Meowllo~
Did you miss me?? We’ve been a bit busy, but here it is! The first part of making the game feel better by gutting all the old systems that just didn’t scale up to keep up with Snacko’s size is here: item drops!
Obelisk, MIAOs, crafting...item collection is actually very central to Snacko’s gameplay loop, and we felt like it deserved a clear coat of polish to live up to the rest of the game’s newer features and level of thought put into it.
Nothing felt more frustrating than clearing all the rocks to get 2 measly Citrine Shards.
We outgrew the old way of handling resources and drops quickly, but recursive has gone through the diligent work of converting every single way items spawn into the world into the new system. It was a lot of work, let alone the work that went into creating the new drops and the backend tools to set it up.
[h3]Let’s all clap for recursive! Thank you![/h3]
🌽 Item Drops
Okay, so, the above screen snips make you feel like you’re an investment banker or something, right? At least, that’s how I feel using it.
This let’s us control a couple of aspects:
- Which items drop at what % probabilities
- And when it does spawn, what is the % chance it drops X amount?
- And are there any conditions that can affect these drop rates?
For example, Aquamarine Shards will now spawn a bit more frequently if you try to hunt for them in the Mushroom Forest on rainy days. Lapis Shards will be more common when you venture into the Desert Canyon after dark.
You also have a very rare chance of getting three shards in one rock!
This gives us more creativity to keep the resource gathering experience feeling rewarding and dynamic, while giving us better control over balancing for grinding in early game versus late game.
One example of this are the changes to Citrine and Emerald Shards. To help players get from the end of Grassy Plains to Desert Canyon, where the game first forces you to upgrade your tool, the spawn rate for Citrine and Emerald Shards are higher in the Spring.
This way, just by naturally playing and bonking the rocks in the farm, town, or Plains, players should have more than enough Citrine Shards to get into the Desert Canyon. Higher drop rates on the Citrine Shards means we can allow players to get that +1 Pickaxe and Axe easily without ruining the balance of giving the player too many gems, as Citrine effects are generally more geared towards the early game where money is still a tight resource.
Outside of just resource nodes, this means we were also able to add non-fish items to the fishing pool. On top of fish spawns should reflect their % chance better, you now also have a % chance of nabbing yourself a useful item while fishing in the Mines. You might get some garbage items, like a Boot, but you also have a shot at some handy materials, like a Fastener.
Another part of the new item drop system meant we could modernize the farm tiles: the harvest animation has been sped up, and items now pop out. You also have a chance to get other items, like Plant Material.
Harvesting large plots of farms should now feel much faster and fluid.
As always, with these new balance changes, we’ll be keeping an eye out on everyone’s progress and feedback and adjust accordingly when something is over or undertuned!
✨ Misc.
- Added mirror to Mikan’s house so players can change their appearance early game
- Item drops in the mines no longer go through the walls and out of the mines
- Traditional Desk now allows you to place items on top
- Spinach can now be placed
- Farm tile rocks, etc. now share the same drops as the ones in the farm outside the tiles, making it consistent
- Fixed issue with gamepad routing in the shop screen
- The wiki has had its data reimported to better match up with the new items and changed recipes
This patch had a ton of hidden work to bring our old systems out of technical debt and setting ourselves up for being to create more engaging systems to work around our planned quest and NPC improvements.
We hope that even though on the surface, item drop %s are not the most exciting, you’ll feel a positive difference in your gameplay.
Thank you very much for reading~
We’re always around in
Discord. If you have any thoughts on the new drop rates, please let us know!
[h3]More updates are coming! See you very soon ( ･ω･)ﾉﾞ[/h3]
