AL Equipment

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Equipment is another area where we want to make room for deep levels of customization. Ideally, most gear should be the best if it's crafted/customized, while weapons will be better if they are unique/named given out as rewards.

Equipment Slots

Each character has the following slots:

  • Armor/clothes
  • Neck
  • Earrings(2)
  • Rings(4 base, possibility to increase to 10)
  • Trinket
  • Belt
  • Boots
  • Gloves
  • Cloak

13 slots total, increasable to 19.

Further, the Armor/Clothing is subdivided into the following:

  • Chest
  • Shoulders
  • Right Arm
  • Left Arm
  • Right Leg
  • Left Leg

These have to be assembled into "suits" and can be customized in various ways. But assembling them cannot be done "on the fly" and has to be preformed at some kind of crafting table.

Crafted armor and accessories should usually be the best in the game, especially owing to customization for specific builds(for example, a warrior with a few mage levels putting spellpower on his heavy armor). However there will be exceptions.

Weapons

Each character has a right hand and a left hand. Base there are 1-handed and 2-handed weapons, shields, etc. Players can chose to equip two shields for better defense, at the cost of severely reduced attack.

While crafted weapons will certainly exist and be strong, the most powerful should always be "named" items, which will have better effects. These will still offer some levels of customization.

Gear Customization

Crafting

The game needs a deep, complex crafting system at it's core. Ideally gathering resources should matter, refining, etc; down to the quality of the raw materials. Will dig into a crafting system later, but for now assume it will involve a chain like Raw Materials --> Refined Materials --> Refined Ingredients --> Finished Base Items.

Enchantments

Ideally every item should have the ability to be enchanted. Some items(such as jewelry) exist for no other purpose than to hold enchantments. Others, like belts, have functional aspects. Armor has defensive abilities, etc. We'll separate enchantments into three areas:

  • Basic - just your garden-variety "+X stat" type jobs.
  • Alchemical - more variable but still straightforward, alchemical deals with specific functions like increasing the toughness of armor.
  • Ritual - exotic, highly specific functions. Some ritual enchantments will be specific to item-types(like weapon rituals, armor rituals, etc).

Augments

An augment is some kind of special physical modification to an item. These will be specific to types, for example spikes being added to boots to prevent knockdowns, or a chain added to gloves to prevent disarms. The most common augment will be the addition of sockets to add orbs.

Orbs

Orbs are items which are crafted, bought from vendors, or passed out as loot drops. These can be stat increases, special effects, or any number of things. Every item will have the potential to have a number of "sockets". The basic idea is that effects and bonuses from orbs should be lower, but not useless. It's a good way to slot much-needed effects(like immunities, less valuable stats, etc), but shouldn't be your primary focus.

Limits

How much can you throw on to one item? Really, the sky should be the limit, here. I like the notion of a crafting system graded by quality, with limits at various quality-levels. Obviously you have to stop somewhere, but for example a sword with 6 enchantments, 3 orb sockets, 1 alchemical ritual, and an augment, should absolutely be possible.

The key is in engineering diminishing returns. Eventually, adding that 1 extra point of damage shouldn't matter because the weapon already deals base 1000, but the dedicated player still has that to shoot for.

Additionally, we want to engineer trade-odds. EG is base damage better than critical multiplier? higher crit chance? attack speed? All of these will be possible to modify, but not all of them to be maximized.

Named Items

As the name implies, these are not crafted. They are handed out as prizes for the games.