with identical effects. In the above example, if someone were to place a ‘firecoat’ on the wearer, it would have no effect.

6: There would be many different types and qualities of amulets, but they would all be quite valuable because amulets should be rare. Amulets should never be sold in any sort of store (if stores are ever implemented), as they should be rare and highly sought after items. Finding them from encounters, buying them on the market from another player, or gaining them as a reward for a mission should be the only ways to get amulets.

7. Other effects made specifically for amulets may be possible. As I do not know what effects are available, I cannot say what is or is not already possible. However, some suggested possible effects (not necessarily limited to amulets) would be:

Regeneration: regenerates a small amount of life every round. Could also increase the maximum amount of life a character can have.
Haste: extra movement per round, plus increases maximum amount of movement possible.
Life: increases maximum life a character can have.
Action: extra action per round, plus increases the maximum amount of action points. This should certainly be far weaker than ‘haste’.
Armor: provides a bonus to armor.
Resistances: provides resistances to specific types of damage (resist fire, resist slash, etc.). Some amulets could resist more than one type of damage (all elemental or all physical, for example).

I’m sure you could come up with dozens, if not hundreds, of various types of amulets (if you like the idea). However, giving amulets powers identical to those which can be utilized by weapons (such as ‘firecoat’ as stated above) means that as long as those abilities are balanced for play, the amulet will be too as they cannot be stacked. Making powers specifically for amulets, while certainly adding to gameplay, may also make them too powerful so I would recommend doing so with caution and making any such power a little too weak rather than a little too strong.

Eerie – it’s like you’re reading my dev notes. An excerpt from my own notes: “more eq slots? a jewelry/accessory slot would be nice for mission rewards – only possible to acquire jewelry as reward or maybe in mission encounter”

Some of what you suggest were ideas I had in mind too, but you also have a lot of good ideas and things I haven’t thought of. In particular, creating an actual skill for “Amulet” (and I think the skill level would be fixed to the actual item, rather than have a character’s skill with Amulets randomly notch) – this might allow me to create special effects just for accessories that may not require the character to use their own skill level. Example: a self-only firecoat would be handy for a character that wields two blades but has little or no fire skills. Likewise, a character with a high Fire skill would not make the amulet’s firecoat any stronger (that would take an active effort and the amulet’s effect would be passive). The advantage in any case would be that the amulet’s effect would happen automatically without costing any action points. This new type of item will take a bit of programming, so I can’t promise anything immediately, but I hope to implement it fairly soon.

Incidentally, firecoat is pretty effective even with 1 or 2 points of damage – the damage is applied directly to your attacker’s health (rather than defense), and health cannot be regenerated during battle. If your enemies are ganging up on one character, a few rounds of hacking against firecoat will whittle their health down enough to make it worth the action points spent on creating the firecoat itself.

I like this idea; and I could see it expanded upon exponentially. Future additions could be being able to equip more types of armor (helmets, gloves, boots, etc.), rings, amulets, shields, and numerous other possibilities.

Also, on armor it would be cool if there were enchanted items as well. As a sidenote to this it may be a novel idea to have a place in towns where you could pay a hefty sum to enchant/bless items. Many possibilities for advancement in the equipment aspect of the game; it’s a great game so far though. :D

Upon reading this, my psycotic little mind started up again, producing several accessories that (if used) will only be accepted as rare items:

Bloodstone Amulet: Reflects melee damage 10% back to the attacker Barrier Ring: Increase Defense by 15% Shadow Cape: Allows movement through characters and obstacles if the move ends on a normaly accessable space Ring of Winter: Increase unarmed attacks by 15%, adding the element of frost (elements may differ) Raging Neclace: Increase attack power by 3% and add the ability of Rage: forces a foe to only attack the caster

If maybe you could, make wepon attachments as well. Do not worry, I have examples:

Rougue’s Spike (short blades): skill Dissarm: Foe is unable to use a wepon’s abilities for a turn, no affect on bare hands Stone of Focus (elementcoils): skill Element Tunnel: Deals wepon power element damage, and slows the enemy down. Iron Spike (clubs): Increase damage done by the Club attack by 7% (hey, that much might come in handy)

Unfortunately, that is all that I can give you for now. I hope this has been of help, and all I ask is that I merely see one of these items in use, I wish to earn them if they are used in the game.