Factory Floors

This will be the first dev blog post. After experimenting with different styles of youtube updates I've learned the video format is not suitable for every kind of content (and is also a lot of work).

This post is about the upcoming update, which will include high-level temples. The new starter dungeon was only the beginning for these temple dungeons, setting the groundwork for the art style and null creature faction.

After travelling through the first few floors of a Temple, you'll encounter a factory floor. These floors are wide open preventing use of doorway blocking, forcing the player to rely on their abilities and awareness of the map if they want to avoid stumbling into an unwinnable ambush.

Null Creatures, along with the infesting wildlife will have their own goals and interact with each other and the environment, giving space for emergent behavior, and adding variation between play-throughs.

For example, destroying machinery has a chance to trigger an alarm, deploying Null Hunters who will seek out and destroy any intruders.

When energized by surrounding beacons, Null Creatures light up and become invigorated, gaining massive boosts to their stats. Overcoming these enemies will require destroying the beacons, careful combat, or stealthy movement.

Magic Essence

But what are these creatures up to? Why did their creators build them along with these huge factory floors?

Their purpose is the collection and manufacturing of Magic Essence. Magic Essence will be a required resource for the upcoming Enchanting skill, and for certain types of magic spells.

For this reason Temples will be a hot destination for players looking for magical loot as opposed to the weapons and armor more commonly found in castles.

A Note About Dungeon Rewards

My long-term plan is for each dungeon type to offer certain kinds of rewards. The main quest line will not force the player into every dungeon, rather, the player will decide what dungeons to overcome based on the rewards they are looking for, and what they think they can manage.

Castles contain weapons and armor; Wizard Towers have rare spells and magical equipment; Temples contain Magical Essence (and unique spells); this trend will continue for each dungeon type as they are added.

The last thing I want is to force a certain order of content: visit dungeon A, complete quest B, then go to dungeon C, etc. Booooo! Not good enough. Even the main quest line should be skippable. Everything should be killable. Sever the threads of prophecy if you must.

This goes along with a larger philosophy underlying DoT: the world is independent of the player. This means monsters do not scale up with the player level and very little content is gated. You can attempt almost any dungeon at any time if you're up for the task.

WHEN WILL IT BE DONE?

The first few weeks of working on this update I realized I was going too fast just for the sake of getting an update out. Last week, I threw out a chunk of that original work. I knew I could do better.

That said, players buy into Early Access with the expectation the game will continue regular development. Moving forward, if several weeks have gone by without a new patch, at the very least you can expect a blog post.