I'm not sure what constitutes as a "huge spoiler". Story? Events?
This definitely isn't a story based game.... its actually going to be a bit on the "hunter/gatherer" approach to King's Field. Currency will be silver, not gold as I'm planning on using some bigger numbers.
I'm going to do things based on a "quest" system. Meaning, that you'll have to buy contracts and complete "missions". Missions can be anything from collect X amount of X ore, kill X amount of X monster, or defeat X monster boss, etc. I'd like to base any "leveling up" on missions completed, but I haven't quite looked into how to do that yet. (I might just base them on strength or magic power, sort of like Trismegistus)
So far, I've come up with a pretty good contract system using multiple shops. Using a counter, it activates an NPC to give you the contracts as items in a shop. After you have the item in your possession, it activates a counter so you can abandon your quest. (though quests not completed, will not get a refund - well 1 silver, as the shop won't recognize 0)
I'll make a manual and in-game notice that buying multiple quests wouldn't be recommended, as you'd have to complete ALL the quests in order to be successful. (and you'd have to abandon all the uncompleted quests in order to chose from the quest list again.)
After a quest is completed, I plan on having a "status screen" reporting rewards and items collected. (rather than picking up items and coins, it will be all through event as well as a "mission complete" screen and a free warp back to town. I plan on converting the X contract item into X contract (Cleared) item, which can be sold back to the NPC for the "contract reward". (and all of this is going to take a shit ton of events and parameters, but I'd like to get to 100 or more quests.)
Now, the cool part.
There will be weapon shops, armor shops (though I'll probably do complete armor sets rather than individual pieces through event transactions) alchemy shops, and magic shops. The (s) on shop(s) I might use loosely, as there might be one that contains everything available in the town.
Town and "mission field" will be two prominent different places, as the mission field will only be accessible when you've signed up for a mission.
I'm planning on having shops as more than just currency. For example, to buy a bone weapon, you'll need X amount of X bones, X amount of X ore as well as X amount of silver to buy it. The thing is, I'd have to set up events for after the shop screen if they don't have the materials.... Something that will refund their money, and a statement explaining they don't have enough materials. Magic and alchemy shops will be the same way. (alchemy shops will be like healing, mana, strength up, mana up potions - with ingredient specifications and price)
Just like there are going to be multiple shops, there will be multiple parameters. For instance, there will be the S.Bone (15 bone,10 earth ore) and then another for the actual weapon in personal inventory, S.Bone, which will be swapped by event. I'm going to have to get clever with the character limit in parameters.
I guess how this goes hand in hand with the quests, is that you'd need say 15 bones for the weapon, but might get 10 from the quest.... I'm going to try to encourage multiple quests to get items needed for item production.
The items you can gather on the field will be very limited. ....no armors or weapons would be available to "find", everything like that will have to be "made". Replenish items will be to find, but I plan on having them to be on the field for each mission. (which means I'll probably have them on examine object events and bypass the item screen.)
A few other things worth mentioning. I plan on only having one map, but it will be packed to the brim. Normal monsters will all regenerate. "Quest" monsters will be event based, so there's no sense looking to fight the blood skeleton when you're on the ore gathering quest. "Quest" monsters are going to be quite a bit stronger than the regular beasts.
Well, those are my ramblings of a mad man... I realize that I'm going to have to change some things from what I said, but at least that's the general idea of what I'm trying to do. Whatcha' think? ( ^ - ^)
