Stoneshard News

Hello!

In today's devlog we will talk about items: food, consumables, valuables and their impact on the economy.



Let's start with the most delicious part: food. Cooking system isn’t that far away, so we’ve added many new types of food, almost all of which have their own properties, rarity and value. The meat is very nourishing and slows hunger accumulation after being consumed; fruits quench thirst and increase immunity; vegetables also strengthen your immunity and often have special effects. For example, garlic will slightly increase your resistance to unholy damage, and leek will slightly increase the speed of detoxification.

Dishes are separate subcategory of food. They usually greatly satisfy hunger, occupy less inventory space and spoil more slowly (or don’t spoil at all when it comes to pickled and smoked products) or have powerful special effects. For now, you can only buy them from merchants, but in the future we will add the ability to cook them by yourself.

Some types of food are highly valued for their healing properties and rarity. Usually, they have an elven origin: figs, ginger, citruses and dragon fruits will be difficult to find anywhere except from stocks of rarely encountered elven traders.

Alcohol deserves a special mention. Since the war was raging around not so long ago, there is not much quality alcohol left and therefore it’s highly values. You will have a choice: to keep alcohol for yourseld to relieve pain and keep morale high enough, or to sell it for additional income. The more exquisite the alcohol is, the weaker are its side effects: drinking country moonshine is… well, very different from consuming brandy or rare elven icy wines.



By the way: we finally added the ability to merge used consumables with each other. Now, if you have two half full bottles, their contents can be poured into one, freeing up a place in the inventory.



And now, the valuables. We want them to become the main engine of the in-game economy: it will be much more profitable for the player to seek various rarities than to collect rusty junk sold for a penny. First, they take up much less space than massive armor and weapons. Secondly, it’s way more profitable: almost all merchants are interested in valuables and are willing to pay pretty well for them.

Different locations will have different sets of valuables you may encounter. In the crypts you can profit from the plundering of sarcophagi - perhaps, among the decayed bones you may find some old jewelry. In the brigand hideouts you may find a lot of different stuff, including rare goods from the plundered elven caravans: porcelain, silks, ivory and spices. And in the abandoned mines it’s possible to find gems and precious ingots.



And to carry all that loot far enough, do not forget to get a roomy bag in advance. And, perhaps, equip some good armor: with such a load you can easily get into a brigand ambush.

That's all for today, see you soon!

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Hello!

Today we will show another new feature, and this time it’s quite a massive one: trade system. Trade is the vital force of our game economy, so we paid a lot of attention to its development. We faced a difficult task – to make trade system both user-friendly and moderately realistic, and we’re quite happy with the result.

Let's start with the context. The game takes place in a country ravaged by a bloody civil strife. But the war is still not over: due to some unfavorable events, all factions were forced to declare a temporary truce, thereby securing a precarious status quo. But at any time their confrontation may resume again. All this impacts the economy: currency is devalued, because of the chaos and production slump many commodities are in acute shortage, and the prices of essential goods are greatly inflated.

Trading with merchant. Clickable.

In Stoneshard you can trade with almost all neutral and friendly characters: from merchants to simple peasants and city guards. But at the same time, it is worth remembering that the wartime economy is pretty brutal: because of limited resources, everyone is primarily interested in securing personal gain – so NPCs tend to overprice their goods a lot and prefer to buy your goods far below their true value.

NPC role also influences trade prices. Depending on what craftsman you’re dealing with, you may expect some price fluctuations on goods he’s interested in. A blacksmith, for example, works with metal, so he’d buy iron equipment more expensively and also sell it cheaper, while merchants and wandering traders, due to their versatility, tend to trade at less favorable tariffs for you. In addition, your reputation level with a particular settlement and faction, some local and world events, and the quality and condition of the item itself will have their impact on the final price too.

Trading with common folk is mostly about bartering few cheap items like food. Clickable.

Other important aspects of trade are NPC interests, their stock and wealth. These parameters are different for each NPC, depending on its role, settlement and faction.

Ordinary peasant possess very few items: usually, food, drinks and tools. They tend to buy the same kind of stuff from your character and won’t be interested in buying armor or potions. They’re also very limited in their funds, so you should probably seek some another person to sell an expensive gem to – peasant won’t have enough money to make this deal possible.

However, the blacksmith's stock is much more impressive: he sells a huge variety of various equipment, is quite wealthy and is willing to purchase some of your spoils of war, though he won’t be interested in buying scroll and potions too. It’s worth mentioning that there are some items which are demanded by almost everyone due to wartime conditions – such as food, alcohol and different valuables.

Trading stock will be regularly refilled: NPCs will purchase new goods instead of the sold ones, and the speed of this process will also depend on the situation in the settlement and the world around.

Repair in action. Clickable.

And finally, repair function. Now battered items can be repaired by a certain artisan for a fee: metal equipment can be fixed by blacksmith, while carpenter and tanner would work only with wood/leather and cloth items respectively. The repair cost depends on the item’s condition and its base price. By the way, you’ll also have an opportunity to fix the item by yourself using a repair kit or an appropriate skill, but the efficiency of such amateurish repair is much lower, and item’s max durability will degrade a little too. Therefore, it’s a good idea to have your most valuable equipment to be repaired by professional craftsmen only.

That's all for today. Until next Saturday!

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Hello!

Firstly, we would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (we hope you’ll have great holidays) and take stock of the past year. The 2018th was full of events: the Prologue’s release, a successful Kickstarter campaign, porting to a new engine’s version, huge revamp of many game systems and implementation of many new features. Without your support all of this would hardly have been possible, and it’s an awesome thing our community consists of so many cool people! 2019 should be decisive due to the planned release, so all the most interesting is yet to come!

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Now let’s turn to the current news. This devlog was preceded by a long period of silence. The reason is simple: we simultaneously worked on many different features, but until recently, they were all too rough around the edges to show them publicly. Now the situation has changed, so in the coming weeks devlogs will be published much more often and stably. And today’s Saturday will be dedicated to the updated UI.

Initially, we did not plan to change with the interface before the Beta. However, when it came to the introduction of trade and the dialogue system, it became clear it's impossible to continue on without the total rework of the entire UI. So in this iteration we tried to take into account the most frequent problems and suggestions of the community.



First let’s inspect the general points. The GUI design has become more dark and monumental in order to better match the game world’s spirit. For example, we’ve added two atmospheric statues to support health and energy scales – they will constantly remind you of how close death is in Stoneshard.

Inventory has undergone notable changes as well. First of all, we’ve added a new equipment slot – the back. There’s a choice what to equip there: a bag for some additional inventory slots or a cape for extra stats and resistances.



Small changes have affected the old weapon slots too. They were increased to a size of 5x2 – so the especially large types of two-handed and polearm weapons could fit. The amulet slot was increased to 2x1 – thanks to this, talismans and necklaces would become much more detailed.

We’ve also added autosort button, which was requested by many players. Upon clicking on it, all items in your inventory will be optimally arranged to leave as much free space as possible. This should ease the management of all your hard-won loot. Weapon loadout switch has moved to the upper panel as well.

Another new feature – gold counter: it allows you to quickly track the number of coins in your inventory, which is very useful when trading.

By the way, as you can see, we’ve changed the font of the game too. The old pixelated font had its own charm, but we were forced to abandon it for the sake of better text readability. Also, this is necessary for future localizations: some European and Oriental characters turned out to be impossible to be adequately pixelated.

That's all for today. Stay tuned for more devlogs in the future!

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Hello!

In this devlog we will continue to discuss Stoneshard’s psyche system . In the Prologue the psyche system was limited only to positive effects such as Optimism, Heroism, Second Wind and Prudence. You can read more about their mechanic in this devlog. However, these are only the tip of the iceberg – a reward for keeping one's mind in good shape. The rest of the mental states arent’t that nice, and this devdiary will be dedicated to them.

I repeat: these are NOT political coordinates.

I think it’s worth to recall how psyche works in our game in general. Your character has two scales: Sanity and Morale. Sanity is responsible for how adequately your character perceives the world around. Morale show the willingness to perceive the world as it is. The psyche of the character in Stoneshard is based on the interconnection of these two scales, which determine the general pool of possible moods and states, and the various triggers that activate these states.





This combination gives states that are generally harmful, but can be useful and even powerful in some situations. They simulate various conditions in which a person loses control, letting outside his inner beast.



This state increases the survivability of the character in battle, but severely cripples your recovery speed when not in combat.

Trigger: the activation chance can be increased with damaging and killing enemies.

• Critical Chance + 15%
  
• Critical Damage + 30%
  
• Lifesteal + 25%
  
• Energysteal + 25%
  
• Health Restoration -35%
  
• Energy Restoration -35%
  

This state allows the character to draw strength from his own suffering – but it lowers his survivability.

Trigger: the activation chance increases depending on how low your health is, and how high your pain level is.

• Damage Received + 33%
  
• Pain Limit +25
  
• Pain Resistance + 30%
  
• The higher the pain, the more energy is recovered at the end of the turn.
  
• Each point of pain slightly lowers Abilities Energy Cost.
  

Your character throws a tantrum. It causes him to destroy everything in its path, paying very little attention to any resistance he may face.

Trigger: requires active Sadism / Masochism / Megalomania. High pain level, as well as taking and dealing damage, increases the activation chance.

• Decreases Sanity, but increases Morale.
  
• You lose control of your character for 10 turns.
  
• Your character have a chance to apply “Consecutive Blows” skill instead of an ordinary melee hit (even if it isn’t learnt)
  
• Damage Received -50%
  
• Pain Resistance + 90%
  
• Weapon Damage + 33%
  
• Critical Damage + 75%
  

At low Sanity your character tends to pay way too much attention to his own successes. Sometimes it takes morbid forms.

Trigger: the activation chance increases due to successful hits (especially critical ones), killings of multiple enemies and leveling up. Misses and fumbled attacks reduce the chance.

• All player attributes are falsely increased when displayed. The narcissistic character considers himself flawless and therefore is inclined to overstate his real abilities.
  
• Physical, mental and magical debuffs (except for injuries and psyche states) become hidden. Such flaws are way too insignificant to be concerned about.
  
• Bonus Experience: -75%
  

Now we can turn to the next set of states, caused by a combination of low Morale and high Reason. This is reflected by the mood cycle: the longer your character stays depressed, the more disheartened he becomes.



The beginning of a long journey right into the abyss. The character loses the motivation to move on.

Trigger: skipping turns, Rest Mode overuse, no challenges (like enemies in sight) increase the activation chance. The fastest way to shake a character a bit is continuous fights. Don’t let your character to be idle!

• Willpower -10%
  
• Vision -1
  
• Fumble Chance +7%
  
• Fortitude -10%
  
• Sanity Change -0.05 every turn
  
• Bonus Experience -25%
  

Anxiety

Anxiety is reinforced where apathy has taken root.

Trigger: requires Apathy. The lower your health and the lower your morality - the more worrying your character is and the higher the activation chance of this state.

• Willpower -20%
  
• Vision -2
  
• Fumble Chance + 15%
  
• Fortitude -20%
  
• Sanity Change -0.1 every turn
  
• Psionic Resistance -25%
  

A character who has succumbed to despair no longer believes in his own success and just wishes to bring the inevitable end even closer.

Trigger: requires Anxiety. The activation chance depends both on the health and morale levels, as well as hunger, pain, thirst and toxicity levels. The worse your character feels in general, the faster he will fall into despair.

• Willpower -30%
  
• Vision -3
  
• Fumble Chance + 25%
  
• Fortitude -30%
  
• Sanity Change -0.2 every turn
  
• Damage Received +20%
  

Hypochondria is an obsession with one’s own health. When hypochondriac receives even the slightest reason to worry, he starts to think he got gravely sick with every possible disease ever. With the exception of prenatal fever maybe.

Trigger: every untreated disease and every undiagnosed symptom increase the activation chance.

• Willpower -10%
  
• Fortitude -30%
  
• Health Threshold -10%
  
• Pain Resistance -25%
  
• Sanity Change -0.05 for each active undiagnosed symptom
  
• Every turn there is a chance to discover a false symptom. Or maybe a true one? Or maybe a false one though?
  

The effects of the most terrible combination, low Sanity and low Morale, shall remain a secret so far - because of their complexity, they still require some more work and polish. In the meantime, you can turn on your imagination and try to guess how they will work in our game by their names.

See you soon. Until the next devlog!

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Hello!

Yup, it's new devlog time. Currently our team is working on some big features that we aren’t yet ready to showcase, so therefore in today's development diary we will discuss several small improvements and fixes we’ve accumulated. Most of the targeted aspects are probably well known to you because of the Prologue, so I guess today's blog will be pretty interesting.



You don’t have to fix the impassable objects being generated if you can make them destructible.

Firstly, we’ve added the ability to destroy most of the dungeon environment objects. Yes, all those beds, bedside tables and chairs, which previously were purely decorative, now can be properly broken, burnt or blown up. This small innovation introduces a significant variety to tactics, making you to take a different look at the use of the environment in battle. In addition, each environmental object is made of a certain material that sets the level of its resistances to different damage types. For example, wooden furniture can be easily crushed by slashing and blunt weapons, but, let’s say, iron maidens are way tougher.



Verren gets he's probably screwed, but prefers to remain optimistic.

Mysterious vampires doorphobia has long been a target of our community’s mockery. In the public version of the Prologue, timely escaping behind a closed door was an unbeatable strategy: it gave you unlimited time to heal.

Of course, it was an obvious exploit, not intended by us. So recently we’ve told the mobs that doors don’t present any threat to them and can be actually interacted with. However, the type of door interaction depends on enemy’s type.

Small-sized beasts like bats will need looots of time to break the door, however.

For example, vampires have no problems simply opening unlocked doors, while the undead or beasts will try to break them – which means you won’t have that much time to take a breath anymore. By the way, the same goes for any environment objects that prevent mobs from getting to your character.

All this was made possible by changing the door system as well. Now, like the rest of the environment, they have a durability pool, which can be depleted by attacking or using spells. Which means that now you can get injured only when trying to break the door down with your bare hands.



Some pretty angry skeleton.

Another feature added to counter The Most Popular Tactic #2, the scourge of many turn-based roguelikes – endless kiting (referred to as “tactical retreat” by some people). If a player is sure the back areas are secure, he can start to run away – and, because of the turn-based system and the “1 move = 1 action” rule, his enemy will chase him potentially endlessly, unless he has some long-range skills. Usually it was used to reset cooldowns on powerful skills or to lure an opponent to the right spot – for example, closer to the ashfire barrel or spike trap.

Therefore, we’ve added the so-called attacks of opportunity: whenever you try to retreat, the enemies surrounding you may receive a chance to deal a bonus hit. In addition, thanks to the change of the movement system, now enemies will no longer wait for one turn before taking the tile of the retreating player, but will do this instantly. In sum, this makes kiting a disadvantageous strategy, forcing you to rely more on movement/knockback skills if you want to escape some sticky situation. Or, alternatively, level up Agility: high Agility unlocks the perk allowing you to avoid attacks of opportunity.



And finally: some changes were made to the durability system. Previously, durability penalties were calculated dynamically depending on the percentage of lost durability, so your equipment started to get debuffs from the very beginning, which was pretty annoying, honestly.

Now the penalties are divided in tiers: when at > 50% durability, your items won’t receive any penalties; at >25%
That's all for today. See you soon, until the next devlog!

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