DateND v0.1.1 Release

v0.0.1 was pretty trash, so much so I'm not even gonna bother adding it to the site. v0.1.1 is the new hotness that was 3 months in the making and hopefully v0.2.1 won't take early as long because really 2 of those 3 months were just me being amazed that this laptop can run modern Need for Speed games.

But anyways, details on all the systems regarding dungeon crawling, levelling, and so much(?) more are right after the break.

Revamp: Dungeon Crawling

My original inspiration for the DnD sections mostly came from mobile games: Puzzle and Dragons, Crash Fever, etc. I wanted the straight-forward nature of automated encounters, and I figured to spice things up I could add encounters that were other than battles for variety. This turned out to be a pretty awful idea - as later floors would get longer with branching paths, this design simply wouldn't be able to comfortably accommodate for longer play sessions.

These redesigned dungeons don't totally abandon the original design however, they simply change each fixed event node into a sort of break room to give the player some time to reorganize and take a break between each stretch of battles.

Don't worry, they're not all straight lines I swear

The gameplay flow now consists of two parts: in-chamber events and between-chamber battles. In each DnD chamber (represented by dots on the path selection map), the player can check their current progress through the floor, check the status of their party, and investigate the area for a chance to trigger a special event that may help or hinder party members with hidden chests, helpful NPCs, or nefarious traps. In a future update the player will be able to save and quit in these chambers should they need to take a break during the later and lengthier floors.

Between chambers the party will be faced with a walking section which is essentially a random battle survival gauntlet that lasts longer the further away the next chamber is. Each walking section has its own rng enemy table, allowing for alternate paths with long distance walking sections filled with high level monsters that lead to rare and valuable loot-filled special event chambers in an otherwise non-threatening low level floor.

Revamp: Character Levelling

So I like Fire Emblem. I'm also not very good at it; I never paid much attention to stats and just made do with waifu squadrons. Naturally this bled into DateND in the form of a similar rng-based levelling system, but I was quickly informed of a key difference between this and FE: FE has way more than 6 characters, and bad luck here could quickly make the entire roster unviable as opposed to a small percentage of FE's generous casts.

Honestly, this was definitely for the best, as it resulted in changes to the levelling system that made it much more closely resemble DnD which, y'know, is supposed to be the game these gals are playing and not Fire Emblem.

Stat growth is now fixed, but is still tied to class, so after maxing out Guntecht on a DPS character, maybe a few levels in Angel wouldn't hurt to buff up their ATK stats even further. Each class will also permanently increase the exp cost for that character to level up any class, much like DnD. I certainly want this game to encourage multiclassing, but to get the best out of any given class, picking up more than 2 or 3 will mean quite a bit of work for the player.

This also influenced another major development decision...

New Feature: Subclasses

Not subclasses in the usual sense, these classes simply function as mini-classes that give smaller benefits but also increase the exp cost by a smaller amount. The two subclasses added in this update - Archetype:Guardian and Archetype:Striker - give moderate boosts to DEF and ATK, respectively, at half the cost increase.

In future updates there will be more subclasses for other stats, as well as subclasses that function more like passive skills - classes that grant awareness of traps in chambers, boost item drop rates, and more.

New Feature: Form Acts

The [Showoff] line of Acts has been altered to be the first of many Form Acts that the girls will now be able to utilize starting with this update. Form Acts function like any other buff, however each character can only have one active at a time, and they last indefinitely until either that character is paralyzed (which disables the use of Form Acts and reduces the duration of all other buffs) or until a new walking section starts (this is simply so that Form Acts aren't too fire-and-forget).

In addition to [Showoff], Form Acts have another debut showcase...

New Character: Witchford Kuhn

"I dunno, sometimes I just... ehehe~"

Witchford Kuhn - "Witchy" for short - a lackadaisical, fun-loving nature nut who pretty much enjoys three things: sleep, nature walks, and DnD. I'll be providing more in-depth info on her happy-go-lucky lifestyle and her druid-like class' emphasis on Form Acts and off-tanking in a future post, so for now all I'll say is that she's a good friend of Altai's. You can ask her about Witchy if you're curious about her.

Patch Notes

• Major changes/overhauls
• Complete overhaul of dungeon system, nodes are now individual rooms with random battles in between instead of fixed event points
• Complete overhaul of character stats, growth is now fixed and determined by levelling classes
• New character [Witchford] added: become good friends with [Altai] to meet her
• New class [Entguard] added: an extremely defensive class made by [Witchford] with shapeshifting abilities to either further increase defensive potential or add offensive capabilities
• New "Archetype" classes added: [ARC:Striker] and [ARC:Guardian], Archetype classes are designed to supplement stats or movelists with low exp costs and level caps
• New "Form Acts" added: these Acts add persistent buffs to the user (until the next chamber), but only one per character can be active at a time
• Class adjustments
• Classes now have individual level caps, the basic classes ([Guntecht], [Angel], [Cosmo], [Entguard]) have been raised to 30
• Act adjustments
• [Showoff] acts no longer stack; instead their effects are increased by landing hits on enemies
• [Showoff] acts are now Form Acts
• Misc
• Characters are now prevented from acting independently while their act menu is open
• Various UI adjustments and improvements

Next Update...

• Planned features
• Major visual polish for UI
• New character
• Floors 6-10
• Implement character total level cap
• Known Bugs
• Killing multiple enemies with Ketos Blast freezes the game (reported, not reproducible on my computer, needs further investigation)
• Status effect text carrying over from one day to the next

And that should about cover all the major new features, you can find the full patch notes history [here] for more details, and download v0.1.1 [here] to try it out for yourself. Thank you again for your continued support and feedback, and until next time <3