Monday, October 24, 2011

All that Glisters is not Gold (literally, in this case)


I thought I would take a bit to explain how acts of commerce play out in Valor Seed. There is no gold pieces, or zenny, or gil, or goth, or fol, or munny, or crowns, or bottle caps. I claimed earlier to be trying to use some typical RPG elements more plausibly. A big part of the setting is that its full of poor people. A war just ended, with the majority of able-bodied young males having died in it. Each town has its own range of experience levels. These levels increase as the player performs quests and other stuff. Think of them as community morale. The growth of each town results in the develop of different types of workshops, blacksmith, whitesmith, alchemist, and tailor.

Item creation is a big part of Valor Seed. Scattered all throughout the games' maps are Item Spawn Points. These points yield materials used in item creation. Once looted, these points vanish. As the player defeats enemies he gains invisible item points. When these points hit a certain value, spent Item Spawn Points refresh in the same general vicinity that they were last plundered.

Most Item Spawn Points yield a specific product and casting a certain spell can enhance the amount. These points are located on the world map and in natural dungeons. Additionally, raising the levels of towns will open up use of unique Item Spawn Points representing the town paying tribute to their hero.

Another manner of acquiring materials is from enemies. Each type of enemy has a dropped item that is unique to it. I am not the biggest fan of grinding enemies to get them to drop their crap, so I am making drop rates pretty reasonable.

Valor Seed's maps are designed to give the player plenty of room to explore. I cannot justify this without offering up rewards for it, so expect to see Item Spawn Points in all the out-of-the-way places.

I have also designed plenty of different types of junk to make.

It should be pretty fun.

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