Items were something I wanted to work on a little over time. For a while, I worked on a couple of items at a time to keep myself from being creativity drained from trying to do too many at once. That habit however did not last. This brings me to this week as I started to work on what my newer zones would be dropping one day. Along with setting up the creatures AI, animation, and other stuff.
The loot concept behind each zone at least for now is each one has a certain type of armor drop for the player to be able to target farm. At some point, I’ll be backfilling them with lower common items that have increase stats as commons from lower level zones.
Each set range of zone levels also has crafting materials. These won’t be so much zone target farmable as they will just be a range of zone they can drop in. Such materials are for potion crafting along with armor enhancements among other things.
This is all subject to change. Still quite an early system with a lot of things I need to work out. Along with a lot of playtesting and readjusting stats and drop chance once everything gets imported in.
Zone 16: The Fallen
Levels: 31 – 32
Item Rarity: Rare
Main zone drops: belts, boots, and shoulders
Creatures: Frost Giant, Giant Assassin, Giant Infantry, Giant Warrior
Worldbuilding posts: The Fallen
Zone 17: The Tower
Levels :33 -34
Item Rarity: Rare
Main zone drops: bracers, and cloaks
Creatures: Frost Giant, Goblin, Greater Spider, and Guard
Worldbuilding post: The Tower
Zone 18: Eternal River
Levels: 35-36
Main zone drops: gloves, and helmets
Creatures: Mushroom Warrior, Mushroom Assassin, Mushroom Sage, Blood Sucker
Worldbuilding post: Eternal River
Zone 19: Nightmare Oasis
Levels 37-39
Item Rarity: Rare
Main zone drops: necklace, pants, rings, and chests
Creatures: Warrior Worm, Giant Infiltrator Worm, and Giant Blaze Worm, Blood Sucker
Worldbuilding post: Nightmare Oasis
Zone 20: Arena Trial 4
Level: 40
Item Rarity: Epic
The main zone drops: 3 different item sets suited for a strength, dexterity, or intelligence stat wearer.
Boss: Slither The Fallen
Worldbuilding post: Arena Trial
Zone 21: Temple of Minotaur
Levels: 41-42
Item Rarity: Epic
Main zone drops: belts, boots, and shoulders
Creatures: Minotaur Infiltrator, Minotaur Officer, and Minotaur Warrior
Worldbuilding post: Temple Of Minotaur
Zone 22: Overgrowth
Levels: 43-44
Item Rarity: Epic
Main zone drops: bracers, and cloaks
Creatures: Giant Worm Trapper, Howling Wolves, and Mushroom Assassin
Worldbuilding post: Overgrowth
Zone 23: The Great Divided
Levels: 45-46
Item Rarity: Epic
Main zone drops: gloves, and helmets
Creatures: Goblin Thief, Infantry, Nights Watchman, Old Troll, retired guard, Wolf Assassin
Worldbuilding post: The Great Divide
Zone 24: Dragon’s Lair
Levels: 47-49
Item Rarity: Epic
Main zone drops: necklace, pants, rings, and chests
Creatures: Inferno Dragon, Jungle Dragon, Sea Dragon, Swamp Dragon
Worldbuilding post: Dragon’s Lair
Zone 25: Arena Trial 5
Level: 50
Item Rarity: Epic
Main zone drops: 3 different item sets suited for a strength, dexterity, or intelligence stat wearer.
Boss: Night Terror
Worldbuilding post: Arena Trial
The lack of creature diversity is also something I had a feeling it would run into with 25 zones. Everything I’m using is from Unreal, Unreal Store, or Humble Bundle purchases. While Unreal is having a 50% off massive sale that ends today that is not quite enough time for me to come up with enough funds or do enough research on the different items in the store.
I had some quite funny and ugly fails as always while I was working on animation blueprints, blend spaces, and state machines among other things setting creatures up. In the screenshot above I imported the wrong material. For now, I’ve kept this mistake in-game as this creature roams around in quite darkly lit caves making it even scarier. I’m not sure if I’ll keep it like that or not.
In total, I worked on 106 items over the past week. Each item for now has 42 different columns to hold the different valuables I have for items. For such things as name, description, rarity, gold its worth to a vendor, health, damage types, resistance types, and so on.
The massive 7k icons I purchased in a Humble Bundle a while back are coming in quite handy. I still have a lot of items to work on in further goals for expanding zone loot out. I think it’s safe to say I’ll now be on the lower end of 1k items instead of up to 2k items like I was thinking when I first started this project.
Final Thoughts
Not everything is perfect and I expect over the long run I’ll be making some changing to things. For now, still getting as much as I can get done. I’m quite far ahead of my schedule now which is good as I have some things I was not planning for coming up that will take my attention elsewhere for a bit.
At some point, I’ll need to go back over things and make some massive improvements and polish them all up. That is what I’m expecting to take quite a lot of time. I’m still in what feels like the early stage where everything needs something before I can start connecting things together and do proper testing. Some days it feels like you are pulling a thread in a shirt and the whole thing wants to come undone.
