#07 – RESOURCES

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Welcome back! Thanks to the discussion on the project's Discord server as well as on Steam forums, there's no lack of topics to address. Which is great news! Spire of Sorcery is many things at once: it is an RPG, it is a survival game, and it is also very much a strategy. So today we would like to address one of the issues that are directly relevant to the strategic component: ːgreengemstoneː resources.



Whenever we say resources in Spire of Sorcery, we mean something at this level:

• wood;
  
• stone;
  
• iron;
  
• clay;
  
• food; – and similar
  

These are the resources that you can source (for example, by sending a disciple into the forest to cut down a few trees); or trade (with one of the settlements, human or non-human); or receive as a gift (if you enslave a settlement or if you successfully promote Cult of the Spire).

These resources occupy certain space in your Spire's warehouse, and as such, as your ambitions grow, you will need to either expand your warehouse, or take a certain risk by storing the resources outside of the Spire (where they might get stolen by passersby or damaged by weather).

Important: if you're taking an action that requires certain resources, you may use your magic energy to fill in the gap of any of the missing resources. It is a pretty expensive way, and to be honest – a real waste of the precious magic energy, but still, it is possible. For example, if you're constructing a new room, let's say, a cave to grow crystals, and you don't have enough stone in your warehouse... you can still carry out the action by spending more magic energy to make it happen.





Whenever we say items in Spire of Sorcery, we mean something at this level:

• chairs, candles – and furniture in general;
  
• potions, field rations – and ready-made consumables in general;
  
• cloaks, boots – and equipment in general.
  

These are the things that are produced by humans, or non-humans, from resources, and can be consumable/expendable (e.g. a potion) or lasting (e.g. a dagger). You can craft them, trade them, receive/give them as gifts, or find them (for example, going into the ruins of abandoned town to bring back whatever your party can salvage).

The items that belong to the class of furnitureare used in the Spire. This is what you will decorate your rooms with. And why do you need this? Because the function of each room is affected by its quality and prestige. Let's take a Library as an example. If you add more light, you increase its effectiveness, allowing the disciples to study faster as they have such an easy time reading all the books even during the night-time. If you add beautiful paintings on the wall, and decorate the windows with crimson curtains, you increase its prestige, improving motivation of disciples to go and study there.

By the way, in one of the later blogs we will talk about the Spire itself, but for now let's just note that in addition to decorations and light, your library will also need two kinds of spaces: space to keep the books; and space to study (i.e. chairs and tables). So you can have a small but very effective library, that will drive disciples like a magnet; or you can have a huge and bland library that would allow a dozen of disciples to study at the same time, but might so lack anything special, that the process of study will be rather taxing.



Whenever we say ingredients in Spire of Sorcery, we mean something at this level:

• special roots, rare mushrooms and plants;
  
• crystals, gems and precious minerals;
  
• animal products like horns, beaks, hair, skins and such.
  

These ingredients are used for Alchemy and cannot be replaced by magic energy. In other words, while you can still build a cave even if you lack stone, you absolutely cannot prepare a painkiller potion if you lack the specific mushroom that is required by the recipe.

The way to source the ingredients is to trade, to harvest – or to grow. To grow animals, you can construct a farm, or cages; to grow plants, you can construct a herbal garden; to grow crystals, you can construct caves; and to grow monsters, you can construct kennels.

Important: while the recipes in the game remain the same across all the campaigns, the specific properties of each item (e.g. mushroom, root, flower, etc.) are generated anew each time you start a campaign. It is highly unlikely, that the same mushroom, for example, will have the same properties in two different campaigns. The way it works is that a recipe for poison, for example, requires 2 different ingredients with the property "poison". And dried & crushed wings of fluter have 1 rare and 1 common properties. So in one campaign, the "rare" property will be "poisonous", and it can be used to make poison; while in another, the "rare" property of the same wings will be, for example, "energy boost", and thus, while this ingredient will be useful elsewhere, it won't fit the recipe for poison anymore.

As you probably understood by now, the availability of specific resources and ingredients close to the Spire at the start of the campaign will be one of the major influences on the strategy you choose in the game: it makes little sense to spend time and effort looking for a specific ingredient that you need for potion X, when you can already have potion Y made from ingredients safely harvested nearby.





Whenever we say artefacts in Spire of Sorcery, we mean unique items that may be obtained (found, traded, stolen) or constructed (requires advanced skill of Arteficing), that may affect ːnotebookː STATS, ːnotebookː TRAITS, ːnotebookː SKILLS, and otherwise cause permanent effect on the owner.

In the world of Spire of Sorcery, there are hundreds of artefacts. Oftentimes these will lend advantage in one field and disadvantage in another. Some remain from the times before the mage wars. Some belong to non-human creatures. Some are owned by lords in the region close to the Distorted Lands, where the need for their use is stronger than the fear of the Inquisition.

Important: whenever you come across a new artefact, you won't really know what it is and what are its effects – until you properly research it, using qualified disciple/your mage, and sufficient time. Of course, you may always just start using the artefact... with unpredictable consequences.



There's the inventory of the Spire – what you own and control, and what is accessible to the disciples (e.g. books in the library, or potions in the pantry); and the private inventories of each of the disciples – what they own and control, and what lies beyond your reach.

Depending on the traditions that you install in the Spire, and the traits of individual disciples, you may see outcomes where a party sent to look for treasure brings back an amazing loot and freely gives it to you upon return; or where the same party comes back with their private pockets full of gems, and reluctantly gives you only a small share of the finds, because they are greedy – or because this is what you promised to them, or for some other reason, based on how you reached this point in the campaign.

The inventory generally is split between equipment (clothing, weapons and such) and consumables (food, drink and potions). A sidetone on potions: there are no "healing potions" in the world of Spire of Sorcery. A potion may sustain a character's energy, or improve their mood, or take away the pain symptoms, but a magic may never truly heal a broken bone – for this, you will need someone with a Healing skill, spending substantial time to mend things.

It's also worth noting that most potions do have side-effects. A bout of energy may lead to exhaustion; a painkiller may slow a person down to a crawl, and so on.

Finally, one last note: each item in the equipment range can generally be in one of the three states:

• good
  
• damaged
  
• broken
  

A skilled character may repair or mend items, given enough time and resources for fixing it up.



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That's it for this week – and thanks for being a part of the community! Our official Discord server now has over 400 members, and we look forward to seeing you join the conversation there! We'll be back in a few days with a look at another part of the game.

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