Strive Sequel: Dungeon and combat system (Patreon)

I feel like I've been promising to tell more on the dungeon system, but it only has been taking a shape in recent month, so here it is. 

Firstly, dungeons fall under "Location" category so you won't be able to access them instantly, instead you will have select a team to travel there. There's no real limit for how many characters can be stationed at one location, added or sent back at any time, but combat group is going to have fixated number of members (currently 6, similar to Displaced, but that might be a subject to change). 

The dungeons can be either quest related and accessed only after taking a quest or simply local and accessed at any time. Ultimately there's not much difference between two, except that quest dungeons will have time limit on those. Dungeons can either conquered or roamed for exp and loot. After dungeon's boss is defeated you'll be able to 'Complete' the dungeon and it will be removed from the map. Structurally dungeons will be separated by levels, each level requiring a number of battles to proceed and generally the system is pretty similar to Displaced again. Every new level will have enemies slightly buffed and provide more rewards, with last level ending with a boss. 

In-between stages you will be able to trigger random (or scripted) events providing opportunities for loot, healing or getting new characters. Speaking of healing, I've been taking a big steps to redesign combat system so I'll also try to explain the new concepts behind it.

Firstly, most attacks won't be costing any mana or energy. This is the thing, I've figured out, is a must for any turn based combat system with upscaling difficulty. The mana too often falls in either 'entirely ignorable' or 'utterly annoying' categories, as early in the game you might not have mana for anything, but later its simply does not matter. The other problem, is that with increased difficulty enemies starting to have more hp and armor, making taking them requiring more mana and can potentially make your run out of it with no options but to drag battle for much longer. 

Instead mana will be used for only specific skills: healing, resurrection, very powerful skills and spells and so on. This way it can be balanced very precisely without having to sacrifice main combat capabilities of fighters. 

Healing is another area which is going to be greatly altered compared to first game. As your characters will be separated from the mansion, you won't be able to skip a number of days and return to the dungeon fully healed. The good news, though, the inventory is going to be shared so you will be able to use healing and mana items from anywhere. Yes, that means backpack mechanic is going away, but without the healer in team you will be relying on healing items in and out of combat a lot. Good thing, though, enemies will be dropping them constantly, and out of combat you will be expected to quickly patch yourself up. (By the way, one of the early classes will have a trait, allowing to use an item in combat without taking a turn). 

Other than that, I want to build combat around status effects and resistances, so you can expect lots of elemental attacks, stuns, freezes, disables and so on. Besides that, all dungeons will be having a one of the themes on them: bandits, cave goblins, forest, crypt and so on. Each will be featuring multiple difficulty levels with different enemies, events and drops corresponding to dungeon theme. While at Easy Bandit den you will be able to occasionally fight rats, Hard Bandit lair will host assassins and even siege engines. Those themes will also be tied to possible resources you can find at those dungeons, and modular items you find there will be made of those resources. 

For the alpha release I plan to complete at least two of the main dungeon themes, which means about 10 different enemies per dungeon for all difficulties with unique skills, AI, bosses, events and drops. As you can figure, the generation mechanics for it is mostly in place so currently it needs content filling with tons of polishing afterwards. Speaking of Alpha I plan to go into some details about it in next time. If you have any additional ideas or suggestions let us hear them in the comments and thanks for the attention.