But yes, I figure I may as well since I do have stuff to share sooner for once. So then, what's going on?
First off, every change I mentioned in my previous entry as been implemented.
- Trap and Bonus tiles have been integrated into the first and second Symbol Maps and will be present throughout the rest of the game from this point onward. I think they serve as a nice alternative to just another battle and it's a good way to make TP more relevant I think. I can even include little dungeon relevant messages like "A magic glyph hidden under the snow activates beneath your feet!" Ahaha!
Anyway, here's how Symbol Maps look with those additions now.
One thing to say though is that with the lessened frequency of battles, EXP rewards from battles will have to be increased to compensate on that front. I'll work it out for sure.
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- Secondly, I decided in my testing that having both an increased EP bonus from Focus as well as a turn by turn EP recovery would definitely speed battles along even more. So now both are implemented together. If you fight wisely, you shouldn't have HUGE EP troubles. Unless you like blowing all your EP on Chains. Which you shouldn't be doing anyway! But who am I to tell you how to play, huh?
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- And on that note, all Burst and Ether skills now have base damage included into their makeup. So now, even if the innate algorithm figures the damage from your spell down to say, 3, you will at the very least have a base damage of 30 to make it 33 damage. Each skill has base damage based on amount of hits. It's definitely nice to see these skills doing proper damage again. And it also factors another facet of the battle system.
Multi-Hit skills have less base damage, but they increase the Combo Chain, which directly adds onto skill damage. But Single-Hit skills have high base damage, which is especially good if the target is weak to the element of the skill. I've seen upwards to about 500 damage from a single hit skill in my tests. It was pretty awesome. But the target was weak to the element in question. It only did about 130 damage to a neutral enemy.
All in all, damage is fairer now, which is good. Previously, almost everything was doing 1s and 2s, which actually empathized the Combo Chain system as well as Strike Chains more than Burst Skills. Hopefully the focus of the system changes for the better with these additions.
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Lastly, I've actually managed to completely finish Caith's sprite sheet. With this progress, EVERY playable character has their sprites done. I'm currently working on implementing Caith's Burst Skills into the battle system, of which you can see some examples here.
Click on it for a better view.
And that's pretty much all on my end. Once I finish with Caith's skills, I'm going to have set on to the grueling task of adding her presence to the main menu and the other systems. It's going to be.......fun. Not really.
Anyway, that's all from me! Till next time!
