Containers and Crafting

A number of changes were talked about in chat between Sephiroth, Darte and I, and here's what we've decided on, but these aren't finalized until we've got some more general input.

Lifting and changing some restrictions

First off, some lesser but notable things...

• The restriction that said you must be within 3 levels of another character to transfer things has been lifted entirely.
  
• However, for selling items, "You must be capable of using the item you wish to sell in order to sell it to that shop. If necessary, a live demonstration may be required."
  
• The restriction that capped Heart and Magic containers by pick-ups to 50 has been lifted.

EDIT: Also noting that you can have unlimited characters, however if you make more than one at a time, I can't promise support for them all.

Heart and Magic Containers

The reason that there was a cap in the first place was to prevent the game from breaking in the late-game. However, it had a few problems.

1. If you can hold unlimited items, why can you only have 50 of these?
   
2. What happens once you hit 50 while they're still dropping?

Arguably, the Heart and Magic stats are a little weaker than Power, Courage, and Wisdom. However, what I'll be doing over the course of time is adding more items and abilities that support having higher Heart and Magic stats, rather than permanent increases by container pick-ups. This way, they'll actually be in line with the other stats just fine. That said, here's what containers will now do.

Heart Container

• Amount: 1
  
• Consume this to recover # Hearts, where # = your total affinity levels.
  
• This can also be used as a Material.

Magic Container

• Amount: 1
  
• Consume this to recover # Magic, where # = your total affinity levels.
  
• This can also be used as a Material.

Their drop rate in the random item drop will remain the same, especially because they're a crafting material. Speaking of crafting...

Crafting System

Back in this thread, I outlined a crafting system design. It was cool in concept, but unnecessarily... "fluffy", so to speak, so we're gonna take Skyward Sword's crafting system instead and tweak it a bit, which is cool because it's a Zelda type of system. Here's how it works.

• There'll be a master list of every recipe in the game in the shops forum, meaning everyone will be able to see all recipes.
  
• Each recipe will call for the following:
  • Item Type (ie, Weapon, Armor, Tool, Bladed Weapon, etc.)
    
  • Materials required
    
  • Cost of crafting it
• Unlike the previously suggested system, the materials will not have affinities attached to them.
  • You may attach an affinity to the bonus (one that you currently have) for an extra cost.
    
  • Some recipes will have affinities built into them already.
    • To clarify, if you have a weapon that has no affinity innately, but you have a bonus on it that gives it and requires Fire (Level: 1), you can use the weapon even if you don't have Fire affinity, but the bonus will only be active if you have Fire. This holds true for all affinities.
  • As for if you can attach an affinity to a bonus that already has an affinity, I don't know where I stand on that, and that can be debated below.
• As you defeat higher level enemies, they will drop higher level materials.
  
• Materials in general will not be specific per enemy. Instead, there'll be various generic materials.
  • I don't have a list of materials yet, but expect something along the lines of metal, feathers, silk, etc.
• There will be Artifact-level Materials.
  • These bring a small addition to whatever bonus they're crafted into.
    
  • A reminder, Artifact = one-of-a-kind. Careful how ya use these.

Regarding the bonuses you can expect to see, there's generic ones like Passive stat boosts, attacking and defending dice/successes increase, damage increase, etc.

Then there's also ones that add burn damage, give buffs and afflictions on-hit, or maybe if you're hit, it heals an ally. In general, it'll be lot more varied than just generic stat/dice increases.

For now, we'll limiting crafting to item augmentation. Later, we'll expand this into item transformation and item synthesis.

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I'm hoping to get a WIP draft of the materials system out by mid-November, and have it finalized and released alongside the Enemy Database update by the end of November.

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Thoughts?

An edit to that, Heart and Magic Containers will still exist (as permanent stat increases), but not as random item drops. Instead, they'll remain specifically as quest rewards, meaning the amount you get overall will be decreased quite a bit.

However, the ones that recover Hearts and Magic as consumables will be changed to Restoration Hearts and Magic Jars. It's just a name change, so that we can distinguish between the different kinds.

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That said, regarding everyone's Current Heart and Magic Containers, how should they be handled (if this system goes through)? Keep 'em as is or convert some or all current ones to Restoration Hearts and Magic Jars?

I say we go the "Convert some" route if this goes through. What we convert (and not convert) should be based on each characters' participation in the game. Obviously, we won't convert the containers that each character has brought from shops (Hearts from Subrosia Mart and Magic from Lynchman Trap Shop) and what was given through quest rewards/ treasures. Based on the rate at which we gain containers, I would say it is reasonable we keep a Heart and Magic for every second boss (not Mini-Boss) battle we partcipated in. All the rest would be converted to the consumable variety. Keeps it more in line with Zelda that way.

I would say it is reasonable we keep a Heart and Magic for every second boss (not Mini-Boss) battle we partcipated in.

Is there even a reasonable way to see just how many of these battles a person particpated in since the beginning of ZURPG?

Unless we kept an accurate log at the end of each quest thread with the lists of every battle (people in each battle, not just on a session by session or even quest by quest), then no, we can't.


I'm fine with everyone keeping their existing Heart and Magic Containers, I'm just asking cause I want overall input. An option I'm considering is allowing people to convert as many of their Heart and Magic Containers to Restoration Hearts and Magic Jars as they want, as a one-time opportunity. However, if I were to open that option now, I have the feeling hardly anyone would take it, so instead, when (and if) I open that conversion window, it'll have to after I've released a roughdraft of the crafting system, so that people can see the potential of turning them into both restoration items and materials.